I saw this summer, 2005, blockbuster aspirant in a theater. In prime time on a Saturday night, the theater was almost empty. So empty that a woman sitting a few seats away asked me if she was in the right place. I told her she was, but on reflection the morning after, I should have said no.
I hadn’t done my homework before entering the theater. Max had read the New York Times review, and knew the director’s previous work. He is also 24, with age appropriate eyes, ears, and tolerance for the sights and sounds of eye and ear splitting video game action.
Max knew that this was a Michael Bay film. Bay began as a director of music videos and commercials. He was not annoyed therefore by distracting product placements, the glossy photography of cars, use of actors as models, slick though pointless cutting. While the old man in me moaned about the jittery incoherent camera work, which I took to be ersatz “action,” Max had no problem with it. He knew that Bay’s feature resume established a Michael Bay style: BAD BOYS (and BB II), THE ROCK, PEARL HARBOR, and ARMAGEDDON. Max thus expected to see and hear less than subtle scenes with the tried and true conventions of the genre: exploding cars, interminable chases, implausible spectacular effects and stunts. Originality and subtlety are not part of Bay’s resumé.
Of course, after the movie we debated. I decried the overkill of sound and fury. Max observed that this was simply the inevitable evolution of trends established by classics such as NORTH BY NORTHWEST. He might have added BULLITT and many others. I objected that the difference was that this movie lacks the essential elements that made those chases, explosions and effects work: originality, tension, wit, and surprise. Max parried that the action genre no longer requires these elements. That is a different movie genre altogether. Audiences now do not have the patience for those kinds of slow developing action set pieces.
Max, the analytical screenwriter, surmised that the script was a patchwork of probably uncredited script doctoring. The more successful scenes include Steve Buscemi’s characteristic rants, Scarlett Johanssen’s career first sex scene, and a few other obvious patches. I read later that Steven Spielberg produced the movie, and “supervised” the script. It shows, as there are ghosts of MINORITY REPORT sprinkled throughout.
The theme and plot of THE ISLAND are also derivative. It includes ideas and images previously used in movies from the 1970's. George Lucas’ THX 1138 involved Robert Duvall’s escape from a white uniformed conforming perfect society which banned drugs and sex. In LOGAN'S RUN, Michael York, as “Logan 5," fled a supposed post-cataclysmic perfect conformity-imposed underground world along with a sexy companion. COMA was a Michael Crichton directed movie about harvesting organs from comatose patients. It goes further back than that, of course. The “Eloi” in H. G. Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE were young, innocent humans who were raised for food by the race of subterranean “Morlocks.”
All of that is okay. Hollywood has always honored plagiarism, better known as “quoting” or paying “homage” to its past.
Here, as Max (and several reviewers) noticed, there is a submerged political message. The sci-fi issue explored is the inevitable evil of “cloning,” stem cell research, and other contemporary issues that stir religious controversy. The POV of the movie seems to be contrary to the supposed liberal bias of Hollywood. By showing the danger of rampant science capable of growing clones for eventual transplants for the benefit of the selfish elite, it argues the conservative side.
Of course, this may also be a “Humanist” argument, favoring the individual against corporate greed, but nothing so serious is explored. By burying the issue within the confines of this kind of action flick, any serious consideration is of course made irrelevant. The audience in this atmosphere is precluded from any deep thinking by the sturm and drang. This is well within the Spielberg tradition. He did the same with MINORITY REPORT and A.I.
I hadn’t done my homework before entering the theater. Max had read the New York Times review, and knew the director’s previous work. He is also 24, with age appropriate eyes, ears, and tolerance for the sights and sounds of eye and ear splitting video game action.
Max knew that this was a Michael Bay film. Bay began as a director of music videos and commercials. He was not annoyed therefore by distracting product placements, the glossy photography of cars, use of actors as models, slick though pointless cutting. While the old man in me moaned about the jittery incoherent camera work, which I took to be ersatz “action,” Max had no problem with it. He knew that Bay’s feature resume established a Michael Bay style: BAD BOYS (and BB II), THE ROCK, PEARL HARBOR, and ARMAGEDDON. Max thus expected to see and hear less than subtle scenes with the tried and true conventions of the genre: exploding cars, interminable chases, implausible spectacular effects and stunts. Originality and subtlety are not part of Bay’s resumé.
Of course, after the movie we debated. I decried the overkill of sound and fury. Max observed that this was simply the inevitable evolution of trends established by classics such as NORTH BY NORTHWEST. He might have added BULLITT and many others. I objected that the difference was that this movie lacks the essential elements that made those chases, explosions and effects work: originality, tension, wit, and surprise. Max parried that the action genre no longer requires these elements. That is a different movie genre altogether. Audiences now do not have the patience for those kinds of slow developing action set pieces.
Max, the analytical screenwriter, surmised that the script was a patchwork of probably uncredited script doctoring. The more successful scenes include Steve Buscemi’s characteristic rants, Scarlett Johanssen’s career first sex scene, and a few other obvious patches. I read later that Steven Spielberg produced the movie, and “supervised” the script. It shows, as there are ghosts of MINORITY REPORT sprinkled throughout.
The theme and plot of THE ISLAND are also derivative. It includes ideas and images previously used in movies from the 1970's. George Lucas’ THX 1138 involved Robert Duvall’s escape from a white uniformed conforming perfect society which banned drugs and sex. In LOGAN'S RUN, Michael York, as “Logan 5," fled a supposed post-cataclysmic perfect conformity-imposed underground world along with a sexy companion. COMA was a Michael Crichton directed movie about harvesting organs from comatose patients. It goes further back than that, of course. The “Eloi” in H. G. Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE were young, innocent humans who were raised for food by the race of subterranean “Morlocks.”
All of that is okay. Hollywood has always honored plagiarism, better known as “quoting” or paying “homage” to its past.
Here, as Max (and several reviewers) noticed, there is a submerged political message. The sci-fi issue explored is the inevitable evil of “cloning,” stem cell research, and other contemporary issues that stir religious controversy. The POV of the movie seems to be contrary to the supposed liberal bias of Hollywood. By showing the danger of rampant science capable of growing clones for eventual transplants for the benefit of the selfish elite, it argues the conservative side.
Of course, this may also be a “Humanist” argument, favoring the individual against corporate greed, but nothing so serious is explored. By burying the issue within the confines of this kind of action flick, any serious consideration is of course made irrelevant. The audience in this atmosphere is precluded from any deep thinking by the sturm and drang. This is well within the Spielberg tradition. He did the same with MINORITY REPORT and A.I.
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