I can't remember where it was I read it, and can't find it in my recent newsfeeds, but I did read that the marketing department had a bit of a quandry with "The Island" - at what point do you reveal that There Is No Island? In the end they decided that the target audience would need to know key parts of the plot, otherwise an entirely different bunch of people would turn up and get pissed off. Or something.
So apparently there is more to the film than this.
I did think that perhaps there might be. But really, I think the movie would be a more satisfying experience if you went into it thinking it was a future-based post-apocalyptic thing. The Matrix wouldn't have succeeded nearly so well if they'd explained the "simulated world" premise beforehand - all I knew when I went in was that it was something to do with a virtual reality. The first half of the movie is arranged so that you think Neo lives in the real world and the Matrix is a dark simulation of that world, so the whole "welcome to the real world" thing takes you by surprise. "Nobody can be told what the Matrix is" really helped the movie.
In the case of The Island, I think they'd have been fine hinting at the whole "there is no island" thing, but they had to take it that step further and reveal all about them being clones or whatever. You go in thinking it's Soylent Green and it turns out to be something entirely different.
This is, of course, all with the caveat that I haven't seen the movie. I'm actually tempted to see it on the basis that, well, what else could they possibly be holding back?
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Date: 2005-06-03 09:36 pm (UTC)So apparently there is more to the film than this.
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Date: 2005-06-03 10:02 pm (UTC)In the case of The Island, I think they'd have been fine hinting at the whole "there is no island" thing, but they had to take it that step further and reveal all about them being clones or whatever. You go in thinking it's Soylent Green and it turns out to be something entirely different.
This is, of course, all with the caveat that I haven't seen the movie. I'm actually tempted to see it on the basis that, well, what else could they possibly be holding back?