This was a movie that I was really looking forward to because I’m a fan of the source material. Surrogates came to life as a five-issue comic book miniseries that I think was pretty entertaining. My biggest fear from the start is that the movie would need to be padded like crazy, as the original comic was not a long story. In order to avoid the crutch of having to pad out the movie, the movie does divert from the source material. The general concept and characters are largely the same, but most of the smaller plot points are original. The overall story isn’t mindblowing, but it moves along at a fast enough clip and should keep you entertained. There are more than a few flaws in the plot’s logic, but a few handfuls of popcorn should help you look past them. Similar to my earlier comparison with Wall-E, the movie is a bit heavy-handed in its social commentary. I don’t particularly like having a message beaten over my head, but as a movie, I was able to enjoy it. Like my fellow reviewer Curt said in his District 9 review, movies with an allegory still need to be entertaining enough to stand on their own.
While the movie had flaws, there were two things about it that I really liked. First of all, the effect that they used for the titular surrogates was really cool. I don’t know if it was makeup, CGI, or a combination of the two, but I love the look they achieved. All of the surrogates looked like humans (as they were all played by the actors themselves), but there was also something about them that was “off,” especially with their skin. The skin just looked wrong, and it was perfect because it constantly reminded you that you weren’t looking at humans. It was done so in a way as to not be distracting, but as you watched the scene, you definitely knew it was there. On the other side of the coin, they also did a great job of making all of the humans in the movie look sufficiently more “worn” than their surrogate counterparts. It was a nice dynamic that helped sell the message the movie continued to push. The who concept of the surrogates added helped to add a cool sci-fi element to the movie. It presents you with a future that’s a bit more realistic than something as clean and technology driven than we see in most sci-fi fare.
The other thing I really liked about the movie was Bruce Willis’ performance, particularly as the human character. He did a great job of conveying the emotions of someone who was seeing the world for the first time in a long while. He gave you an idea for how alone the character felt, as although he was surrounded by people, they weren’t really people. It’s my opinion that Willis is the best thing about this movie by far. You could make an argument that his acting as the surrogate was pretty stiff, but I’m going to assume that was done on purpose.
Out of a total of five, I would buy Surrogates 3 beers. That’s only if we were humans though. If we went out as our surrogate robots, I guess I would have to buy us glasses of……oil! Holy shit. Do you see what I did there? Did you picture it in your head? Robots drinking oil at a bar. They’d be just like people. Oh man. Ha ha ha……ha…………………….ha……………………………………….wheeeeeew.
No comments:
Post a Comment