I'm going to see this on Sunday, but articles are already saying it's flopping at the box office. Most articles are blaming Willis' fleeting box office appeal, but I have to wonder if this does fail to catch on with audiences the same way "Whiteout" didn't, will this affect the future of Hollywood's interest in independent comics?

No, cause with these movies, you don't even really know it's even a comic book movie. Hollywood's just looking for stories to mine, they don't care where they come from.

 Anyway, this movie looked like shit from the first trailer. 

Whether or not Hollywood cares that the source material is a comic matters... Why?

Are the going to a batman/superman public enemies podcast?

Was very excited by the trailers, didn't love it, but thought it was better than the reviews said it was.  

Sadly not interested in it. Probably because I don't like a book at all. It's a great idea but as a whole I had a lot of problems with it on the storytelling and the very bad artwork. (In my opinion)

But when it comes out on DVD I'll certainly give it a rental.

Went tonight to see it, was sold out, have to go tomorrow, so that seems like a good sign. Plus this movie has grizzled Bruce Willis. Grizzled Bruce Willis is an american institution of awesome. 

I saw it.  It was pretty underwhelming.  That said, I don't remember if these were in the comic, but someone involved along the way was a futurama fan.  A couple uses of "meatbag" and one use of "jacking on". 

@AMuldowney: Let me 'axe' you a question. Does Bruce Willis have a love of velour?

Saw it, bored by it. My full review is here.

http://www.examiner.com/x-1550-Seattle-Movie-Examiner~y2009m9d25-Reviews--Fame--Surrogates

Reviews shmeviews. Here's a mathematical proof: Bruce Willis + Explosions = Me - ($10)

Why it matters is if we'll see any cool movies based on other independent comics. I don't need hollywood to be interested in books I like for justification, but I would love to see a movie based on "Black Hole" or "Hack/Slash" but the recent box office failures of Surrogates and Whiteout might make those properties look less appealing to Hollywood executives, and that kind of sucks.  

I wouldn't say I'm excited for it. More than likely I'll satisfy without not getting burned by it like G.I. Joe.

@Nate: I'mma be honest, if Black Hole or Hack/Slash became a movie, I'd be afraid because I would easily shell out $20.00 to see them both. =\

typo: take out "without" and substitute "for"

@Nate

If the premise is good, Hollywood will take it even if every indie comic movie is a bust. These guys are struggling hard for material. 

Am I still the only one who liked G.I. Joe?

what was that song you used?

Seriously, Did Sonia use this podcast to moan about tourists?

 she is english

@peterporker: Music info added.

Great review/recap episode as always guys. Anytime Sonia is involved it's gonna be a good time. Wait that came out wrong...

Anyways, Roger Ebert has his review out of it (finally and might I add this seems to be a runner with me putting his reviews on here) and he says practically all the problems he had with it like you did. He was very indifferent about it but there is a line in the review that made me think quite abit. Noting:

"It's well known that someone you meet online may not be who they pretend to be. Surrogates sound like an ideal solution for transsexuals. Don't go through the surgery, just switch your avatar's gender. But would that satisfy your hormonal feelings?"-Ebert

The more I think about that line, not knowning if he's joking or not, I do have to ponder. Would something like this be appropriate for that type of lifestyle? I would think so.

The movie touched on a lot of interesting concepts even though it did not investigate them.  I can see the film provoking a lot of thought in a person not familiar with the story material.  Did anyone else get the feeling they picked bad actors for many of the parts to portray surrogate fakeness?  Maybe that is just a rationalization.  Overall I think it deserves a positive review.  I just wonder what an award winning director could have done!  The final scene of two humans hugging, a natural embrace, was a great choice.

I liked the movie... mostly. I anticipated hollywood changes though the only one I knew was that Greer was getting a female partner. However there were a lot of changes made that make the film far more black and white than the book. Notably the inclusion of the death of the operators to the disabled surrogates. In the book Canter's intentions are NEVER to kill most of the world, just to pry them away from their constant surrogate use. This was the biggest one I think, because now Canter is clearly portrayed as being some extremist with malicious intentions. The Prophet was HUMAN in the book. His wife SHOULD have killed herself. I dont know. I liked it, but the ending let me down.

*Yawn*

I found it really, really boring and I probably liked The Spirit more.

Gah! Conor! That mic is killing my ears...

Just thought I'd share.

Thank you for sharing.

I thought it sounded like Conor and Sonia were communicating with us from the future.  I've heard worse.

It was probably more my headphones fault than anything.

@BrianBaer - No, Conor admits that the problem was on their end this time.  It's in the show notes.

After not being able to find the time to see the movie, I decided to listen to the podcast about it.  Sounds like rental material.

That much said, I have one gripe; Die Hard 2 was substantially worse than Die Hard 4.  But they both had awful, awful titles.

@MisterJ: I would think that it's hard for a movie to be worse than one that was never made.

@conor-Don't know what you are talking about, there are four Die Hard movies.

Die Hard-the original; A classic piece of movie cinema

Die Hard 2 (aka)Die Harder-About rescuing a Pinochet type dictator.  Occurs at Dulles w/Dennis Franz; 

Die Hard 3 (aka)Die Hard w/ A Vengeance-About stealing from some gigantic gold depository w/Samuel L. Jackson;

Die Hard 4 (aka)Live Free or Die Hard-About stealing $ electronically while there is big Y2K-esque computer meltdown.

So that is 4 Die Hards.  Each had Willis playing John McLane. Are you just forcibly exercising one from your memory??

I've never heard of the fourth one. I don't believe that one was ever made.

@conor: Hold the phone.

You won't acknowledge the 4th film, which I grant was pretty bad. But you'll willingly buy a prequel comic? I'm not talking about after the fact you read it. But you'll buy something just for the fact of someone (like Willis) getting more money on whoring out his character makes no sense. Especially if you'll forget the 4th film was made.

@conor-Fair enough.