The movie ‘Surrogates’ warns: can technological advances threaten our humanity?

The movie “Surrogates” explores the social changes that come with the invention of “Surrogates,” robots that live in place of humans. While they provide convenience and safety, they also warn of increased inhumanity, new crimes, and human rights violations. The movie delves deeply into the underbelly of technological advancement and makes us think about the relationship between humanity and technology.

 

I don’t watch a lot of movies, but I do watch sci-fi movies. In particular, I often watch movies about robots or artificial intelligence, such as Terminator and iRobot. Most robot or A.I. movies are about confrontation with humans. However, this movie ‘surrogate’ has robots, but there is no human-robot confrontation, and the robots are strictly tools. The movie focuses on how the changes brought about by the introduction of surrogates affect humans. surrogate means agent, and it’s also the name of the robot in the movie. It’s a word that seems to be used because it’s used to replace humans.
The movie opens with an explanation that in the not-too-distant future, Surrogates will be invented to replace humans using machines that detect brain waves and carry out commands. Surrogates are machines that look exactly like humans. They can receive and control human brain waves. They can be controlled remotely, so humans leave the device that sends the brainwaves at home and live as machines by lying there and controlling them with their brainwaves. Surrogates are spreading rapidly around the world because of their convenience, criminality, and beauty. The biggest advantage of Surrogates was the safety of its users. But when the son of the Surrogates’ inventor is murdered, the police are thrown into chaos when the Surrogates are attacked and the user is killed. Chasing a criminal with a weapon that can destroy Surrogates and melt the user’s brain at the same time, the protagonist enters the area where people who oppose the use of Surrogates are gathered and chases him, but the Surrogates are destroyed and the weapon falls into the hands of the head of the opposition organization.

 

 

As the protagonist continues his investigation without the Surrogates, he discovers that VSI, the company that developed the Surrogates, and the military have invented a weapon that kills the user, and that one of the weapons was destroyed because of its danger. He realizes that his boss is behind the murders and manages to forcefully get the information from his boss’s computer, only to be taken over by the inventor of Surrogates, who is controlling his dead partner’s Surrogates. As it turns out, the inventor invented Surrogates for people with disabilities, but he opposes the use of Surrogates in this way, claiming that it is addictive for people around the world to use them, and in fact, the head of the Surrogates opposition is one of the inventor’s own Surrogates. The inventor tries to use the data to exterminate the users along with all the Surrogates in the world, but the protagonist succeeds in stopping him. The users don’t die, but the commands that cause the Surrogates to malfunction are left in place instead of being removed, causing Surrogates around the world to break.
This movie was shown to me in high school by my science teacher, and I remember it being very creative and interesting because of the Surrogates it was based on. So I decided to watch it again. Unlike the futuristic science and technology in other sci-fi movies, Surrogates seems like it could be realized in the relatively near future, which made me more immersed in the movie because I could imagine Surrogates actually existing. At the beginning of the movie, a monkey is shown feeding a robotic arm by controlling it with brain waves, and this experiment has actually been successful. Unlike other robots, the control mechanism is already in place, so it is more feasible than other robots because only hardware needs to be developed.

 

 

In addition, Surrogates, if invented, would bring many benefits to humans, as introduced in the beginning of the movie. With Surrogates, people can stay younger even when they are old, and people with disabilities can live like normal people as long as they are not neurologically impaired. People will be able to take on the face, body, race, and gender of their choice, and they won’t have to worry about crime or accidents, as the destruction of Surrogates won’t harm them. Their physical capabilities are superior to human bodies, making life more convenient. There are so many advantages that you might wonder if it is a machine with nothing but advantages. The movie opens with an introduction to these advantages, but that’s not what the movie wants to show.
First of all, it shows and criticizes the inhumanity that has become rampant in society due to the invention and commercialization of Surrogates. What I realized while watching the movie is that the filmmakers were meticulous about the message they wanted to convey. In the scene where the protagonist is walking on the street, which may seem trivial, the surrogates are broken and the protagonist is barefoot for the first time, and the surrogates on the street hit the protagonist’s shoulder, and there is no reaction or apology. When the protagonist enters the military base to get help from the investigator, there is a scene where the soldiers are training for war using Surrogates, and it shows that the soldiers are training as if they are playing a game. Of course, it is the Surrogates that they are destroying while training with Surrogates, but in a real war, they would also use Surrogates against enemy soldiers or civilians, and it shows the problem of treating it like a game.
On the personal side, it is shown through the protagonist’s relationship with his wife. After the death of his son, the protagonist is unable to communicate with his depressed wife. She is always in the room and communicates only superficially through Surrogates, and there are several scenes where she disconnects from Surrogates and becomes disconnected whenever she tries to have a genuine communication. This is a warning that technological advancements, while convenient, can dehumanize us.
The film also warns that when new technologies are invented and commercialized, they can lead to new crimes and human rights violations. Just as the inventor kills the protagonist’s partner and manipulates the surrogates to deceive the people around him, using them to steal data from his boss, the person behind the murder, it would be very difficult to recognize or stop someone from stealing other people’s surrogates and using them to commit crimes. Just as the protagonist used Surrogates that were disconnected from their bosses to get the data from the bosses, this method of crime renders all security devices that use Surrogates useless. In the movie, a programmer on the police side develops and operates a system that allows them to monitor all Surrogates and forcibly suspend Surrogates who are engaged in criminal activity. This is an invasion of privacy for people around the world and is dangerous because it could be used to commit other crimes, just as it was used by the inventor to destroy all Surrogates and their users. It could also lead to the creation of new crimes that didn’t exist before the invention of Surrogates, as shown in the movie with the use of a device that has a drug-like effect.
In the movie, there’s a scene where a company that has become the largest company in the world with Surrogates turns a blind eye to a murder that calls into question the reliability of Surrogates. It’s even the company that collaborated with the military to create the dangerous weapon. It shows a company that uses science and technology to make money from new inventions, but ignores the problems that arise from their inventions. It also shows how convenient inventions can lead to a breakdown of communication within a family and a loss of humanity in society. When new technologies emerge, it is inevitable that new inventions will be made using them. And while it is true that these inventions increase convenience, we need to think about whether the human aspects of society are disappearing.

 

 

Even in the modern world, the way people communicate with each other is changing as technology such as smartphones evolves. The more convenient tools we have, the more we communicate indirectly and superficially rather than directly. This brings to mind the inhumanity behind the convenience that technological advancement brings. The movie effectively conveys these issues through the science fiction genre, and it has a message that makes us think about the other side of technological advancement.
In conclusion, Surrogates is not just a science fiction movie, but a deep exploration of the relationship between humanity and technological advancement. It provides a deep insight into how technology changes our lives and how our humanity is affected by that change. The movie gives us a chance to reflect on the important values that can be lost in the midst of the convenience of technology.