The Island

So the other day I watched The Island. At the time, I didn't know who had directed it. Had I known, I wouldn't have bothered to watch it.

It started off nicely. A bunch of oblivious people who are actually organ banks for wealthy individuals. When the wealthy people on the outside need an organ, the clones on the inside apparently win a lottery but actually wind up being killed.

The plot was very similar to another movie I've seen. The 1979 piece of shit Parts: The Clonus Horror which features Peter Graves, who is actually 80 years old now but still working, mostly as a voice actor.

The basic concepts of the two films are incredibly similar. Young man in an insulated environment, doubts the truth of his surroundings, falls in love with a girl he shouldn't be in love with, doubts the legitimacy of the reward of getting out of the community, learns the nature of the environment, escapes, tries to find his original copy, chasing ensues.

The major differences in story-lines are the specifics of the love story, the exact nature of the clone community, and the end result of all the struggling.

So anyways, back to The Island. It started off very nicely. Good characters, good characterization, solid acting, good cinematography (essentially stolen from Minority Report with lots of very bright, white scenes with ultra-hard lighting), and the foundations of what seemed to be an interesting, poignant, disturbing and complete movie to watch.

Then Scarlett Johannson showed up and my enjoyment of the movie soared. She's very sexy and very talented. Plus she spends most of the movie in a white suit that is tight in all the right places.
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Then all hell breaks loose. Ewan McGregor finds out the truth, escapes with Scarlett, and chase scene after chase scene follows. Two new characters are introduced. Ewan McGregor's original copy, and the African dude from Gladiator who is one of two black characters with significant lines.

These two new characters actually have a good dichotomy in that one seems good (a convivial, jovial Scotsman who is attracted to Scarlett) but turns out to be bad, and the other seems bad (a former SEAL turned private mercenary whose skin tone is black as the Ace of spades (black in movies almost always equals evil, unfortunately)), who turns out to be good. But neither of these characters have much depth. They both have complex sequences of actions, but we never learn much about their motivations. For example, the former SEAL decides to turn into a good guy almost on a whim. He mentions that he was once branded in an ethnic cleansing campaign. Then he decides to help out Scarlett Johansson. He goes from trying to recapture her to trying to help her escape in one fucking scene! If I wrote a sequence like that in Screenwriting class, Professor Nonas's red pen would be out of ink.

The movie ends with chase scenes leading into chase scenes, leading into a vague enlightening of the clones caused by Ewan and Scarlett. There's also a token climactic battle to the death between Ewan and the 100% evil mastermind of the clone compound. Then the clones are released and everyone is happy.

Then the words "Directed by Michael Bay" appeared on the screen, and it all made sense to me. The unoriginal storyline, the hackneyed directing techniques, the cliched characters, the over abundance of overly elaborate action sequences, and the over-simplified clash between good and evil at the end of the movie are all staples of a Bay film.

This movie really pissed me off. It had such potential to be good and interesting. The limit to two primary characters and only a few secondary characters could have given the audience really good, in depth character analysis and development. The relevance of cloning in a political and moral sense was also not utilized. The viewer isn't left with anything at the end of the movie except for satisfaction that the clones got away. No moral questions are raised by this movie. Michael Bay did to cloning movies what he did to World War II movies. He fucking ruined them for at least 20 years.

The 1979 movie was better than The Island. And it was so terrible it was featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

But what do you expect from a guy whose directorial debut was Playboy Video Centerfold: Kerri Kendall?