While "Mimic" has often been compared to Big Bug movies such as "Them!" and the "Alien"series (where the title creatures have many insect-like traits, such as exoskeletons, a parasitic reproductive cycle, and a hive social structure), they actually have more in common with the "The Fly" (1958) — along with its 1986 remake and their various sequels — when it comes to the narrative and visual themes of insect and human worlds suddenly fusing together in haphazard, disfigured arrangements that are horrifying, preposterous and tragic in equal measures.
For example, the title monster of the original "Fly" movie is somewhat like the Judas Breed, in the sense that both are genetically-spliced, underground-dwelling, human-sized monsters who hide their insect identities behind awkward, makeshift masks. There are parallels between the classic scene in "The Fly," when Helene Delambre (Patricia Owens) pulls the hood away from her husband's head only to see the enlarged face of a housefly, and in "Mimic," when Dr. Tyler suddenly sees a full-sized Judas Breed insect unwrap itself out of its human disguise for the first time.
The "Fly"/"Mimic" connection is more evident in "Mimic 2," which is basically "The Fly" in reverse: Instead of a man becoming more like an insect, "Mimic 2″ features an insect slowly becoming more like a man. The ending of "Mimic 2," when Remi's Judas Breed admirer shows up at her front door to "date" her, is likewise very similar to the freakish imagery in "The Fly" movies.
Insect Irony
If the "Mimic" movies have anything in ample supply, it's irony — most obviously in the creation and development of the Judas Breed themselves. Created as bugs that could "fool" real cockroaches for the purpose of killing them, they then mutated into something that can "fool" people for a similar predatory purpose. Likewise, with their original intent as a solution to Strickler's Disease, the Judas Breed put a new ironic spin on the term "superbug," a term coined to describe an infectious bacterium that is antibiotic-resistant.
In each "Mimic" film, there is an ironic yet parallel connection between the human protagonists and the Judas Breed:
- In "Mimic," even though Dr. Tyler saved countless children through her research and her scientific offspring of genetically modified insects have become much more fertile than she intended, she herself is unable to conceive a child with her husband, Dr. Peter Mann (Jeremy Northam).
- In "Mimic 2," Remi cannot find a boyfriend who understands her but nevertheless cannot shake the sexual designs of a male Judas Breed insect — a suitor that Remi understands better than her human suitors because of her background in entomology. This plot of cross-species attraction is an extension of both the Judas Breed's transgenic creation and the fertility/infertility theme from the first movie. Remi's habit of taking photos of her own face when she is dumped is also paralleled in the lone Judas Breed's ability to attach the faces of its victims — the same people who dumped Remi — to its exoskeleton for better mimicry of people.
- In "Mimic 3," Marvin survives Strickler's Disease only to become an asthmatic bubble boy stuck in his room, while the very things that ended the Stricker's epidemic are freely roaming the streets and systematically slaughtering Marvin's neighbors[4].
Another recurring irony in the "Mimic" movies (which echoes the aforementioned Darpa cyborg insect surveillance technology project) is photography. The films' protagonists use photography to identify the presence of the Judas Breed menace. This theme complements the Judas Breed's capability for deception, that the human eye cannot be trusted to identify such well-hidden threats. However, the characters' reliance on photography to find the monsters also indicates that technology is more adept at noticing environmental problems than humans. In other words, humans are so far removed from the natural world that we need technology to identify when our technology wreaks havoc with nature.
Plot details aside, the pervasive ironies in the "Mimic" series allows for commentary on several real issues:
Genetic Modification: While the "Mimic" monsters in reviews and plot summaries are referred to as "giant cockroaches," the Judas Breed are a hybrid of cockroaches, preying mantises and termites; to use real-world terminology, the Judas Breed are genetically modified organisms (GMOs), particularly one of a transgenic variety. The plot device of elaborate, inter-species genetic splicing is supposed to give plausibility to the Judas Breed's later changes in size and shape, as if to say that humanity's tampering with the genetic code of several insect breeds somehow (to use firearms terminology) took the safety off of nature's mandated order of gradual mutation and evolution.
The notion that genetic tampering could result in uncontrollable dangers is further emphasized in the first "Mimic" film when it is mentioned that the Judas Breed were supposed to self-terminate shortly after they fulfilled their purpose — thus limiting their environmental impact to only the cockroaches that served as a vector for the propagation of Strickler's Disease — but instead propagated out of control.
In the real world, the methodology of creating self-terminating GMOs is known as terminator technology, or Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURT). This method was devised for genetically modified plants, which causes second generation seeds to be sterile. GURT is used to ensure that genetically modified plants do not mix their genes with other plants, which could threaten the biodiversity of local ecosystems and cause complications between food and non-food crops.
However, where the "Mimic" films represent incompetent genetic science in the form of giant, predatory insects, concerns over genetically modified plants suggest horrors of a different sort. Critics of agricultural GMOs fear that genetically modified plants could share their terminating genes with local plant life, thus endangering the local ecosystems and other farms with infertile plant life.
Furthermore, the widespread usage of infertile, genetically modified plants and patenting them as intellectual property has infringed upon the food autonomy of smaller farms, indigenous peoples, and entire rural communities, thus making them subservient and exclusively dependent upon agro-industry for new seed.
Another twist on the relationship between the "Mimic" films and real genetic research is in the area of fertility. According to the films, when the terminator technology failed in the transgenic Judas Breed GMOs, they started reproducing at a rate so rapid that they evolved into giant, predatory horrors during the short span of three years. In contrast, for as much as genetically modified crops have been promoted as being capable producing higher yields than non-genetically modified crops, research has indicated that the opposite is true.
International Environmental Issues: In the sequels, unidentified foreign characters seek to acquire Judas Breed eggs or larvae for nefarious yet unspecified purposes. In contrast, the U.S. government is portrayed as being ready to spring into action to exterminate Judas Breed infestations whenever one is identified. This dichotomy is an ironic reflection of modern politics, where America is one of the largest polluters in the world and has a record (particularly under the current Bush administration) of under-funding or directly hindering the EPA, the NIH, the FDA, NASA, the USDA, and the CPSC in dealing with environmental and consumer safety issues such as food poisoning, bioterrorism, and global warming. The relocation of the Judas Breed to foreign countries also hints at the environmental issue of invasive species, where foreign species are brought into new environments by humans and thus ruining indigenous ecosystems.
Anti-Vaccination Fears: By intertwining the creation and existence of the Judas Breed with Strickler's Disease — as well as making children frequent victims of the giant insects in all three films — bears symbolic similarities to recent efforts by the anti-vaccination movement. In other words, scientific solutions designed to protect children from disease that in turn endangers them is the underlying premise of the both "Mimic" trilogy and anti-vaccination paranoia. In a peculiar twist, the MMR (mumps-measles-rubella) vaccine has been accused of promoting autism, while the only child who survives a close encounter with the Judas Breed in the first "Mimic" film is obviously autistic.
On a deeper level of irony, director Guillermo del Toro uses Christian imagery throughout the first film to argue that scientists "shouldn't play God" in spite of their efforts to fight a child-killing disease[5] (as if the term "Judas Breed," a name given to monsters that specialize in lethal deception, weren't enough of a hint); in contrast, some people actually use religion as a reason to either exempt their children from vaccinations or to justify denying them medical treatment.
Unfortunately, just as Del Toro does not specify in his film when science actually should intervene in the natural order to save lives (you'd think he'd be more sympathetic to the Dr. Tyler character for all of the lives she saved as the result of her work[6]), parents who refuse to immunize or give proper medical care to their children for religious reasons have not offered any remedies to when children die as the result of such beliefs.
Urbanization and Species Displacement: While the underclass are usually the victims of the urban-dwelling Judas Breed monsters, many animals have been reported raiding dumpsters in large cities. Some animals normally thought of as wild (such as raccoons and monkeys in India) have become "urban wildlife," animals that are extremely adept at adjusting their behavior to exist in large cities — essentially, the real-world Judas Breeds.
The supreme irony that permeates the "Mimic" trilogy is that the genetically-engineered bugs are much better suited to survive and thrive in filthy, disease-ridden urban environments than the people who built and live in them. In a biological sense, New York City is more of a home to the Judas Breed than its human inhabitants, suggesting that it is humanity that will be displaced from the world of its own making.
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