Why Surrogates wasn’t that good • 09.30.09
It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t good. And if you’re like me, you’re trying to put your finger on exactly why it wasn’t good. Bruce Willis is always a treat in any movie, the premise was intriguing and offered limitless possibilities for satire and social commentary. It had the potential to satisfy our seemingly insatiable appetite for doomsday future dramas in which the machines we built to help us end up being our downfall (I don’t know about you but movies and TV have convinced me that the future ultimately leads to computers killing or enslaving us all-Terminator, The Matrix, Battlestar Gallactica, I Robot, Blade Runner). And it wasn’t a bad movie, it just wasn’t very good.
What was good:
The makeup. There was something creepy about how perfectly smooth the surrogate skin was. All of the surrogates look like they’ve got Oprah’s best makeup and lighting crew following them wherever they go. Plus all of the actors-including the myriad of gorgeous extras-walked, talked and looked just a little off, their eyes seemed a little dead, their faces apathetic, unmoving, their motions as smooth and mechanical as their skin. It was also fun to see juxtaposition of the perfect surrogate and the “operators” all of whom were dull, flabby, pale, blotchy-skinned greasy-haired older shadows of their idealized surrogate selves. I don’t know how the makeup artists were able to make the actors look more made up and perfect than they normally do in regular movies, but they did a great job.
The special effects. There were some great moments of faces being torn off to reveal the robots beneath. The movie was glossy, fun, and the effects were flawless. Coordinating as many extras as they did to all simultaneously fall down dead on the street must have been difficult, and I’m also impressed that the casting directors were able to round up so many ridiculously good looking people to work as extras to populate the surrogate world of physical perfection. Why aren’t all of them already actors and/or models?
Bruce Willis. You gotta hand it to the guy, he is good at playing the wounded, good guy out for truth and justice. He has so much charisma that you can’t help but watch him in any scene, and he was the only one who was more attractive than his surrogate counterpart.
What wasn’t good:
The death of the son. While I’m a firm believer in a character having a wound or past trauma, in this case, it felt very contrived and phony, as if the writer imposed this past upon the story. It didn’t fit his character but seemed like it was tacked on, so that he could share common ground with his nemesis, whose son is also killed. The fact that his son died seemed to have little to do with the story, the theme, or the way in which Bruce ultimately overcame the bad guy in the end. In order for a wound to work to build a character arc and allow the theme to be fully realized, it needs to be something intrinsic to what the character needs to do in order to save the day in the end. Clarice had to overcome her self-doubt and fear that she wouldn’t be able to save the senator’s daughter, just like she wasn’t able to save the lambs. Shrek had to learn to be open to love and let people into his heart after being rejected so many times in his past. But having a dead son had nothing to do with Bruce Willis saving the world.
The nemesis. James Cromwell plays Canter, the inventor of the surrogate technology. His original intentions to help the paralyzed has gone horribly, superficially wrong, and now he feels the only solution is to kill everyone. His dastardly plans are not based in any logic, and wouldn’t benefit him at all, or provide him with the satisfaction of revenge. Since the simple solution Bruce offers in the end is much more logical, practical, and less evil, it begs the question as to why Canter didn’t do the same thing.
The car chases. Too many, too cheesy and too overdone. Car chases have their place in action and caper movies, but there are so many more exciting, interesting things the writers could have done with this weird future world-like the chase through the freight-car jungle of the Dread Reservation, it’s disappointing that they fell back on such an overused convention.
The premise. The idea is fascinating, and makes you think about our current society and how close we’re getting to this type of reality. With the abundance of plastic surgery, the obsession with youth and beauty, and the increasingly isolated, computer based lives we are leading, the idea that someday no one would leave their house doesn’t sound too far off. But they didn’t use this premise to explore these parallels, nor did it even seem that bad. Crime and disease have gone down 99% in the surrogate-based future, everyone is happy, safe and perfect. What difference does it make if you aren’t real if everyone around you isn’t either? Other than the feeling that it just isn’t right, the story does not explore the dark side of what this lifestyle does to a person, or what it means to be human and live an authentic life. It’s such a great premise, it could have been done very well, but it just fell short of making you think about and dread the possibilities it explored.
