The Island
Short description
The Island is set in a controlled, isolated facility where residents live under constant surveillance and hope to be chosen for a journey to a place said to be the last uncontaminated spot on Earth. Among them is Lincoln Six Echo, who shares this hope with everyone around him until he begins to question the restrictions governing daily life. What he uncovers is that their existence rests on a lie, and he escapes together with Jordan Two Delta to find the world outside. The film is a science fiction action thriller directed by Michael Bay.
It was released in July 2005 and runs 136 minutes. The screenplay was written by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Caspian Tredwell-Owen, with Bay producing alongside Walter F. Parkes and Ian Bryce. Ewan McGregor plays Lincoln Six Echo and Tom Lincoln, Scarlett Johansson plays Jordan Two Delta and Sarah Jordan, and Djimon Hounsou, Sean Bean, Steve Buscemi and Michael Clarke Duncan appear in supporting roles. It was Bay's sixth film as director, following Bad Boys II and preceding Transformers.
Made for a budget of 126 million dollars, The Island grossed about 163 million dollars worldwide, falling short of its cost. Audience response has been moderate: it rates 6.8 out of 10 on IMDb from roughly 341,000 votes and 6.7 out of 10 on TMDB from about 6,000 votes. A film critics' rating of 5.5 out of 10 from 200 reviews places it close to, though slightly below, the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Scarlett Johansson wanted her breasts to be visible in the sex scene, but Michael Bay refused.
- The black yacht shown in the trailer is called 'Wallypower 118' and costs $25 million.
- Before the first chase scene, you can see a prototype of the 'Lexus' car, which was already used during the filming of 'Minority Report' (2002).
- A 45-minute segment of the film was shown to the press at the Cannes Film Festival.
- Initially, Scarlett Johansson's character was named Esther, not Jordan, and in an early draft of the screenplay by Caspian Treadwell-Owen, she was pregnant.
- The painting hanging in Merrick's office to the right of his desk is a Cubist painting by Pablo Picasso, 'Femme Assise (Jacqueline)' (1962), a portrait of his wife Jacqueline Roque.
- The poster, as well as the Calvin Klein commercial featuring Scarlett Johansson, are genuine.
- This is the first Michael Bay film produced without Jerry Bruckheimer's involvement.
- Six-Echo, before meeting his sponsor, finds a photograph of Tom Lincoln on a motorcycle in his house. This picture belongs to Ewan McGregor and was taken during the making of the mini-series "Long Way Around" (2004).
- Filming took 14 hours a day, after which the actors spent additional hours in the gym.
- The sports car glimpsed in the trailer is a concept model of the 'Cadillac Cien'.
- The film uses touch-screen tables as a computer control interface. In 2007, Microsoft announced the release of similar tables.
- The basis of the film's plot and many of its details coincide with the plot of 'Parts: The Horror Clone' (1979), which became the subject of legal proceedings.
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