First, I totally have to give credit to my good friend Joe Dunn of Joe Loves Crappy Movies for making the observation that the robot avatars in Surrogates look like the creepy family from the Duracell commercials. Joe noted the similarity during Monday’s episode of The Triple Feature – which I highly encourage you to download!
If you have no idea what this reference means, here’s a handy video to help educate you:
If you grew up in the ’90’s, you’re probably very familiar with the Putterman family (as they were called). If you grew up in any other era, I’m sorry that I’ve now scarred you for life.
The Little Dutch Boy? Let’s hope that everyone has some cursory knowledge of his fable. If you don’t know who he is, then your parents must not love you.
In either case, I’ve created this visual aid to help put it all together for you.
I think it’s the hair that really trips me up. Like I said, if you could walk around in a robotic avatar that looked 20 years younger, why would you give it a haircut that exposes a high forehead and make it look like it was wearing a bad wig?
Maybe I should talk about the movie a little bit…
I like the idea for Surrogates and I certainly like seeing Bruce Willis in action hero mode, but I think this film is suffering from some bad advertising – especially the first trailer, which is heavy with exposition explaining exactly what surrogates are.
I don’t want to hold the marketing against the movie too much, though. I realize that it’s necessary for the film to establish “the rules” of the society depicted in the not-too-distant future if they’re going to bring people on board. I just wish it weren’t so cheesy – what with the robotic female voice literally selling us the concept of surrogacy. It’s not very clever.
If the advertising is anything to go by, I fully expect the exposition in the opening act to be boring and things won’t get interesting until we get to see the “real” Bruce Willis stomping in robot heads.
Once again, however, I have to give credit to Joe for pointing out a unique trend in avatars at the movies this year. First it was Gamer. Later in the year is Jim Cameron’s aptly named Avatar. But right now, it’s Surrogates. All movies about a separate consciousness controlling the body of another.
Is Hollywood trying to send us a warning about technology. Should I stop posting to my Twitter account? Should I drop off the grid entirely?! Time will tell.
What’s your thought about Surrogates? Are you planning on seeing it this weekend? Are you excited to see Bruce Willis back in an action movie two scant years after Live Free or Die Hard? What do you think about that plasticine look? Leave your comments below!
If you could walk around with your consciousness downloaded into a robotic avatar that looked twenty years younger...
...why would you have it designed to look like a cross between the creepy Duracell battery people and The Little Dutch Boy?
DAMMIT, TOM! Now I can't unsee it.
Oh HOW could I have forgotten that commercial? Good spot, Willis’ look in the previews has been irking me, too.
OMG! I had totally suppressed the Putterman Family. Oh the flashbacks!
I can understand the whole diffent look in Surragates though, the film makers wanted to make enough distinction between the real and the plastic. Also, maybe the hair style Bruce’s character chose was in ‘vogue’ when he got his surragate, but he didn’t have enough money to update it (Bruce’s characters always seem to be just getting by with money and other things). Besides it’s the future, who knows what will be cool to the kiddies-to-be.
That thing about the warning of technology sounds like a pretty interesting conspiracy theory. I’m gonna go make me a new tinfoil hat and crawl into my concrete bunker deep below the surface stocked with 3 years worth of food now. I’ll be the only non-surrogate left on the face of the planet, which means I won’t exist….MWAHAHAHHA!
I have to agree about Bruce Willis in this; his “real” self looks much sexier than his creepy surrogate.
It is interesting that there are 3 avatar movies coming out all within a few months of each other when there hasn’t been much (if any?) released for a very long time. I wonder what started this sudden trend or if it’s just a coincidence?
Tom… how could you? I’m with wren: I was totally free from any memories of the Putterman Family, each commercial carefully deleted. Now they’re all flooding back! Oh the humanity!
I’m seeing the movie this Saturday. I’m hoping the 88 minute run-time won’t be disappointing. That’s the minimum for a script to be considered “full length”… so hopefully that doesn’t mean it will be a sloppy effort to just throw big Bruce up on the screen.
I too wondered if you can choose any look for yourself why’d Willis select what looked like a bad Shatner-esque wig. I think my avatar would enhance all my features as well as make myself younger looking. That would include a nose job & maybe even a boob job hehe. Heck if you could be anyone would you maybe consider making yourself look like a supermodel or hot actress? In any case my hubby & I are both interested in this film. Over this past weekend we saw “The Informant!” and that was funnier than I expected but he thought some of it was painful to watch. This is kind of a dry time at the movies so I’m not sure what to expect with this avatar based film. We’ll have to wait & see.
Tom I’d like to wish you a belated congrats in regards to your recent announcement on your upcoming daughter. That’s wonderful that Henry will get a baby sister for Christmas. Quite a family present! Your family is truly blessed. I’m sure all your worries will fade away when you meet that precious little one. Hopefully Henry will be happy to have a sibling to play with. I don’t know anything about the sibling dynamic cause I was an only brat errr child. 🙂 Good luck to you and your family!
I saw the trailer for this a while back and I thought “If you could choose your appearance (as the premise suggests you can) why would you have such terrible hair?”
In the realm of Avatars in general it seems a bit simplified for the filmmakers to believe that everyone would want to be just a younger, more attractive version of themselves. I have not seen the movie so I do not know if there is some element of control over what you can chose but considering how people behave in modern society right now it seems to me that many “surrogates’ would have different if not unusual skin tones, unnatural but interesting eye and hair colors and then there is the freakshow that is the world of “furries” and other people who are not as interested in maintaining their natural body.
Also there would be copycats unless that is strongly controlled. How many Ashton Kutchers and Heidi Klums would be walking around if people could just chose a body that was young and attractive.
Perhaps the movie deals with these questions. I do not have any interest in seeing it to find out.
I thought for sure I knew where this comic was going. The comment I’ve been making to all of my friends about this movie is: if Bruce Willis could be anyone he wanted with a surrogate, why in the world would he choose himself with a wig? It just doesn’t make any sense.
Personally, my surrogate would be Denzel Washington. Or maybe Brad Pitt.
I saw a pre-screening of the movie and feel the trailer is a fairly good representative of the movie itself: earnest but comically over-simplified on an issue that could be made significantly more nuanced, or at least edgier. My thought was that they were aiming it at a 12-16-year-old audience.
Ah, memories…what scary childhood I had!
I had totally forgotten about those creepy duracell commercials. Now I’ll be haunted by them again.
the matrix meets minority report meets iRobot. i still neither here nor there as to whether i wanna shell out $10 for it just yet. plus the haley joe osmond hair cut really is weirding me out… They should’ve gave him the triple skunk punk doo like Rufio in “Hook” if they really wanted to give him something that outrageously out of character. Hopefully this isn’t a sign of things to come and he takes the Nicholas Cage method to decifering how good a movie is by his movie hair…
Personally I enjoyed the original comic (2005) by Robert Vendetti. When I first heard they were making it into a movie, I thought Bruce Willis was a decent choice for the aging cop who had let himself go, pulling himself back into the real world all gruff and grim. From this picture (same hair stylist as Gardy Oldman’s in 5ht Element?) I wonder a bit. Curious how they will handle the ending.
Oh, wow. Good call on the Gary Oldman / 5th Element reference!