blueneumann at 2014-04-27 14:34:38:

Genetically engineered brilliant children/ Khaaaaaaan! You tell me about a genetically perfect kid criminal with a powerful mind and I immediately think of the Rainmaker from "Looper." Which would be an amazing character to follow, and I immediately get Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels meets Chronicle. Which might stylistically feel too close to Misfits, an awesome show. Then the practical realist in me realizes that we really already know what we need to do to save the world from calamity, we're just incapable of doing it as a society (we couldn't even pass universal healthcare in the states, and that's just an accounting problem!). There's this trend in movies that the big, dangerous thing is a clean energy device (Watchmen, Dark Knight Rises) where what we really need is better versions of what we're working on (I said it before, sugar batteries and just non-corrosive technology in general, transparent solar panels which apparently exist now) and to reorganize what we do have to make it more effect. Massive Global Feng Shui. Global warming's a problem? Stop driving your car! Cut down on the number of cattle in the world! There's not enough work to go around? Maybe rethink our relationship to work and money. There's an obesity epidemic in the world? Stop putting sugar in all the food! On paper, it's not hard, but you know what? I like my car (well, not MY car, I want a nice car, but I like not needing a bus), I like my meat (the only reason I'm cutting down on burgers is because my fave place to get them closed down), I like having money in my wallet, and I like sugar. And I know I know better. But that's me. Now just multiply that by the population of most industrialized countries and you'll see what the problem is. What we really need is a group of sociologists and engineers to design a system that could ease us into a new way of life without taking us out of our comfort zone and for ridiculously rich assholes to accept the fact that they don't get to suckle at whatever teat they were at anymore. You look at a lot of problems we have in the world and I'll bet you they're because someone, somewhere, is making a lot of money from things being that way. And the people saving the world are the ones who either figured out a way to monetize that or really lessen the impact on their wallet to the point that it's inconsequential. So this would make this an adventure movie with the company, perhaps the ones sponsoring the eugenics lab ("GM and NBC Universal Comcast Time Warner present... "Babies! 2.0") realize that the solution the babies come up with is totally incompatible with their business model, so they decide to kill them. Which would make it the most predictable thing I'd ever seen, and also make no sense because they could have just asked the babies how they could best monetize the new order. Or maybe the company gives the babies wrong advice, stuff that's gone through PR channels and scrubbed clean of any details that might make them look bad (which I think/heard the Government did in the W days with scientific papers), so since the babies are working off faulty information, their solution just makes things worse. You could literally jump generations where you keep going to different, increasingly strange, repressive, and downright contradictory cultural models that don't work until there's finally an uprising, then the final time period we see is a medieval style world with few people and some farms with little livestock, and it's not much but it's calm and relatively safe. Then, over the hill, some guy (or girl) comes riding a horse into the village proclaiming to be a King and that he has a calling to build a Shining City on the Hill, where we shall grow numerous and mighty and rich, why toil here in nature when we can all be rich!" and the farmers basically go "here we go again!" That's really the only way I can think of to keep the movie interesting to me. Now, the action movie you described, it sounds like... well, I never saw "Eagle Eye," but if I close my eyes and picture it, I'm seeing the same movie you were talking about. If it's further in the future, my mind pictures that remake of Total Recall. Maybe the two figure out how to use things they find as tools and weapons, like "MacGuyver" or "Paycheck," but that's not a skill I have. I'm trying to think of a high standard to hold this potential movie up to, maybe the Dark Knight movies... maybe that's how the two different worlds are presented, the poor side is the Blade Runner-y Arkham Island from Batman Begins (a hellish place where the only nice child there is Prince Joffrey) and the rich side is the clean lined Dark Knight/Skyfall/Inception-y stark simplicity that's all the rage now. Or even further, it could be Tron Legacy/Oblivion levels of sleek. But that might be too much. After all, the tech is going after them on the street, and I gotta figure that's hobbled-together junk tech... maybe District 9/Elysium style stuff. Made from parts of the old stuff we can't use anymore, so there's gasoline engine parts, iPhone screen face, whatever.

writerhaha at 2014-04-28 01:01:46:

Thriller sounds like a fun way to go. (Conspiracy/pitch hats on) What if, America was a lie? Instead of democracy, political parties and such, it was all just one person making all of the choices? This person of the highest intellect would be the one tasked with making decision from foreign policy to what cereal you buy. Their care would be supported by things like peace prizes, donations to various companies and campaign contributions, and although they would live in luxury, essentially their duty from the time they're able to the second they drop would just be to use massive intellect to determine everything. A character like Grant would've thought this through, with the idea of preserving his genetic material. Others would be motivated to try, motivated by things like elite prestige or just the general combination of wealth and boredom. The smartest of our society donating genetic material, and the country storing it. The only difference is that Grant's proposal matched high intellect with alike. One night he's flipping through "smart" tv and comes across a documentary about wolves. Something in his mind registers wolf mating habits (breeding outside the pack in order make up for shared genetic inefficiencies). From there he then goes on a tangent (nature v. nurture, natural selection etc.) and comes up with the conclusion that he needs to find a "inferior" woman. He finds a "normal woman" and produces a child. We then see the two growing up (following the notes from the above story), but what if it was reversed. Morality in high society v. morality in the real world? One night "Adrianne" realizes what her fate is, gets spooked and bails. She's alone on the street with no "normal" social skills. She's on the road when she's attacked. The attacker is then stopped and runs off, but then her savior steals money (or something of value) and leaves her. Then turns around boom, we hear that first "twin connection." Introductions and they're on the run. The ticking clock is that the one "Person" is no longer there so the government is stalling/hunting to find Adrianne, Brendan (going by the notes) is being chased by Thugs/police for a "moral" crime (think eco-terrorism or something) putting them both in deep.

Alejandro at 2014-04-28 18:04:37:

Better late than never. I think we could mix it with: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-confess-the-worst-things-about-working-at-google-2013-11 Quotes: Everyone is awesome, so they can hire the very best people to do even the most mundane jobs. "The worst part of working at Google, for many people, is that they're overqualified for their job. Google has a very high hiring bar due to the strength of the brand name, the pay & perks, and the very positive work culture. As a result, they have their pick of bright candidates, even for the most low-level roles." "There are students from top 10 colleges who are providing tech support for Google's ads products, or manually taking down flagged content from YouTube, or writing basic code to A|B test the color of a button on a site." So, in our dystopian future a lot of parents went the "Genius Sperm and Eggs Bank" and the number of genius in the world skyrocketed. The result? Assuming 130+ is a genius... The guy moping that floor at the mall? Yeah, his IQ is 145. The waitress at a local burger joint? 147. That beggar on the street? 151. Cat lady who lives on social security? 153. The problem now is there aren't enough jobs for geniuses. Now it's not a competitive advantage. And most are seriously lacking in the social skills area (yeah, a little cliché...) Enter: Gary. IQ: A very average 90. But he's THE master of social skills. He just dropped out of high school and just wants to make some money. Think of "Jordan Belfort" from "The Wolf of Wall Street". So, our movie is the path Gary takes to take several high I.Q. guys as his team and make them work for him. He uses his social skills to trick everybody, earn a lot of money. His gift is the emotional intelligence most people considered geniuses lack.

Alejandro at 2014-04-28 18:27:03:

I'd like to emphasize on Sperm AND Eggs bank. (I think the correct term is an Ova bank) We want the highest chances of the kid being a genius. So, years later this bank has produced a lot of high achieving people. Nobel. Pulitzer. Hugo. Grammy. Oscars. And not just I.Q. but they also have sperm and eggs from great athletes, so they're all over the Olympics, World Cup, NBA, NFL... The catch? one of them, a not-so-successful reporter finds out years ago they had an accidental power failure, they lost a lot of the sperm and eggs and they decided to substitute them with whatever they could find from other sperm and ova banks. DNA played the least part - these kids were raised by parents who thought they were genius, were given education for genius, were treated as genius... so they became genius even if their DNA wasn't from a genius. Oh, an our not-so-successful reporter finds out he was indeed born out of genius sperm and genius eggs. Why he didn't turned a genius? God only knows...

blueneumann at 2014-04-28 19:23:09:

The first episode of The Big Bang Theory started in a high IQ sperm bank with Sheldon pointing out that DNA doesn't determine these sorts of things, "I have a sister with identical DNA to mine waiting tables a Fuddrucker's!" Maybe there's a placebo thing going on here, people think that their bought genius children will be brilliant so they project that on them. You could do that "swapped out" thing and have a kid whose donor parents were, like, loser rednecks, but he's treated like the son of Einstein and Mozart. I wonder if there's a danger of.. obviously accurate human cloning is a long way off, but suppose that there's a cloning facility so that they could make the genetic material ad naseum. Maybe one of these facilities just steals the profiles of various desirable people and reconstruct it. It reminds me of an old little film my friend Chad made about illegal drugs that would make you feel like you had an orgasm brought on by the celebrity of your dreams. So imagine that, you list out the traits your want, it finds the pirated DNA of the best choices and makes the baby. I feel there's plenty of parents who would suggest one handsome or gorgeous celebrity to make sure their kid looks good, and it seems like a really dangerous thing as well.