If you are worried about spoilers? You need to read this post, so that you don’t spoil your bloody afternoon, the way I did by paying money to watch this crap.
Wow, and I thought genetics was a branch of science and industry where people were researching how genetics works, how to design medicines and other technologies based on those discoveries, and hopefully figure out how to regrow organs or limbs, fight aging, combat genetically-heritable illness, and that kind of thing. I mean, yeah, there’s also all kinds of stuff I don’t like in the biotech industry; most people I know, once they look at some of the things Monsanto has done, for example, have issues. But…
… I had no idea that biotech was really all about scientists with no moral compass working out their (abusive) family-of-origin issues and couple issues, designing magical superfastgrow (a few weeks to adulthood!) humanoid mutant freakazoids, boinking those freakazoids — and hey, why not make that freakazoid sex-changer, so that after it seduces the male lead, it can go and rape the female lead? And hey — incest too, since the mutant freakazoid is, genetically, partly a clone of the female lead? And what do you end up with? Hey… what was that bat-kind thing in the National Enquirer? Yeah, let’s fairy up the wings and give it a tail with a stinger that regenerates overnight…
Isn’t science fun?!?!
Sometimes I think Hollywood’s being funded by some kind of secret, shithead organization that just wants everyone to be exposed to so much moronically stupid science, and such ridiculous depictions of scientists and the scientific establishment, that people will just give up on the whole enterprise and go back to living with mud and pig shit on their faces and paying 10% of their crops to the clerics and kings and living in fear annd dying at age 35. I really, really do wonder sometimes.
Oh, but wait, it’s not Hollywood: it’s a Canadian film. Yep… Telefilm Canada funded this shit. Wow, that’s two reasons of late to be ashamed of Canada.
Anyway, if you want your intelligence insulted? Watch this film. Otherwise? Check out one of the many books that asks interesting questions about genetics, biotech, our nature, and our future:
- Necropolis, by Maureen F. McHugh
- Schismatrix, by Bruce Sterling (pick up Schismatrix Plus, it has the related short stories)
- Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
- Sirius and Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
- Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
- The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells (free online)
… and I’m sure, many more novels, each of which would be a better use of your time than this film.
How does it work as a “horror” film? That’s how I’ve seen it marketed, especially one as capitalism run amuck and scientists believing themselves to be gods and damn the consequences.
And would it have worked better without the added scene at the end hinting at Splice 2?
Anyway, I saw all this years ago back in the late 1990’s and done much, much better on the Batman: Beyond episode “Splicers.”
John,
Well, it certainly does include some of those tropes you mention: capitalism run amok is much less a part of it than ambition run amok, and of course arrogant scientists thinking they’re god (and using their experiment to work out their own family — and [sexual-]relationship problems).
I didn’t find it particularly horrifying, though. I might be a bad judge of that, since I haven’t found much in horror film at all horrifying since The Exorcist.
This isn’t quite the same as the Batman-related stuff: it’s more about gene splicing human and nonhuman DNA together, and what do you get? You get a very dumbass movie, apparently.
Bloody hells bells, I also forgot that in the “Epilogue” episode of Justice League Unlimited it comes to light that they “good guys” decided that the world needs more heroes like Batman, so they take it into their own hands to secure a sample of Bruce Wayne’s DNA and clone their own future Batman (Batman Beyond). Sounds a bit like they decided to put their own “Kick-Ass” enforcer on the streets in their place; however, they did it by illegal, and unethical, means.
“Sometimes I think Hollywood’s being funded by some kind of secret, shithead organization that just wants everyone to be exposed to so much moronically stupid science, and such ridiculous depictions of scientists and the scientific establishment, that people will just give up on the whole enterprise and go back to living with mud and pig shit on their faces and paying 10% of their crops to the clerics and kings and living in fear annd dying at age 35.”
Yep. The secret organizations are called “humanities” and “lawyers.”
It probably doesn’t help that most Hollywood types are humanities majors (including lit) and lawyers.
“I had no idea that biotech was really all about scientists with no moral compass working out their (abusive) family-of-origin issues and couple issues, designing magical superfastgrow (a few weeks to adulthood!) humanoid mutant freakazoids, boinking those freakazoids…”
Actually, this is (more or less) the plot of Frankenstein (the book), right? (except instead of boinking the monster, Victor played the abusive daddy). I’ve read the book three times now, and while I certainly can see the book as a critique of someone who is too prideful and confident for his own good, I still don’t see how the book works as a critique of science and scientists, unless you make a crucial additional (and in my reading, unstated and unwarranted) assumption that all scientists are like Victor Frankenstein.
Oh, I forgot to ask you whether the movie had gore and nudity. I’ll forgive a lot for full frontal (female) nudity, flying guts and exploding heads or neat explosions. (I really miss those early Cronenberg movies – before he became respectable …)
Just looking at the character design on the poster removed all my desire to see this movie, and when I read a review or two, I was wonderstruck that this wasn’t a direct-to-video B outing. You nailed it.
Junsok,
Ha, well, to be fair, I imagine most of the really competent literary types aren’t attracted to Hollywood, or, anyway, don’t make it there.
But point taken: literary types are, in my experience, quite frustrating about science and SF.
Well, it’s certainly in the Frankenstein ballpark, yeah — at least for our interpretation of Frankenstein today.
I think that interpretation has come to dominate in part because of our own anxieties, of course. I’ve read criticisms of how Frankenstein is really all about the marginalization of women. As in, “If this goes on, eventually they’ll even try to make babies without women… and just you wait and see what happens!”
I also don’t see it so much as about a critique of science and scientists, as much as a kind of expression of the same anxiety, in an earlier form, that we see in a number of Wells texts and, indeed, in SF right up to the present — about the evolutionary supercession of humanity by a technological construct, these days. It’s a response to the same pressures that gave rise to SF in the beginning: the shock of what science at the time was starting to (or claiming to) suggest about the mechanics of bodies and life. (Apparently at least at Villa Diodati the conversation turned to galvanism and the animation or reanimation of dead bodies, as experimented with by Erasmus Darwin.)
It’s weirdly prescient of the roots of the Technological Singularity, which I’m working on an argument about, dating it back to Wells at least. Shelley doesn’t seem to argue that Adam could ever, um, knock traditional humanity off the top of the food chain, but that’s only because she never imagined Adam realizing that, hell, he could build himself a wife… and an army, given enough time.
Huh. Makes me want to write a sequel, in short story form at least. Huh… I know Aldiss already did it, but this is a far different idea from his, I think. (I haven’t read the book, only about it. Been trying to read Aldiss lately, but finding it, well… frustrating.)
As for Splice, the film has more full frontal nudity than gore, but the nudity is… er. Well, it’s not quite bestiality, but it’s a part-human beast-thing and I’m not sure many people will find it very titillating. It’s more… estranging than anything.
V,
Yeah, well, but I’ve seen a few TELEFILM CANADA movies that seemed like they ought to have been a direct to video sort of thing. So long ago I can’t remember titles, but…
The sad fact is, once it’s anything scientific, B-movie stuff can pass as relevant and believable to today’s audiences. Ah, the ignunce.