Nicolas Cage (domestic terrorist Castor Troy) lies on a hospital bed, in a medically induced coma. John Travolta (FBI agent Sean Archer) stands nearby, contemplating something few people have: Should I put Nicolas Cage’s face… on my face?
Face/Off, released 20 years ago this week, is a John Woo-directed action film in which Travolta is given Cage’s face—so he can pretend to to be Cage while actually foiling a bomb plot—and Cage wakes up from his coma to return the favor, forcing surgeons to give him Travolta’s face. What happens next is a tour de force of prison fights, gun battles, and explosions, underpinned (if you’re feeling generous) by philosophical questions of identity and personhood.
Despite the movie’s arguably medical premise, the science behind Face/Off is cursory at best, sort of like how dinosaurs are brought back from extinction in Jurassic Park (“frog DNA!”) or how Arnold Schwarzenegger gets pregnant in Junior (a miracle drug called “Expectane” 🙄). There’s a “morphogenetic template” that removes faces and puts on other faces, plus a larynx microchip that makes it easy to sound like someone else. Hair is trimmed in some places, added in others; love handles are sucked out. But how Sean Archer can physically pass for Castor Troy, and vice versa—to each other’s families and longtime colleagues, no less—is mostly glossed over. Suspension of disbelief is a prerequisite for any good Face/Off viewing.
And yet. The science team at Quartz wondered whether the passage of two decades has made made some of the movie more fact than fiction. To assess this, we watched Face/Off together in the most 2017 of ways—streaming on separate devices while live-commenting in Slack $WORK. Here is a version of that Slack chat, edited for clarity and length, and annotated with GIFs and research into the veracity of all that delicious “science.”
elijah [12:12 PM]
corinne [12:13 PM]
foley [12:13 PM]
zoe_schlanger [12:14 PM]
elijah [12:15 PM]
kira [12:15 PM]
ephrat [12:15 PM]
corinne [12:25 PM]
foley [12:26 PM]
kira [12:27 PM]
zoe_schlanger [12:29 PM]
elijah [12:30 PM]
zoe_schlanger [12:30 PM]
elijah [12:31 PM]
kira [12:37 PM]
foley [12:37 PM]
kira [12:38 PM]
zoe_schlanger [12:38 PM]
corinne [12:38 PM]
kira [12:38 PM]
kira [12:46 PM]
elijah [12:46 PM]
foley [12:47 PM]
kira [12:47 PM]
kira [12:48 PM]
ephrat [12:48 PM]
elijah [12:49 PM]
kira [12:50 PM]
foley [12:52 PM]
ephrat [12:53 PM]
zoe_schlanger [12:53 PM]
ephrat [12:54 PM]
kira [12:55 PM]
kira [12:58 PM]
foley [12:59 PM]
zoe_schlanger [1:00 PM]
foley [1:00 PM]
corinne [1:01 PM]
elijah [1:01 PM]
ephrat [1:02 PM]
kira [1:02 PM]
corinne [1:02 PM]
elijah [1:02 PM]
kira [1:02 PM]
corinne [1:02 PM]
foley [1:02 PM]
zoe_schlanger [1:02 PM]
zoe_schlanger [1:03 PM]
elijah [1:03 PM]
zoe_schlanger [1:04 PM]
kira [1:13 PM]
corinne [1:16 PM]
elijah [1:18 PM]
corinne [1:19 PM]
they make clear that this family doesn’t communicate much, but it should raise alarm bells that suddenly he is a completely different person
kira [1:19 PM]
corinne [1:19 PM]
elijah [1:19 PM]
kira [1:19 PM]
corinne [1:20 PM]
ephrat [1:20 PM]
foley [1:20 PM]
elijah [1:20 PM]
kira [1:20 PM]
elijah [1:21 PM]
zoe_schlanger [1:22 PM]
kira [1:26 PM]
zoe_schlanger [1:29 PM]
kira [1:29 PM]
zoe_schlanger [1:32 PM]
kira [1:32 PM]
zoe_schlanger [1:32 PM]
kira [1:33 PM]
zoe_schlanger [1:35 PM]
elijah [1:50 PM]
corinne [1:50 PM]
foley [1:55 PM]
corinne [2:00 PM]
elijah [2:00 PM]
kira [2:01 PM]
elijah [2:01 PM]
kira [2:14 PM]
foley [2:15 PM]
ephrat [2:17 PM]
zoe_schlanger [2:17 PM]
elijah [2:18 PM]
foley [2:22 PM]
kira [2:22 PM]
elijah [2:22 PM]
corinne [2:22 PM]
elijah [2:23 PM]
kira [2:23 PM]
ephrat [2:23 PM]
foley [2:24 PM]
kira [2:24 PM]
ephrat [2:25 PM]
corinne [2:25 PM]
foley [2:25 PM]
elijah [2:26 PM]
corinne [2:26 PM]
ephrat [2:26 PM]
foley [2:26 PM]
kira [2:26 PM]
ephrat [2:26 PM]
kira [2:26 PM]
zoe_schlanger [2:26 PM]
ephrat [2:26 PM]
kira [2:26 PM]
