Jul 7

Jul 7 Code 8 (2019)

4 Claws, Action, Drama, Hard-Core Sci-Fi, Sci-Fi

Do you know why tomatoes from the grocery store don’t taste as good as the ones you pick from your home garden?
Would you have guessed that the answer to that was “racism”?
Probably not, but here’s what happened: white farmers got scared of having seasonal Mexican workers come to their farms to pick tomatoes, so they lobbied and got immigration laws changed. Fewer Mexican immigrants meant fewer farm-hands to pick the crop at harvest, which meant that tomatoes were rotting on the vine.
The solution? Machinery!
But machines aren’t as soft as human hands, so the tomatoes would get crushed as the machines were ‘picking’ them from the stems.
Tomatoes with firm skins didn’t crush as easily, so farmers grew those strains to get more out of a harvest. Those tomatoes were picked when they were green and unripe, then ripened in a warehouse. Yum.
And now your store-bought lycopene comes in a nice tough shell.

For the record, “Code 8” (2019) had absolutely nothing to do with tomatoes. There’s not a single tomato anywhere on screen at any point.
But it did rely on a similar history:
In the world of “Code 8,” ‘powered’ people existed: humans with superhuman abilities – fire, ice, telekinesis, mind-reading, juggernauts, etc.
Like any good science-fiction, the movie didn’t delve into where or how these people got their powers, just that they had them, and whatever small fraction of humanity this was had been around for generations.
The opening scene was a news-reel smash-cut of stories about powered people in the fictional American locale of Lincoln City, with voiceovers of bosses and employers discussing fears of powered people, or how they wanted a machine to do heavy lifting instead of a powered person, because the machine didn’t have feelings.

Now, in an equivalent 21st century, powered people were a subordinate class. Powered people, despite being born with their abilities and no control for which ones they got, were treated like trash. Powers had to be registered, and only those with exorbitantly expensive licenses could use them.
Imagine if you had to have a license to run around your neighborhood, or to sing.
I can comprehend the fear a regular person might have if their neighbor could throw fireballs at will, or smash through a brick wall, but that completely strips the humanity from the humans who hit a different genetic lottery.
In many ways, it shared common ground with “X-Men” (2000) and the rights that the mutants were fighting for.

The story followed Connor Reed (Robbie Amell), an electric-powered person with the ability to absorb or project extreme amounts of voltage. His mom was sick and dying, and Connor’s job applications were repeatedly turned down as companies refused to hire him when checked ‘yes’ on the ‘are you powered?’ question.
Understandably driven to the edge and struggling to make ends meet, Connor worked for a housing contractor who specifically hired powered people, picking them up in front of an abandoned gas station the way contractors in our world pick up immigrants for cheap labor.

Meanwhile, a militarized, over-aggressive police force watched the city, with face-scanning algorithms tracking anyone and everyone from the instant they stepped out of their homes. Those algorithms knew who was powered and whether or not they had a license to use said powers.
Simply put: being powered was practically illegal.
I know in my review of “Artemis Fowl (2020)” I commented on how stupid it was that technologically superior societies were just hidden. After all, couldn’t they just rise up?
You could almost ask the same question here, except for the fact that the powered people in this world weren’t bullet proof. There wasn’t a Clark Kent who could run in front of a bullet and stop it with his eye. With the exception of the juggernaut-class person we saw, the powered people were just as vulnerable to mortal demise as we were, with many of them simply getting gunned down by the overzealous police.
Draw your own connections to the real-life issues of police brutality we’re currently reconciling with.

Anyway: Connor got himself roped into a heist with a big payout to make ends meet. It worked once, so he did it again. And again. He got deeper and deeper in with the kinds of people he never wanted to have to deal with, because that was his only option to help cover his mother’s staggering medical bills.
It's nice to know that in an alternate universe where people with superpowers exist, our healthcare system is still broken.

This movie had a great underlying question, which is outstandingly relevant: what do you do for a class of people who have spent their lives dealing with systematic inequality, yet they’re expected to behave as if everything was equal?
Now, before you try to tell me this movie was motivated by the current BLM protests: it wasn’t. The movie released back in December, and brothers Robbie and Steve Amell released the short this movie was based on back in 2016.

This movie was made by Netflix, and had the same polished feel that “I Am Mother” (2019) did. The CGI was clean and smooth, the special effects for the powers weren’t campy, and the robots that patrolled the streets looked like robots, instead of dudes in green-suits.

I don’t remember a single piece of music from this, but I also don’t remember any unnecessary silence either, which is an indication of good sound mixing.

There also wasn’t a pointless car chase, shoe-horned love sub-plot, screaming children, or a dog-shit cookie.

Whomever Netflix hired to oversee their hard-core sci-fi needs a raise, their library is killing it.

This movie had what I call a “cowboy ending,” a term I coined thanks to “3:10 to Yuma” (2007) – it’s a conclusion where things got resolved, but no one quite got what they wanted and the world around them didn’t get better. Not a tragic ending, and certainly not the Hollywood-standard ‘everything works out for everyone and the day is saved,’ but the various plot threads were appropriately tied; the antagonists got what they deserved, but the protagonists were left in the lurch, not necessarily in a better or worse place than when the movie started, but a different place.

As it’s a Netflix exclusive, I absolutely recommend you take the chance to watch this from your couch, but I would have been happy to see this on the silver screen.