Bionic (original title: Biônicos) posits the question, what would happen to athletics as we know it if robotics could make the ‘para’ in Paralympics go from ‘beside’ to ‘beyond’? Unfortunately, the answer is irrelevant.
In this movie, individuals known as “bionics” are the evolution of parathletes. Their state-of-the-art prosthetic limbs allow them to take the motto ‘citius, altius, fortius’ to a whole new level. As far as I can tell, bionics and regular athletes don’t compete head-to-head, but the former are somehow putting the latter out of business.
Take Miúdo (Klebber Toledo), for instance. “Former ranked boxer … a true rising star … The bionics came along, and his career vanished overnight … Miúdo … amputated his own arm in a fake accident so he could get a bionic prosthesis, but the scam was uncovered, and the prosthesis was revoked.”
That doesn’t make any sense. First of all, if bionics take on other bionics, who cares how they get their prostheses? It’s not like Miúdo was gaining an unfair advantage. Well, he was, but then so is every other bionic, so it all balances out.
Secondly, the Paralympics continue to thrive alongside the Olympics in the real world. People watch and support both, irrespective of any perceived inferiority. Why wouldn’t the same logic apply if the shoe were on the other foot and the Olympics were the B show?
Maybe I’m idealistic (something I haven’t been often accused of), but I think the public at large would prefer not only the Olympics but the Paralympics as well to the Biolympics.
The appeal lies in the triumph of human will, not in the dominance of chemicals or robotics, and parathletes embody the human spirit more profoundly than able-bodied or potential bionic athletes. After all, paralympians go higher, faster, and stronger in spite of their limitations, not because of them.
In other words, the Paralympics showcase the fortitude, tenacity, and resilience of athletes who have overcome significant challenges to compete at the highest level. Their performances thrill audiences around the world, highlighting the true essence of sportsmanship. The Biolympics would likely face backlash and controversy for prioritizing synthetic enhancements over innate human capabilities.
So there goes the film’s premise, although it’s really the approach that’s the problem. There’s potential in this script, but writer Josefina Trotta and director Alfonso Poyart didn’t have the wherewithal to separate the wheat from the chaff.
“They say self-mutilation is the new doping,” a character says, very Cronenberg-like. Now, had the movie been an allegory for the rampant use and abuse of performance-enhancing drugs, we might have had something here.
The filmmakers, however, out-Cronenberg Cronenberg (and not in a good way). It’s not the characters but Poyart and Trotta themselves who get off on limb-tearing car crashes, and since mutilation equals doping, it follows that they are cool with PEDs too.
The movie would be much more effective if it drew a closer parallel between doping and de-limbing/re-limbing. What if, instead of openly flaunting their cybernetic appendages, bionics hid them? What if they covered their artificial extremities with Terminator-like living tissue? (Trust me, the less screen time the allegedly cutting-edge, cheap-looking computer-generated robotic limbs got, the better).
The plot would then focus on the strategies bionics employ to evade detection and the evolving countermeasures implemented by the International Olympic Committee (or a fictional equivalent), showcasing a high-stakes battle of wits and technology between the two sides.
Having established the above, the screenplay could highlight a rivalry between a heroic non-bionic athlete and a villainous bionic. The story kinda seemed to be headed that way with long-jumping sisters María (Jessica Córes) and Gabi (Gabz).
Of course, they can’t go up against one another in direct competition unless Gabi grows back a leg (not going to happen) or María loses one, which she does in the stupidest possible way (Bionic doesn’t just perpetuate the dumb jock myth; it turns it up all the way to 11).
It’s a shame, because María has this great speech wherein she takes Gabi and Gabi’s bionic friends down a peg for being a bunch of sellouts, as opposed to the inspiring underdogs they once were.
María does that knowing full well that in the next scene she’s going to get run over by a van in her own fake accident. Fake, mind you, like wrestling is fake; that is, she could have been literally killed and can count herself lucky that she only lost a leg. Sadistically, the movie does consider that to be a stroke of good luck.
Case in point: María and Gabi have a younger brother, Gus (Christian Malheiros), a somewhat chubby hacker who regards himself as a misfit in his own family. Is that because he’s not an athlete, or because he’s not a bionic?
Let’s just say that Gus also gets creamed by a speeding vehicle, loses an arm, one eye, and both legs, becomes a veritable cyborg, and now he feels like he belongs. Basically, anybody’s worst day ever is the happiest fucking day of Gus’s life. Gus’s transformation is symptomatic of the film’s disturbing portrayal of disability as a form of liberation.
But anyway, the filmmakers went out of their way to make a hypocrite out of María, which would be all well and good if they had been setting her up for an epiphany. As it turnss out, though, there is no real downside to her hubris.
During the climax, she finds herself dangling upside down from a medium height and is about to be arrested (for reasons and through events not worth recounting). She detaches her prosthesis and falls down in slo-mo.
You’d think this is symbolic of María’s fall from grace and her desire to stop taking the easy way out. You’d be wrong, though. María is just saving her ass, the distance to the ground isn’t that great, and once she’s safe, she simply gets another prosthetic leg.
Moreover, she quits sports altogether (which were a mere afterthought anyway, and clearly the aspect of the movie to which the least effort and money went; the events we see are few and far between, and we hardly see them at all, as they look to be taking place in the dead of night, no doubt to mask how poorly staged they are), and ostensibly turns to a life of crime, selling her and her siblings’ superhuman abilities to the highest bidder (who isn’t the bad guy, but is at the very least bad guy-adjacent).
Those are the quote-unquote heroes. We’re supposed to cheer for the unrelatable, extreme shortcut-taking cheaters who don’t have to deal with any adverse effects (these fuckers never heard of phantom limb). It just doesn’t feel right; it’s like Drago beating Rocky or Lance Armstrong not getting cancer in his tiny little balls.