“I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over... and the insect is awake.”
Seth Brundle
In this version of The Fly directed by David Cronenberg the basic premise is the same as the 1958 version. An eccentric scientist invents a teleportation device and mistakenly splices himself with a fly. In this movie the scientist Seth Brundle is transformed gradually into the creature. With the use of incredible makeup effects and animatronics we see Brundle slowly eaten away by the horrific infection.
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Fly Transformation Stages |
I was convinced that this movie was a cultural metaphor for the AIDS epidemic of the 1980’s so I was surprised when I discovered this was not Cronenberg’s intention (although he accepts the interpretation).
"If you, or your lover, has AIDS, you watch that film and of course you'll see AIDS in it, but you don't have to have that experience to respond emotionally to the movie and I think that's really its power...This is not to say that AIDS didn't have an incredible impact on everyone and of course after a certain point people were seeing AIDS stories everywhere so I don't take any offense that people see that in my movie. For me, though, there was something about The Fly story that was much more universal to me: aging and death--something all of us have to deal with."- David Cronenberg
I find this surprising because the AIDS metaphor fits so perfectly with the sexual undertones in the film. The creature in the movie is far more sophisticated than the original. The original is basically a man with a flies head this one however is not recognisable as a man or fly “Am I becoming a hundred-and-eighty-five-pound fly? No, I'm becoming something that never existed before. I'm becoming... Brundlefly”- Seth Brundle. They have also applied fly like attributes to the creature for example, the way it twitches is neck and throws up acid onto its food to digest it. The movie is full of horrific and disgusting moments that are mostly necessary to convey the horror of the situation. The only violent part I found was unnecessary and a bit silly was the arm wrestling scene, it just didn’t seem possible to me.
This movie is great! Dark, gory, twisted fun for the whole family.
Great to see this big chunk from the director himself - but you don't give its published source or from where you accessed it. You need to get into the habit of always citing your evidence completely.
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