THE ISLAND (film)

THE ISLAND. Michael Bay, dir., one of four prod. Caspian Tredwell-Owen et al., story and script. USA: Dreamworks, Warner, Parkes/MacDonald (prod.) / Dreamworks/Warner (dist.), 2005.

Recombinant SF cinema, usefully bringing together (among other motifs) an underground modernist dystopia in the manner of THX-1138; unborn humans in vitro—except it's plastic here, not glass—and sleep-teaching, in the manner of Brave New World; bodily invasion by insectoid devices as in MATRIX (but numerous, more like ladybugs than a scorpion, and much smaller); a variety of "Logan's Run" (as in the novel and film); the organ-harvesting of Coma; windmill imagery that may suggest the Whale FRANKENSTEIN (1931) and BLADE RUNNER; and the Wonder City of the (Near) Future in the manner of METROPOLIS and its successors (all save FRANKENSTEIN listed under Fiction and/or Drama). CAUTION: Americans who cannot or do not distinguish among zygotes, embryos, fetuses, and teenagers—or the cloning of embryos for stem cells science-fictional clones—will take ISLAND to be more immediately politically relevant than it probably is. Students of SF will note the standard villain of the scientist playing God and the standard attack on medical science as an excuse to treat some humans as things.