Surrogates (and hollywood science fiction in general)
- May 30th, 2010
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I just watched Surrogates this past weekend. Not bad. I’m either rusty or the plot twists were genuinely difficult to predict.
But I have to say the ending left me just a little unsatisfied. Part of it may just be that I’m a technologist at heart. Slap some powered silicon onto something, and you can bet I’ll think it’s interesting. (Maker Faire last weekend felt a little like that, but that’s for another day). Apparently I like Fitbits because I’m interested in tech (but if you don’t know them, try one. I’m on my second after a bit of water damage on the first). But it’s a clever bit of technology. It just tracks every step you take, a pedestrian game in life. And you can monitor your sleep at night (even more fascinating).
iPads aside, the spread of sensing technology will definitely lead to Surragotes or I, Robot style exo-skeletons for human use.
What really bugs me is it seems like most of these techno-thrillers about the future seem to portray the hyper-advancement of the field as an inherently bad thing, often preaching a kind of Luddite philosophy. Now mind you, I don’t think there should be a movie where everything is better because of the tech (I don’t think a story that’s happy through and through can be a very good story, there has to be strife…)
…strife.
So why not a movie looking at problems in the world we currently think of as intractable, with the story about the development of said solution. The R&D I’m sure would be boring, but you could really emphasize a grand conspiracy of anti-solution sentiment coupled with the docile inactivity of the mass population. It’s like a non-dead zombie apocalyptic scenario where the average person is effectively a mediated zombie, ODing on pizza and television. There’s a big problem (well, several are hinted, but we focus on one) looming ahead that a subset of the population can see, and nobody else seems to give a damn.
Oh, wait.
And then the rest of the film can be about the struggle to bring solutions to fruition. With a plot twist and international intrigue thrown in for spice.