Bruce Willis, star of the new sci-fi flick "Surrogates," excerises throught control over his alter ego. Image courtesy of Touchstone Pictures.
It’s going to be a loud, fast-paced weekend at movie theaters. Director Jonathan Mostow’s latest film, “Surrogates,” debuts, giving audiences 88 minutes of escapism involving robots that are remotely controlled by humans who largely remain closeted from real life. The robots are more attractive versions of the individuals who operate them, and things unfold smoothly until murder intrudes in this sci-fi utopia. The flick raises the question,” Human perfection. What could go wrong?” Mostow gives a sense of where we are, and where we may be headed.
Q: In your movie, humans are intelligent enough to create powerful robotic surrogates, but doesn’t that simply make people more isolated and less human?
A: I can make argument that we already live in that world. That’s ultimately what I found compelling about the source material. I found that even though this is a supposedly outlandish sci-fi premise that it almost represents our existence today. The fact is, you can pretty much function without leaving the house. You can do your shopping, make your opinion known, and find out what your friends are doing through email and social networking sites.
A: But isn’t that what the Internet offers you? You can go into a chat room, take on the mask of anonymity and say and do things in a way that you’d never dare to do if you were in a room with someone or on the phone with them. This leads to the question of what the Internet is doing to us on a social level, on a psychological level. I bet that, 1,000 years from now, historians will look back on this time — maybe this very decade — as a watershed moment in the evolution of mankind. That’s not to say that this movie is endeavoring to tackle heady questions like that, but it’s treading in that area.
Q: The movie’s characters can choose what their surrogates will look like. So most choose to be attractive and fit. Wouldn’t that sort of choice lead to a sort of sameness, a dullness, in the real world?
A: It’s so funny. In the movie, everyone is gorgeous. It was a real casting problem because we had a hard time finding enough good looking people. Even the extras were good looking. I am so over that. We spent six months with impossibly good looking people.
Q: Who would you choose to look like?
A: Probably a more idealized version of myself. I’d shed pounds, get rid of the gray hairs creeping into my beard. This sort of thing is addressed in the movie. Most people would choose an idealized version. They want to feel good about themselves. It’s like suddenly catching sight of yourself in a mirror and feeling good about what you see. You suddenly carry yourself differently.
Q: But what about real imperfections? Isn’t that part of what makes us human?
A: What people want and what they say they like are two different things. If you look at the top movie stars today you’ll notice that they are not perfect. The stars we connect with are people who have things like a nose that’s a little too big, or some other kind of imperfection. But if you go to a newsstand you’ll see magazines that are all about achieving physical beauty. People end up thinking that what they need is a great nose or a great behind, but that’s not really what makes us happy.
Q: The plot of the movie seems to violate Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics,” which says, in parts, that a robot shall not injure a human. But isn’t that part of your movie?
A: There’s a huge difference between “Surrogates” and all other robot movies. In the other movies, robots are independent thinkers. In my movie, the robots are just tools. They’re puppets. The only do what people command them to do. This movie says that we have all of this great technology, but that we pay a price for it.
"Surrogates" director Jonathan Mostow. Image courtesy of Touchstone Pictures.
Q: In “Surrogates,” a person can ” live the life you want without risk or danger.” But isn’t that also what defines us as humans — our willingness to take risk, to experience true danger?
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