The premise of The Island ...
Question: The premise of The Island reminds me of a very bad and cheesy '70s movie that was used in an episode of MST3K. Am I right, and is it a remake of this horrible film?
Answer: The Island (2005) is not a remake of Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979), but it "borrows" shamelessly from this low-budget sci-fi film's premise: that a colony of healthy, pampered people living in a tightly supervised community because the rest of the world has supposedly undergone some calamity are actually clones bred to serve as spare parts for rich people. And yes, Clonus was lambasted on TV's Mystery Science Theater 3000. While I wouldn't go so far as to say Clonus is a good movie, I would argue that it deserves credit for dealing with issues that are even timelier now than they were 25 years ago, even if it owes its own debt of inspiration to Logan's Run (1976) and Coma (1978). The Island, which also lifts liberally from The 6th Day (2000) and Blade Runner (1982), and smothers the still viable questions about bioethics and the relative value of people's lives with ever-escalating, skull-rattling action sequences, looks about a million times better than Clonus, but doesn't add a single original idea.
