Rate The Island

[Fast Learner]

Why? People still use VHS alongside DVD's and VHS tech is old. People still ride bikes despite cars and treadmills. Typewriters are still in use despite the fact that computers make them obsolete. It's not so hard to say that there are a few relics with modern vehicles predominately in use.

Did you see the movie? All of the cars are very slightly updated versions of today's vehicles. There are two speederbikes and a whole ton of vehicles, from motorcycles to large trucks to SUVs, that look exactly like today's vehicles, though slightly pointier. Do today's cars look like Model Ts? Are the streets filled with horses and buggies?

It is very hard to say that in 85 years we'll be driving cars that look just like today's cars, both inside and out, while other technology moves forward drastically.

And that's not the only place such a failure in vision takes place -- there are tons of them. A giant building-sized

Spoiler

holographic field

is used, but otherwise the best video display seen is a high-def TV.

It's very, very poorly thought out. Michael Bay loves car chases, so the movie has a big car chase. With year 2000 cars, because you couldn't employ the standard car chase tropes (which are used again and again) if the cars could fly, say, or if they were wire-guide, or if they had automatic collision avoidance mechanisms, or what have you.

A few people using typewriters 20 years after the invention of the PC is not even a remotely accurate comparison. Everybody driving horses and buggies with some Model-Ts sprinkled in today is more apt, and that's without the exponential forward movement of technology that is reality.

Susepend your disbelief if you want -- I do it in other movies just fine -- but to me this movie is simply terrible sci-fi, so bad that my disbelief was lying in a pool on the floor, intermixed with the spilled coke and popcorn kernals.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I usually just avoid any movie that has any connection with Michael Bay and I find that life is better for it.

 

[WayneLigon]

Went to see it today, and I did enjoy it fairly well. It was a nice entertaining film with some cool scenes and ideas I might use later. They explained away a couple of the biggest doubts I had about the film (I'm pretty flexible when it comes to movie science but I have lines that, if crossed, render the film less enjoyable to me) so for me it was a case of 'buy the premise, buy the bit'. I gave it a nice 7. And for some reason I was utterly convinced that Sean Bean was instead the guy who played Giles on Buffy.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

Liked the premise, liked the performances, but was disappointed that not enough was done with either. Too much (over) emphasis on mindless action sequences. The blatant product placement was just disgusting- I was completely floored by the close up of the Michelob bottle. Ugh. Too many lingering posing shots of Djimon Hounsou looking badass. In the end, too much style, not enough substance. So much more could have been done with it, but it was mildly enjoyable for all of that.

A couple of scenes were repetitive- in particular, they explained the whole clone thing in a sequence with Sean Bean, and then later again when Lincoln and Jordan meet with Steve Buscemi's character. Okay, 5 minutes wasted retelling the story? 5 minutes that could have been better used to, say, give Sean Bean's character some depth, rather than making him Mr. One-Dimensional God-Complex guy. Or Djimon Hounsou more depth than Mr. Last-Minute-Change-Of-Heart-Despite-Jeopardizing-Countless-Innocent-Civilians-In-Mindless-Chase-Scenes-30-Minutes-Ago-Guy.

Anyway.

One thing, though:

On the

Spoiler

memories

thing, though, what they said was that

Spoiler

the clones ahd developed curiosity,

that that was the mistake, the new problem. I'm nearly certain that they, at best, implied your suggestion, but never said it.

They do mention that it is

Spoiler

actual memory that they are developing from the original donor

but then seem to throw in the other bit that you mention, and blur the two things together. Kind of sloppy.

 

[Desdichado]

Man, it was one of the absolute worst films I've seen. The huge number of giant plot holes were utterly ridiculous. The fact that they can't even decide what year the movie takes place in (referenced early on as 2019, then later as 2050-something).

Well, I won't rebutt your entire "review" point for point, although I could--I disagreed with most of it. But the part I quoted above, at least, was blatantly wrong, and the only reason you could have thought that was that you a) were either not paying attention to the dialogue, or b) were just looking for "plot holes" to dissect, and jumped on anything that even sorta resembled one.

The year 2019 is referrened... yeah,

Spoiler

in the fictional reality in which the clones live (although is that really a spoiler since the trailers gave it away?)

so it is in no way expected to be believed as the year in which the movie takes place. Laws past in 2050 are mentioned, so we know that the movie takes place after that.

Of course, that was my one big pet peeve; if the movie supposedly post-dates 2050, why are current model vehicles running around all over the place? The big chase scene features current Dodge Magnums with the corporate badging removed, and I saw other current model Cadillacs, GMC and other vehicles. :\

My other pet peeve was

Spoiler

falling from the giant R on the skyscraper and somehow being totally fine.

Other than that, though, I quite liked the film. I'm a bit surprised that sales have been so low for it.

 

[Rackhir]

This movie just has too many warning flags for me to want to go see it.

As mentioned it is a Michael Bay film.

It IS a remake of a bad film.

It is a remake of a bad film that they did on MST3k.

Personally, I am of the opinion that any movie/short/what ever that has been done in an MST3K episode should never be released in any other form. That way the buying public will at least have been warned.

 

[Desdichado]

This movie just has too many warning flags for me to want to go see it.

As mentioned it is a Michael Bay film.

From the Boston Globe review:

But Bay's strength as a filmmaker, the reason his superficial yet entertaining productions can never be completely ignored, is that he appears to lack shame. He'll blow anything up and run anybody over. The moral complexities don't matter to him. He just wants to stage spectacles, appreciate very good-looking people, and assert his cowboy aesthetic.

Frankly, that sounds fine to me.

It IS a remake of a bad film.

It is a remake of a bad film that they did on MST3k.

If it makes you feel any better, my brother and I both thought it more a remake of Logan's Run, which is (arguably) a good movie. Then again, I've never seen this Clonus business.

I thought The Island was entertaining. I liked it. It was a bit predictable, and the long intro section would probably be fairly boring on a rewatch of the movie, but I'll probably actually pick this one up on DVD. Then I can watch the chase sequences from The Matrix Reloaded, Bad Boys II and The Island back to back and decide which one I like the best.

As for plot holes, I didn't notice any that were too obvious. Oddly, what struck me as odd is that Ewan McGregor was tossing big train wheels off the truck to crush the Dodge Magnums; but we had already seen that train tracks have been replaced with maglev trains earlier in the film. My wife says maybe they were on their way to becoming scrap iron, but it struck me as odd. Funny what little things like that catch your attention in a movie.

 

[Hijinks]

He'll blow anything up and run anybody over.

I remember watching Con Air and crying as not one, but two, Corvettes got trashed in various ways Oh, the humanity!

EDIT: Just realized Michael Bay didn't direct Con Air. But it's still a Bruckheimer thing, I get the two confused for blowing-up-ness.

 

[Desdichado]

Yeah, Con Air sure could've been a Michael Bay film, and coming shortly after The Rock and also starring Nicholas Cage, it's easy to get the two confused.

 

[Rackhir]

From the Boston Globe review:

Frankly, that sounds fine to me.

If you like his movies that's fine, I just find them to be pretty one dimentional. You know exactly what you are going to get if it's a Michael Bay film.

If it makes you feel any better, my brother and I both thought it more a remake of Logan's Run, which is (arguably) a good movie. Then again, I've never seen this Clonus business.

Judging from the comments I've seen about it. Pretty much anyone who saw "Clonus" instantly recognized it as a rippoff/remake. When I first heard about it, I started searching on the internet to see if it was acknowledged as some sort of a remake or if they were just lifting the plot wholesale.

I have mixed feelings about Logan's Run actually. The novel it's based on is far better and more interesting. It was simplified considerably for the movie, with some significant liberties taken with the plot. Sanctuary did exist in the book and there was a major plot element involving Logan's nemesis that was completely dropped from the film. Etc and so on. The movie also dates badly, it is painfully obvious that it is a film from the early '70s. That said it wasn't a bad film for its era and it was interesting to see a book like that made into a movie. Though it wasn't the only example of that sort of plot. There was another movie made called Wild in the Streets which quite possibly could have been a prequel to LR. Though the LR book came out in '67 vs '68 for WitS.