If your family dies and you clone them, are they still your family?
This is the question posed by Keanu Reeves’ new sci-fi film Replicas, which had the world premiere of its first trailer at New York Comic Con today. Reeves was in the house to talk about the film, which he produced and stars in, along with executive producer Clark Peterson and director Jeffrey Nachmanoff.
Replicas is the story of a neuroscientist (played by Reeves) who is on the verge of cracking the technology to transfer human consciousness into a computer. But when his family is killed in a terrible accident, he realizes that he must use this science to bring them back to life. To that end, he teams with a partner (Silicon Valley’s Thomas Middleditch) but of course, as Reeves says, hijinks ensue.
Reeves developed the film with his producing partner Stephen Hamel and writer Chad St. John (London Has Fallen) for over a year. “Replicas started in the brain of my producing partner, Stephen Hamel, and he had this idea,” said the actor. “What happens if this married man, this scientist, if his family died? And I said, ‘I dunno! Let’s find out!’”
The Matrix and John Wick star was in a jolly good mood during the NYCC panel, namedropping several of his hit films and even responding to a Johnny Mnemonic shout-out from an audience member with a “Hey Johnny! What’s in your head, Johnny?!” reply. The crowd ate it all up.
Reeves talked about why he’s done so much sci-fi over the years. “I love science fiction,” he said. “I love the world creation of it. I love that it can be a Trojan horse. You can do cautionary tales. And all other genres can fit into science fiction. … And you can hold up a mirror to our lives. … And sometimes you get spaceships and you get robots and you get aliens and all sorts of cool stuff!” Only movie star charisma can make a line like that sound cool, and Reeves still has it
Transformers' Lorenzo di Bonaventura is also a producer on Replicas. Reeves pointed out that the mega-producer also developed The Matrix with the Wachowskis when he worked at Warner Bros. and he also worked on Constantine with the actor back in the day. “So he knows genre,” he said. “He’s creative. And if you need a stick, if you need someone to bring the hammer down, you have the Lorenzo hammer. Which is cool.”
The cloning Reeves’ character does is accomplished undercover, however, so much so that not even Reeves’ wife (played by Alice Eve) and kids know their own true nature… at first. “Oh yeah, because I don’t tell them. Ooops!” laughs Reeves. “There really are some moral questions, some ethical questions, in terms of recreating life and bringing people back. What would you do? Being confronted with [that] technology. We’re always dealing with so much new technology these days that’s changing our lives and the way we deal with it.”
Nachmanoff poses the question that just because we can do something, should we do it? “We basically take a look ahead and say, pretty soon we’re going to be able to do things that [we have to question whether we should do],” says the director. “Here’s a scientist who’s getting close to preserving the human consciousness in a synthetic way. … So we’re beginning to cheat death. But a lot of people would say, do we really want to do that?”
The assembled crowd seemed less concerned with such metaphysical questions than they did with taking selfies in front of the giant screen that had Keanu plastered on it. But hey, it’s Comic Con. And you can be sure the audience would gladly clone Reeves if they could.
Replicas does not have a release date yet.
Talk to Senior Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire