Bleached tracksuits and colored syringes populate what is a rather bleak existence for Lincoln-Six-Echo. Lackluster food and a tedious vocation fill the void that is his time before he is chosen to go to The Island. The film The Island follows a man in what he assumes is a post apocalyptic world. While living in a sterilized environment he discovers he and all the others in the compound are clones financed through the company Biotec by their corresponding originals to be used as spare parts if the need arise. In response to this revelation Lincoln escapes with his friend, and love interest to be, Jordan Two Delta, who is about to be harvested. Once in the outside world viewers watch surreal circumstances in which Lincoln and Delta encounter the real world for the first time. They search out Lincoln’s original who betrays them to Biotec and is killed when he is mistaken for Lincoln. The two replicas then manage to free the other clones and finish the film by riding into the sunset in classic Hollywood fashion which lands a rather devastating blow on the message the movie could have portrayed quite well.

 

The concept that man could be immortal seems like a myth. A figment of some mad scientist’s fantastically unbalanced imagination. The concept of living for an unperceivable amount of time scares people almost as much as death; almost. Mankind is not afraid of death, but of not being remembered once they are gone. This coupled with the natural fear of the unknown make for a disturbing drive to live life on a higher tier. In The Island the idea that humans could live for long periods of time is not set to far off in the future. The Pseudo-Science of experimenting with the extension of life is worked on in the present. Recently those that would have everyone live decades to centuries longer managed a great victory over nature when they reversed the age of a mouse. While the scale may be small, the implications of this distorted success may rebound into the human population in the in the years to come despite nature’s best efforts, like fatal or crippling diseases. While on a personal level diseases such as AIDS and Cancer are both sad and demoralizing on the large scale they are what is necessary. They are one of Mother Earth’s last attempts to save herself from humanity’s roughly 8 billion pairs of hands and feet that are giving her tumors and lesions. The Island presents that mankind needs to tread lightly. Their power as sentient beings is beyond their scope as intelligent ones, leading to a situation in which they may be, their own impending doom.

 

In humanity’s race with its own mortality it faces another runner from the nation of imperfections. As evolving beings, man’s biological structure is not as sound as the layman may believe it to be. The Island inadvertently approaches this issue by following the trend of using beautiful people to portray the characters and takes a more direct stab by depicting Delta’s original as a fashion model. The drive towards immortality is merely a side effect of mankind’s mob mentality that they as a people must be individually perfect. People are psychologically forced by their peers to labor for superficial flawlessness. The Island plays on this cultural assumption that is as overpopulated as the human race is. Using the film as a guide, the pressure to have the quintessential physique can be easily linked back to man’s need to be remembered.

 

As a culture, humanity is consumed not only its own mortality and appearance, but also with its need to relate. Humans are social creatures. They need each other and they need to be a necessity for others. Relating the world in The Island to reality was done by many clever methods. Product placement in the movie was not only profitable but makes the content of the non-fictional world in The Island more applicable to the viewer. Along with the cultural media icons come the social ideals that define how many live their lives, such as the concept of beauty, or the frequent misconception of passion as love. These themes and fluffy abstracts taken from today’s civilization wrap through the feature presentation and back into the idea that man needs to leave his mark on the world, and the easiest way to do that is through the preset social directives.

 

The movie wraps up in a content happy ending which obscures the message that should be drawn from its content. The idea that should be passed to the viewer is that man’s days are numbered no matter what his plan for eternal life is. Even with an extended life span they can not hide when the scythe comes thirsting for their necks. The Island also puts forth the moral implications of what harmful potential humans could hold for the planet and themselves. Living longer may not just cause humanity to degrade if implemented improperly; it will also affect future generations.

 

The consensus on the project Earth’s mortals have undertaken as a race, is for the most part proactive, however the question still remains as to whether the possible drawbacks are worth the risk. The Decision to live longer clearly violates every moral boundary the public entity lives by, yet they still make that decision. The excuse is made that life is to short compared to the extent of the universe, when the same argument could be made for the lifespan of humanity as a whole. The universe existed before humans and will exist after them as well. Leaving a mark on the world does literally that. As regents of this short span in the lifetime of the world, mankind has an obligation to govern this prospective science carefully, and to ask themselves if the loot is on the same level as the peril. Even if they already know their answer.