Surrogates (2009)

Surrogates is a 2009 science fiction film, based on the 2005–2006 comic book series of the same name. Directed by Jonathan Mostow, it stars Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell. The film revolves around the mysterious murder of a college student linked to the man who helped create a high-tech surrogate phenomenon that allows people to purchase remote controlled humanoid robots through which they interact with society. These fit, good-looking, remotely controlled machines ultimately assume their life roles, enabling people to experience life vicariously from the comfort and safety of their own homes. Surrogates was released on September 25, 2009. Rosamund Pike, James Cromwell, Jack Noseworthy, Ving Rhames, and Boris Kodjoe co-star.

In the future, use of remotely-controlled androids called "surrogates" allows everyone to live in idealized forms in the safety of their own homes. A surrogate's operator is protected from harm and does not feel any pain when their surrogate is damaged. FBI agent Tom Greer has a strained relationship with his wife due to the death of their son several years before. He never sees her outside of her surrogate and she criticizes his desire to interact via their real bodies. Greer and his partner, Agent Jennifer Peters, investigate the death of two people who were killed when their surrogates were destroyed. One of the victims is Jarod Canter, the son of Dr. Lionel Canter, the inventor of surrogates. Greer and Peters determine that a human, Miles Strickland, used a new type of weapon that overloaded the surrogate's systems and disabled the fail-safe mechanisms that shield an operator from harm; killing the operators. After locating Strickland, Greer attempts to bring him into custody. Greer is injured during the chase when Strickland uses the weapon again, and inadvertently crash-lands into an anti-surrogate zone, the Dread Reservation (one of many throughout the United States). Greer's surrogate is eventually destroyed by a mob of humans, forcing him to interact in the world without one. The Dread leader, the Prophet takes the weapon (after apparently killing Strickland). Agent Greer learns that the weapon was produced, under a government contract, by the same company that produces the surrogates. It was designed to load a virus which would overload the surrogate's systems thus disabling it. The unexpected side effect was that the weapon disabled the fail-safe protocols that keep the surrogate's operator safe. After the first test, the project was scrapped and all prototypes were destroyed except for one. Agent Peters is murdered and her surrogate is hijacked by an unknown party, who informs Greer that Andrew Stone, their boss at the FBI, supplied Strickland with the weapon and ordered the assassination of Dr. Canter, who has been increasingly critical of surrogate use. His son, using one of Canter's many surrogates, was killed instead. The Prophet orders that the weapon be delivered to Peters before being shot during a military raid on the Dread reservation which reveals that he is also a surrogate. Greer heads to the home of Dr. Canter, who has been controlling both the Prophet and Peters. Using Agent Peters' surrogate in FBI Headquarters, Dr. Canter uses the weapon to kill Stone and proceeds to upload the virus to all surrogates, which will destroy the surrogates and kill their operators. Believing that his plan is unstoppable, Canter disconnects from controlling Peters's surrogate and swallows a cyanide pill. Agent Greer takes control of the surrogate and, with the assistance of the network's system administrator, insulates the virus so the operators will survive. Agent Greer faces a choice to either destroy all the surrogates or cancel the virus upload. Greer eventually chooses to let the virus permanently shut down every surrogate worldwide. People then begin to emerge without their surrogates, confused and afraid of what just happened. Greer goes back home and shares an emotional embrace with his wife in her real form. The film ends with an aerial view of all of the collapsed surrogates along with overlapping news reports of the downed surrogates and how people are now "on their own" again.