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- I think it’s clear that while this movie opens up a very dense can of worms about bioethics, bioengineering, and other morality clusterfucks, on some level you sort of have to accept (for the sake of the plot) the notion that technology will find a way whether you like it or not and it’s in how you deal with that inevitability that will make all the difference in the world. What kind of staggered me about this movie was that at the end of it I wasn’t left with questions about the morality of human genetic engineering but with issues surrounding mental illness, performative gender roles, and rape culture. Surprise!
- Not that they needed any help, but this movie makes the families on Parenthood look like a bunch of self-absorbed idiots with very small problems.
- I liked Sarah Polley’s character, Elsa, from the start for having very transparent ambitions and having the scientific skills and drive to back up her professional pursuits but it became clear that in order to justify this ambition, she must also be the John Hammond to Adrien Brody’s Ian Malcolm. Together Elsa and Clive work to breed a new creature with a little bit of human DNA added to the mix, but it’s clear that Elsa is the driving force behind this and that although Clive is happy to participate in seeing if they can do it, he keeps panicking every time they achieve something that puts them one step closer to actually creating this new… thing. You know, the ol’ “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should” crisis of conscience. Elsa gets to be the Evil Scientist of the pair and Clive’s brother makes it clear that Clive apparently has no free will of his own and thus will always follow Elsa’s orders. Is there a scientific slant for the yuppie Nuremberg defense?
Because the results of Elsa’s unbridled ambition are supposed to scare us (“We’ve made living biological attractions so astounding that they’ll capture the imagination of the entire planet!”), it’s apparently totally acceptable to imply that she’s suffering from a mental illness. No one but a crazy person would splice human DNA with that of a multitude of other animals! In the only back story given to either of the main characters, we’re only given hints about Elsa’s childhood and her relationship with her now deceased mother. Initially it feels framed as though Elsa’s relentless pursuit of the scientific is because she’s interested in curing a genetic disease that her mother may have succumbed to — an admirable ambition! — but slowly it becomes more clear that she instead had an unnamed mental illness and that Clive thinks Elsa might definitely have inherited it and that this is what causes Elsa to boldly wade into morally murky territory. She’s ambitious because she’s evil and crazy! Awesome!
- Clive and Elsa are, for all intents and purposes, the parents of Dren, the human hybrid creature they’ve birthed. Naturally, I was skeeved out during the scene where Clive teaches Dren to dance because it looked as though Clive thought he was in love with Dren, so imagine my relief when I realised that the look was actually the realisation that Elsa had used her own DNA to build Dren and that he was seeing Elsa’s features in her. Sure. Fine.
THEN HE HAS SEX WITH DREN. ELSA WALKS IN AND SEES IT HAPPENING.
The scene where Clive tries to explain himself was priceless. Elsa is like “I’m an Evil Scientist™ and even I know that was pretty fucking wrong” while Clive keeps sputtering “But! But! But!” as if anything he can say will make it okay. Up until this point Clive kept questioning Elsa’s intentions with the experiment, asking her “Was it ever about science?” Pro-tip, Clive: if observing your experiment changes the nature of the experiment, I’m pretty sure that fucking it nullifies any scientific data you could possibly get out of it from that point onward.
- Anyone else get the feeling that Dren developed the physical characteristics of other animals solely as they were needed by the plot? I did. Once the wings came out, I kept picturing Ralph Fiennes eating the William Blake print in Red Dragon and I just about lost it.
- Speaking of which, I like how the combination of animal DNA results in an amorphous blob creature until you add human DNA when suddenly it takes on a zillion other characteristics that make it resemble various non-blobulous animals.
- I loved how when both Ginger and then Dren changed sex, all the scientists were shocked, surprised, and had no idea how it happened. No explanation was ever given, either. Given the fact that Dren had amphibious lungs, I think anyone who has seen Jurassic Park would probably agree that her frog DNA is responsible for this. Nature finds a way!
- Dren is portrayed as highly intelligent and capable of using Scrabble tiles to spell out how she is feeling, even though she is unable to communicate verbally. Colour me thrilled when the first words that Dren speaks are “INSIDE YOU” before the now-male Dren decides to rape Elsa.
- In what I assume is supposed to be a thought-provoking ending, Elsa ends up pregnant. I suspect we’re supposed to be kept guessing as to whether or not the baby is Clive’s (due to their “this is a plot device” unprotected sex earlier in the movie) or Dren’s. Elsa’s just finished signing a monetarily huge contract with the Big Pharma company she and Clive worked for because presumably she is going to allow Experiments in the Name of Science™ on her child, but I can’t imagine they’d be that interested in the baby if Clive was the father. Silly.
- Small details I enjoyed: that the B.E.T.I. machine in the lab had a Bettie Page sticker on it, and that the prototypes of Fred and Ginger were all kept in jars and bottles and labelled with the names of other famous couples like Sid and Nancy. Nice.
- I still love you, Adrien Brody.
Splice
“What To Expect When You’re Expecting” probably does not have a chapter on this.
IMDB Plot Synopsis: Elsa and Clive, two young rebellious scientists, defy legal and ethical boundaries and forge ahead with a dangerous experiment: splicing together human and animal DNA to create a new organism.
at 7:32 pm
God, thank you for this. I’ve been trying, TRYING to find a review online that skewered all these points, but all I’ve been getting is gushing adoration of the movie’s “intentions” and questioning of moral plot lines.
I saw it yesterday with really high hopes, and I’m pretty much exactly the target audience for this flick.
The lack of logical choices made by supposedly incredibly bright people in this movie was just too much for me, and the sex all felt forced. You are exactly right. The Elsa/Clive unprotected sex near the beginning was just a freaking plot device.
Bluh! But thanks! I’ll be reading more of your stuff now, thanks…
at 7:51 pm
I just discovered this review which is infinitely more capslocky with rage but also manages to convey these points much more hilariously than I ever could.
at 1:36 am
Ummm..how come none of the other reviews I’ve read have mentioned these things?
My mind is boggled by the connotation that Elsa’s ambition is a result of mental illness.
And for the life of me I thought all along that is was Sarah Paulson in this movie not Sarah Polley.
at 8:17 am
I have no idea why no other reviews are mentioning this! It’s completely baffling to me. There are so many things in this movie that are far more disturbing than the moral implications of the sci-fi version of human/animal hybrids.
at 1:49 am
What. The. Everloving. FUCK?!?!
Between reading this and your Girl With the Dragon Tattoo review, I’m getting so fucking sick of and disgusted with all the goddamn fucking rape in these movies. I just don’t get it. Why the HELL would anyone pay to see this???
at 7:04 am
At least with this one, no one seems to be telling anyone about the rape issues. The reviews seems to be being purposely vague so as not to spoil the “deep moral issues” the movie brings up. Ugh.
And, well, I’ll see mostly anything no matter how uninformed I am about it.