Required Film Assignment: Clones, Corporations, and Control: What The Island Teaches About Modern Society
Required Viewing & Analytical Essay
Assigned to: Gospel Glamour · Mitch Leyor · Bennett + Monroe · Prism Church LA
Film: The Island (2005), directed by Michael Bay
Essay length: 1,500 words
Assignment Overview
This is a required viewing assignment. Every participant and team listed above must watch Michael Bay's 2005 science-fiction film The Island in full before completing the written work below. Please watch it closely and take notes as you go — not as passive entertainment, but as a cultural text worth interrogating.
The Island follows Lincoln Six-Echo and Jordan Two-Delta, two residents of a sealed, controlled facility who believe they are survivors of a global contamination. They dream of winning a lottery that promises relocation to the last uncontaminated place on Earth: "the Island." What they eventually discover is far darker — they are clones, engineered and housed as living insurance policies for wealthy clients who harvest them for organs, children, and spare parts. The lottery is a lie. The Island does not exist. It is simply the euphemism for death.
On the surface, the film is a big-budget action spectacle. Beneath that surface sits a sharp meditation on identity, ownership, deception, and the value of a human life. Your task is to read the film on both levels at once.
After viewing, each group will produce a single 1,500-word essay responding to the prompt below.
Essay Prompt
Write a 1,500-word analytical essay that examines how the central themes of The Island correlate with current political and societal issues, and how Michael Bay's directorial style shapes the way those themes reach an audience. Your essay should make an argument — not simply summarize the plot. Build a clear thesis, support it with specific scenes, and connect the film's ideas to the world outside the theater.
Structure your response around the three sections below.
Section 1: The Film's Core Themes (approx. 500 words)
Identify and analyze the film's driving concerns. Address at least four of the following:
Cloning and manufactured identity — The residents are told a fabricated story about who they are and why they exist. What does the film suggest about identity that is built by an institution rather than a person?
Corporate control — The Merrick Institute owns its "products" completely, including their bodies and futures. How does the film frame corporate ownership of human life?
Consumer deception — Clients believe they are purchasing insurance, not sentient people. How does the film use this lie to critique what consumers choose not to know?
Loss of autonomy — The residents' movements, relationships, diets, and even dreams are monitored and managed. What does freedom mean inside a system designed to feel comfortable?
Use concrete moments from the film. Reference specific scenes, lines, and images rather than speaking in generalities.
Section 2: Correlation to Current Political and Societal Issues (approx. 600 words)
This is the heart of your essay. Connect the film's themes to real conditions in contemporary politics and society. You are not required to argue a particular political side — you are required to think seriously and draw honest parallels. Consider issues such as:
Surveillance — The residents live under constant observation framed as care and safety. Where do you see similar trade-offs between comfort, safety, and privacy in modern life?
Bodily autonomy — The clones have no legal claim to their own bodies. How does this speak to ongoing debates about who controls a person's body and choices?
Corporate power — A single institution holds the power of life and death over its "products." Where do you see concentrated private power shaping public life today?
Media manipulation — The lottery, the Island, the contamination story: these are engineered narratives that keep people compliant. How do manufactured narratives function in current media and politics?
Government and institutional overreach — When institutions decide who counts as a full person, what protections disappear?
Choose the connections you can argue most convincingly. Depth beats breadth. It is stronger to develop two or three parallels thoroughly than to list six shallowly.
Section 3: Michael Bay's Directorial Voice (approx. 400 words)
Bay is often dismissed as a director of loud, glossy spectacle. This essay asks you to take his craft seriously. Analyze how his signature style operates as a delivery system for the film's deeper critique. Consider:
Spectacle — Bay stages enormous set pieces, chases, and explosions. How does spectacle keep an audience watching while smuggling in uncomfortable ideas?
Hyperrealism — The world of The Island is bright, clean, and seductive. How does that polished surface mirror the film's warning about attractive lies?
Commercialism — Bay's work is saturated with brand imagery and advertising aesthetics. Is it ironic, then, that a film so commercial critiques consumer culture? Or is that tension the point?
Argue whether Bay's style strengthens or weakens the film's message. There is no correct answer — only a well-supported one.
Requirements
Length: 1,500 words (a reasonable margin either direction is acceptable)
Thesis: Your essay must open with a clear, arguable thesis
Evidence: Reference specific scenes, dialogue, and visual choices from the film
Original analysis: We want your interpretation, not a plot recap
Tone: Thoughtful and bold. Take a position and defend it
Guiding Question
As you write, keep one question in front of you:
If a lie is comfortable enough, well-produced enough, and profitable enough — who is responsible for finding the truth?
The Island poses that question through clones, corporations, and explosions. Your job is to answer it for the world you actually live in.