Mostly about 'The Island'
Briefly:
I rented the first two seasons of Homicide: Life on the Streets from netflix, but knew by the end of the first episode that it wasn't a show that was meant for me. I liked some of the characters, and I did think that the Bayliss and Pembleton interaction was interesting, but the format, editing, and even the way they filmed the show itself does nothing but turn me off. I can see where it's a good show (much in the same way that I can see where The Lord of the Rings is a good book), but it's not my thing.
At Length:
And now, onto something that was so totally my thing.
I really liked The Island. It's not doing too well in theaters (Though, honestly I believe that part of that is because the trailer for the movie sucks so very much. It gives away far too much and it... is not a good trailer, otherwise, dammit. Seriously, if your movie is called The Island, you should not put the line "there is no island" in the damn trailer, thank you.), which might bother me if I had the impression that Ewan actually cares about how much money the films he shows up in make. Also, if I personally cared whether the movies I like are box office hits. I've noticed that my tastes run across the board -- sometimes I like the current flavor of the month and sometimes I wonder what the film industry is smoking.
I'm probably not going to see it in theatres again (there is a very short list of movies that I will see in theaters more than once and the list of movies that I will see in theaters all by myself is even shorter... hell, the list of movies that I will bother seeing in theaters at all is fairly short, to be honest, though I could spend hours watching trailers), but I already know that I'll want it on dvd so that I can rewatch in detail.
Recently, on my flist, inyron pointed to a link where a website informs us that The Island is just like Parts: The Clonus Horror. This page also gives us a helpful link to a detailed run-down of Parts: The Clonus Horror.
Which is where I started blinking in mild bafflement.
Yes, there are, in fact, similarities -- namely that people are being cloned to provide organs for their rich 'real selves' and that a plucky clone escapes and goes out searching for his 'real self' in hopes of Stopping the Cloning Horror, yo.
Maybe if I actually watched Clonus, I would see where it was So Very The Same Movie, but my dad forced me to watch too many bad horror movies in my youth for me to consider voluntarily watching one (don't ask about the one where the possessed chick drew lipstick circles around her nipples... and please don't ask why my dad thought that that was an appropriate movie to show to his daughter, who was all of fourteen at the time. Seriously, I have no fucking clue what he was thinking.).
Still, the stories and (especially) the characters seem fairly profoundly different. For example, the clones in The Island? Are actually in a controlled enviroment as opposed to wandering about where they can find random cans of beer to wonder about the origins of. And they were kept in a secret underground place instead of aboveground in a colony called Clonus! Also, the 'hero' clone in The Island actually succeeds in freeing his clone friends, which is a pretty big difference.
Also, it's just hard for me to get upset about someone taking the basic idea of a really bad movie and changing it so that it doesn't suck.
Though really, it's also really hard for me to believe that the (clearly) brilliant writer of Parts (a movie featured on Mystery Science Theatre: 3000) was the first and only person in the world to think up the idea of rich people cloning themselves for extra organs. Because. That is the only thing that is the same! They aren't even the same genre! (Parts is a horror film, while The Island is most definitely an action film -- I enjoyed it a lot, but it's way more popcorn than most of the flicks that Ewan does). Yes, the main female character of each film has blond hair, but Jordan? Is not a moron who would be the only person in her cloned bicycle group not to wear a helmet.
Good Lord, the two main characters of Parts meet during the time of the film and bonk (screen) minutes later, apparently. In The Island, there is actually a really good reason for Lincoln to be desperate and willing to risk himself for Jordan, as they are established as close friends right off the bat.
There is one main reason that Lincoln manages to find out that the Island of The Island isn't real -- a 'defect' in the cloning process that allows his sponser's memories and curiosity to resurface. The reason that Parts' main character starts questioning? He finds an empty beer can in the river of contrivance, that's why. And the random coincidences described in the very detailed plot summary are also something that The Island lacks, as it instead contains an actual plot and plausible character reactions.
It... just... I do realise that the 'Warning: OMG, these movies are so alike!' is based off of very brief summaries of both movies, but still.
The plot of The Island makes actual sense. The characters make actual sense.
Maybe the directors/writers/etc of The Island should cop to there being a link except... dude, it's a sucky horror movie. As a person who has seen far too many sucky horror movies, I can understand not wanting to explicitly connect your film to... you know, a sucky horror movie that happened to have an interesting idea.
Clearly, I have no sense of copyright ethics, but we already knew that (ownership at all is a tenous and shifting idea to me -- sometimes I understand the urge and pull of being able to say 'mine' about something and other days I wonder what the fuss is).