“Imagine a world where you can be anyone, go anywhere, do anything.
Robotic human surrogates combine the durability of the machine with the grace and beauty of the human body.”
So starts Surrogates, the sci-fi thriller movie based on a comic book series of the same name. The basic concept of the movie is that a company called VSI has created human surrogates. Surrogates are human-like robots that are controlled wirelessly by the mind of the controller using a device called a stem chair. The surrogates really do allow one to be anyone, as we find out early on in the film. A rather beautiful blond woman who is killed turns out to be a somewhat obese, bald, middle aged man.
The film starts out showing the progression of the robot surrogates program. Apparently, VSI started the project to give new life to disabled people (such as the company’s founder, who is unable to walk). In the eyes of the founder, the project went way out of hand when every human was able to afford a surrogate. VSI started to advise that everyone live their lives through their surrogates. It even went as far as the company firing their founder after he refused to comply with the new program.
There are several human reservations that have formed around the major cities, all which are lead by “the prophet,” a mysterious man who teaches that surrogacy is wrong and “an abomination.” These surrogate haters call themselves the Dreads.
The main character, played by Bruce Willis, is FBI Agent Tom Greer, who decides early on in the film that he thinks surrogates are a fake and that people should take breaks from their surrogates to actually live life as their real human selves. His wife, Maggie, is totally addicted to her surrogate self. We learn that Agent and Mrs. Greer lost their son in a car accident, and Maggie is only able to cope with this by knowing that she can be her perfect, beautiful, surrogate self on a daily basis.
Surrogates are supposed to have built in fail safes that disconnect their operator should anything happen to the surrogate. For example, if a surrogate is killed or otherwise incapacitated, the unit automatically disconnects from the operator. However, the problems in the film start when a mysterious weapon is used to kill a surrogate and it also kills the surrogate’s operator. Agent Greer is a part of the FBI task force that has set out to find this weapon, which is most likely in the hands of “the prophet.”
Without giving away major plot points, that is about all I can say about the actual facts of the movie. Now I will start with my commentary. I loved this film. The whole idea of this film, as with all films of this nature, is to show that when technology goes too far, it can have horrible consequences on society as a whole. The sad thing is that I can see something like this actually happening (and not that far in the future) if things continue on the path they are on. The surrogate system is like the ultimate virtual reality game. There are people now that get lost inside games, especially the ones that have immerse worlds and plots. The idea of surrogacy just seems to be the next step for these people to feed their addiction to be someone that they aren’t.
Another immediate thought I had was that this movie was very much like an inverse of The Matrix. In The Matrix, humans are placed into a make believe virtual world by a jack being placed into their heads. The idea of The Matrix, however, was that humans weren’t given the choice to do this. The only people that did it on purpose were the people that had escaped the matrix and were trying to fight against the machines.
In Surrogates, people willingly choose to sit in their stem chairs and become their robot selves. Basically, the world outside of one’s living space only existed with a surrogate. Also, the robots exist in the same world as their human counter-parts. However, as is seen in one part of the movie, a human cannot exist in the super-human world of the surrogates very well. Besides the fact that a surrogate death does not lead to the operator’s death under normal circumstances, the surrogates are seen to have super-human strengths. A surrogate is able to take gunshots and still move freely. They can lose limbs and still walk on. Also, they are shown to be able to jump over and between moving vehicles. This does not tend to lead to a good experience for a “regular” human when walking alongside these super-human bots.
If you love The Matrix, you will love this movie. If you’re into films that explore what might happen if technology goes wrong or what happens when people are able to become other people at will, this is something you will enjoy. If you’re looking for a deep, developed storyline, there’s not much of that here. Looking back, the story is somewhat predictable. However, I would definitely recommend this one. I’ll give it a 4.5 out of 5. That’s an A-. Better than what most people gave it on Yahoo! reviews, but I love technology based sci-fi movies.
