Because, for example, if a surrogate pilot was flying a jet somewhere in the world (thus meaning it would crash upon the pilot losing connection to his surrogate) that had even one "meatbag" on board (thus ending a real life), Greer would have been guilty of murder. This single point ruined the entire character and thus the entire movie for me.
sharei hated it too. just because he wanted to see his trainwreck of a wife again doesn't mean he had to ruin everyone elses lives.
shareIn the end Greer was no better than Canter.
Leading the blind squirrels of inquiry to the lost nuts of illumination.
Greer was no better than Canter? are you kidding me? Canter was going to literally kill every single person who was using a surrogate, whereas Greer simply destroyed their surrogates but didn't harm the operator. Canter and Greer wanted the same thing but in the end Greer found a way that was about a BILLION times better than killing both the surrogates and the billions of operators.
share> Canter and Greer wanted the same thing but in the end Greer found a way that was about a BILLION times better than killing both the surrogates and the billions of operators.
Except that Greer's solution was temporary. Society will rebuild or reactivate the surrogates and within five years everything will be right back to the point where the movie started and VSI will be richer than ever.
Consider a current-day example. Suppose you settle down for an evening of watching TV and the power goes out in your home. You blink your eyes, light a candle and wander outside. You see how beautiful the night sky is outside and you spend an hour chatting with the neighbors. You realize that you are missing what life is all about.
But the next day the power comes back on and it's time to watch "American Idol." Are you going to drag a lawn chair onto your front lawn and wait for the neighbors to join you or are you going to watch the TV?
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What Would Jesus Do For A Klondike Bar (WWJDFAKB)?
If they show this (they immediately get back to surrogates in no time) for the ending, it would be a more impactful movie!
shareI have to agree. He's just forced over 90% of the world to go "cold turkey." His wife could easily commit suicide later on as she no longer has the joy she had at her job. Plus, what is he going to do? Be a cop? OK, now she may get that phone call about him getting killed in the line of duty.
shareDid you guys even watch this movie? He had to do it because they were all living in a f'cked up dreamworld.
I am qod
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Right, but do you really think everyone is going to come out of their surrogate chambers and say, "wow, I forgot how great it is to not be perfect!" No, society is going to re-build the surrogate system. If the movie showed more and didn't end there, I can guarantee the whole world would have just been rioting and going crazy. People would probably mass suicide out of the depression that must come along with going from a perfect body to being a fat disgusting slob. Like I said in my original post, there would be deaths *everywhere* from the pilot example I said, to entire buildings (possibly cities) burning down as everyone who was cooking a meal would suddenly be abandoning an open flame, etc. etc. Those are just little examples that would add up to cause mass death and world panic. Greer is a selfish man who's own desires and lack of thinking things through make him into a murderer. When your movie's main character is just as bad as the bad guys...well, suffice it to say, your movie has failed.
share[deleted]
Totally agree with Pfff. Overall, I really enjoyed this film. an interesting premise that felt original (even though, yes, it had many derivative elements to it). An under-rated future cult classic perhaps?
www.igloooftheuncanny.blogspot.com
I know I'm late on this discussion but i just finished watching. I completely agree with your last point. Afterall he basically just saved mankind. It was his decision to make. Sure as the OP mentioned there would be human deaths, many of them. Regarding the airplane example, it wouldnt be so much from humans on the plane but how about planes crashing all over the globe into homes filled with sleeping humans. He did not have the luxury of time to think it through, but he had enough experience with this investigation and his own personal life to choose the way he did. I am so glad i saw this. I had heard only bad things about it but i loved it.
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There'll be no mutant enemy we shall certify
Well he didn't necessarily save mankind. True the cities would be horrible, with pestilence from all those rotting bodies and a rise in scavenger and insect populations for a while, but there's a chance that the human colonies scattered about the US would have survived without him. Hopefully not all of them were filled with redneck scum; I like to think that was the *beep* colony, but that some of the others were thriving. He saved a lot of lives, sure, and billions of people with muscle atrophy might go on to live semi-normal lives following years of physical therapy (I know, I know, in the movie they look fine, so maybe we have to assume they don't suffer from lying in bed all day, owing to some technological doodad in the device they plug into). But yeah, planes crashing, doctors suddenly stopping in the middle of life-saving surgeries, all the roads being plugged with stalled cars, so emergency situations going on unchecked (firefighters not at work, unable to get to work quickly because the streets are hell), numerous other disasters going on with no response).
His actions may have "liberated" mankind, and certainly his actions before he decided to press "no" saved lives, but pressing "no" probably led to millions of deaths. If the disaster was limited to the US, as it's indicated at the end of the film, then maybe he only killed a few hundred thousand, ignoring all the murders and suicides that would likely occur in the ensuing panic and depression.
Fun movie though. Reminded me of Asimov's The Naked Sun. So I guess that makes it the second Asimov-derived robot movie to feature James Cromwell.
The reporter voice-over at the end said they were no human casualties. I would infer from that that airplanes and the like would not be allowed to have surrogate pilots, due to the risk of network failure. (And no matter how good wireless gets, we will always have occasional network failure.)
shareWhy would surrogates be cooking?
shareThe Dreds "meatbags" did everything they could to stay away from Surrie's. I doubt one would have flown on a airplane flown by a surrie. Then also Agent Greer and mentioned to his wife going to Hawaii, she said you could rent surries down there, making travel unnecessary
shareAnd just think about what it would do to their economy. That kind of sudden upheaval would be devastating.
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We belong to each other now. For better, for worse, like love - only real.
The news at the end made it sound as if this was a worldwide event. They said something about this affecting Paris and somewhere in Asia as well. I'm pretty sure this was world wide (or anywhere they are online).
I personally think he made the right choice. Even though there would be some human casualties, humans were not meant to live this subhuman existence. You can convince yourself that half a life is enough for a long time.
To each their own...opinion
Altogether, the damage would be into the trillions worldwide. Damages to property, public and private, as well as worldwide lawsuits. Worldwide deaths would also be problematic. The fact of the matter is, when it would be found out he was the one who did that to everyone(regardless of what the other guy was going to do), he'd most likely get the death penalty for premeditated first degree mass murder. The better option he had was to simply stop the guy before him and reboot the system. Granted, living a life like that is not really living, but that decision he made is filled with irrationality. But then you humans are overpopulating anyway. War and disease is required, otherwise we will *beep* and eat ourselves into extinction.
shareIt's only a movie. It's interesting to see what moral choice he chose to make. He wanted his wife back. Cantor had a point that humans were not meant to live that way. Cantor went to extremes where almost all of the humans would have died. Now that's premeditated mass murder. Greer only had seconds to make a decision.
To each their own...opinion
Agreed. He had no right to make a decision affecting so many people, and I don't think the writers really understood the impact of what that would do, and the utter pretentiousness of it all is just unfathomable. I know its a movie and I'm not taking this as seriously as I seem to write it. It's just more fun to write it in a ranty way.
Let's look at the way he "saved" mankind by shutting down:
1. Surrogate doctors performing surgery on human patients. How's the heart-bypass going, Bob?
2. Parents driving their non-Surrogate children around and drivers hauling busloads of non-Surrogate schoolkids. Way to go, Mr. I'm-sad-because-my-son-died-in-a-car-accident.
3. Surrogate police, federal agents, and soldiers. Now all the criminals, terrorists, and enemy soldiers that might not be Surrogates (and why would a criminal use a Surrogate, since they are literally a walking black box of your actions) have an instant get-away and new cache of all the weapons and equipment that the cop- and soldier- Surrogates were carrying at the time. This also goes for Surrogates guarding the White House, national gold reserve, and other vital governmental and economic places.
4. Surrogates in 3rd World countries providing life-sustaining food and medical care to impoverished peoples that do not have Surrogates.
5. Surrogates driving trains, large trucks, and airplanes, that are now no longer in control and crashing. This also includes trucks loaded with gasoline, propane, and various other hazardous and flammable chemicals. Also, the numerous ships at sea crewed by Surrogates that will never reach port with their food, oil, medicines, etc.
6. Surrogates operating power plants, including the nuclear ones, so that they are now no longer under constant observation, as well as Surrogates monitoring the national power grid, and will not be for some time due to...
7. ...Every vehicle on the road, in the air, or at sea, which has now crashed and is likely unusable until they can get repaired, meaning that no fresh food, fuel, medical assitance, or other vital time-sensitive thing you can think of, will be able to get to where it needs to be. Or simply getting people to their jobs.
Also, since the roads will be literally stuffed with damaged and wrecked vehicles, don't count on them getting fixed anytime soon. Even the ones that are still drivable are stuck in the, literally, endless traffic jam.
But why stop with Surrogates? Why not burn down every private residence so that everyone will have to go to a mass shelter and we can return to the quainter, more social times of communal huts and long houses? You can also cure humanity's addiction to oil by destroying all the cars, trucks, ships, and planes, forcing people to walk and use horses to carry all the food, medicine, and other society-sustaining staples across the country. Who cares about food spoilage, lack of quickly available medical care, and taking half your waking hours to get to work? At least people are walking around and off their asses.
Hey, at least the psychological and drug therapy businesses will be booming...
:P
I think plot holes like this the directors like to sweep under the carpet, and hope the audience focuses that surrogates were only in his immediate surroundings, or weren't in charge of real human livesSource:Movie Review For Surrogateshttp://moviereviews.noskram.com/2009/11/movie-review-for-surrogates
shareYeah, but aside from that, it's unbelievably egocentric. Apparently, according to the main character, it's OK to make life altering decisions for the other 7 billion people in the world if you think you know what's best for them. I enjoyed the movie, but it sends a really horrible message. In fact, that kind of attitude is exactly what's wrong with religious or political extremism.
share[deleted]
I didn't like this either. Who the hell did Greer think he was? It's not his call to make how people live their lives.
"Why do you say this to me when you know I will kill you for it?"
The surrogates were getting in the way of people leading their own lives.
The plot required they be erased.
They got what they deserved. Practically every body with a surrogates had become a sorry ass bunch of frauds, who where living their entire life on lies, which even was bordering in to what only was perverted and disgusting.
Just look at the face of that female black lawyer surrogate at the company, when human Greer confronted the user about how he would not know, if the surrogate user was a fat ugly guy sitting somewhere with his "ehem" hanging out in front of him.
Looks like human Greer was right judged by the surrogates look on its face.
Have to agree with OP..
If Greer's decision was based on his screwed up relationship.. that's pretty selfish.
And there was also something else i noticed, that basically would have trashed the movie. Common sense. In order for the director to "build up the suspense" at the end?
He kept the fat guy handcuffed to a pole no more than 2 feet away from the terminals. If the Surrogate has the cuffs, obviously she has the key on her person. All Greer had to do was just un-cuff, or shoot the cuff chains.
I have a tendency to look at movies as "staged, vanity projects" anyway, and had to laugh at how long the director used to "build the suspense" while having the fat guy yelling in the back ground to make it even "more suspenseful".. it took over a minute and a half, for him to keep his finger near the yes button, maybe longer.
Then, the half/half adhesive duct tape.. Out of no-where there's the duct tape. In a high tech world... In a police dept.. The Surrogate manages to find duct tape that goes AAAAAAALLLL the way around the fat guy's head to stop his speech, and it never sticks to his hair...
Anyone ever play with duct tape? Get that crap near your hair, and you might as well have given your self a damn good "Brazilian Wax."
Then we have the Surrogate shooting off a fire arm in a residence, and no one hears or responds. Sorry.. But i lived in a high-end residential area where if kids shot off fire crackers, the cops were there within one minute. Only the head of police was the dirty cop. It was obvious near the end, that the other cops were not even aware of the dirty dealings of VSI. Thus, you can't debate that he suppressed AAAAALLLLL of the dispatchers from sending someone out to her house.
So, the director arbitrarily blasts us with news reports of shots fired and a helicopter crash in the reservation - but nothing about a cop getting killed in her sleep?