Directed by Andrew Will, The Prototype is action/sci-fi thriller movie that’s in pre-production, which means of course that we have some ways to go yet before it is dazzling us on the big screen.
But, and yes I appreciate this is drawing an exceptionally long bow based on just the proof-of-concept trailer below and a few pictures, but it is has me excited about what could result from these imaginative ideas.
While the trailer does little more than allude to what takes place, it seems to strongly suggest to me that the experimental drone soldier we see on the run and sitting mysteriously by the side of a beautiful and clearly much-loved woman in hospital that the robot and it’s human creator are, in fact, one and the same.
By actions dark and duplicitous the man’s superiors seem to have found a way to make their lead scientist the subject of his own experiment by turning him into the very robot he is developing.
This triggers what by all accounts is an existential crisis on-the-run, as he has to evade and outwit his pursuers while working his way through what it means to be human, especially when he longer looks like one (apart from the humanoid bipedal shape).
It reminds me of Wikus van de Werwe (Sharlto Copley) in Neil Blomkamp’s District 9, who begins mutating into one of the segregated aliens he and many others regard with distrust, if not outright hostility, after he is sprayed with a mysterious fluid.
As he outraces those who see him simply as an scientific oddity to be dissected, he is repeatedly forces to reassess who he is, and what he is becoming and how affects his sense of what it means to be human.
It promises, in the words of Glen Basner from FilmNation who is financially the sub-$40 million film (mere pocket money for most high concept sci-fi thrillers these days), “a thrilling and cool film” (quoted on deadline.com).
Yeah it know it’s just a short trailer but I have a feeling he could be right.
* Stay tuned for further updates as they come to hand.