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In the new trailer for Surrogates, the paranoid outlines of the plot are neatly laid out: Everyone has given up on real life for the vicarious experience of living through their beautiful robotic human surrogates. But now someone has died and no one with any authority is talking straight. Everyone just seems to want to protect the robotics company and the institution of surrogacy.
There are also two new clips, in which we see Bruce Willis slam up against more than a few blank walls (and at least one parked car) in his unwelcome pursuit of the truth. And he comes up against them real hard, no thanks to the company, which keeps insisting that there really is nothing to see here.
Posted 09.14.09 by reelz -
For most people in the future envisioned by Surrogates, it's all about better living through your prettied-up robot avatar. Not only do you get downloaded into a younger, idealized — and in the case of Bruce Willis, hairier — body, but you also get to fine tune what you feel. In one edit bay interview, Surrogates director Jonathan Mostow explains how to absorb the pleasures but avoid the pains of everyday life:
You can adjust your surrogate. We don't address this in the movie because there just wasn't time to get to all these things. You could theoretically just tune your surrogate not to smell unpleasant smells, and only to smell pleasant smells. That's what [is] so fantastic about this technology: it filters out whatever you don't like.
You can even filter out out the boring bits. In another interview, he points to a scene in which we see Willis going home on a subway that the other passengers have literally tuned out:
The subway is basically just populated by people who are shut off, because if you have to take your Surrogate from work back to your house, you can take the subway, walk onto the subway, sit down and get out of your chair, go eat a bagel and just come back before your stop is ready and your Surrogate can reactivate.
It's not all fun and games, though, as Willis' character discovers when he is called on to investigate what looks to be the murder of a person through his surrogate. And despite all the seductions, not everyone is sold on the concept. There are reservations filled with people the director describes as "the Whole Foods/Trader Joes crowd" who still like to do things the natural way.
Posted 08.31.09 by reelz -
One of the key themes explored in Bruce Willis' sci-fi action flick Surrogates is how everyone is giving up their humanity to live vicariously in the seductive world of robot avatars. It's definitely not all fun and games in a new batch of photos from the movie, in which everyone is either zoned out, rubbery and deactivated, or showing way too much skeletal metal. But that doesn't mean the future doesn't rock.
Breaking Benjamin weaves all sorts of new footage from the movie into a music video for their single "I Will Not Bow." Lots of atmospheric shots of wandering through shiny corporate offices cut with scenes of mayhem and destruction. It's definitely fun watching Willis pummel his way to the truth in time with the music. Seeing him with a full head of hair is still pretty weird, though.
Posted 08.27.09 by reelz -
If you haven't heard of Bruce Willis's next movie Surrogates, the below featurette should clue you in. To give a short summary, it's a sci-fi thriller about a world where people who, from the comfort of their homes, live their lives vicariously through robots. The movie is based on a graphic novel written by Robert Venditti. It supposedly has a lot to say about how technology is affecting our lives, how we lose out on personal connections thanks to computers and cell phones. We're just hoping Willis finds a way to say something like "yippee-ki-yay, mother cyborg."
Posted 08.24.09 by reelz -
The new ultra-violent ensemble flick from writer-director-actor Sylvester Stallone, The Expendables already includes an incredible cast of silver-screen tough guys — Mickey Rourke, Jet Li, Jason Statham, and Dolph Lundgren. Recently, another action star was added to that list: Mr. Die Hard himself, Bruce Willis.
Willis told MTV that he has not been on set yet, but that he is opening up space in his schedule to shoot a cameo with Stallone and the "Governator," Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I'm waiting for a call from Sly about when we're going to try and make that happen.... I don't know anything about (my character) yet, haven't seen any pages yet. But, I'm excited about it.
The Expendables also features Steve Austin , Terry Crews, and former UFC champion Randy Couture.
Posted 08.19.09 by BrentJS -
In the future, we will live our lives even more vicariously than we already do — that's the basic story behind Surrogates, a cinematic vision of a world in which living life through your robotic avatar is so compelling that no one really wants to live an ordinary life inside his or her own body anymore. It is a world of seemingly unlimited fantasy devoid of any consequences. You can be as attractive as you like. You can be a man, or a woman. You can even die and come back again. A lot like Second Life, but with much better graphics. And it all feels real.
The movie's cast and crew try to make this vision of the future as compelling as possible in a new featurette laced with an assortment of eye candy from the movie. It is, they contend, a cautionary tale about the de-humanizing direction online life seems to be heading. Along the way, we are treated to glimpses of telephone booths repurposed as avatar charging stations, a Terminator-like avatar assembly line, and Bruce Willis — or at least his avatar — engaged in all sorts of Die Hard-like action.
Posted 08.19.09 by reelz -
Wired has put up a mini-documentary exploring the science behind the upcoming sci-fi movie Surrogates, and finds the future it imagines not so far from now. The breezy commentary may not be a balanced assessment of how far we have to go before we can live and feel vicariously through hot robot avatars, but it does offer a look at some of the entertaining things we can do with the robots we have now. Along the way we get contrasting snippets of footage from the far more advanced surrogate factory in the movie. One disappointing difference between the robots of today and the surrogates of tomorrow is that today's versions just don't look much like supermodels.
A recent poster promotion for the movie does go part way toward bridging that gap though, with images of beautiful surrogates with exposed Terminator-style metallic midriffs. Looks like things still can and will go haywire even in this fantasy future.
Posted 08.06.09 by reelz -
Sacha Baron Cohen has already played cover girl for Marie Clarie, so his latest cover stunt (striking a Jennifer Aniston pose for the cover of GQ) is perhaps not so surprising — although his homoerotic take on the football field is admittedly a head-turner.
But what's up with Bruce Willis, who seems to have been channeling his inner Brüno in a bizarre S&M/sci-fi photo spread with his wife for W Magazine? Perhaps he's getting the mood for his role in the upcoming sci-fi thriller Surrogates. In the trailer for the movie, he can be seen intermittently trying out a whole different kind of new look — hair of all things — with somewhat problematic results.
Posted 06.17.09 by reelz -
The prequel-slash-origin-story silliness continues. MTV reports that this August, Boom! Studios will release a comic book prequel to the 1988 action classic Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis.
What's it called? Die Hard: Year One, of course. Not to be confused with Batman: Year One, or Year One starring Jack Black and Michael Cera. (They're not very creative with titles either, are they?)
The only plot detail available is that the story follows a younger John McClane who must deal with a crisis during the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations. We're wondering if they couldn't just drop footage of McClane into Robert Altman's Nashville and get the movie adaptation over with.
Posted 05.29.09 by reelz -
Worried that you are spending too much time on line? The sci-fi thriller Surrogates plays on just that kind of anxiety, offering up a vision of the future in which most people have become so caught up with living online that they really never leave home anymore. The attraction is fully functional robot avatars, which allow you to experience and even feel everything they do.
Other than the obvious, the problem, as the trailer released yesterday makes clear, is that the experience is not turning out to be quite as risk-free as advertised. Now there have been a series of murders. Enter Bruce Willis, a detective who, like any normal schmoe in this world, doesn't even remember the last time he went out in his own body. And now he has to go out and find the murderer.
But before you get too far into the downsides, a viral site for the movie aims to give visitors a tour of the temptations. Virtual Self Industries offers a very slick promo urging everyone to "ctrl Shift: Be Happy," "Download Your Pleasure," and "Plug In and Live." They also offer a 3-D tour of their well-scrubbed corporate facility and the opportunity to build your own fantasy persona.
Posted 05.22.09 by reelz