This movie is a modern-day Blaxploitation set in the city of Glen, centering around the lives of three main characters: Fontaine (John Boyega), a drug dealer, Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), a pimp, and Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), a s** worker. Their lives take a dark turn when Fontaine is sh** by a rival drug dealer. Fontaine mysteriously returns to life the following day.
The trio, fueled by curiosity and suspicion, investigates the mysterious incident and eventually stumbles upon a shocking discovery: an underground lab where clones of themselves are being created. This revelation uncovers a larger conspiracy involving mind control, racism, and eugenics that is plaguing the city.
They learn that the city's poor Black population is being cloned and are under the control of evil scientists, who have devised various methods, including mind control triggered by a special chicken recipe (sounds familiar lol), music, and other items used to manipulate and subjugate them.
During their mission to expose and liberate the clones, the trio encounters an elderly man, Old man Fontaine, who confesses to being the original human whose DNA was used in the creation of the clones. Old man Fontaine's motivations stem from his traumatic experiences of racism and the tragic loss of Fontaine's younger brother at the hands of the police, which deeply scarred him. Old man Fontaine reveals that he played a role in the experiment to achieve a "peace." He believed that by assimilating Black people into white individuals, he could create a more peaceful future.
Old man Fontaine's pivotal statement, "Assimilation is better than annihilation," captures the central ethical dilemma of the movie. His actions were driven by a desire to end the suffering and discrimination faced by Black people, but they ultimately involved participating in a harmful and exploitative experiment that robbed individuals of their autonomy and identity.
What are your thoughts on this?
They Cloned Tyrone is streaming on Netflix.
HELLA INSPIRED.
