Given a second take at Surrogates, I still find the message to be "technology bad, relationships good." But I think I learned a few other things by watching it again.

Bruce Willis still makes a rocking good time of a movie. While I initially wanted to write him off after seeing the bad wig that they had his character, FBI Agent Tom Greer, wear, I really think he provides a rough, real-life dimension to a movie that might have otherwise gotten carried away in its techno-savvy take on life. He's a rock in the midst of the windshield, shattering the expectations of the society in which he lives, and proving that he's not over-the-hill. Given the sad end we've seen to some of his contemporaries (Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenneger, anyone?) it's pretty exciting.

Surrogates travels ground that others have walked before, like I, Robot, Minority Report, Blade Runner, etc., without completely selling out for a copy of someone else's work. We all have a desire to be "safe" and to keep lives that we've grown accustomed to, or which are better than what we have. Robert Vendetti's work is a social commentary on our technological-reliance, but it's also an entertaining look at the way that we "drug" ourselves rather than dealing with the pain...

Which lends itself to my third point: we're better at running from our pain and frustration than handling it straight up. We're presented with so many options, like drugs, sex, work, money, and more, as ways we can dull the pain. In faith, specifically Christianity, we find that our pain isn't ignorable but we have a Creator who longs to take it away and restore us to the perfection in which we were made. Surrogates shows us as beings with the power to learn, love, and create, who need to know ourselves and accept ourselves before we can be positive members of society.

Our "life, only better" is fulfilled when we achieve who we are supposed to be, not who someone else expects us to be or advertises that we should be. The society of 2017 has bought into the hype, and the hype machine has to be broken before community can be achieved again, and individuals find true meaning. Isn't that true of our society today?

Surrogates proves to itself and to the audience that love can conquer everything we encounter, whether it's our self-imposedprisons or external pain. That's a better ending to me than the one provided in the graphic novel because it's the true ending. We know how this goes; in the end, the good guys win.