Our theme for 2019 is Avengers:FilmFail, due to the overwhelming success of the MCU that culminated in the triumph that is Avengers:Endgame, it only seemed right to remind ourselves of the less than stellar performances that four of the big players in this series have given us in the past.
First up is Scarlet Johansson, aka Black Widow(and also known as "ScarJo"), a lady who has been rather vocal about her choices when it comes to film roles. Too bad she wasn't that particular in 2005 when the script for The Island came her way. Trust me, she would've been better off playing a tree than in this big,loud and stupid mess, courtesy of Michael Bay!
Johansson is the co-star here, playing Jordan, the best "friend" of Ewan McGregor's Lincoln where both of them are confined to an enclosed facility due to the outside world being contaminated by some sort of virus/plague/whatever(it's never really explained).
Lincoln is having weird Altered States on acid type of dreams but his biggest worries in life are not being allowed to have bacon at breakfast, a left shoe that goes missing and a cranky guy on his morning elevator ride who complains that he still hasn't been chosen to go to the island!
The breakfast issue gets somewhat solved, as Jordan uses her charms on the food server lady to get some extra portions and the guy complaining about being stuck in the facility, which is pretty much a luxury hotel set-up, is dealt with but we never find out about that shoe. Some mysteries are best left alone, I guess.
Everyone in the jump suits is just waiting for the lottery to announce that he or she gets to go to the title location, the one place on earth still safe to be at. Of course, it's not what it seems to be and when Jordan's number is called, Lincoln is sad to see her go. Particularly since he's always told to "watch the proximity" whenever he gets too close to Jordan like home schooled teenagers at a chaperoned prom:
The big secret is that there is no island, it's just a ruse to keep them in line as they're all clones who are considered "products" due to the mad science doings of Sean Bean, made for rich folk to use as spare parts.
There's a whole lot of stupid that you have to buy into here, as later in the film, it's explained that the reason for making a little community for the clones is to keep the organs functioning but couldn't that be done another way, like making headless bodies, for example? If you have the tech to make full grown replicas of human beings that takes less than an hour, I would think that this wouldn't be that hard to figure out there!
Also, the clones are supposed to be as educated "to the level of a fifteen year old" but for what purpose? There's no mention of brain transplants and in the beginning of the story, we see a clone class reading Dick and Jane books-if they're supposed to be refugees from a pre-existing world, why would they have to start with the basics?
In addition to that, they're intended to be not "programmed" for sex yet early on, there's a pregnant clone lady who turns out to be an unknowing surrogate mother. How is that explained to the others and if you're supposed to repopulate the world, why would you be discouraged from sex? No wonder that at least Lincoln caught on to the false front but perhaps if Sean Bean and company had just given him some bacon every now and then.....
Anyway, Lincoln saves Jordan from the organ chop shop and the two of them venture out into the real world and this being a Michael Bay movie, the first point of civilization they arrive at is a strip joint!
There, Lincoln finds Steve Buscemi(one of the workers at the clone farm who hangs out in secret with him) using the men's room and yanks him out of the stall to confront him about the whole "I live in Sector Five" story that Buscemi has given him over the years. Yes, this does lead to an unfortunate misunderstanding about meeting in the men's bathroom from a guy who walks in on this-so not funny then or now- and thankfully, it's brief!
Buscemi is no stranger to cashing a paycheck in cinematic crap like this(he was a welcome sight to see in Con Air) but it's a thankless task in this movie to be the one to let Lincoln and Jordan in on their doomed clone status. He's forced to drop truth bombs such as "Just because people want to eat hamburger, that doesn't mean they want to meet the cow."
Too bad he couldn't say what my mom(who kindly suffered though this movie with me) said when constantly asked by his unexpected guests, "What are we?" Idiots for being in this movie, that's what!:
However, it is down right criminal how underwritten Johansson's role is. At one point in the story, she makes a video call to her original version's home and the OG Jordan's little boy answers,saying his mom is in the hospital . He then asks Jordan "Mom, is that you?"
That thread is dropped quicker than a hot potato and the closest we get to a conclusion is when Sean Bean mentions that the OG Jordan is comatose and brain dead, making the intended organ harvest pointless but still planning to do it anyway. Uh, hello, sub plot much?
Why not have Jordan and Lincoln ,who are betrayed by Lincoln's original source material-a real creep who leers at Jordan like she's a piece of Wasbu beef-find the kid and maybe the husband of the first Jordan to help them out? Maybe set up a love triangle between Lincoln and Jordan's husband, who is torn between saving his wife and being attracted to the fresh new version of her? I know, I know, this is a Michael Bay movie, no character development allowed!
Still, the best she gets is being able to read lies in people's eyes,along with killer kick boxer moves that come in handy for the endless chase and destroy sequences that make up a good portion of this flimsy flick. Given that this movie runs nearly two and a half hours, I think that dropping one or two action scenes would've allowed for a little more nuance, even if hover bikes are involved:
It was not only a waste of ScarJo's time and talents, this movie also gave fine actors like the late Michael Clarke Duncan and Djimon Hounsou not much to work with. Sean Bean did his fair share of mustache twirling as the villain of the story, with wince worthy lines such as "We have a product on the loose!" and the classic cliche, "I brought you into this world and I can take you out" when having that all too expected showdown with Lincoln.
You might think that ScarJo would try to steer clear of badly written sci-fi scripts after this but given that she later starred in the likes of Lucy in 2014 and then Ghost in the Shell(a wrong choice for so many reasons) a couple of years later, clearly the answer is no to that question! Well, if you persist on making the same mistakes over and over again, you need a thicker skin to handle the blowback, honey.
Join us again for another Avengers:FilmFail when we see Chris Evans aka Captain America, try his hand at romantic comedy in 2015's Playing It Cool. The good news is one of his Avenger co-stars, Anthony Mackie, is in the movie and the bad news is that this film was sitting on the shelf for a long while, making it perhaps staler than it already was:
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