WHY SURROGATES WAS SUCH A BOX OFFICE HIT IN 2009
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“Surrogates” was a big hit at the box office in 2009, earning just under 15 million in its opening weekend, and ultimately raking in over 38.5 million over the entirety of its initial run.
The film is a science fiction action movie which is set, as most of the popular films of the genre are, in a futuristic society. People in this future rarely leave their homes, as technological advances make it possible to perform all necessary tasks from the comfort of your own living room.
When it does become necessary to actually interact with someone else in the world, meetings are done via “surrogate robots” that project a perfect image of the person who controls them. In this way, everybody is a supermodel. Everybody is a movie star. And for movie audiences, everybody can relate to this fantasy, which is why it is understandable that the movie had such interest.
Bruce Willis, whose presence in a movie like this always prepares you perfectly for the action that is to come, plays Tom Greer, a police officer who must venture out into the world for the first time in years when a murder — the first murder in years — takes place. As the imperfect Willis ventures out into the world of the beautiful surrogates, he acts as the audience’s surrogate, representing all of our own inherent insecurities, as he tries to unearth the truth behind what is actually going on.
The movie also features familiar stars like James Cromwell (“Babe”) and Ving Rhames, who appeared with Willis in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” as well as Australian actress, Radha Mitchell, a relative newcomer to American audiences.
In 2009, with advances in real-life technology moving along at such a rapid pace, many films were able to capitalize on this new-found fascination of audiences with what the world of tomorrow might encompass. “Surrogates,” along with similar films like “Push” and “Gamer,” found box office magic with their take on the answer to that question.