Gemini Man's intriguing premise isn't necessarily new, but the Ang Lee-directed sci-fi thriller
presents a number of chances to look at a familiar story in ways that other movies haven't.
These are just some of the implications left hanging by the end of the film - and what
they mean for the people left standing.
Even before he realizes that he's unwittingly been roped into a massive conspiracy involving
a secret cloning program and a clone of himself growing up right under his nose, Will Smith's
Henry Brogan is tired.
He finds himself slowing down, losing his touch, and more importantly, he's beginning
to struggle with his job a little more.
Killing people is no longer a satisfying bit of service to his country.
It's something he struggles to live with.
The journey of Gemini Man is Henry's journey to quite literally contend with himself and
his place in the world, and he comes out the other side of it feeling a little better about
himself.
His defeat of Gemini leader Clay Varris allows him to sleep a little easier at night, he
admits he can finally look in a mirror, and he's found a surrogate son who just happens
to share his exact DNA profile in Junior.
Henry Brogan's killer instinct might not go away overnight, and neither will his guilt
or any traces of post-traumatic stress, but he has people in his life who care about him
at last, and that's a good start.
We get less character development on the side of "Junior," Henry Brogan's young clone who
was adopted as Clay Varris' son, but we know enough to understand that he's got a tough
road ahead of him.
Junior was created to be the ultimate killer, a man with all of Brogan's natural skills
and athleticism but none of the emotional issues he grew up with.
In talking with Junior, Henry revealed that Clay's attempts at taking all of those issues
away from Junior didn't work.
The young clone still struggles with issues of inadequacy, with nightmares, and with struggling
to find joy anywhere besides on the other side of a gun.
"I’m guessing 19, 20 years old the first time he ordered you to shoot a person?”
By the end of the film, Junior - renamed Jackson Brogan at his request - has found some degree
of actual, tangible joy in his life, and most of it comes in the form of choice.
He seems genuinely happy at the end of the film, but this isn't the end of his struggles.
He's dealing with the weight of psychological trauma sustained throughout his relationship
with his adoptive father, but thankfully, he's got people in his corner to help him
out.
From the moment we meet her in the film, Mary Elizabeth Winstead's Danny proves to be a
resourceful and sharp DIA operative.
Over the course of Gemini Man, she keeps proving that she's always cool under pressure, despite
being propelled into one of the most improbable situations of her career.
By the end of the film, Danny and Henry are close friends, and Danny has even become at
least somewhat close to Jackson Brogan, Henry's young clone.
More than that, though, she reveals that she's been promoted within the DIA, a likely result
of the restructuring that had to take place once the Gemini cloning project was brought
to light and ultimately dismantled.
That puts Danny in a position to not just help Henry and Jackson as they try to get
on with their lives, but to hopefully prevent anyone from meddling in Jackson's future as
he tries to simply enjoy his 20s, free from the life of an assassin.
At one point in the film, Henry and his old Marine buddy Baron are talking about their
history with Clay Varris.
They both recount how he asked them to join up with his new venture and how they both
declined.
Baron, in fact, said no and then moved to a different continent, putting him at least
somewhat out of Varris' reach.
Henry stayed in America, and later found out that Varris had used his blood to create a
perfect supersoldier clone.
As the film unfolds, we learn more and more about the dark dealings of Gemini, including
the last-minute revelation that Varris created at least one more clone of Henry and managed
to edit out his sense of pain.
By the time the film is over, Henry's old friend Del assures him that the Gemini lab
has been shuttered, hopefully putting an end to Varris' secretive dealings.
Any fan of spy movies knows that it can't possibly be that simple, though.
The film leaves us hanging, but there has to be something more.
So we know that Junior was cloned from a sample of Henry's blood more than two decades earlier,
and he was raised from infancy by Clay Varris.
At some point in the intervening years, Varris took that endeavor a step further and cloned
Henry again, this time drafting a top scientist to edit out things like pain sensitivity from
the second clone's genetic code.
"Look what we created.
You were the inspiration for all of this."
"Why not just make a whole army full of them?"
So, Gemini Man posits a world in which a rich paramilitary contractor has had viable cloning
technology in his hands for more than 20 years, and in that time, he's found a way to breed
supersoldiers that don't feel pain.
What else has he figured out?
How many other scientists has he spoken to, and perhaps most importantly, who else has
access to this technology?
Now that Varris is dead, is someone else going to finish what he started?
If there's a sequel to Gemini Man, that seems like fertile ground to explore.
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