The great things about this film are the high energy action sequences with an aging and only slightly unbelievable Arnold Schwarzenneggar. What is far from great, however, is how the film does a half-assed job of dealing with an ethical issue in what ought to have been a thoughtful way. The film treats the issue of cloning in an amazingly misinformed and ignorant manner and rides on a remarkably idiotic script.
Don't people consult with real-world scientists when treating scientific issues any more? Assuming Western civilization survives into the 22nd century, people will likely look at this propaganda film as an example of the savagery of 21st century life, inhabiting the same cinematic context that Reefer Madness enjoys today.
It is clear that a lot of thought went into this film. However, thought without the support of FACT is about as useful as a teabag without water. Thought is a means to great things, those great things can not come to fruition without a proper context and without the support offered by... reality.
Arnold (who is really the only personality in the film) gets illegally cloned for no apparent reason (the plot is not driven by necessity, but rather, by the writers poor conceptualization of the moral implications of cloning), and his clone, not being aware of the fact that he is a clone, takes over the REAL Arnold's life. A lot of people, in fact, get cloned for no apparent reason, and then get shot for equally inconsequential reasons. I will not spoil this by going much farther, but I have to admit that the ending is WORTH the effort of suspending disbelief through all the absurdity of the first 3/4ths and is the reason I gave the film a 4 instead of a 1. (Politically, most of the movie is a 1-) This is NOT a film about the REALITY of cloning. Rather, it is a paranoid, empty and weightless attack on the whole moral concept of cloning - and by implication an attack om science and medical progress. Science does not and can not progress by weak, cowardly half-measure conservatism. If this were its mode of operation, we would still be treating communicable diseases with mercury injections and sweat baths as we were just a hundred years ago. We are constantly beaten over the head by movies like this - with the message of science's potential to destroy all we hold dear. Folks, your politicians invented the H-Bomb, not the scientists in the Manhattan Project, and certainly not Einstein, upon whose work its technology relies. And worse... the politicians were also the ones who used it.
One of the questions the film treats - seriously - is whether or not clones have souls. Getting past the fact that "souls" are not definable through any rational thought process and really have no place in movies concerning scientific themes, clones, being more or less exact genetic copies of existing organisms, have as much soul as any other creature. How could it be otherwise? Fortunately, this film does not provide a clear message in the end, despite the heavy-handed future-phobic paranoiac ultra-right-wing ignorance pervading the first half of the film. Worth watching, if you can stomach the stupidity to get to the rather ambiguous but reasonable point.
Don't people consult with real-world scientists when treating scientific issues any more? Assuming Western civilization survives into the 22nd century, people will likely look at this propaganda film as an example of the savagery of 21st century life, inhabiting the same cinematic context that Reefer Madness enjoys today.
It is clear that a lot of thought went into this film. However, thought without the support of FACT is about as useful as a teabag without water. Thought is a means to great things, those great things can not come to fruition without a proper context and without the support offered by... reality.
Arnold (who is really the only personality in the film) gets illegally cloned for no apparent reason (the plot is not driven by necessity, but rather, by the writers poor conceptualization of the moral implications of cloning), and his clone, not being aware of the fact that he is a clone, takes over the REAL Arnold's life. A lot of people, in fact, get cloned for no apparent reason, and then get shot for equally inconsequential reasons. I will not spoil this by going much farther, but I have to admit that the ending is WORTH the effort of suspending disbelief through all the absurdity of the first 3/4ths and is the reason I gave the film a 4 instead of a 1. (Politically, most of the movie is a 1-) This is NOT a film about the REALITY of cloning. Rather, it is a paranoid, empty and weightless attack on the whole moral concept of cloning - and by implication an attack om science and medical progress. Science does not and can not progress by weak, cowardly half-measure conservatism. If this were its mode of operation, we would still be treating communicable diseases with mercury injections and sweat baths as we were just a hundred years ago. We are constantly beaten over the head by movies like this - with the message of science's potential to destroy all we hold dear. Folks, your politicians invented the H-Bomb, not the scientists in the Manhattan Project, and certainly not Einstein, upon whose work its technology relies. And worse... the politicians were also the ones who used it.
One of the questions the film treats - seriously - is whether or not clones have souls. Getting past the fact that "souls" are not definable through any rational thought process and really have no place in movies concerning scientific themes, clones, being more or less exact genetic copies of existing organisms, have as much soul as any other creature. How could it be otherwise? Fortunately, this film does not provide a clear message in the end, despite the heavy-handed future-phobic paranoiac ultra-right-wing ignorance pervading the first half of the film. Worth watching, if you can stomach the stupidity to get to the rather ambiguous but reasonable point.