Movie Reflection: Surrogates

Plot Synopsis:

Surrogates is a story of Agent Greer, an FBI agent who investigates the murder of surrogates. Greer and co-agent Peters investigates the mysterious murder of a college student who is linked to a man who created a surrogate-phenomenon among people. This phenomenon allows people to buy remote-controlled humanoid robots that can interact with the society and allows people to purchase picture-perfect humanoid robots assume their life roles thus enabling them to experience idealized life from the comfort of their homes. The operator of the surrogate cannot feel pain even if their surrogate is harmed or damaged. (Even Greer's wife has a surrogate but they have a tensed relationship due to the death of their son so Greer could not see her beyond her surrogate.) Greer and partner Peters investigates the death of two people killed when their surrogates were destroyed (one was the surrogates' inventor's son). The agents learned that a certain human used a new type of weapon that disabled the fail-safe mechanisms shielding the operator from harm. Greer's chase with Strickland eventually led his surrogate to be destroyed forcing him to interact with the world by his real self. Later Greer learned that the weapon was actually under a government contract by the same company that produces the surrogates. Originally designed to load a virus that would overload the surrogate's systems disabling it, the weapon unexpectedly disables the fail-safe protocols keeping the operator safe, so its prototypes were destroyed but for one. Greer later learned that it was their FBI boss who supplied that weapon to Strickland to assassinate Dr. Canter (who is becoming critical in surrogate use). Unfortunately, Canter's son who was using one of his surrogates was killed instead. Canter was using the weapon and uploads the virus to all surrogates which will destroy them and kill the operators. Agent Greer takes control of Peter's surrogate and insulates the virus so the operators will survive. This made all the surrogates in the world destroyed and people are now on their own again.

My Reflection:

This movie made me realized how harmful technology can be, especially if man has gone to the stage of creating far innovations out of his selfish desires for comfort, convenience and other reasons. Man has created a robot out of himself, and gets it on a remote control living and playing and working as if he was the one doing it. I think the idea for me is just inhuman. As it makes one live life without really on it. So just for the worldly desires. The idea that even when a surrogate is injured or damaged the operator will still be safe seems convincing. Yet what happened in the movie is a precise evidence how it could be dangerous especially when somebody tries to disable the mechanism that protects the operator. It also motivates people to be lazy, by not entirely doing or being in locations or incidents or actions that they are supposed to be in. For me, it plainly disrupts the real essence of humanity