The Island: Incompetent Bioethics

This review was published originally in cinekklesia on May 5, 2007.

Dystopian movies can be tricky. The whole point of portraying subsequent eras in a negative light is, of course, to serve as a warning about what could happen to us if we don't change our ways or to make a comment about our present reality through the relatively safe lens of the "future." As with any "message" movie, however, the risk lies in creating a work that is ploddingly didactic or overly simplistic. Unfortunately, Michael Bay's The Island (2005) fails to mitigate this risk, as it takes a potentially interesting and complex question and presents it in a simple-minded fashion.

Ewan McGregor plays Lincoln Six Echo, one of many humans who live in a sterilized environment, completely shut off from the surrounding natural world, which has been irrevocably contaminated by killer pathogens. His living situation is highly regimented, as an essentially totalitarian state has arisen to ensure that the remaining humans survive so they can continue the species. "The Island" refers to the only remaining pathogen-free natural environment on the planet; McGregor and his fellow survivors are entered regularly into a lottery to see who will be able to re-initiate human civilization in that tropical paradise.

In the middle of the movie, Lincoln Six Echo learns that he and his fellow survivors are actually part of a scheme as complicated as the island-colonization plan, but far less pleasant. They are unknowing "subjects" in a massive organ-harvesting regime, serving biological masters ("clients") who live beyond the sterilized walls.

The problems with The Island are many and are best discussed systematically:

1. It is Cinematically Mediocre (at Best)

Despite its bioethical pretensions, The Island is basically a vehicle by which Bay could put together some cool chase scenes and special effects. In fact, he and the screenwriters (Caspian Tredwell-Owen, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci) could have shortened the movie by 30 to 45 minutes without any detrimental effect to the storyline — though the violence, I suppose, would have "suffered." The script was largely dull and contrived, and McGregor's performance came across as a bit amateur (though, admittedly, I've never been a fan of his acting).

2. Its Main Moral Point Is Too Simple

For a sign that The Island is not to be taken seriously from a philosophical standpoint, we just have to look at its main moral point: killing people for the sake of harvesting their organs is bad. That's it. That's as complicated as it gets. That point is so obvious (in the sense that the vast majority of people in the world would agree with it) that it is hardly a point at all. Why even mention it? Furthermore, making an obvious point as part of a moral discourse simply evinces a lack of originality and courage. Obvious points are a way for people to pretend that they have something important and meaningful to say, when in fact, their points contribute nothing substantive.

3. It Implicitly (and Simplistically) Blames Technology

Because large-scale organ harvesting is almost intrinsically a high-tech endeavor, The Island ends up implicitly blaming technology for the moral travesty it portrays. Sure, the movie includes characters with "bad motives," but technology is portrayed as the enabling medium — because organ harvesting is so bad, then technology loses its position as a morally neutral vehicle for human activity and becomes inextricably tied with the immoral behavior of its masters. (The same rhetoric pervades our debate over guns: gun-control activists claim that automatic weapons "have no other purpose" than to kill and, as such, are immoral technologies.)

The problem with implicitly blaming technology is that (a) it diverts some blame from humans when, in fact, humans should be completely responsible for what they do, and (b) it insinuates that the prohibition or reversal of technology is an efficacious means toward a moral end. However, we would do well to remember that Cain didn't need a lot of high-tech gadgetry in order to kill Abel and that people with immoral aims and sufficient drive can obtain almost any "prohibited" technologies.

4. It Sloppily Handles the Question of Longevity

Besides the evil organ harvesters, The Island also condemns the harvesters' clients, wealthy people with either life-threatening diseases or who just want to have "spare parts" available for any future repair. The movie continually returns to the question of people who are willing to "do anything" in order to "live longer" (and maybe even live forever). Its handling of this is sloppy because it fails to recognize that the issues of (a) longevity and (b) actions that promote longevity are completely separate.

From a theological standpoint, the mere desire for longevity becomes problematic if it evinces a lack of faith in God. If one doesn't believe in God (or in an afterlife of some sort), then he/she may be very concerned, even obsessed, with extending his/her time on earth. However, longevity in and of itself is not morally problematic; if it were, then any attempts we made at healthy living—diet, exercise, doctor's visits, even childhood immunizations—would be bad. By implicitly equating the desire for longevity with organ harvesting, The Island incorrectly condemns longevity per se.

(In addition, a friend of mine noted that Lincoln Six Echo's "client," Tom Lincoln, appears to serve as a representative of all of the clients; thus, his desires and motivations are to be seen as those of his peers. In the middle of the movie, we learn that the clients are incorrectly told that the organs produced do not develop in actual humans beings but rather, in some biological sack (or stew) sans consciousness. When Tom Lincoln learns the truth, he doesn't care and wants the company to continue harvesting anyway. Thus, The Island implies that all of the clients, even if presented with the truth of the matter, would follow Tom's immoral path — an unfair, broad-brush condemnation that serves to obfuscate, rather than illuminate, the moral questions involved.)

5. It Unfairly Condemns Cloning

Finally, along with all of the other implications it makes, The Island implies that human cloning, per se, is bad. The only purpose or outcome of said practice that the movie portrays is organ harvesting; we are given no indication that human cloning could produce a beneficial (or, at least, neutral) outcome.

Yet, we seriously should ask ourselves why cloning, in and of itself, is so readily condemned. After all, a clone is simply a genetic copy of a biological entity; as others have noted, so long as a cloned human is treated as the moral equivalent of a non-clone, then there should be no problem. (After all, an identical twin is simply a clone produced the old-fashioned way.) Sure, there are perfectly legitimate moral questions regarding the risks of human cloning, but cloning in and of itself seems to pose no moral problem. (In this sense, The Island seems to fall into trap of the "ick" or "yuck" factor, in which a biological process or practice is condemned simply because it appears strange to a particular group of people at a particular point in history.)

As such, The Island simply presents important and complicated bioethical issues in a simplistic and ultimately incompetent fashion. If you want to see chase scenes and special effects, then by all means, watch this movie. If you want thoughtful moral reflection, then you need to look elsewhere.