Robotic surrogates closer than you think

21 September 2009

John Howell

The premise behind Bruce Willis’ upcoming science fiction thriller, Surrogates, is a clever twist on the usual tale of malfunctioning machines and robotic dystopias. It’s also a lot closer to reality than you might think.

In Surrogates, Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell play FBI agents investigating the mysterious murder of a college student linked to the man who helped create a high-tech surrogate phenomenon - a phenomenon that allows people to purchase unflawed robotic versions of themselves: fit, good looking, remotely controlled machines that live your life for you.

You stay at home in your “stim” chair and experience the world through the senses of your perfect, powerful, almost indestructible robotic twin. Be as sexy, dangerous and daring as you like, without the physical and social consequences.

“The premise of the movie is that surrogacy has taken over the world like cell phones and computers,” said director Jonathan Mostow. “Surrogates represent the ultimate freedom, from both physical harm and the mental toll of everyday life. Pleasure is achievable simply by plugging in”.

Surrogates can be controlled neurally from hundreds of miles away, but without a human mind sending and receiving impulses while sitting in a “stim chair,” the robotic double is completely inert. When Willis uncovers a surrogate conspiracy he must stop using his surrogate for the first time and venture out into the real world alone.

I’m guessing this means that the perfect surrogate world is not so perfect after all. There’s always a catch isn’t there? For every utopia there’s a dystopia waiting just around the corner.
Surrogates also stars Ving Rhames and James Cromwell. Rhames plays The Prophet, a cult leader who disdains surrogates and plans an uprising, while Cromwell plays Canter, the inventor of the surrogates.

“…for some, surrogacy feels like the abandonment of humanity itself,” said Mostow. “In a world where actual physical contact is increasingly rare, does the very notion of love threaten to lose its meaning? Those are some of the ideas we explore in our story”.

Robotic surrogacy should give Mostow and screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris plenty of scope to explore some social and psychological issues and perhaps avoid the usual pitfalls of a single idea action movie.

Imagine a world where crime, pain, fear and consequences don’t exist. And imagine if you have to exit that world for the first time and face reality amongst your surrogate using peers?

Brancato and Ferris previously teamed up with Mostow on Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

The present day parallels with virtual Internet worlds, increasingly immersive online gaming and people surrendering themselves to the Internet for just about everything are likely to strike a cord. Why leave the house if you have online banking, Google, an email account and Amazon? If you present a perfect virtual mask to the world constantly, how would this affect our behaviour and happiness? If you never see anyone in the flesh, what would you loose? Are virtual interactions provided by Sony's "Home" on the PS3 and similar technologies passing fads or a wave of the future? Is Second Life a second life, or a hollow, soulless imitation? There are some excellent philosophical, social and cultural questions to pose and modern day parallels to explore.

Surrogates reminds me too of the philosophical questions posed by the presence of replicants in Blade Runner (what is it to be human?) and the plot has an off-kilter resemblance to James Cameron’s Avatar. In Avatar though, human consciousness is projected into biologically engineered alien beings on another planet rather than robotic constructions on Earth.

Surrogates is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele. Apparently Robert Venditti thought up the novel’s premise while working in a shipping warehouse in suburban Atlanta. Venditti recalled a sociology book he had read for one of his graduate school courses that depicted a study of people who played early community-type online games:

“I was fascinated by how these people just became so involved in this game, “ said Venditti “creating these alternate personas for themselves. They became so identified with them that they would lose their jobs, their marriages, because they just couldn’t separate their lives from this persona that they created. It was an idea that stuck with me—the basic human desire to be something other than oneself.”

“My idea was to create this persona that would go to work and earn money for you, a practical reason for having a surrogate. I looked at the idea of self-improvement, where these surrogates represent plastic surgery to the extreme where you could maintain yourself as forever young, or be more muscular—look like your dream self.”

“As soon as Mike and I read the graphic novel, we felt it could make a great film,” revealed screenwriter Brancato. “The concept of surrogacy speaks to the modern condition in ways direct and oblique, a metaphor at once for the Internet, plastic surgery, addiction, role-playing games. Not to mention outer versus inner selves.”

The pair of screenwriters also investigated some present day research that reflected ideas from Venditti’s graphic novel, including a Japanese scientist and engineer Hiroshi Ishiguroa, a robotic specialist who has been using a plastic version of himself to lecture around the world without leaving his Osaka office. They also uncovered a rhesus monkey in North Carolina that has been wired to make a robot in Kyoto walk, merely by thinking.

Interestingly, Hiroshi Ishiguro is the subject of a documentary film called Mechanical Love. Mechanical Love details Ishiguro and his team’s creation of a mechanical pet called the Paro, which resembles a baby seal. The artificial pet provides companionship for people who might otherwise be unable to handle the challenges of dealing with a real pet. After success with the Paro, Ishiguro has begun work on a more advanced creation called the Geminoid, a human lookalike.

“The core idea of Surrogates is how we retain our humanity in this increasingly, relentlessly technological world that we live in,” said Mostow. “Technology is great. The fantasy of technology is that it frees us to be creative, productive and to do all these wonderful things. The flip side to that is that we wind up being servants to it in a certain way. We’re tethered to our cell phones, to our BlackBerries. It’s great to have email, but when you spend hours a day returning emails, it becomes an obligation. So, these new opportunities and possibilities in life also restrain us in certain ways.”

A second trailer from Surrogates has been released (watch it on YouTube below or a high resolution on Apple here). The official Surrogates websites have a lot of good material too.

International "Choose your own surrogate" website. UK Surrogates website.

Surrogates will be released 25 September and has the potential to be more than just an average science fiction thriller. Here’s hoping anyway. We’ll post a review shortly.

Thanks to the Surrogates PR representatives Jeremy Lloyd and Emmanuel Fearon for providing the quotes from director Jonathan Mostow and the movie's writers.

{qtube vid:=fKBs0DGRI8A}

Related Articles

Bruce Willis’ Surrogates trailer blends robots and virtual r...
You would think that robots and virtual reality had been don...

Bruce Willis in sci-fi thriller Surrogates...
Bruce Willis ventures into science fiction and fantasy terr...

M. Night Shyamalan contemplates Unbreakable 2...
Looks like a sequel to M. Night Shyamalan's excellent sup...