Here's a surefire formula for making a clone movie: Take the seeds of a few sci-fi classics and grow your own. In director Michael Bay's The Island, due in theaters July 22, Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson star as residents of an idyllic near-future utopia who gradually discover that the world around them - and even their own humanity - is a lie. The dizzying premise is a major departure for Bay, the guy behind explosion-heavy action flicks like Armageddon and Pearl Harbor. "There's way less carnage and destruction than the other movies I've done," he says. But there's an awful lot that feels uncannily familiar; while everyone from Plato to Philip K. Dick has explored false realities, Bay seems to have several specific sources for his phantasm island.
Where a Film About Clones Got Its DNA:
THX 1138 (1971)
Drugged, enslaved, shaven-headed humans inhabit George Lucas' antiseptic underground world. "When you watch THX 1138, you wanna blow your fucking head off," Bay says. "Our film's world is actually fun. It's about exercising and health."
Logan's Run (1976)
The Island apes the setting, the escape-pursuit story line, and even the naming-conventions of this flick. Logan 5 and Jessica 6 were the leads in Logan's Run; in The Island, McGregor is called Lincoln Six-Echo and Johansson is Jordan Two-Delta.
The Truman Show (1998)
Evil producers raised Truman in an artificial environment and programmed his life for prime time. In The Island, characters have phony life histories implanted. "They're force-fed sound and visual imagery," Bay says, "fake memories of childhood."
The Matrix (1999)
The Wachowski brothers reduced humanity to a power source farmed and tended by machines. The Island sows and reaps mass-produced clones. "They're 'born' as adults," Bay says. "When they're harvesting them it kinda makes you cringe."
- Paul Davidson
credit: Dreamworks. The Island
credit:Carl Samrock PR. THX 1138
credit:Everett.Logan's Run
credit:Everett.caption_4="The Truman Show"
credit:Everett.The Matrix
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Island of Lost Souls
