Hot Stuff
Browse
Genre Picks
Extras!
Stores
More Ideas
| |     |
I've Seen It:
| |
My Rating:
| |
Avg Rating:
| |
| |
| Lincoln Six-Echo (McGregor) and Jordan Two-Delta (Johansson) are among hundreds of residents of a contained facility in the mid 21st Century. Everything about their lives is monitored and the only way out is to be chosen to go to The Island, reported to be the last uncontaminated spot in the world following an ecological disaster, which claimed the lives of everyone on the planet apart from them.
Lincoln who increasingly restless about the restraints and plagued by recurring, unexplained nightmares is aware that something is not quite as it seems but he is not prepared for what he discovers. His growing curiosity leads to the terrible discovery that everything about his existence is a lie, that The Island is a cruel hoax…and that he, Jordan and everyone they know are actually more valuable dead than alive. With time running out, Lincoln and Jordan make a daring escape to the outside world they've never known while the forces of the institute relentlessly hunt them down.
|
Here's what our members thought of this title. 5 stars = very good, 1 star = poor.
 |  | "People will do anything to survive. I wanna live and I don't care how."
Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson run for their lives in this rip-roaring tale of the near future from Armageddon director Michael Bay. A cracking science fiction thriller packed with action and ingenious special effects, The Island borrows from movies like Coma and Logan's Run to tell an exciting, surprising story that, besides making your heart pound almost non-stop, also gives your brain a bit of a workout.
"I play a guy called Lincoln," explains McGregor, "who lives in an ordered, regimented society, where everything is decided for them - what they wear, what they eat, where they work… Everything is controlled by someone else. They have been told that the outside world has been contaminated, except for one beautiful paradise, which is The Island. Periodically, there is a lottery and if they win, they will go to The Island, where their job is to repopulate the planet, which is nice work if you can get it," he says with a smile.
"They believe they are living to go to The Island, and whereas everyone else seems to be fairly satisfied with that, my character is the one who rocks the boat a bit and starts asking questions: Why are things this way? Who decides?" Basically, "Lincoln and others like him are blessed - or perhaps cursed - with a very dangerous character trait in this particular world: curiosity. So now, he has become the squeaky wheel."
As Lincoln digs deeper, and develops a bit of a thing for naively sexy neighbour Jordan (Johansson), the pair discover the shocking truth and throw themselves into the hero game, on the run from their tooled-up overlords while fighting desperately for truth and justice. Exactly what that truth is you're not going to read here, though. If you don't already know, simply watch the movie and enjoy the surprise.
According to producer Walter Parkes, whose credits include Deep Impact, Men in Black and Minority Report, Bad Boys director Michael Bay was the only man capable of bringing this story to the screen. "He has the focus, the drive, the creativity, the confidence and the technical expertise to handle a production this size," says Parkes, "so it was a perfect match.
"This movie came with huge production challenges - many locations, hundreds of extras, massive sets, digital effects, physical effects… just about everything. There is a very short list of directors who are capable of dealing with all of that without being buried by it. I mean, there are a lot of people who understand digital effects or know how to do a chase scene, but the challenges can be so great that they get in the way of the sheer exuberance of the scene itself. Michael can do it all - he literally knows everybody's job on the set - and he just exudes a certain kind of energy from the director's chair - not that he ever sits down! In a lot of ways, he's like a big kid with a wonderful sense of playfulness. It set a tone and brought great energy and excitement to the set, which I think translates to the film. It's a very infectious thing."
McGregor and Johansson were similarly hooked on the project, eager to do as many of their own stunts as possible. "Ewan and Scarlett were in some precarious and challenging positions, but they were both troopers," says stunt co-coordinator Kenny Bates. "We had them ducking, diving, crawling, running, jumping, falling, climbing… They were wet, they were dry, they were dirty, but through it all, they were just great sports about everything."
"I've never done anything like that before," reveals Johansson, who arrived on set having barely recovered from a tonsillectomy, so there was almost no time for her to train for the physical demands of her role. "It really requires you to keep fit," she confirms. "It's interesting to have to push yourself to new limits, though. I've never had to run for my life, ever, but I did it every day on the set. It definitely pushes you to a different place, mentally as well as physically."
(c) 2005 Warner Bros. Entertainment inc. & Dreamworks L.L.C. All Rights Reserved
|
|
|
|