SURROGATES

Ok, animation, children’s classics, and fantasy – all this is fine for me. Sci-fi? Not a big fan. I’m not quite sure why, I am the right generation to like sci-fi. Possibly, because I was brought up on a steady diet of books and stories. I’ve never really liked machines or computers (though God knows I use them often enough). I would feel no great loss if they vanished tomorrow – except perhaps to write my blog… That is why; getting me to like – I mean REALLY like a sci-fi flick is no mean feat. No sir. I was vaguely curious about Surrogates and had a few hours free at work and that is the only reason I picked it up in the first place. I reckoned it was a police drama of sorts, had to have action in it being a Hollywood film with Bruce Willis in it and thus would probably pass the time… Well, it did pass the time, I’ll give it that, but it did a whole lot more in the meantime…

Surrogates is set in a rather eerily realistic (to my mind) future. In this future, technology has advanced to such a degree that people no longer need to leave their homes. Ever. They live their lives “by proxy” using robotic surrogates that can be controlled with the mind. These surrogates are, as you can imagine, completely customizable and physically perfect, you can be absolutely anybody you want to be… Crime rates are absolutely nil, in fact there hasn’t been a murder in quite a few years when suddenly a man and a woman and their surrogates are destroyed by a very sophisticated weapon. Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) is the FBI agent who must investigate this. The prime suspects are a renegade group of people who live without surrogates under the leadership of a man called The Prophet… But when Greer’s own surrogate is destroyed in a chase another challenge presents itself. If he wants to solve these seemingly impossible murders he must accomplish the unthinkable… He must leave his house. For real…

The technology itself may not exist yet but we are not as far from the Surrogates as you might imagine. This is, after all, a mere caricature of the internet. We all have customizable online personas (and they are completely customizable – hence the many child-filters against people who, shall we say, are not as well meaning as we are in chat rooms. I mean look at the newest development on this topic here) and do in fact have complete online “lives”. To the point that there is an actual website (www.suicidemachine.org) that helps one commit “online suicide” – removing one from all the social networking sites completely and forever. That may sound like a nightmare scenario for most of us but it actually might be quite liberating if you think about it… For those who are slightly older, well first of all, the sci-fi element does not get in the way of the police-drama section. It is undoubtedly there, but not “hard to follow”. In fact I am, to be honest, almost completely computer illiterate and yet could follow the ins and outs of the plot with ease. And Bruce Willis isn’t half bad either =)