Lincoln Six-Echo (played by Ewan McGregor) is a resident of a seemingly Utopian but totally enclosed, underground facility in the year 2019. Like all of the inhabitants of this carefully controlled environment, Lincoln hopes to be chosen to go to the “The Island” — a paradise that is reportedly the only uncontaminated spot on the surface of the planet. But Lincoln soon discovers that everything about his existence is a lie. The earth’s surface is not contaminated. It is, in fact, very much like the earth we know. He and all of the other inhabitants of the underground facility are actually human clones, being raised as “insurance policies” to provide organs and body parts for transplants to prolong the lives of their look-alikes on the surface–people who have no idea that the “tissue” and organs they receive are harvested from the clones. Those inhabitants of the facility chosen by “the lottery” to go to the Island are actually selected to be killed when their organs are needed.
Lincoln makes a daring escape with a beautiful fellow resident named Jordan Two-Delta (played by Scarlett Johansson). Relentlessly pursued by the forces of the sinister institute that once housed them, Lincoln and Jordan engage in a race for their lives to literally meet their makers and to let them know that their “insurance policies” are actually human beings who are being killed for their organs and body parts.
What compelled my attention was the similarity between this work of science fiction and the recent revelations of Planned Parenthood’s involvement in harvesting fetal organs and body parts. As in The Island, Planned Parenthood perpetuates the myth that those from whom the tissue and organs are harvested aren’t actual human beings.
Read it all [warning: graphic]
I watched the movie being shot in Detroit, they used my undercroft for the feeding station for cast and crew, and I was introduced to Ewan, Scarlett, and Michael Bay. Unfortunately, the move was billed as an action adventure movie rather than the futuristic horror film that it is. The moral implications of cloning has yet to be dealt with, but in the end, money is money and it thinks it can win.
Thanks, #1, for that interesting background info. But thanks also to Kendall for posting this, and especially to Robert Munday for calling our attention to this chilling parallel. I missed seeing the movie when it came out too, but Munday’s incisive observations are spot on, as usual.
David Handy+
For those who want to look at this issue in terms of philosophy and public policy, I highly recommend [i]Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics[/i] (2002) by Leon Kass, who chaired President GW Bush’s Council on Bioethics. Kass caused me to go back and reread Aldous Huxley’s [i]Brave New World[/i] for the first time since my teenage years. It is still a very compelling and relevant read.
Sounds like a cross between [u]THX 1138[/u] with Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasance and Logan’s Run with Michael York and Jenny Aguttar. Interesting. I’ll have to check it out when it comes out on DVD/Blu-ray.