Replicas Movie and Copies of Copies

Art by Jay Brett (carbon 1492 at CGSociety)

I have hit a proverbial wall, I think. I have come to a place where I feel like there isn't much further I can go with all of this. I don't feel like writing most of the time, trying to find artwork feels like a chore instead of a pleasure and I have some serious doubts that all of this is leading me anywhere. I feel like Bill Murray living Groundhog's Day over and over again, only I keep getting older in the process and he didn't.

I watched the movie, Replicas, tonight and I finally have enough thoughts running through my brain to inspire a blog post as a way to coagulate all of my thoughts it inspired. If you are bored, I welcome you to step inside the rabbit hole that is my mind and read on.

Early on in my journey I got signs and syncs about copies of copies. When I heard the Nine Inch Nails song "Copy of a Copy", my scalp tingled and I got chills. I knew there was something there but I didn't know what, so I put it in my pocket to save for later.

I once had a dream about a little girl and there were all of these copies of her.

Dream Journal Excerpt: October 23, 2015 There was a part about a little girl and there were all these copies of her and when she was identified as the original, they were all in awe and adoration of her. I don't remember much else about that scene. 

Replicas received horrible reviews by critics. I never read the reviews, only the headlines. Personally, I didn't think it was horrible at all.  I think it is easy to forget it was a sci-fi movie because it seemed so current in its setting. There were no flying cars, spaceships and weird futuristic clothing to remind you it was sci-fi you were watching. With sci-fi you always have to suspend disbelief and just accept this is a fantasy brain child of some creative and probably nerdy people imagining "what if".

What if you lost someone you loved and could bring them back exactly as they were before they left? Would you do it?

It raises some thought provoking questions...hence this blog post.

I wished Stephen Hamel and Keanu Reeves had consulted me and I could have given the movie a different twist idea that would have given it more heart and maybe helped audiences and critics connect with the story better.

I think the whole military idea with robots is pretty predictable and played out as a point of conflict. What if instead the conflict came in with science and spirit coming together to create drama? What if the spirits of the deceased family came into play and haunted William and his new family? Where would his loyalty be placed?  Would the replicated new family have souls now as well?

Art by Joshua Hutchinson Illustrations

I once had a dream that these two guys took the essence of a cat and placed it inside my dog. I was so upset because she had still been in her body when they placed the cat essence inside her body. It felt like they had basically killed my dog because she was never going to be the same again. How can we be sure that replicas of us wouldn't end up being different? We have free will and identical twins are basically biological copies. All the identical twins I have known are similar but also different. They don't make the exact same choices even though biologically they are identical.

I also had a different dream:

Dream Journal Excerpt: February 10, 2014 I died in my weird ass dream. I was driving up a mountain and parts of the road had fallen away and the car I was driving went off the cliff. I woke up and was inside a robot version of me and the people who made it were trying to convince my partner it would be just as good as the human me.

I was reminded of the movie, Making Mr. Right, where John Malkovitch plays both a scientist who created an android and the Android who looks just like him. Ann Magnuson's character was hired to make the android seem more human and likeable. He was designed for deep space where he would be alone for a very long period of time. But thanks to Ann's character, the android actually ends up with more warmth and humanness than his identical counterpart who made him. Ann falls in love with the android and the scientist ends up going to outer space and taking the position his android had been made for. The scientist really didn't like people very much and felt this was actually a better place for him.

Similarly, the robot version of William in Replicas states that being in that body feels more natural to him than the flesh body he had been in before. What is this saying about scientists? Lol At that moment, I thought to myself, "Of course you feel at home there because you are the Tin Man in the tale. You have no heart."

Science on its own has no heart, no empathy, no compassion and no soul. It is cold and without feelings. Science is Spock...all logic and no vulnerability.

The Tin Man has to birth a heart for himself on his journey. Science and Spirituality need each other to be balanced. They need to get in bed together and make babies.

Spirituality has helped me understand that ANYTHING is possible. But science has also helped me understand that it is more likely than not that we are living in a simulation. I understand that it is entirely possible that I am copy of a copy. It is also possible that I am an original too....but of what? We can take code for a program and copy/paste it. What if all of us are simply code? What if past lives are simply residual code that was copy/pasted and tweaked slightly to make them seem different?

Overall, I liked the Replicas movie because it did make me think about a lot of things. I will probably be pondering it all for days to come.

Now I am going to watch The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.