The movie “The Island” takes place in the year 2019, where rich people can buy a “life-insurance” in form of a clone. The clones live separately under the earth in an old military site, where they have no acces to the real world. They have been told that they are the only survivors of a catastrophy that contaminated the whole world. They live separately under the observation of Dr. Merrick, the unscrupulous chief of the organisation. The clones are used for their original human being, who is called their “sponsor”, when he or she gets sick and needs a new organ or the feminine clones can be used involuntarily as a surrogate mother.
The clones believe in the lottery which is their sense of life. In the lottery you can win a trip to “the Island” and live there for a couple of months before you have to go back in the reservation. The island is very beautiful and is presented for the clones on TV and stands for a better life. But the island is just a big lie. The lottery wins the one who is needed by his sponsor, the clones gets eliminated in the hospital over the reservation and they take their organs and transplant them.
These are the most important facts to know of the situation of the clones to understand the comparison between the novel and the movie. There is a story about two clones, who can flee… I am not telling you any more than that, in case you got interested and want to watch the movie. Similarities: – the clones are divided in castes (f. ex. Echo, Foxtrott, Gamma, Kilo, Delta) – they are under complete control – they have no free will – they live in a totalitarian state (the old military site as reservation) – they have no sexual instinct they are not supposed to have feelings, jealousy – they both have a substitute for God (in BNW: the Ford Model T (our Ford) and in the movie they believe in the lottery) –
in the movie two clones break out and turn against the system of Dr. Merrick likewise John the Savage also attacks the system in Brave New World – in the movie the male hero Lincoln Six Echo falls in love with the female clone Jordan Two Delta and in BNW Bernard Marx seeks romance with Lenina Crowne – in the movie Dr. Merrick controlls everything and in the novel Mustapha Mond plays a similar ole like him because he is the World Controller for Western Europe – Jordan Two Delta (movie) and Lenina Crowne (novel) are both very likeable and pretty characters and show emotions although that is forbidden – in the movie the clones are mass produced in an artificial process like in a factory and in BNW there is the Bokanovsky`s process where up to 96 embryos are produced out of one egg and only the strong survive – in both cases people play God by creating human beings and by deciding over life and death
Differences: the utopian world is under the earth and the “normal” people still live in the real world – in Brave New World the utopian world is the “real world” and just on a few single islands live people like we are – in the movie “the Island” the castes all wear the same clothes, with no colours (white) and in Brave New World the castes wear different colours but according to their caste – in the movie the clones have the same age like their sponsor – all of the clones can think and behave like their original donors, in Brave New World the castes are conditioned differently because the lower castes live like robots and cannot develop feelings or interests but they are content with their manual work because they cannot think of an alternative – in the movie the clones get killed immediately when they have been used in the hospital and in BNW dying people are still youthful, there is no ageing, death is just another enjoyable experience to them and the World State does not accept individuality –
Scarlett Johansson death of a single person is not important Final comment: The movie “The Island” is worth seeing because it is well made, it starrs good actors like Scarlett Johanson and it is exciting and it gives you some insight into the character of human beings,e. g. man is prepared to kill in order to survive a bit longer. In my opinion the movie helps to understand the situation and the topic of the novel. If there is time , maybe we can watch the movie in class. ( Jannis Gerner) Two obvious similarities is: 1) They are both intellectual thrillers 2) neither are real places. Now the other similarities are found in this review. I hope you see them as I did. 😉
But the most curious and surprising thing about The Island is that not only do a lot of things go boom, but it is a philosophically and morally explosive piece of art. In an interview about The Island Sean Bean (The Lord of the Rings), who plays the bad guy, mused: “I found [The Island] quite disturbing…because it makes you think about it…You really have to wonder if it’s right. ” By “it” Bean means human cloning and all the many contingent moral dilemmas arising from its practice, which pertinent moral dilemmas the film tackles with a lovely-to-behold moral deftness. The movie was so very deeply disturbing; and that is the greatest complement I can give it. Hollywood rarely creates truly disturbing films; mostly they’re just sick, and it’s not at all the same thing.
The Island, however, made me want to stand up in the theatre and scream long philosophical and theological diatribes at the screen. That’s disturbing. Purposely set in the only-too-near future the movie focuses on two characters played by Ewan McGregor (Lincoln Six-Echo) and Scarlett Johansson (Jordan Two-Delta). For the first twenty minutes of the movie it’s all classic and predictable science-fiction, 1984/utopian stuff. The ‘outside’ world has been contaminated (presumably through nuclear warfare) and there remains one last bastion of humanity. Lincoln Six-Echo and Jordan Two-Delta are two close friends who live in a futuristic, climate controlled complex that shields the inhabitants from ‘the contamination’. The several thousand residents all live regulated lives.
Everybody wears the same white tracksuit, eats the same food according to strict dietary restrictions, exercises regularly and reports to ‘wellness centers’ whenever automated sleep and urine detectors indicate that something in the body is off-kilter. Besides performing various mundane jobs and entertaining themselves at night with virtual sports and frequenting stylish futuristic bars, the residents spend their time dreaming about being chosen by the daily “lotteries” to go to The Island. The Island, the residents are told, is the only uncontaminated place left on earth; it is a tropical paradise, and to be chosen go to is the ultimate dream of every resident. Once there the residents will begin the noble process of repopulating the earth. Of course all isn’t as it seems.
Lincoln Six-Echo (McGregor) demonstrates an unusual level of curiosity which leads him at various points to enter restricted areas of the complex under false pretences. Eventually his curiosity leads him to explore further and he enters a restricted area of the building that he has never seen before. This is where the movie begins to disturb. Through a series of discoveries Lincoln realizes that there is no island at all, but rather winning the lottery means that your time has come to be harvested for your organs and other body parts. Lincoln flees in horror with Jordan Two-Delta, who had herself won the lottery not hours before, in tow; they outwit the security and eventually escape the complex.
Once the pair leave the only world they’ve ever known, escaping to a not particularly futuristic Californian outback town, they track down one of the tech/mechanical staff from the complex, McCord, who Lincoln had befriended earlier and who had sometimes smuggled contraband to him. McCord begrudgingly explains that in fact the pair, and all the inhabitants of the complex, are clones who have been created as several million dollar ‘insurance policies’ for some of society’s wealthy elite. That is to say, if the person who ordered the ‘insurance policy’ starts falling ill, they will glean their clone from the general populace by arranging it so that their clone wins the lottery; then they harvest the perfectly compatible organs or tissue they nee
