Rent Morgan (2016)

Why Wasn't This Set in Wales? Questions Need to be Asked. - Morgan review by Strovey

Luke Scott is Ridley Scott’s son and it is Ridley’s production company that produced Morgan in 2016, so far so the usual way the cinematic world runs, but with this connection and the way that the story unfolds I could not help but link father to son in some way. Without spoiling exactly what is happening in Morgan it could be taken as an origin story for the unforgettable Roy Batty and his comrades. That is just me saying that no one else. The two Scotts are the only connection because while the late Hauer’s Roy Batty is iconic and unforgettable, Anya Taylor-Joy’s Morgan is dull as dishwater and entirely forgettable.

Morgan is a film that thinks it is far cleverer than it is. It is trying to say, just like Luke’s dad’s Blade Runner is trying to say, ‘what is it to be human’ and ‘who are the real monsters’ but this is a common theme in modern AI/robot films, so if you are going to ask the question you now have to ask it in a special or interesting way. Ex-Machina did this perfectly.

In the end, Morgan is just an average piece of science fiction with some action/peril near the end and if you are not paying full attention it might surprise you with the outcome, I was, and guessed the ‘surprise’ and the ending in short order.

Kate Mara, Roony’s older sister, is the mysterious protagonist who at first is the baddy but then flips your feelings for her, more than once. That in itself is interesting and fun. But, and it is a big but, the way Mara plays Lee Weathers makes it blindingly obvious what she is about and who she is, this makes you sigh and raise your eyebrows, about a quarter of an hour into the run time. Was it bad acting, writing or directing? Surely Luke Scott could have told her to reign it in a bit?

Mara herself is surrounded by a group of good and well-renowned actors, all of whom I am convinced did this film to either do Ridley Scott a favour or to get into his good books. Brian Cox bookends the film to let you know what is going on and what happened, Jennifer Jason Leigh is sort of in it but if you had cut her part out it would have made no difference to the story. Toby Jones plays a fairly cardboard cut-out character in the tale, which is a shame, and Paul Giamatti plays the world’s worst psychologist, so poorly written, if they had said, ‘That doctor, he was not a doctor but a plumber faking it’ that would have been believable. Michelle Yeoh again seems to be in the film but really her screen time is in minutes. All these great actors pop in and pop off to save on salaries I presume.

Probably the most interesting character was nutritionist Skip, Boyd Holbrook, his inclusion made me think there was something more to his role. There was not, he was just a nutritionist. A waste.

On the whole, Morgan was watchable, I cannot help feeling poor old Anya Taylor-Joy got the role because of her looks, which is a shame, but I will never watch it again and I will not remember it in a month or so.

For a film that tries to be intellectual and challenging about an interesting and controversial subject, it tends to get more stupid and easier to figure out what is happening the longer it runs.

It was a wasted opportunity and sadly had the reek of ‘the old boys club’ about it in some places.

Shame, a story about how the human race developed and made the likes of Roy Batty many decades before the time of Blade Runner would have been an interesting tale.