YMMV / The Island

• Adaptation Displacement: Most people who know of Clonus these days learned about it from this very movie. Or MST3K.
• Complete Monster: Dr. Bernard Merrick is at first charming and helpful. He has the clones under his care dissected alive when he views the need as arising, and lies by telling them they'll be sent to the mysterious "Island", while lying to the clones' original source by claiming the clones are brain dead and are not living, sapient beings. When one clone's original donor is already dead, Merrick spitefully plans to have her harvested anyways, and tries to kill any clone that resists him. Drunk on his own genius and power, Merrick seems to view himself as some sort of twisted messiah.
• Critical Dissonance: An odd inversion for Michael Bay. Compared to how they react to most of his films, the critics were merciful to this one, giving it mixed reviews and praising several aspects of it, with the common criticism that it didn't try hard enough to really be great. However, it was a box office bomb and barely made back its budget, if even that.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The music of the same name, composed by Steve Jablonsky. Listen as the tension and the emotion slowly builds up...and then suddenly explodes in a shower of pure, saturated epicness. Seriously, how did this music not get any awards?
• Genius Bonus: Tom Lincoln's comment about how Six Echo was worth all the money he spent on him when discovering that they have the same finger prints can seem a bit Captain Obvious, unless you know that finger prints are not genetically determined. Not even identical twins have the same finger prints.
• Magnificent Bastard: Albert Laurent is a very intelligent and skilled mercenary hired by the revolting Dr. Bernard Merrick to retrieve escaped clones Lincoln Six-Echo and Jordan Two-Delta. Suspecting and realizing Merrick uses the clones to harvest organs, Laurent only takes the job for both the pay and being a Consummate Professional. Tracking Lincoln and Jordan through tech implanted on Lincoln and then to LA through use of a credit card, Laurent and his people ambush a police convoy when the two are arrested and during an extended chase, death and destruction is chaotically caused. Killing sponsor Tom Lincoln thinking he's Lincoln, Laurent also recaptures Jordan so that her dying sponsor Sarah Jordan can be saved—only for Merrick to say she can't be saved and plan to harvest Jordan anyway. Having as a child suffered the same treatment the clones are enduring, Laurent defies Merrick by helping Lincoln and Jordan to set all the clones free and make sure Merrick's business is finally brought down in the end.
• Moral Event Horizon: Dr. Merrick's actions are harsh and heartless, but could be seen as necessary extremes to contain a volatile situation which is Lincoln and Jordan escaping. Then he personally kills Jones, and orders the deaths of dozens of clones because their Genetic Memory is starting to develop. He gives the order with such apathy, like telling someone to cancel a meeting, and he's well aware that this won't really solve the problem and he'll have to resort to the same solution in the future when it rises again, and he seemingly doesn't care.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Michael Clarke Duncan being harvested for organs. Doubles as a tearjerker as you see what is essentially an innocent Manchild, played by an actor that is usually the Scary Black Man, dragged to his death crying "I wanna live!" And the probes that crawled onto his eyes.
  • The woman who gave birth and smiled at her baby only to be killed seconds after the child is taken from her.
  • That midwife's face. It doesn't change man.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The film sets up what could be an emotionally wrenching decision, namely asking whether it would be worth it for Jordan to sacrifice her life so as to prevent Sarah Jordan's family from losing a wife and mother. Unfortunately this is rendered completely moot by the revelation that by the time Jordan brought back, Sarah Jordon has suffered brain damage from her accident and it's unlikely she'll recover even if the transplants she needs are successful.