Last Friday I watched The Island, the new sci-fi action flick starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson and directed by Michael Bay. I don’t have time this week to offer a detailed analysis, but suffice it to say that it’s pretty bad.
Despite the presence of quality actors (I spent the entire film trying to figure out where I’d seen Ethan Phillips before), there was very little time for, you know, acting. The vast majority of the film involved enormous, incongruous action sequences. I know I shouldn’t expect any more from Mr. Bay, whose previous credits include cerebral projects like The Rock and Armageddon. He seems to specialize in taking films with promising premises and making them as idiotic as possible.
On a related note, here’s an interesting commentary on the shameful product placements in the film (including a truly bizarre, meta-cinematic reference).
I did want to list some of his worst sins. Most of them relate to his clumsy approach to the sci-fi genre.
NOTE: After the jump, THERE ARE SPOILERS. SPOILER ALERT! (THERE ALSO BE SPOILERS IN THEM THERE COMMENTS!) If you’re going to see the movie, you probably want to wait to read my bitchy complaints.
To reiterate: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!
- The first third of the film is a bald-faced rip-off (plot, set, costuming) of George Lucas’s early film, THX-1138.
- It’s at least 50 years in the future, and there have been incredible leaps in the biological, medical and genetic sciences. Yet the cars people drive (and the helicopters) and the guns they wield look more or less identical to 2005.
- However, a couple of these villains have these nifty jet bike things lifted from Return of the Jedi. Why doesn’t everybody own one?
- In the period from 2005 to 2050, no one has introduced a single word of slang.
- In order to get an ‘insurance policy’ clone, you have to pay $5 million. Considering inflation, that seems far too little. I’m guessing that five million 2060 dollars might equal one million 2005 dollars. If your clone kicks around for 20 years, you’re only paying $50,000 a year. Surely Sean Bean’s evil corporation isn’t making any profit on that.
- The clones actually aren’t a very good insurance policy. If I get a clone made when I’m 35, and then get inoperable cancer at 40, odds are that the clone’s going to have cancer too.
- There’s a scene involving a technologically advanced and very intrusive ‘synaptic scan’. When they get the results back, they look hilariously like a 2005 (or 1995) CT scan of one’s head.
- Along the same lines, the villainous mercenaries–led by the excellent Djimon Hounsou playing yet another Magc Negro–run a street-by-street facial recogntion scan for our heroes. Eventually they’re spotted with a ‘93% match’. This absurd, as we’ve got the technology today to complete a 99.9% match. Combine that with the computational clout of 2060, and you could monitor every human in Los Angeles in real-time. No scan would be necessary.
- If I’m running a top secret clone farm, I’m going to use something a little more robust in the way of tracking devices. Easy-to-remove bracelets aren’t going to cut it. I’d, I don’t know, embed something under their skin.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Don’t forget the worst thing about this film – Michael Bay wouldn’t let Scarlett Johansson go topless in the love scene.
http://actionadventure.about.com/od/celebrityinterviews/p/aajohanssonI.htm
That’s a crime against humanity right there.
Some of your complaints do seem a bit overly touchy. Canada’s still using 40 year old helicopters, and cars 40 years ago don’t look THAT much different from today’s cars (4 wheels, headlights, doors, windshield, etc.). Maybe not everyone has a jetbike for the same reason that not everyone today has a helicopter – price point, licensing, or maybe even illegality.
Just curious, where’d you get the 99.9% facial recognition statistic? I did an upper level computer science course on computer vision last fall as part of my degree, and that number seems to be pretty high…
How could I enter an anti-Michael-Bay conversation and not post the lyrics to “Pearl Harbour” from movie Team America – World Police?
“I miss you more then Michael Bay missed the mark
When he made Pearl Harbor
I miss you more than that movie missed the point
And that’s an awful lot girl
And now, now you’ve gone away
And all I’m trying to say is
Pearl Harbor sucked, and I miss you
I need u like Ben Affleck needs acting school
He was terrible in that film
I need u like Cuba Gooding needed a bigger part
He’s way better than Ben Affleck
And now all I can think about is your smile
and that shitty movie too
Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you
Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?
I guess Pearl Harbor sucked
Just a little bit more than I miss you”
Thank you, thank you. I trust your opinion enough not to waste my $. I thought it might be good because of Ewan and Scarlett, but now I know better. Perhaps I will rent it when it’s half price or something.
Well, I’ll grant you the helicopters (though they certainly seem incongruous when compared to the flying jet bike thingies). To clarify the year of the film, it’s definitely 2051, and probably at least several years later. There are recognizable differences between 1960 and 2005. That’s not the case in The Island. As far as I could tell, they were, for the most part, regular 2005 models.
The facial recognition information came from a BBC documentary I watched a few years ago. Computer scientists demonstrated extraordinary accuracy recognizing individuals who were disguising their faces with hats, sunglasses and fake facial hair. It convinced me that we’d solved this problem.
I was entertained, but it took some work on my part.
technological development is always uneven because markets drive the search for new technologies; it’s not some force that pushes everything along at the same speed. companies have developed all kinds of pills for middle-aged rich people, but have yet to find a way to cure those patches of rough skin you get on your hands after a long day at the factory, for example.
the thing about 5 million being too low… it’s common for countries that have had a lot of inflation to just drop a few zeros off the end. in 2045 it might have cost a few trillion, but maybe in 2049 the state bank fixed what was becoming a major accounting problem.
there was a part in Heinlein’s “the cat who walked through walls” where everyone had a clone on hold for emergencies. but there, the clones’ brains were not allowed to fully develop (who would want a brain transplant, even from one’s own clone?) and the bodies were kept in storage. seems a lot easier and more likely.
More similiar than dis-similiar to Logan’s Run. Actually, a remake of Logan’s Run might have made for a more intersting story. The Island takes the best from numerous films including:
Terminator
Logan’s Run
Coma
Star Wars
Planet of the Apes
The product placement…shocking!!!
There *is* a remake of Logan’s Run…at least there will be. Bryan Singer (“The Usual Suspects”, “X-Men 1 & 2”) is making it.
how can you do this?