Surrogates (spoilers)

[Guardsman Bass]

Has anyone else seen this sci-fi movie with Bruce Willis in it?

I thought it was an okay one-shot seeing (meaning I'd never buy it, and probably won't watch it again, but I was entertained the first time). They used Willis' age to their advantage, by having his real self be an old, weathered dude (like Willis is in real life), whereas his surrogate was obviously touched up with CGI. The question posed was interesting - "if you basically a surrogate like that, how would you use it, and when?"

Of course, I had some quibbles with the premise (for one thing, considering that they seem to be able to carryover all sensations from the surrogates to the people sitting in their chairs at home, wouldn't it be easier just to create really good virtual stimulation for many of the benefits of surrogacy, like partying and casual sex?). There were also some clear plot devices, like having all of the surrogates worldwide (billions, it's implied) routed through a single building monitored by one fat dude (making it easy to infect/attack), and some areas where I was a little skeptical (the soldiers sound interesting, until you realize that it makes the bandwidth demands posed by drones today look like nothing, and would be extremely vulnerable to disruption and jamming). Overall, though, it was a mildly entertaining sci-fi film.

Thoughts?

[B5B7]

I haven't seen the movie, but I read a review of it, and from what I read it seems to have a great similarity to a certain Isaac Asimov novel - people living isolated, using robots to interact, and a policeman sent to solve a crime, are elements of the novel The Robots of Dawn. Of course, the similarities may be superficial.

[CaiusWickersham]

Ummm, yes, since "Robots of Dawn" is part of a larger series that goes into more depth as to why they do such things, aren't many serious plot holes and is actually (to a high school mind) decent entertainment through most of the series.

[TC Pilot]

From what I've heard, this movie is hilariously similar to I, Robot, to the point that they even have the same actor playing the exact same role of the inventor of this robotic paradise which turns on everyone and drives him to commit suicide.

[Bedlam]

I found it quite interesting but I feel thay rather glossed over the impact of that he did at the end. All of the surogates destroyed and they acted as if everything was going to be all right. Their civilisation was about to crash and burn, effectively everyone working everywhere (well 95% of them) just 'died' aircraft are going to fall from the skys, people in hospitals are going to die, power systems are going to shut down, fires arnt going to be put out. Its likely going to take most people a minimum of a few days to get back into doing things for themselves and during that time everythings going to go to hell and not going to be easy to put back together again.

[CDiehl]

I found it quite interesting but I feel thay rather glossed over the impact of that he did at the end. All of the surogates destroyed and they acted as if everything was going to be all right. Their civilisation was about to crash and burn, effectively everyone working everywhere (well 95% of them) just 'died' aircraft are going to fall from the skys, people in hospitals are going to die, power systems are going to shut down, fires arnt going to be put out. Its likely going to take most people a minimum of a few days to get back into doing things for themselves and during that time everythings going to go to hell and not going to be easy to put back together again.

Leaving aside things like planes crashing or buildings burning, things will go back to the way they were in a matter of weeks. The infrastructure that maintains surrogates still exists, and most if not all the people who had them will want them back. It's just a matter of cleaning up the mess and repairing the damage done to whatever network carries the information from the people to the surrogates. Once that's done, people will be back in the saddle, hooked up to their surrogates. Hell, I'd bet the government would decide the surrogate industry is too big to fail, and set up a program to help people replace their surrogates, like Cash for Clunkers. If someone blew up every car in existence simultaneously, would the automotive industry go out of business? Would people decide they don't want cars anymore? I don't think so.

[Zor]

Some observations and opinions.

Why do military surrogates look like Mannequins in BDUs? This may seem like a quibble, but it would in general make more sense (and look better) if they had a more mechanical war robot (even if they still had the Face).

I found Bruce Willis's Charecter at the end to be a collossally monumental asshole for what he did. Sure he saved the majority of the species from the Genocidal delusions of a madman, but in not pressing yes he, as others have pointed out, brought about a shitload of chaos and problems to the world.

Unexplored areas of the concept. Why do people with Surrogates have Cell Phones when such systems could be emmulated perfectly well by built in communications systems? Why do Surrogates sit at offices instead of doing office work remotely? Why have regular surrogates doing heavy jobs when you could build a stronger non human looking deal to due the job (lets say a robot Gorrila type deal)? Things like that.

Zor

[Guardsman Bass]

Why do military surrogates look like Mannequins in BDUs? This may seem like a quibble, but it would in general make more sense (and look better) if they had a more mechanical war robot (even if they still had the Face).

It might be so that the body isn't too different from the basic outline of the human who is controlling them.

Unexplored areas of the concept. Why do people with Surrogates have Cell Phones when such systems could be emmulated perfectly well by built in communications systems? Why do Surrogates sit at offices instead of doing office work remotely? Why have regular surrogates doing heavy jobs when you could build a stronger non human looking deal to due the job (lets say a robot Gorrila type deal)? Things like that.

Good point. For that matter, if they've got VR and human-machine interface to that level where it's like actually being there, wouldn't it be easier to just simulate awesome parties and the like by direct brain stimulation as opposed to attending them in their super-mannequins? I might be missing something here, though - perhaps they have super-good human-machine interface but not so hot simulation (or at least not simulation that would be close enough to the real thing).

I think there was some of the "long distance work" thing going on, though. The police office surrogates looked like they were turned in at the end of the day, but I can't remember if the people using them ever actually came into the office.

In any case, there is a pretty clear sense of them not having thought through all the implications of what this type of technology could create and involve. It's almost more like they dropped the technology wholesale into an otherwise near-future environment.

[Zor]

Why do military surrogates look like Mannequins in BDUs? This may seem like a quibble, but it would in general make more sense (and look better) if they had a more mechanical war robot (even if they still had the Face).

It might be so that the body isn't too different from the basic outline of the human who is controlling them.

I can understand that, but why not just build a camoflauged armored human surrogate, naked because it has nothing to hide but heavily armored and so forth.

Zor

[Darmalus]

My guess with the military robots is that those were off the shelf surrogates with the Anonymous Soldier appearance option.

At the very least, I would expect lots of looting and fires from people who decide it is time to get some five-finger discounts and permanently settle some old scores while the cops are disoriented.

One of the things that bothered me was the reservations. I can't wrap my mind around how the hell you would be able to pull off making your own sovereign nation like that, inside major cities, no less!

[andrewgpaul]

It was an OK film, but the basic premise bugged me. 98% of the world's population uses Surrogates on a regular basis? Really? Including people in Shitholistan where they have no electricity and no running water?

Like Darmalus says, I don't buy those reservations being so independent. I can buy them setting up areas where Surrogates aren't allowed. I can even buy law enforcement not sending in Surrigates on a regular basis, but I don't believe they'd get that enshrined in law.

The army seemed a bit 'off'. I think the Surrogate soldiers were a new thing, and they hadn't been actually deployed yet (hence them sending in real soldiers into the Res - I don't think General Buck would be bothered by the "no robots" rule). Which leads me to wonder where they get their recruits from. Assuming present-day numbers, half a percent of the population is in the military. That means they're taking 1 in 4 of the available non-Surrogate-using population. Granted, a smaller military might be required if global security levels have fallen in line with the crime rate. Still, it's a small recruit pool, and possibly not the type of people they'd want.

[Bedlam]

The army seemed a bit 'off'. I think the Surrogate soldiers were a new thing, and they hadn't been actually deployed yet (hence them sending in real soldiers into the Res - I don't think General Buck would be bothered by the "no robots" rule). Which leads me to wonder where they get their recruits from. Assuming present-day numbers, half a percent of the population is in the military. That means they're taking 1 in 4 of the available non-Surrogate-using population. Granted, a smaller military might be required if global security levels have fallen in line with the crime rate. Still, it's a small recruit pool, and possibly not the type of people they'd want.

I dont know if it was stated but I would have thought the army would have been one of the first uses of surrogates, you get an army of superhuman robots and if things go wrong none of your guys come back in body bags.

I'm not sure but I thought they did send surrogates in with the resurvation raid, I might not have been paying attention but if they didn't it would clear up a plot point for me. It seemed odd that the attack turned to a bloodbath so quickly, they were trying to take the boss alive but as soon as his guards shot back they took everybody down. If they were using surrogates I would have assumed they would have just rushed the guards as no one is actually being killed.

I would think the army surrogates would be better than the off the shelf ones. I assume that the 'police' model was better than average and could stand up to more of a beating (as the film showed) civilian models are presumably not much stronger than normal people although they might be tougher. The army models should be even better.

The faceless look might be a design decission as a phycological attack on the enemy, they look more inhuman, its harder to tell how many of them there are and it wouldn't seem like your killing specific ones.

[andrewgpaul]

The soldiers attacking the Prophet looked human, not the shop dummy look we saw earlier. The ones that got shot seemed to bleed, to me, rather than spark and ooze green.

[Shroom Man 777]

They didn't send robots there because - surprise - they knew the Prophet had a gun that could kill Surrogates and their human controllers with one shot?

[andrewgpaul]

Yes, so? I wasn't questioning the reasoning behind sending human troops in.

[Shroom Man 777]

Yes, so? I wasn't questioning the reasoning behind sending human troops in.

I was also replying to Bedlam and this previous post of yours:

The army seemed a bit 'off'. I think the Surrogate soldiers were a new thing, and they hadn't been actually deployed yet (hence them sending in real soldiers into the Res - I don't think General Buck would be bothered by the "no robots" rule).

I think that the military actually had been using Surrogates for a while and it only sent meatbags in this mission into the Res because the enemy potentially had a device that could murderize Surrogates in mass with area-wide EMP-things.


I liked the movie, it wasn't too deep or anything. I think it needed more explosions. More... Die Hard with Robots Terminator People!

[andrewgpaul]

Yes, so? I wasn't questioning the reasoning behind sending human troops in.

I was also replying to Bedlam and this previous post of yours:

The army seemed a bit 'off'. I think the Surrogate soldiers were a new thing, and they hadn't been actually deployed yet (hence them sending in real soldiers into the Res - I don't think General Buck would be bothered by the "no robots" rule).

Ah, fair enough. Sorry for the idiot moment.

[Molyneux]

For anyone who has both read the original comic book and seen the movie: how badly did they fuck it up in transition?

[Vympel]

This was an ok movie. I was entertained, but there was a lot more they could've done with the premise.

[mr friendly guy]

It was an entertaining enough movie. I don't get why they needed a military weapon to disable surrogates when it seems that one company has a monopoly on part of their production. VISI or whatever that company is called might not produce all of them, but the interface seems routed through the same system hence, which other country is going to be producing surrogates en mass to challenge the US. I supposed you could argue that some other country with the know how could produce their own surrogates and build their own interface network given time, but in a conflict they are not going to get time.