Cyndi Lauper once said (in the immortal 1984 single, “Time After Time”), “Caught up in circles/Confusion is nothing new.” But when it comes to the “fusion” concept in Together, the more accurate statement is, “Fusion is nothing new.” And certainly not in the sci-fi or body horror genres. For, although Together’s comparison to a little-seen movie called Better Half has been made official with a good old-fashioned lawsuit, there’s another movie that Michael Shanks’ Together bears a certain connection to (though you won’t see the creators of that film suing over one similar concept in particular). And that movie is none other than David Cronenberg’s 1986 masterpiece, The Fly. A remake of the 1958 sci-fi adaptation of George Langelaan’s short story of the same name, Cronenberg’s interpretation of the material became the best known, with Jeff Goldblum in the lead role of Seth Brundle complementing Geena Davis’ performance as Veronica “Ronnie” Quaife.
Indeed, the film instantly establishes the actors’ chemistry (and hey, they don’t even need to be married in real life like Alison Brie and Dave Franco) by commencing with their first meeting at a scientific convention, of sorts. Granted, Ronnie is no scientist; she’s only in attendance as a journalist doing her best to dig up an interesting story for Particle magazine at the request of her editor. When Seth tells her that the project he’s working on is best explained at his lab (away from prying ears), Ronnie is resistant (repulsed even—little does she know…), ready to write him off as yet another creep-o science nerd who’s just trying to use a line on her. However, his combination of having no finesse and too much earnestness when it comes to repeating that he’s working on a project that really will change the world (in addition to offering to make her a cappuccino with his Faema espresso machine) leads her to change her mind about him (“You don’t get out much, do you?”).
So it is that she drives them back to the lab in question (located in the kind of atmosphere that would make most present-day women run in fear, but since it was the 80s, his scary warehouse apartment in a random alley sets off no internal alarms). On the way there, Seth’s extreme motion sickness (“I hate vehicles”) foretells why he might be so invested in coming up with a viable way to teleport. An innovation that will change (a.k.a. upend) the entire transportation industry. When Ronnie sees the set of two telepods he’s created in demonstrative action, she knows she’s got the story of a lifetime on her hands. However, when Seth realizes she’s a journalist, he immediately regrets how candid he’s been with her about his creation.
Ronnie, however, practically runs to get to her editor’s office at Monolith Publishing. An editor named Stathis Borans (John Getz), who also happens to be Ronnie’s hyper-possessive/jealous ex-boyfriend (further emphasized by his refusal to give up the spare key to her apartment, therefore being able to randomly show up there whenever he wants). His jealousy ramps up as Ronnie’s entanglement with Seth does, though one can never be fully sure how much of Ronnie’s initial motivation in seducing him is to get the most out of the story. What’s more, Seth being devirginized (yes, reclusive scientists who don’t get out much live up to a certain stereotype in this way) by Ronnie also makes him more easily attached to her.
Almost as attached as Tim (Dave Franco) feels toward Millie (Alison Brie) after drinking some questionable cave water in Together. Indeed, like Seth, Tim has no awareness of what he’s wrought upon himself until it’s already much too late. Unlike Seth, however, Tim is in far much less denial that something very sinister is afoot (arguably even more sinister than what happens to Seth, because at least the latter can explain it through science). For it takes Seth’s fingernails falling out for him to finally believe Ronnie when she tells him she thinks something has gone seriously wrong with the teleportation. A teleportation he only decided to do without thoroughly examining the results of his first successful test subject, a baboon, because he, too, became jealous when Ronnie left his apartment/lab after getting an envelope from Stathis.
Her impromptu departure right at the moment when Seth wants to celebrate the first live creature he’s managed to teleport without killing (previously, all living objects would get their insides turned outside in the process—and it was only through fucking for the first time that Seth had his eureka! moment about how “the flesh” worked in order to instruct his computer on how to replicate it less synthetically) leaves him feeling insecure. This, combined with drinking too much champagne alone, leads him to test out the telepod himself without erring on the side of caution by sending the baboon for tests to see if he’s really okay, as he originally said he would to Ronnie. His unfortunate mood, however, leads him to get into the machine without realizing a garden-variety fly has stowed away in there with him. Thus, it isn’t his original self that gets teleported into the other telepod, but rather, a version that has fused together with the DNA of the fly, generating a human-fly hybrid version of himself that will quickly become less and less human.
In Together, the fusion that occurs is perhaps too human (characterized by an excess of human DNA, if you will), a merging of the flesh that, when applied to humans (for the unexplained phenomenon can also happen to animals as well), results in an androgynous-looking final product—if the couple in question is heterosexual. As for Seth trying to get some more human DNA back inside of him, he understands that, to offset the non-human DNA inside of him, he needs to merge with another human.
Accordingly, Seth tries to get Ronnie to, at long last, enter the telepod and fuse with him in a newly created third telepod that will yield their merged bodies (along with the child—Seth’s—she’s now carrying inside of her) once the process is complete. Or, as he unnervingly puts it, “You, me and the baby…together.” Ah, that word. Theoretically so romantic and yet entirely disturbing when applied to the fusion plotlines of The Fly and Together.
