Normally, dystopian visions of a scifi future have some redeeming quality. And so it was with Surrogates – the action. There are some amazing (and humorous) chase scenes that really got people in the theater pumped.

However…

I found the end message of the film to be unnecessarily offensive, and here’s why. The premise of the film is that 99% of the Western population now have mechanical surrogates of themselves walking around replacing them in their daily lives. Of course, no one bothers to mention how 99% of the population can afford this, but that’s another matter entirely.

SPOILER ALERT:

The end comes to this world of surrogates when they are shut down, and the grid rendered irreparable. I won’t spoil how that happened, but suffice it to say, it was avoidable. A main character’s personal conflict with the widespread adoption of surrogates drives him to shut the mainframe down.

Well, then… I suppose the film’s director would like to tell the 400,000 Americans presently paralyzed from spinal cord injury that we shouldn’t try to give them back mobility? It must be nice to sit in a director’s chair in Hollywood and dictate that the 5,000+ working men and women in the US whose lives could’ve been saved last year on the job by such technology should die instead.

The more science-inclined people out there might have a different perspective. Instead, many of us see great promise by research into this kind of life-changing technology. Some of us would prefer to innovate, offer new hope and one day see a paralyzed child walk again. That is the sort of optimism that today’s scientists – whatever the field – hold for our future. While Surrogates may qualify as a science fiction film, the real fiction here is that human ingenuity is the problem.

What do you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!