BEFORE: Last Ewan McGregor film in the chain. Why this one? That will be a little clearer after I link to tomorrow's film. There is a plan in place.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Cloud Atlas" (Movie #1,795)
AFTER: So funny that I'm back to another story about a clone revolt, of sorts. This film was able to get more into it than "Cloud Atlas" did, which glossed over a lot of the details and mechanics (except, for some reason, the icky ones...) and was really only interested in the flashy, sensationalist part of cloning. If all the clones in your story are hot Korean women, I wonder how much you're really interested in the science of it all...
The science and logistics here seem to make a bit more sense - to the point where it makes me wonder why people aren't already growing themselves clones to get a new liver or a new heart. My guess would be that the process is too time-consuming - if you need a new heart, you probably can't wait the 15-16 years required to grow a new one to adulthood, so your best option is still to be on a donor list. Right now, the only way technology has to birth a clone is to put it inside of another human, right? So theoretically a woman could give birth to her own clone, as I understand it, and that wouldn't be strange or awkward at all.
The problem, according to this film, is that clones raised without sentience are defective somehow, so although the company has promised its investors that their clones are never technically alive, what they're promising and what they're delivering are two very different things. The clones are raised in an underground facility and told that the outside world is a terrible, dead, post-apocalyptic place, except for one very small island, and slowly people will be chosen to go to the island and re-populate the planet.
It's a great scam, if you want to get people to look forward to something, just turn it into a lottery. You could probably sell raffle tickets to get punched in the face if you spun it right - some people would probably just buy the raffle tickets and not even ask what it's for. Or just be really whimsical about it - didn't someone just raise thousands of dollars on Kickstarter to make potato salad?
I'm proud to be an organ donor - provided that all I have to do is check that box on my driver's license form, and never think about it again. If I have to sign a DNR or think about it any further, I'd probably balk. My wife is convinced that if you check the organ donor box, and you're in an accident or something, the doctors won't work really hard to save your life, because they need your heart for the person down the hall that they like better.
There's still a lot that took place in this film that I wasn't clear on - one character notably switches sides, for example, and I'm not sure I understood his motivation for doing so. I also didn't really see how this facility worked in terms of financial strategy, if a slight defect in a small portion of the clones could bring the whole thing tumbling down. Was it structured like some giant cloning Ponzi scheme? Why would a recall of (let's say) 10% of the clones make the whole thing non-viable? Didn't they have some kind of insurance, or a back-up plan in place?
Plus, why didn't the fact that hundreds of people paid millions of dollars for clones buy them some better security? Billionaires have private islands, private golf courses, etc. and even though tight security is a constant expense, it's not impossible. This cloning place took in billions from its clients and hired the cheapest security imaginable. First rule of business - always protect your assets.
It's a funny thing when a film tries to predict the future - it ends up saying more about the time it was created, rather than the future period. I think they're still finding out things that "Minority Report" got right about the future, as opposed to a film like "A.I.", which had more misses than hits in that regard. We've got the interactive billboards and ad-walls seen in "Minority Report", but we don't have the pleasure robots seen in "A.I." - someone in Japan is probably working on that, though. Since this film was made in 2005, it's worth noting that people still drive cars in the future - if this film were made today, the cars in the future would probably drive themselves.
EDIT: But from a writing standpoint, I'm not sure sci-fi writers know exactly what to do with clones just yet. That's probably because we've never grown one to adulthood - we've cloned a sheep, but we couldn't exactly ask the sheep if it felt like its own individual or if it remembered the donor sheep experiences. Some of the Star Wars fiction that followed Episodes II and III got into some of this, like the Republic Commando series, that showed clones developing different specialties and personalities, while still trying to embrace the Mandalorian heritage of their progenitor, Jango Fett.
I also just read a Star Wars book titled "Riptide", in which a Jedi came face to face with a clone of himself, and that's the whole nature vs. nurture argument right there. If the clone of a good man is raised to be evil, is he inherently good or evil? And if you could transplant the consciousness of the good man into the evil clone, what happens then? I don't have the answers here, but I'm fascinated by the questions.
Also starring Scarlett Johansson (last seen in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier"), Djimon Hounsou (last seen in "Push"), Steve Buscemi (last seen in "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry"), Sean Bean (last seen in "Troy"), Ethan Phillips (last seen in "Wagons East"), Michael Clarke Duncan (last seen in "The Whole Nine Yards"), Brian Stepanek, with cameos from Shawnee Smith (last seen in "Armageddon"), Eric Stonestreet (last seen in "Identity Thief"), Mary Pat Gleason.
RATING: 6 out of 10 tracksuits
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