Surrogates (2009) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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This is not the greatest sci-fi film in the world, this is just a surrogate.

Surrogates presents a future world where crime and disease are almost non-existent because the human element has been removed. No longer do people interact with one another physically. Instead, they interface with robotic bodies which they use to conduct their daily business. What could possibly go wrong?

First Impressions

The trailer opens with a commercial for robotic human surrogates, which allows people to explore the world tethered by computers into synthetic bodies. Someone begins killing surrogate bodies which kills the user connected as well. Bruce Willis is a detective in charge of investigating the crime. The company that builds the robots wants to keep it quiet that people might die while connected to their surrogate. But when the Detective’s surrogate is destroyed in a crash, he must enter the real world without a safety net to hunt down the killer. Many action scenes, explosions, and fights end with a whole crowd falling (apparently dead) around the Detective. This week it’s all about the Surrogates.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

The film takes place in a near-future world where android bodies, called surrogates, are used by 98% of the world population on a daily basis. Humans plug their brains into a device that allows them to puppet their surrogate remotely, while they stay safe at home. The basis for these robots was created 14 years ago by Dr. Lionel Canter (James Cromwell) as a way for disabled people to control synthetic appendages. Proto-surrogate bodies were first used by the military in wartime 11 years ago, with the Supreme Court approving their usage for civilians in daily life soon after. Crime and disease statistics then dropped to new lows, while a vocal minority of humans opposed these machines. These detractors live in sovereign areas of the country called Dread Reservations and are led by a man known as Zaire Powell, aka The Prophet (Ving Rhames), who espouses living as real humans and not via machines.

A young man and a blond woman’s surrogate bodies are destroyed outside a club in downtown Boston. FBI Agents Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) and Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell) arrive to investigate the surrogate bodies, finding both eyes damaged and their circuit boards fried. They discover that the man is Jared Canter (Shane Dzicek), son of Lionel Canter–who was a director at VSI (Virtual Self Industries–Life, Only Better), the manufacturer of surrogates. The only difference between this accident and any other involving surrogates is that the operator of the body is also found dead. The first homicide in years. Tom and Jennifer speak with Canter (or rather his surrogate in a younger body). They discover that he loaned the surrogate to his son, and Tom believes that the elder Canter may have been the target.

After speaking with individuals at VSI, the company that produces the devices, and with Colonel Brendon (Michael Cudlitz), a military liaison in charge of surrogates, the killer, Miles Strickland (Jack Noseworthy), is tracked down fleeing towards the Boston Dread Reservation. During the chase, Miles pulls out a handheld weapon that emits electrical energy and kills five police officers via their surrogates, in the same way that Canter was killed. Tom, aboard an FBI helicopter, avoids being targeted by the device by disconnecting himself from his surrogate seconds before it is attacked. The helicopter crashes into the reservation and Tom resumes pursuit, via his surrogate but it is attacked and disabled by a Human Coalition mob. Soon, the Prophet has Miles killed and takes the weapon for himself.

Tom is admitted to a hospital, having received some feedback from the weapon via his surrogate link. He is also suspended by his boss, Andy Stone (Boris Kodjoe) for violating a treaty zone. Tom leaves the hospital, entering the world without a surrogate for the first time in a long while. Tom’s wife Maggie (Rosamund Pike) only ever sees him via her surrogate body, choosing to lock herself into another room of their apartment after the death of their young son. She criticizes Tom for putting himself at risk. One night, a mysterious surrogate enters Jennifer’s apartment and shoots her dead. Her surrogate information is then transferred to another computer system, which is used by somebody else to control her body. Tom lets Colonel Brendon know that the Human Coalition has a weapon, called the Overload Device, or OD.

The military storms the compound to retrieve the device and kills The Prophet, who is revealed to actually be a surrogate. The audience learns he has been puppeteered by Lionel Canter. The Peters surrogate informs Tom that Stone hired Miles to kill Canter (believing it to be the elder man behind the surrogate as suspected), at the request of VSI. Tom steals the codes that activate the weapon from Stone, but Peters goes rogue and takes them from Tom–nearly killing him, and placing the FBI on the lookout for him as a criminal connected to the murder. At the FBI surrogate operations room, Peters kidnaps Bobby Saunders (Devin Ratray) the human in charge of the surrogate network so that she can plug the OD into the system and destroy all surrogates and their operators. Her plan is to return the world to the way it used to be.

Tom realizes that it is Canter controlling Peters’ surrogate, as well as The Prophet, and confronts the man. The inventor wants to revert humanity, upset that VSI bastardized his invention, arguing that the human population is now more isolated than ever before. He provides the command interface to the OD and takes a cyanide pill before Tom can stop him. Tom leaps into Canter’s rig and takes control of Peters’ surrogate, asking Saunders how to stop the weapon. They can’t turn off the device, but they can buffer the operators from any feedback. Tom completes that step but chooses to allow the surrogates to be destroyed. All surrogate bodies worldwide fall “dead” at the same time, forcing humans to re-emerge into the world. Tom finds Maggie outside of her room and hugs her.

“We sacrifice many modern pleasures and conveniences to feel truly connected. Not with machines, but with ourselves. This is the human condition. This is what gives life meaning.” – The Prophet

History in the Making

As with many other science-fiction films, Surrogates is based on previously published material. However, its source material is not a book like so many other films (including last week’s The Time Traveler’s Wife). Instead, it’s based on the graphic novel written by Robert Venditti with art by Brett Weldele and published by Top Shelf Productions. The comic, and thus the film, explore an area of sci-fi that hadn’t been as prevalent; human control of android bodies, sometimes referred to as telepresence. These stories often involve virtual avatars within a computer or virtual reality space, but Surrogates opened a new portal of possibilities. The film was the second, and last, sci-fi film directed by Jonathan Mostow after Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and the second to last film he has directed to date. He doesn’t seem to have any defining type of style for his films, except that both of these sci-fi movies are action-themed in one way or another.

Known more for his non-genre action roles, the film stars Bruce Willis whose sci-fi career includes 12 Monkeys and The Fifth Element. Here Willis is playing a character akin to John McClane–the protagonist from the Die Hard films–as he investigates a crime scene and brings the killers to justice. His partner is played by Radha Mitchell, an actress also not known for her science-fiction roles. However, she received her breakout role in the sci-fi/horror film Pitch Black, with Vin Diesel. Rosamund Pike had not been in a sci-fi film to date, and has only one other listed sci-fi credit, which is 2013s The World’s End–coincidentally one in which her character is replaced with a robotic alien version–but more on that in another Sci-Fi Saturdays. That leaves James Cromwell, an actor who has achieved great success by appearing in movies such as Babe and LA Confidential. Here on Sci-Fi Saturdays, he’s known best for his work in Star Trek: First Contact, Space Cowboys, and I, Robot. His casting in this film feels a little familiar, as an inventor of a ubiquitous future technology that goes wrong in some way, leading him to commit suicide. He played a similar role in I, Robot, where his suicide spurred the main character (and plot) forward, but there he wasn’t considered a villain.

Genre-fication

Sentient and near-sentient androids and robots have been a staple of sci-fi films since the 1950s. As technology evolved in the real world, so did the complexity of things seen in the movies. Usually, these automatons are controlled by artificial intelligence (AI) or remotely controlled by humans, but Surrogates uses a telepresence method that has the humans making a direct linkage to the android with their brain. It’s similar to a lot of the virtual reality films from the previous decade including The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor, or Brainscan. Those films had humans using a neural interface to project their consciousness inside a computer simulation of real events. The surrogate bodies of Surrogates work in the same way, but rather than wandering in a virtual world (which may or may not be known to the user) these bodies allow the humans to wander around the real world via an automated interface. It’s like using a remote control, but seen as more efficient since the surrogate responds to thoughts, rather than needing input from mechanical controls. As their name suggests, these surrogates are stand-ins for the humans that control them.

Even though the surrogate bodies exist in the real world, their operators are cooped up in their room or apartment controlling the body. Daily interactions are now mostly surrogate meeting surrogate, which the film depicts akin to real-life humans interacting within the virtual spaces on the internet. This film’s world is not depicted as ultra-futuristic either. It’s only two new technological advancements that change how people live and work: the brain/computer interface that allows control of the surrogate, and the advanced robotic body itself. The film also depicts how these bodies have changed over time. Military models and early surrogates had facial features that resembled crash test dummies. The modern surrogates shown mostly appear to be lifelike representations modeled on the operator’s physicality. Bruce Willis’s surrogate looks mostly like Bruce but with more hair and “prettier.” The same can be said for both Maggie and Jennifer. Their surrogates are slightly more feminized and put together than the “real world” versions of their characters; omitting, for example, Maggie’s large scar over her right eye. But, as with the world of the Internet, just because a surrogate presents as one gender, that doesn’t mean it’s an exact representation of its operator. The blonde woman picked up by Jared at the club belongs to an overweight man, creating yet another new reality in an already shifted landscape.

Societal Commentary

Surrogates creates a future society where the invention of surrogate technology (invented 14 years before the events of the film) changed the course of the world. What began as a technology to harness the brain power of people missing appendages, or with other limited mobility issues, became a new way of life for the entire society. Like other scientists before him, Lionel Canter created a breakthrough technology that was bastardized and monetized in ways he never intended. Fourteen years into this grand experiment, Canter sees that while freeing some people to be able to live normal lives, his technology has created a world where humans no longer interact with other humans. In a world that is probably close to 10 billion people, only 2% choose to avoid this technology (whether for religious purposes, or some other reason). That’s only 200 million people who abstain from the largest technological advancement in humanity. This resistance is shown in a microcosm at the Boston Human Coalition reservation, where residents form a mob to destroy Tom’s surrogate. These abstainers, and people that fight for literal human rights, are led by a quasi-religious figure known as The Prophet. His character evokes elements of both freedom leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, as well as Evangelical leaders that create a dogma of distrust in science and technology.

What becomes apparent in the film is that The Prophet is a literal bad actor. He is not a human preaching about the evils of surrogates, but a surrogate himself, puppeteered by the creator of the surrogates as a foil to his technology. Also, the black religious leader being controlled by a white man to rile up the minority against the technology he created is totally within the realm of a dystopia. This is a commentary on the ability of people of means and power being able to play both sides of the social spectrum; creating a need on one hand, while fulfilling it on the other. In that way, Lionel seems a bit like Lemar Burgess from Minority Report, where he’s trying to game the system. But instead of using it to his personal advantage (for money or more power), Canter is trying to reverse what he feels is a technological drain on society. He wants to put the genie back in the bottle. His motivation is his guilt for turning society into a bunch of people trapped in closets, piloting robotic actors around the real world. Certainly, there were benefits to his creations. Crime rates dropped as well as levels of disease (imagine a pandemic where robotic automata could still conduct “face-to-face” business), but at what cost? The film argues that the literal cost is our humanity, which is played out in the relationship between Tom and Maggie.

The Greer’s backstory implies that Maggie was driving a vehicle that was involved in an accident that killed their young son. She received a physical scar from the incident and went into isolation, devastated by the loss of her son. Tom seems to have been affected as well, but he wants someone to share his grief with, while Maggie only wants to cut off all real contact with the human race and her husband. This tragedy brings up a question about the one type of surrogate we never see in the film, children. It’s unclear if the accident took place prior to surrogates being available, or if surrogates for children are unavailable. Maybe people under 18 are not allowed to use surrogates because of reasons. Showing a child surrogate might have been more damning about the loss of humanity than a mother grieving for her son by shutting out her husband, but only just slightly.

The Science in The Fiction

The idea of a wholly mechanical body that can be controlled by one’s brain is an interesting concept. It’s an idea that grew out of Lionel Canter’s desire to help physically disabled people lead a normal life. The synthetic bodies approximate each operator allowing most people a recognition between themselves and their surrogate. But VSI corrupted Canter’s idea by making the technology available to everyone. The commercialization of a technological discovery destroys Canter’s view of his place in society, driving him to destroy the very thing he created–even at the cost of billions of human lives. And he has the perfect way to do it since apparently every technological advancement also has a way to counteract it. In this case, the Overload Device, dubbed OD–as in overdose. It was designed to destroy a surrogate during the army’s initial testing of the devices. Unfortunately, it also kills the operator by creating feedback that disables the fail-safes that keep humans safe. As the representative from VSI says, “this idea itself is absurd. If it were possible it would defeat the entire purpose of surrogacy.” It is ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as the backdoor protocols that the FBI has in place.

Saunders, the only character audiences see who chooses not to use a surrogate (and works within the system and for the authorities), tells Jennifer about the “grey area” that exists with the buffering software. This is a backdoor protocol by which the FBI can shut down any surrogate at any time (with a warrant) with a few clicks of some buttons. The operators don’t seem to be aware of this action that can be taken against them and neither do other FBI officers (though Jennifer is the only one that interacts with Saunders). Yet, Canter seems to be aware of the device. Perhaps because he worked at VSI and helped create the framework that allows this action to be possible. This is probably the scariest aspect of the film, whereby the government has a Big Brother ability to see what’s happening with any surrogate anywhere and issue a shutdown code to override the user. Imagine if the government could turn off your car remotely any time they wished, what might the consequences of such an action be? Canter also has the ability to operate multiple surrogates, even when surrogates must be coded to only one individual’s neural signature. As he says, he’s not the average VSI customer, implying that he has override codes, or other special backdoors to special functions.

The Final Frontier

The film for next week’s Sci-Fi Saturdays, Avatar, will continue to explore the idea of hardware allowing humans to interface their brain with another body, but in ways that are much grander than those of Surrogates. The idea of the telepresence androids from this film was used as a large plot device in Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player Two. It features neural interface devices called ONI that allow humans to feel and experience real sensations from recorded videos and computer simulations. They also have armored robots, called telebots, that can be controlled from the same device–either from the real world or in their computer simulation called the OASIS. The aspect of robots that are not artificially intelligent but are inhabited by humans, either virtually like the surrogates or by transplantation of a brain, is an idea that doesn’t get used enough in science-fiction films. That idea helps make Surrogates unique and interesting, even if it does suffer from a narrow ideology that attempts to spoon-feed the audience easy answers.

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