History Headscratchers / Surrogates

* Others have touched on it but I'm going to state it outright. Its the all or nothing nature of Surrogate use. Not just the timeframe, which is unrealistic enough, but there are basically only three viewpoints portrayed in the movie. Surrogate for everything but eating and using the bathroom, {{Ludd Was Right}} and the computer tech who is viewed as an eccentric weirdo who avoids being a pariah because he possess valuable skills. There's no one who uses a Surrogate most of the time but occasionally likes to get out and engage in their hobby sans Surrogate, or alternately someone who spends most of their time ''au naturale'' but uses a Surrogate for things like extreme sports for safety/practicality reasons. Or to boil it down there are no shades of grey.

** The "failsafe" wasn't specifically a "prevent this from melting your brain" failsafe. It was a general failsafe, along the lines of, "Make sure that any damage to the surrogate doesn't feedback on the user." The whole point was that the weapon did something ''entirely unexpected'' and out of the ordinary.

* Here's what gets me. Quick rundown of the situation: nearly the entire human population decides to use robots via telepresence to live their lives, largely for safety reasons. Someone comes along, zaps the surrogates with some sort of electromegablaster, and it not only blows out the surrogate's eyes and CPU, it ''causes the [[EyeScream user's eyes to burst]] and [[YourHeadAsplode brains to turn to a bloody gray soup]].'' The movie makes references to the blaster dealie being capable of bypassing the "failsafe," which is presumably the safety device that prevents the headsets and eye pieces from causing their brain to blow up under normal conditions. My question is this: why ''design'' the headsets (controllers) to have the ''capability'' of causing eye bursts and brain melts in the first place? Liquifying someone's brains is not likely to be just an unfortunate side effect of the technology, particularly since brain liquification is no easy task in the first place. The head pieces seem to operate the surrogates by receiving and translating a user's brainwaves, so that's probably not going to need a failsafe to prevent brain liquification. It's not entirely certain how the brain receives sensory input from the surrogate, of course; based on the devices, it's probably a combination of visual images, via the eye pieces, and possibly electrical impulses from the headset sent directly into the brain, but jeez...just how much electricity is needed to implant sensory input? Is it enough to potentially melt someone's brain and cause their eyeballs to burst without a failsafe in place?

*** TruthInTelevision, poorer people often end up fat because they only have access to lower quality food (i.e. [= McDonald's=]. People without surrogates tended to be poor.

** The artificial bodies ''do'' serve a purpose, at least in the comics. Because everybody's in an easily replaceable artificial body people are rarely ever in real danger. You don't have to worry about getting in a car crash or mugged or any of those other risks you take every time you leave your house. I'd also think that anybody who had enough money and was dissatisfied with their natural body (unattractive people, transgender people, etc.) would buy a surrogate. Those benefits change life on a whole different level than just getting a computer.

** Calm down. Some people are just skinny or fat regardless of their eating and exercise habits. Call it good genes. Alternatively, it's possible people who use surrogates use them so much they ''put off'' eating, so they'd get skinnier, sort of like how occasionally you'll hear about a Korean MMORPG player who starved to death. Meanwhile, non-surrogate users, like us, are always in their bodies, and given they're sort of exiles, don't have access to the same passtimes and entertainment, and may end up eating more because of it.

** Calm down. Some people are just skinny or fat regardless of their eating and exercise habits. Call it good genes. Alternatively, it's possible people who use surrogates use them so much they ''put off'' eating, so they'd get skinnier, sort of like how occasionally you'll hear about a Korean MMORPG player who starved to death. Meanwhile, non-surrogate users, like us, are always in their bodies, and given they're sort of exiles, don't have access to the same passtimes and entertainment, and may end up eating more because of it.

* If they all use surrogates except when they are eating or using the bathroom, why are all the real life people NOT morbidly obese? Bruce Willis is in at the ABSOLUTE WORST in average condition for a man of his age, and his wife is also incredibly thin. So these people who spend most of their lives sitting in a chair are perfectly healthy, yet that lady from the settlement who shot Willis' surrogate and had not used a surrogate for god knows how long is overweight. HOW DOES THAT WORK?!?!?!

* I just can't get past the central conceit. Yes, I realize that this is all just a giant metaphor for how we're all turning into couch potatoes and letting ourselves get sucked into our entertainments, and I'm pretty generous when it comes to suspending disbelief but, come on, the idea that 99% of the planet would voluntarily surrogate themselves 99% of the time, in a near future setting, no less, is just way too much for me to swallow.

** The filmmakers' answers to these questions (according to the DVDCommentary) is that [[ViewersAreMorons they were worried that the plot would be too complicated to follow]].

* How exactly do the people on the reservations get away with destroying an FBI surrogate who had a very legitimate reason for being there, harboring the fugitive he was after, and then playing the victim about it? Does the government have absolutely NO authority over them despite them still obviously being part of the US?

* Other ending question: The ending report clearly say the effect was mostly limited to the eastern seaboard. So, what about the rest of the world? Also, doesn't the big corporation win in the end? Everyone needs new surrogates, and since their plants are mostly automated and not run by surrogates, there's no reason they can't repair the damage.

* I'm not a fan of product placement in the first place, and it seemed especially asinine in this movie. Why, for instance, is there a jar of peanut butter randomly sitting on a shelf in an office? And why all the unnecessary zoom-ins on the car badges? It's like, "plot plot plot HEY LOOK A TOYOTA (or whatever the hell it was, I neither remember nor care)." Surely there are less intrusive (and let's face it, stupid) ways to work the product into the movie?

** I imagine that the problem could have been solved with a simple phone call beforehand, even a lie like "My sources in the company tell me that there's a good chance everyone logged in at X time will suffer have their Surrogate's wifi fried, log off and keep it someplace safe at X hour on Y day". Had [[spoiler: his son]] refused to go offline when the evil plan came into effect, he could have had an aide on standby blow the surrogate's CPU out. Uncomfortable for them, but they'd have been logged off and safe.