6th Day

[Writer]

I've seen that 6th Day starring Arnold Schwartzenegger got rather mixed reviews on rottentomatoes.com, but when I saw it for myself, I couldn't help thinking it was a fun little movie overall. Granted, the science is nothing more than semi-plausible (I don't think make genetic "blanks" of any creature is possible) and the film is not exactly high art, but I've seen a lot of good action films that don't meet either standard.

What I liked about 6th Day was how it took an otherwise serious subject and exploited it for every bit of humor the writers could get out of it. Schwartzenegger being what he is, of course, there were a lot of his groan-inducing one-liners and the obligatory references to his other films, but I think what I liked best was how everyone else got in on the act: the goons always cared more that Schwartzenegger had ruined their clothes and hairstyles than that he just run them over or blown off their limbs, for example, and the villain proved the obvious point that if making exact copies of yourself were possible, you really could take someone's recommendation literally when he tells you to go screw yourself.

Even the minor characters were funny; I especially liked the "virtual girlfriend" who acted nothing like any real woman. ("Ooh! I think it's so sexy when you go right to the big chair!") The automated call to 911 was also pretty funny. (You just know the bureaucracies and answering machines of the future are going to be every bit as unhelpful as they are today, don't you?) And if you like a more serious discussion of cloning, it also has that excellent subplot about Dr. Weir (Robert Duvall) and his wife.

I'm not saying there couldn't be a better film on the subject of human cloning, but I think this one was made about as well as it could be made. What do you think?

[Mr_Vindictive]

I saw it a few years back and was underwhelmed.  Just another failed attempt to blast Arnold back to stardom.  It was nice to see Michael Rooker again though.

[BeyondTheGrave]

I saw in the thearters but it was one time thing. I thought it was ok. Nothing bad or really good about it like most on Arnolds later movies like Eraser.


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You can’t give it, you can't buy it, and you just don't get it!-Aeon Flux

[Mr Hockstatter]

I think I saw that quite a while ago.  Sort of a forgotten gem if my vague memories are correct.  Have to rent it or something and check it out again.

[trekgeezer]

I liked this when I saw it at the theater. Although it did degenerate into a formula actioner, I liked the setting (and the goofus heavies who keep getting killed just to be reborn again).

A lot of the technology that appeared  in it are things that have been proposed.  The self driving truck, the fridge that reminds you to buy milk (although it would probably be connected to the web and order the milk itself), and the jet copters they were flying.
The pet cloning I know has been proposed.

The whole cloning doubles thing is ridiculous though, just because someone is a clone does not mean they would look identical to the original. Even identical twins are usually easy to tell apart by people who know them. Judge Dredd was more believable in this respect, Armand Assante and Stallone were clone brothers and look similar, but not identical. Clone cats for instance may not have the same coat patterns.

[Neville]

I liked it when it was released, and couldn't understand why the critics hated it so much. Granted, it isn't exactly original, more like the typical Arnie film with some sci-fi touches, but it stands among the few respectable films çArnold has made in the last years of his career.

A funny though: Has the casting of a real good supporting cast (Duvall, Rooker) anything to do with the fact Arnold's acting seems to have got worse from his early years? I mean, in "Totall Recall" he almost gave a performance, while here he can't even use a gun (i.e the shootout in the parking) without wide-opening his eyes and mouth like if he was drowning or something. Too many cigars, I guess.

[Writer]

Arnold Schwartzenegger does seem to be slowing down a bit, doesn't he? Of course, the almost the entire film is a self-parody for him. Then too, it's worth remembering that when he was in the Terminator film that practically launched his whole career, he wasn't called upon to do much more than look completely indifferent and shoot people; practically anybody could do that. (Of course, it didn't hurt that all of his muscles made him look even more unstoppable.) Here, he's supposed to be more vulnerable and human, so his weaknesses actually help him fit into the part.

I think the reason Schwartzenegger was shown being a little less comfortable with a gun in 6th Day was that it was hinting there was a little more gun control in the future. (Did you notice how his friend Hank remarks "Hey, that's a real gun!" in one scene?) I'm not sure about Schwartzenegger's views on gun control and gun rights, but I'm thinking he may also have been trying to soften his image as part of the "family man" role he was playing in the first part of the film, so he may deliberately have been acting as if he were out of practice. Furthermore, in a scene near the end, one of the Schwartzeneggers remarks to the other that his shooting sucks; maybe the writers are suggesting that cloning process wasn't able to duplicate every skill of the original man perfectly after all. I might be reading too much into this, but those are three possible reasons I see for his amateurish shooting.

Concerning the secondary technologies shown in the film, many of them have indeed been in development, although how successful any of them are likely to be remains as uncertain as ever. The internet-connected fridge will probably come into existence whenever people get around to wiring all of their household appliances. The remote-controlled helicopter-jet hybrids may or may not become a reality: the military could probably make such things, but it does have to justify the costs of developing this kind of thing to the government. Thumb print scanners have been in development even before Back To The Future II suggested they would be used in the future, but it's my understanding the technology is only just getting off the ground now. So yes, these parts of the film were plausible, given that it's supposedly set in the near future.

What makes me say this is merely a good film rather than a great film is that the cloning technology at the center of it all is more of the pop-sci-fi kind than of the more plausible kind we're likely to get from perfecting the mammalian cloning we have right now. That is, the villain in this movie is turning out near-perfect copies of people instead of the delayed twins that might be possible in a more realistic near-future scenario. That the two copies of Adam (Schwartzenegger, of course) should have the same personality and look exactly alike does actually make sense within the premises of the film. Though 6th Day also neglects to explain the science behind it, the villain also apparently has some means of reproducing the non-genetic markings of the original on a clone, down to the patches of color on animals and the fingerprints on humans (which are always unique to the individual, even for identical twins.)

What I'm saying is that the film's weakest scientific point is the premise itself. Since it made a fun story, the implausibility of the cloning technology is forgivable and I don't there was any significant change the writers could have made that would have made the film much better. Nevertheless, I'm convinced that another film based around a more plausible kind of cloning (which gives you a little twin brother with his own unique personality instead of an exact copy of yourself) could be a better movie than this one if it were done right.

[trekgeezer]

As far as the personality, they had a gizmo that could make a snapshot of your mind and then it could be 'written' into the brain of the clone. Sorta like Ghosting a hard drive.  This apparently could be done immediately after death as well as from a live subject since the bad guys could remember their deaths.

They didn't really explain the whole thing with the 'blanks' they kept in the tanks. They were some how overwriting them with the original's DNA to make the clones.

I think this was an underrated movie. It's not spectacular by any means, but it was an entertaining couple of hours.