Bioshock
Genre: Action/Sci-Fi
Director: Tim Miller
Writer: H.G. Hansen
Based on the video game
Cast: Sebastian Stan, Mark Strong, Tom Hanks, Denis O'Hare, Franka Potente, Michael Stuhlbarg, Brooklynn Prince
Plot: In 1960, Jack (Sebastian Stan), is a passenger on a plane. He seems
contained to himself as the pilot tries to make small talk. Jack ignores
him by reaching into his bag and pulls out a package. In the package
contains an earpiece connected to a shockwave and a note saying, “Your
answer lie in the ruined city of Rapture.” Jack looks at the note as he
hears from the pilot. “Where you think you should be heading…” Suddenly,
static is heard from the radio. He hears something and then blacks out.
Jack wakes up deep under water as he sees luggage and plane
parts sink down. The plane has gone down in the Atlantic Ocean. As the
only survivor, Jack tries to make his way to a nearby lighthouse before
the flame on the ocean completely surrounds him. He walks into the
lighthouse and lights suddenly turn on to see Andrew Ryan with a banner
under him saying “No Gods or Kings, Only Man”. Jack is confused by this
as he begins to walk all the way to the bottom level.
Jack
arrives into an elevator and pulls a lever. He sees some kind of lights
on the side of the tunnel. Suddenly, the window closes and a projection
video begins to play. Andrew Ryan (Tom Hanks) narrates about how freedom is
restricted by religion or government He rejects their no’s and he chose
to face the impossible. He chose Rapture and the screen opens up to show
the underwater city called Rapture. Ryan continues how Rapture is a
place to no longer fear censors, science will never be bound by petty
morality, and where the greats wouldn’t be constrained by the small.
With the sweat of your brow, Rapture could be your own home as well.
The
elevator now turns into a vessel that swims past some statues and under
a bridge where the lights flicker. But Jack kinda sees some big person
standing in it. He tries to take a closer look as the vessel goes by but
hears a scary roar that startles him. He now can hear some noise from
his radio like someone has noticed the plane crash. He gets distracted
by the bright neon signs and the giant whales that look to be carrying
supplies. He now heads to an entrance tunnel where words on the rails
say “All Good Things… Of This Earth… Flow… In The City…” Jack mutters.
The vessel floats upward to a platform.
He sees nothing as it’s
too dark but he hears someone beg for their life. Jack leans onto the
glass and wonders what’s going on. The lights begin to flicker as he
sees someone attack the guy digging some kind of hooks into him. Jack is
shocked by this and tries to step back but it’s too late as whatever
attacked sees him. “Is this someone new?” said in a creepy female voice
and then a banshee roar is heard. She climbs onto the vessel as the
lights stop. He looks around trying to wrap his head around what he just
saw. Suddenly, metal can be heard getting scrapped and clawed at. The
woman screams as she tries to get in. A loud noise is heard which makes
her scream louder and run off.
Jack is scared out of his mind as
the door now opens and someone on his radio communicates with him. Jack
tries to ask questions but the man tells there’s no time. He tells him
his name is Atlas (Mark Strong) and wants to guide him to safety from the splicer he
just saw. Jack doesn’t understand but Atlas tells if he doesn’t move to
higher ground, he’s good as dead. He asks how he sees him as he sees a
helicopter robot watching him. Atlas has many of them around the city.
He
guides Jack along the building as he can hear the female splicer
whisper how she’d like to murder him in gruesome ways. Jack is afraid as
he listens to Atlas’s instructions, tells him to keep walking and get
her out of hiding. Suddenly, the splicer jumps in front of him and Jack
is mortified by what he sees. This “splicer” looks like she is badly
disfigured with heated hooks attached to her arms. She screams before
going to attack him. Not before a defense robot swings in to showers
bullets in her direction. She runs away trying to avoid the robot. Jack
is stunned but Atlas snaps him back telling him to find a crowbar or
something. Jack looks and finds a wrench on the ground. Atlas tells him
to crush the rumble blocking the way that was made by the Splicers to
keep whoever in. Jack finally clears it and crawls inside. He runs up
the stairs till he sees a flaming couch fly at him. He dodges up it. He
laughs till someone else attacks him with a pipe. Jack gets hit but
fights the guy off till he puts dent into the guy’s head. The guy goes
limp leaving Jack breathing hard.
He doesn’t waste time as he
goes to head to the door which is broken by the Splicers. Atlas tells
him not to worry and head upstairs and take something from Gather’s
Garden. Jack is confused but heads upstairs to find a vending machine
with some red vials. Atlas tells him to take one but Jack is hesitant.
He takes one, looks at it, and then injects himself with it. Suddenly,
he’s shaking as his veins can be seen lighting up. He groans in pain as
his entire body begins to light up. Atlas tries to calm him down as his
genetic code is being rewritten. Electricity begins to shoots off him as
he almost becomes unstable. He loses control, falls over the edge and
lands hard onto the floor.
Jack wakes up to find out what he
took was a plasmid, a Gene Tonic which gave him control of electricity.
Atlas is glad he’s okay and tells him to use his new powers to open the
door. He opens the door to a bridge as everything is okay till a bang is
heard afar. Jack looks around to see a submarine begin to fly into the
bridge. Water begins to quickly rush in and Jack rushes to get out of
there. He gets through the sub and on the other side. Now the water
begins to make the whole bridge unstable as more leaks break through.
Jack rushes to the end before the bridge is completely filled with
water.
He’s safe but only for a minute as other Splicers begin
to attack. He fights them off with his wrench and powers as the door
leading the way out slowly opens. Atlas tells him to take their plasmids
as it’s dangerous to overuse his powers. He grabs their plasmids and
walks up to a calm room till a flaming elevator drops down. Jack walks
up to door but an on-fire splicer pops out to attack. Jack makes quick
work as he rushes to find a working elevator. He finds out and heads up.
As he goes up, Atlas requests Jack's help in stopping Ryan,
directing him to a docked bathysphere, called Neptune’s Bounty, where he
claims Ryan has trapped his family. Jack doesn’t know if he can. He was
looking for this place but had no idea why or how dangerous it was.
Atlas urges him and argues if Jack had a family, wouldn’t he do
everything in his power to save them. Jack sighs as he remembers the
last words his mom and dad told him before his trip. He agrees to help
him if he can help him get out of here.
The elevator stops and
he asks what the hell everyone’s deal is. Atlas tells him plasmids
changed everything. It destroyed people’s bodies and minds as people
couldn’t handle it. Best friend butchered one another, babies strangled,
and then the whole city went to hell. He walks into the Kashmir
Restaurant as he looks around for any company. He goes downstairs slowly
as he sees a splicer knock on a door manically. Jack tries to head down
the stairs till he accidently steps on glass. The splicer attacks as
they break through the rails and lands on the floor. A piece of wood
goes through the guy’s head. Jack tries to get up by the guy’s lady
friend quickly attacks him. Jack struggles to kill till he puts the
pistol in her mouth. Jack breathes heavily as he sees some kind of
recording on her. He plays it on the shockwave radio and it’s a
recording of a girl along on New Year’s Eve talking about how foolish it
was to fall in love with Andrew Ryan then an explosion happens. She
says she’s bleeding till another explosion cuts it off. Jack is beside
himself as he looks around to see dead bodies, blood, and destruction
everywhere.
He finds a way out as it leads to the skylight over a
theater. He walks across but sees a little girl (Brooklynn Prince) on the stage. He puts
his weapon away and walks across to get a better look. He then sees
she’s injecting a dead guy’s flesh. Jack whisper what the hell is he
seeing. He tells him that’s a Little Sister. Someone turned a bunch of
orphaned girls into monsters. They carry something called ADAM, allows
its user to alter their DNA to grant them super-human powers like
telekinesis or pryokinesis. Jack asks why but his answer comes when a
splicer tries to attack the Little Sister. She cries for help and
suddenly a monstrous roar Jack heard from earlier is heard. The monster
he saw from earlier jumps down and viciously attacks the guy with its
huge drills sending blood everywhere. Jack watches in horror as the
beast smashes the guy’s head into the glass infront of him. It continues
till he goes through the glass. “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!” Atlas tells
him that’s the Big Daddy, a plasmid-enhanced human surgically grafted
into giant lumbering diving suits. She collects ADAM and he keeps her
safe. Jack waits till their gone to remove the guy and walk through the
glass.
He gets to Neptune’s Bounty but the door shuts on him and
an alert is sounded. Jack asks what’s going on as it turns out Andrew
Ryan knows they’re there and set off the alarms. Jack can hear a door
slamming open as Atlas tells him to run for Splicers are on their way.
Jack runs down a hallway shooting at the gang of Splicers. Jack asks
where to go and Atlas tells him to take the elevator at the end. Jack
runs out of bullets and heads inside. But it turns out to be a trap as
Atlas’s signal breaks off and the room goes dark.
A message
starts to begin inside as Andrew Ryan appears. He asks if Jack is CIA or
KGB or just some asshole trying to plunder Rapture. Jack defends
himself by saying he’s not a spy, he just is in the wrong place, wrong
time. Andrew doesn’t believe him as he then tells him he’s not some
socialite who likes being slapped around and bids him farewell or
Dasvadinya. Whatever he prefers. Suddenly, the gang of Splicers
reappears and starts to break through the glass. It turns out he’s not
in an elevator but a killing room. Jack knows he won’t be able to fight
his way out as there are too many. They get close to breaking through
till Atlas comes back and opens one of the doors. Jack runs out and the
door closes just in time.
He thanks Atlas but Atlas stays on the
task at hand. He tells Jack he needs to head to an emergency access.
Jack stops though cause he wants answers about who the hell is Andrew
Ryan. He tells him he’s the King of Rapture and GD maniac. He doesn’t
even believe he’s human anymore. Jack is worried but Atlas assures him
by telling him the sooner this is over, the sooner he’s out. Jack agrees
and keeps going.
He gets to the emergency access panel but
access was denied. “What now?” Atlas tells him they need Dr. Steinman’s
key to access it. But he warns Jack, the doctor is more monster than
human nowadays. Jack finds two recording and plays one recording of how
Ryan and Frank released him from restrictions and how he can finally be
free. Then the other is the woman from before talking about how Steinman
is gonna make her pretty.
Jack shakes his head as Atlas asks if
he’s okay. He ignores him and opens a door. Atlas tells him to follow
the blood. He walks into only find Steinman set up machine gun defense
robots. Jack dodges them but then finds some Splicers there as well.
Jack fights off both as the dust settles. Jack finds more recording in a
room looking for Steinman. The recordings get darker than the last as
Steinman (Michael Stuhlbarg) uses ADAM and his surgical skills to redefine himself.
Suddenly, Ryan announces how a fly is spoiling their ointment and offers
one thousand ADAM to whoever can clip its wings.
Jack can’t
believe what’s he hearing as he can’t believe would act this way. Atlas
disagrees as everything from the security and the Splicers to the little
sisters and the big daddies all leads to Ryan. He pumps some chemical
scent into the air, pheromones they call it, makes them all dance to his
tune. Jack is beside himself by all this but has no time as he has to
hurry to the doctor’s office as he can heard the hordes of splicer
running to his direction. Jack enters the office and puts a steel pipe
in the handles and a desk in front of it. He then sees a photo of
someone disfigured as he finds a recording under it. Steinman compares
himself to Picasso how he got bored with painting people and started
with cubes. He then thinks what if he could do the same as him but with a
scalpel.
Jack heads over to the end of the hall as he sees a
man doing surgery on a poor lady. Dr. Steinman freaks out by how the
lady doesn’t stand still. He raves about making people beautiful but
they always turn out wrong. He then shines a light three failed
procedures on blood smeared crosses. By seeing this, Jack vomits by the
sight of it. Steinman hears this and sees Jack, who to the doc is ugly.
This upsets him beyond his edge and grabs a tommygun and begins firing.
Jack dives out of the way. Jack uses his lighting to open the door to
try and sneak behind the doctor but he sees him coming and fires again.
They
chase and gun fight down to the lower almost downed basement. Steinman
raves about how he’ll make Rapture beautiful again and everyone sees how
he’s a genius. But while he rants, the gun jams and Jack doesn’t waste
time to shot him in the chest. Steinman drops to his knees and while
looking Jack mumbles about how he was gonna make everyone free. Jack
watches as the doctor’s blood filled the water. Atlas doesn’t seem to
care as he tells him to grab the key from him and get going. Jack stares
at him for a little longer and asks himself how the craziness of life
finds a way.
Jack gets the emergency access working and walks
into another almost collapsing tunnel. He gets hallway till he hears a
bang. He walks to the left hallway and sees a Big Daddy fly in flames.
Jack encounters a wandering Little Sister. Atlas urges Jack to kill the
Little Sister to harvest her ADAM for himself; Dr. Tenenbaum (Franka Potente) overhears
this and intercepts Jack before he harms the Little Sister, urging him
to spare the child and any other Little Sisters he encounters, providing
him with a plasmid that would force the sea slug out of her body. Atlas
laughs by how sermon this is coming from the woman who made that girl
that way. He tries to convince Jack but Jack tells him to shut up. Jack
refuses as he doesn’t want to be a monster like the Splicers and this
damn city. The Little Sister tries to crawl away but Jack tells it will
be alright and frees her from her enslavement. Atlas thinks he’s a fool
for that but Jack doesn’t care.
Jack walks into Neptune’s Body
as he sees a man strung up like a scarecrow who cuts to shreds with the
word “smuggler” written in blood. Jack asks how does it come to this and
Atlas is quick to blame Ryan. Ryan drove the city to the ground but no
one knows why. Power, greed, or maybe he stopped liking people. He tells
Jack to go to Fontaine Fisheries that he’ll meet him there.
After
dealing with Atlas’ partner who rambles about the tyranny of Frank
Fontaine, a former mobster, who waged war on Ryan, Jack gets to where
Atlas’s family is and the submarine they’re hiding in. Ryan now knows
Jack isn’t CIA but one of Atlas’, a roach he can’t squash but he can do
something else. Ryan already knows their plan and ambushes them. They
try to fight off the splicers but they’re too late as the submarine
blows up. An angered Atlas now plans for Jack to head to where Ryan is
to finish this whole thing.
Jack and Atlas go to find Sander
Cohen (Denis O’Hare), a former musician and art dealer. Jack walks down
the hallway to see a performance are set as Cohen talks about being
tired of Atlas’ and Ryan’s sandbox tantrums. He as an artist wants to
relief Jack is his tensions as he sends splicers to challenge Jack. Jack
uses his plasmids and wrench to make quick work. Cohen finds him
intriguing as it’s been a long time since anyone new has arrived. He
invites Jack in as doors open to his performance hall. He walks down the
hall to see someone playing a piano. The man is having a tough time
satisfying Cohen. Cohen tells the man he’s embarrassing himself with
their first guest in years. The man reached his limit cusses at Cohen to
let him go as we see the man is stapled to the piano chair. Jack tries
to calm him down but is interrupted by a huge boom. The man and the
piano go up in flames. Jack falls into Cohen’s head game like killing
his pupils to finding a woman who was involved with Ryan till he
murdered. He hears a recording how she was pregnant.. Jack finishes
Cohen masterpiece by putting everyone he killed photos on it. Cohen, who
wears a phantom mask, does a full celebration by this and offers Jack
access to Ryan.
Jack finds Atlas is gone as Jack now is on a
rampage as everything is now getting to him. He submits to the violence
to get to Ryan as Ryan goes on about how worms look up to gods and how
Jack is just another worm. Jack gets into Ryan’s place as he sees bodies
nailed to the walls like warnings or trophies. Ryan tries to explain
how what he’s doing renders to the impossible but that be like Mozart
being played for a tree frog. Ryan grows delusional as he believes
Rapture will return to its glory. Ryan called him a terminate as he
built this impossible city. But Ryan still finds everything such a
miracle how its all gone down. Jack doesn’t buy all this chatter but
Ryan leads him into a lab. A lab where he hears a recording of a man
telling a child to murder a puppy. Then he sees photos of himself and
his family.
Eventually, Jack enters Ryan's personal office, where
Ryan is patiently waiting for Jack by casually playing golf. Ryan
explains he fully knew of Atlas' plan, and explains that Jack is his
illegitimate child, taken from his mother by Fontaine who placed him out
of Ryan's reach on the surface, and genetically modified to age
rapidly. Fontaine had planned to use Jack as a trump card in his war
with Ryan, bringing him back to Rapture when the time was right; Jack's
genetics would allow him to access systems such as the bathysphere that
Ryan had locked out long ago.
With no place to run, Ryan is
willing to accept death by his own free will, quoting one of his own
principles: "A man chooses. A slave obeys." He asks Jack "would you
kindly" kill him with the golf club, and Jack is compelled to do so. As
Ryan dies, Jack becomes aware that the phrase "would you kindly" has
preceded many of Atlas' commands as a hypnotic trigger forcing him to
follow Atlas' orders without question; a flashback reveals Jack himself
was responsible for crashing his plane near the lighthouse after hearing
the phrase on the radio. Atlas demands him to use the self destruct key
to inject into the mainframe. Atlas then reveals himself as Fontaine,
the thug that tried to take Rapture for himself as part of a long con,
having used the Atlas alias to hide himself while providing a figure for
the lower class to rally behind. Without Ryan, Fontaine takes over
control of Ryan's systems, and leaves Jack to die as he releases hostile
security drones into Ryan's locked office.
Jack is saved by Dr. Tenenbaum and the Little Sisters who had previously been rescued. Dr.
Tenenbaum
helps Jack to remove Fontaine's conditioned responses, including one
that would have stopped his heart. Jack asks what the hell just happened
and doc explains to him. Made in the 1940s by Objectivist business
magnate Andrew Ryan, Ryan wanted to create a utopia for society’s elite
to flourish outside of any government control. To protect Rapture from
any involvement from the outside world, Ryan imposed a law that imposed
no outside contact to the surface world.
Despite the apparent
utopia, classes began to form and grow, former gangster and fellow
businessman Frank Fontaine used his influence of Rapture’s lower class
to plan a coup. Fontaine profited by creating black market routes with
the surface world, and together with her created a cheap plasmid
industry of mass-producing ADAM. Fontaine used his plasmid-enhanced army
to attack Ryan but faked his death. In the months that followed, a
second figure named Atlas rose. Creating further strife, Atlas lead
attacks on the factories, freeing the Little Sisters. Unfortunately,
this lead for Ryan to create his greatest weapon, a plasmid-enhanced
human surgically grafted into giant lumbering diving suits that were
psychologically compelled to protect the Little Sisters at all costs.
Tensions
came to a head on New Year’s Eve of 1958, when out of nowhere; Atlas
ordered an all-out attack on Andrew Ryan. The battle left many citizens
dead, and the few survivors with their sanity barricaded themselves
away. Once a peaceful utopia fell into a crumbling dystopia of fear,
insanity, and violence. The town since then has never recovered nor
contacted with the outside world.
With the help of the Little
Sisters, Jack is able to make his way to Fontaine's lair to face him.
Fontaine, being cornered by Jack, injects himself with a large amount of
ADAM, becoming an inhuman monster. Jack is aided by the Little Sisters
in draining the ADAM in Fontaine's body and eventually killing him. Jack
takes them back to the surface with him and adopts five of them as his
daughters, and Jack happily narrates how they go on to live full lives
under his care, eventually surrounding him on his deathbed and how his
memories might have been fake but at least the final words he heard from
his parents rings true, He is special…
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