My Cloud Atlas Explained post and my Life of Pi Explained post are both number one on Google (respectively), so I’m going to try my best to explain the movie Oblivion.
I think the best starting place for this movie is a scene that took place near the end.
Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) and a crew of six others embark on a mission to explore some massive craft in space that orbits earth. As Jack and his crew get closer, the gravity of the massive craft is so strong that it pulls them in and they cannot escape from it. Realizing this, Jack makes a last-ditch effort to disengage a portion of the ship that contains five of the seven crew members. Jack succeeds and the portion containing the five crew members floats freely into space while Jack and his commanding partner board the massive craft. The five crew members are completely unaware of all this because for some reason they are in a sort of hibernation state.
So the portion of the ship containing Jack and his commanding partner drifts into the giant object in space (known as the Tet). Once in the Tet, it is presumed that Jack and his commanding partner are killed and cloned – perhaps not in that order. The details of this and the following series of events are not exactly clear forcing us to infer these parts of the story.
The Tet unleashes havoc on earth by destroying the moon. This disrupts the tidal and tectonic balance causing massive earthquakes and tsunamis. The process decimates nearly everyone and everything. The reason the Tet did this was because it needs energy from planets like earth similar to Unicron from Transformers or Galactus from Silver Surfer. But instead of eating the planet, it sent thousands of Jack Harper clones to earth to set up giant machines that extract energy from the oceans. It also deployed drones to protect Jack Harper and these machines. The drones are also tasked with scouring the surface of earth for any remaining humans that may thwart the Tet’s plan, and are programmed to kill them on site.
Act 1
The movie starts with Jack Harper (Technician 49) and his female partner – who we eventually discover are clones of the original Jack Harper and commanding officer from 60 years ago. They have no idea they are clones because their ‘memories’ have been wiped clean. They are assigned the thankless mission of staying on earth and repairing any drones if and when necessary. They live in an über-modern house in the sky and are romantically involved.
Jack’s partner acts as his ‘eyes in the sky’ keeping him safe while he is on the surface performing his daily duties. The partner communicates with the Tet, who appears under the guise of a benevolent woman on a video screen. The Tet gives them instructions and protocols to follow, approves or denies requests, and reinforces the promise of one day returning to the Tet. They are told that once they complete their mission, they will be reunited with the other remaining humans from earth who are on board the Tet, and together they will travel to one of the moons of Saturn to establish a new colony.
Each day, Jack goes down to search and repair drones and is told to stay out of certain radiation zones. Jack tries on multiple attempts to persuade his partner to join him on the earth’s surface, but every time she vehemently declines because it is against protocol.
While repairing the drones, Jack gathers items that are left over from the past, such as books, baseballs, and records. Jack must also be on the lookout for ‘Scavs’ – scavengers who he is led to believe are the remaining aliens that destroyed earth. These Scavs watch Jack and notice that he is different than the other clones because he shows an unprecedented curiosity with these lost and forgotten objects from times past.
Act 2
One day, the Scavs jury-rig some sort of device to a tower and attract the original Jack’s aforementioned disengaged crew, who have been drifting through space in a sleep-like state for the past 60 years. Once the crew ship lands, everyone is killed by drones except one – the original Jack’s wife Julia, who was one of the crew members. Jack rescues Julia, but has no idea who she is. He experiences flashbacks of her – remnants of his original self’s memories. These vague recollections grow stronger after Jack spends the day with Julia. She informs Jack that she is in fact his wife.
Julia convinces Jack to go back to the crash site to retrieve the flight log from her ship so she’ll have a better understanding of what happened. During this operation, the Scavs capture Jack and Julia. They reveal themselves as humans (not aliens) and tell him the truth. The truth is that the Tet is not a ship filled with humans, but rather some artificial intelligence hell-bent on destroying the world for its own sake. Apparently, it needs the energy from planets like earth to keep it alive. Information like who built the Tet, where it comes from, and how it uses the earth as an energy source are never explained.
Together, Jack and Julia enter the forbidden radiation zone. Jack discovers another clone of himself (Technician 52), which confuses the hell out of them both. They fight, and Tech 49 Jack chokes Tech 52 unconscious with a sweet triangle choke. Jack 49 takes Jack 52’s ship, goes back to 52’s house, and discovers another commanding officer, who is a spitting image of his commanding partner. I skipped the part where Jack 49’s commanding partner gets killed and also that she told the Tet that Jack found a woman who had crash landed to earth. So Jack 49 asks Jack 52’s partner if she wants to visit the surface with him and she vehemently tells him no – implying that 52 is much like 49 in that they share the same curious nature that was observed by the Scavs.
Act 3
Meanwhile, back at the Scav hideout, three drones attack the Scavs. A big fight ensues and the drones eventually get defeated, but not without killing several Scavs. Jack 49 partners with the Scavs and together they devise a plan to destroy the Tet. The plan is to board the Tet and detonate a bomb akin to Luke Skywalker blowing up the Death Star. But before Jack 49 boards the Tet, he leaves Julia behind at a little house he had built by a lake. The house is filled with all the old relics that he had gathered (books, baseball, records…).
So apparently Julia was pregnant with Jack 49’s baby and lived at the house for the next three or four years. We are led to believe she had the baby by herself (now 3 or 4-years old) and fended for the two until one day, Jack 52 and the Scavs find her. It is a big happy moment because Jack 52 has been searching for her for the past three or four years. Since he shares most (if not all) of Jack 49’s memories, he is a sufficient substitute for Jack 49 (who died in the explosion on the Tet) and the original Jack (who also died on the Tet).
My overall opinion of the movie is that it was really good. It started off slow, but that made it suspenseful. While the action and dialogue was limited, it was visually stunning and made for a great sci-fi adventure tale.
Related Posts
- Interstellar Explained
- Cloud Atlas Explained
- Transcendence Explained
- Life of Pi Explained
- Looper Explained
platosacademic 
awesome explanation, I also really enjoyed the movie. Best sci-fi this year
LikeLike
I also thought what a sweet triangle choke, good call
LikeLike
Thank you for the explanation!
LikeLike
great explanation as I’m watching the movie for the second time right now
LikeLike
Just one question, how does he have any of the memories needed to know who she is? All the clones memories were erased for this exact reason.
LikeLike
@Corey – Great question. I can’t remember if they ever explained it. My guess is that the memories laid dormant in his subconscious and could therefore be retrieved given the right stimulus.
LikeLike
Will come to you whenever I need an true break down of a complicated flick. Good lookin!
LikeLike
A few questions:
At the end, Jack 49 leaves some sort of big parchment for Julia when she wakes up for her to read after he’s died. And then when a minute later in the movie a voiceover from Jack starts up, it just made sense that it was him voicing the big parchment letter he wrote to her.
I figured out it was actually Jack 52’s voice though, but that begs the question, what the hell was on the parchment and why did the filmmakers bother to show us that and show Julia scrambling to open it up the moment after she wakes up from her cryo-sleep thing?
The other thing I want to know is in said Jack 52’s voiceover, he talks about “I know he must have built a house and I needed to find it and find you (Julia),” which makes sense he’d get that idea because the “building a house in the woods” idea was a memory he had from pre-cryo, pre-cloning, basically a memory that the original Jack had, and therefore all his clones had that memory dormant. And then when Jack 52 saw his clone (Jack 49) in the desert and got woken up to the weird stuff happening and also of course saw Julia and knew she was real, it would make sense that he’d remember that and go after that stuff.
But in that voice over, Jack 52 also says “I wonder if when you look at the girl (the baby girl Julia and Jack 49 had together) if you think of me.” However, that girl did not exist pre-cryo. The original Jack (by original I mean pre-clone Jack not Jack 49) did not have that girl. Julia and Jack 49 had that girl together and thus it was a “new memory” specific to Jack 49, not Jack 52 or any of the others, so how did Jack 52 know about that girl before finding Julia? Or was it supposed to be like a voiceover Jack 52 was having on the spot when he finally found Julia, who was with the girl, in front of the house in the woods? Except even with that explanation, the “I wonder if you think of me when you look at your daughter” line literally came before Jack 52 emerged from the trees and saw Julia, so I don’t get it.
Or do these two things tie in together? Before going to bomb Tet, did Jack 49 go and find Jack 52 and tell him to go find Julia and tell him she was pregnant? And that’s how Jack 52 knew about the girl? Except Jack 49 didn’t have time to do that before defeating Tet, or know where to find Jack 52, and couldn’t afford risking getting caught doing it, plus they would have showed him doing that, plus if that had happened, Jack 49 would have told Jack 52 where to find Julia and it wouldn’t have taken three years to find her.
So I don’t understand that part outside of all the “souls” talk in the end monologue that was maybe hinting that the clones, at least the ones who had seen another clone and seen Julia and were starting to wake up, sort of shared new memories as well, not just old ones, and through the connection of their clone-souls or something Jack 52 was able to know telepathically that Jack 49 and Julia had a daughter.
Last question is, what happened to all the other Jack’s and Vickra’s? What if all the other 100 Jacks show up on Julia’s doorstep? Won’t they figure it out eventually?
LikeLiked by 3 people
Great explanation. It really brought the movie around for me. As for MattD’s questions. You are confused because you didn’t realize that the parchment wasn’t a note from Jack 42 but it was the painting that they were looking at before going into the pod. As far as the baby comments, Jack 42 was ahead 60 years technology wise. I just assumed that some sort of tech revealed that his wife got pregnant and that it was going to be a girl. That just goes to show you, pulling out doesn’t work in the future either.
LikeLike
I think the child is from the original Jack. Obviously you don’t age while hibernating in that cryo chamber thing so I think she got pregnant before she went in that thing and was with child the whole 60 years. So every clone jack would have the memory as well if knowing she was pregnant with his child.
LikeLiked by 2 people
frankjc81 says:
August 11, 2013 at 6:26 am
I think the child is from the original Jack. Obviously you don’t age while hibernating in that cryo chamber thing so I think she got pregnant before she went in that thing and was with child the whole 60 years. So every clone jack would have the memory as well if knowing she was pregnant with his child.
I like outside the box thinking, but for this to be true, you must believe that NASA would have sent a pregnant woman into space to explore Titan. Though it seems she would have been in delta sleep for the journey to Titan, and could possibly have been put back into delta sleep before her pregnancy progressed, it still seems far feched that NASA would send a pregnant woman on a mission to the outer reaches of our solar system.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for the awesome explenation! well done buddy.
LikeLike
I agree, good explanation Edward.
Some subtleties that struck me as either interesting and/or plot holes include:
– Victoria’s clone seemed to know all along about Julia being Jack’s wife but didn’t let on until Jack returned to their sky pad after Julia had told him. Therefore, was Victoria some type of spy cooperating with the Tet or was she too just caught up in the Tet’s great charade with only a few memory fragments (like Jack) to cling to? If she was entirely innocent then how did she reconcile that Jack was effectively the same age as Julia who’d been in cryostasis for 60 yrs? This leads me to conclude that the Victoria clones were working with Tet all along and the charade was for the Jack clones alone. Any opposing views?
– Once you find out what the Tet really is, it bothered me that it had so much knowledge of human culture and theology. References to ‘buying drinks’ once their tour was done and ‘I am your god’ – well ok, perhaps the Tet got to download Jack and Vicra’s brains before cloning them and hence learnt all of this about the species. Some imagination needed to bridge this hole.
– Questions have been raised about why the Tet needed to create clones in the first place and and create such an elaborate charade for the multiple Jack (and Vicra) clones, when it was clearly capable of manufacturing effective human killing drones? Couldn’t the Tet have simply created more drones whenever one got wiped out by the resistance? My answer to this is that the Tet’s perfect “clean up” agent for each world must be the inhabitant at the top of that world’s food chain (i.e. its survival had already been honed through evolution). I think this is plausible – you need mop up and maintenance on the ground regardless of how powerful your weaponry and who better to do the job than the original inhabitants.
– what does happen to the other Jack and Vicra clones in their towers around the world once the Tet was destroyed??
– Surely Jack, after wasting a few scavs on prior maintenance runs, would’ve inspected his handiwork and discovered they were actually humans? Also, if there was a supposed war with the scavs (as Jack was brainwashed to believe) then where was all the intel on the scavs habits/biology/weaknesses etc. Wouldn’t Jack, curious as his nature was, have questioned this?
– Perhaps the biggest unexplained aspect (for me) is the mysterious re-entry of the cryopod capsule to earth after 60 years? Where was it in the interim? If the premise is that the human survivors somehow pulled it down with their homing signal, then how did they even know it is existed or who was on board? There is some opinion that Morgan Freeman knew he had to get the pod to earth to make Jack 49 realise who he really was – however in that scene Morgan Freeman seems a little suprised to find out that Julia is Jack’s wife.
Anyway, great film indeed!
LikeLiked by 1 person
THANK YOU.
I watched this on the plane, and the headphones they give you make the audio sound so bad.
LikeLike
I think Vicra had a thing for Jack but Jack ignored it before being sucked into the Tet. That’s why such the strange expression when she snapped the picture
LikeLiked by 1 person
Quite surprising that the escape pod could repel tet’s tractor beam but the spacecraft couldn’t.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Didn’t Julia get shot in the stomach? If she was pregnant that whole time the baby would have died, wouldn’t it?
LikeLike
I think she got pregnant that night when she was with Jack 49 in that cottage he built. It makes sence
LikeLike
Why isnt she a day over 60
LikeLike
And the answer to all the great ?s is cuz its sci-fi thank you very much
LikeLike
Great movie, but I have to say that Jack’s technique on the triangle choke was a little loose. He wouldn’t have passed out unless he did the choke a little better. Just sayin’
LikeLike
You said,”how the earth is used as a power source is never explained” and you’re wrong. They clearly say that the fusion reactors are sucking ocean water for energy.
LikeLike
@Solidzandatsusnake – While they mention how fusion reactors are used to suck ocean water for energy, they don’t really explain how that process works. But I could be wrong, I only watched the movie once.
LikeLike
Well… It was ok, but a lot was left unexplained and just exists for the sake of the movies story…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Visually nice but far too many “mistakes” / problems:
1. Odessey pod ejected would/should have also been attracted into the tet
2. Tet technology can detect people and objects so it would sure as hell have detected the pod floating nearby in space and prob destroyed it
3. Tet failed to notice that the body Jack carried to it was not Julia which again, given teh tech was ridiculous. On the way in the Tet analysed Jacks voice and breathing, knew he was lying but still couldn’t scan the attached lifeform and know it was not Julia? Silly
4. Tet had the power to destroy an object as big as the moon but couldn’t destroy a bunch of humans cooped up in a cave?!!! Had to send drones in to do it! Just silly.
5. Jack’s station in the sky can obviously track all objects on the planet surface, including drones, other craft, scavengers etc. How come it never detected the other ships in the radiation zones?
6. In the early scenes Jack goes to teh surface to find and repair 2 drones. After fixing the 2nd one he abandons his ship in favour of his motorbike to find the 2nd. Why?? The ship would be far easier to use and spot things from above. He could have landed it rightby the sinkhole where the 2nd droid was discovered. Just silly.
7. Just before Jack 49 meets Jack 52, Jack 49 crashes his ship and uses it’s ejector seat/pod. Then Jack 52 flies his ship right over them. His ship would have picked up the crashed ship and /or escape pod signals and he would have investigated it.
8. How have the scavengers managed to continue living for 60yrs? There are no signs of any crops or vegetation.
9. Why were 5 crew of the Odessey in hibernation in the first place when the mission was just to investigate the Tet stationed just above the planet?
10. Why does the Tet need humans (cloned or otherwise) to maintain drones on the surface? The massive Tet structure is piled high with drones so it can obviously create them itself. It could just send more and more to the planet surface. The need for Jack and his partner is a complete nonsense.
11. How did the scavengers know the Odessey hibernation pod was up there in space?
12. How did the scavengers know how to signal the hibernation pod?
13. THe Tet obviously knew the hibernation pod had landed/crashed and sent drones to kill any survivors. So why didn’t it detect the hibernation pod whilst it was in space and simply destroy it there.
. . .
and so on.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So after the tet blew up is there 100s of clones on earth suddenly stranded in there houses?
LikeLike
Thanks for a great explanation. Please now do Mullholland Drive, I didn’t get that one at all.
Obviously, the child is the 49’ers kid. I think the voice in the end before #52 comes along is just a kind of ghost voice or a what if I could still talk to you voice. It’s not an actual memory of a certain person that talks to you.
Very much like the voice over in the beginning is not actually Jack, speaking to the audience explaining the situation. It’s a narrator. It can be live person, a dead person a ghost, or just even a voice. Most of the time it’s Morgan Freeman, although not in this one.
About the hundreds of Jacks and Victorias that assumably were left on the planet, do we actually know how many that were assigned? Also, most of them would arguably be at their stations and maybe they also stopped working or exploded or initialized the robotcop, killing machine, when Tet blew up.
LikeLike
Very well explained.
LikeLike
Undeniably imagine that which you said. Your favorite reason seemed to be on the net the simplest thing to take into accout of. I say to you, I definitely get irked even as other folks consider issues that they plainly don’t recognize about. You managed to hit the nail upon the top {as well as|and also|and} defined out the entire thing with no need side-effects , other folks can take a signal. Will probably be back to get more. Thanks!
LikeLike
Excellent write up of Oblivion and congrats on being top search on Google. My favorite part of Oblivion is when Jack fights Jack ( Tom Cruise ) fights himself. You must think about cloning and DNA to understand this movie completely. -Hoffa
LikeLike
Also, I don’t get why the area around the Empire State Building in the movie is mountainous and the terrain is come rely different than the current terrain – I realize there were events with war and the moon being partially destroyed, but would this really have created a different landscape entirely?
LikeLike
Hi! Do you use Twitter? I’d like to follow
you if that would be okay. I’m undoubtedly enjoying your blog and look forward to new posts.
LikeLike
While I think that I am seeing what I want to see in this movie, I can’t help but see the Parallels to the book of Genesis in this movie. You have the two people on the planet (albeit you have other clones of them) one woman and one man, you have forbidden fruit and Morgan freeman is the tempter. Here knowledge is the forbidden radiation zone. Freeman tempts him to see the truth. This time however, once the fruit of knowledge is taken, Jack rejects his “god” Tet and sets about destroying him. Again, I may be reading more into it but with the references to “god” and “another day in paradise”, I can’t help but thinking this an atheists take on genesis. If so then this movie is much more fascinating than it appears on the surface. Ill have to give it some more thought
LikeLiked by 1 person
Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) and a crew of six others embark on a mission to explore some massive craft in space that orbits earth. As Jack and his crew get closer, the gravity of the massive craft is so strong that it pulls them in and they cannot escape from it.
not thats correct at all it was a side mission to explore the tet.
the scavs needed a large nuclear weapon to destroy the tet i guess survivors of the crash was secondary lol.
the drones have a weakness akin to the death star , if i had such powerful automated weapons to hand then yes i would have them a built in weakness also just incase they ever turned traitor.
cloned and memory wiped will only go so far we all deep down inside have our original feral side our dark survivors instincts these cannot ever be wiped there hardwired and certain death/mental/catastrophic situations can bring them to the surface that or we just sucumb ie the lord of the flies/castaway/platoon/alive/ etc.
we humans are an amazing species but we also have a very self destructive nature.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for the clarification. But this was the real failing point of the film: “Since he shares most (if not all) of Jack 49’s memories, he is a sufficient substitute for Jack 49 (who died in the explosion on the Tet) and the original Jack (who also died on the Tet).”
How can a clone ever be a “substitute” for another person? Even if the memories are the “same” (and they are not, as they are not real memories in the case of a clone), this is still an entirely different person. It’s a mortal offense against the original Jack to simply replace him with a clone.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Omg great writing and explanation of this movie! You’re a good writer!
LikeLike
The most confusing part to me was: Why in the world was there one oasis of thriving plant life and fish life, and where the hell did it come from, how did Jack find it, and why was nowhere else on the planet like that?
LikeLike
After the Tet blows up wont there be like 1000 confused jack’s on earth is their fancy uber modern houses who see the explosion and wont know what is going on. Also that would be awkward if everyday a new jack finds Julia and her kid at their lake house…
LikeLike
In REPLY to the post Ace made:
“”””””Ace says:
August 24, 2013 at 11:41 pm
Visually nice but far too many “mistakes” / problems:
1. Odessey pod ejected would/should have also been attracted into the tet
2. Tet technology can detect people and objects so it would sure as hell have detected the pod floating nearby in space and prob destroyed it
3. Tet failed to notice that the body Jack carried to it was not Julia which again, given teh tech was ridiculous. On the way in the Tet analysed Jacks voice and breathing, knew he was lying but still couldn’t scan the attached lifeform and know it was not Julia? Silly
4. Tet had the power to destroy an object as big as the moon but couldn’t destroy a bunch of humans cooped up in a cave?!!! Had to send drones in to do it! Just silly.
5. Jack’s station in the sky can obviously track all objects on the planet surface, including drones, other craft, scavengers etc. How come it never detected the other ships in the radiation zones?
6. In the early scenes Jack goes to teh surface to find and repair 2 drones. After fixing the 2nd one he abandons his ship in favour of his motorbike to find the 2nd. Why?? The ship would be far easier to use and spot things from above. He could have landed it rightby the sinkhole where the 2nd droid was discovered. Just silly.
7. Just before Jack 49 meets Jack 52, Jack 49 crashes his ship and uses it’s ejector seat/pod. Then Jack 52 flies his ship right over them. His ship would have picked up the crashed ship and /or escape pod signals and he would have investigated it.
8. How have the scavengers managed to continue living for 60yrs? There are no signs of any crops or vegetation.
9. Why were 5 crew of the Odessey in hibernation in the first place when the mission was just to investigate the Tet stationed just above the planet?
10. Why does the Tet need humans (cloned or otherwise) to maintain drones on the surface? The massive Tet structure is piled high with drones so it can obviously create them itself. It could just send more and more to the planet surface. The need for Jack and his partner is a complete nonsense.
11. How did the scavengers know the Odessey hibernation pod was up there in space?
12. How did the scavengers know how to signal the hibernation pod?
13. THe Tet obviously knew the hibernation pod had landed/crashed and sent drones to kill any survivors. So why didn’t it detect the hibernation pod whilst it was in space and simply destroy it there.
. . .
and so on.””””””
My answers:
1. Possible a lot of power thrust when that part got seperated(and might be some attraction beam from Tet, that just didn’t have a lock on the rear of Odessey).
2. We could assume the pod itself was deactivated and pretty much could been seen as another bit of dead junk metal. And at the same time shielding the probably low energy signature from each “sleeping coffin” within itself.
3. Tet seemed to be needing it’s drones to “read/scan” Jack, thus it would seem Tet by itself couldn’t detect more than another lifeform/human be within the small ship.
4. Tet didn’t know until rather late in the movie that “something” was amiss at that place.
5. Probably a built in security precaution. It was a “radiation zone”, not many lifeforms could really survive there – according to the false data that Tet provided Jack with. Obviously, I’d think, it’s Jack persons all over the place, having their own area to move around and work in. And would be troublesome if all the different Jacks ran into each other. Thus the false “radiation zone”.
6. Saw the movie at the premier, so can’t be be sure. But I’d say it was because two things.
A. It was a known “scavanger place”, thus his ship would be endagered(and in extension, Jack would be as well). Thus parking at a safe distance.
B. He enjoyed to not fly for a bit, thus “working” with the ground/terrain/earth – like a training exercise for both body, mind and spirit.
7. He picked up something. And if the vital parts was destroyed(wouldn’t be unlikely after such an crash), there would be no signal of any kind. AND if Tet wasn’t in line of sight, so to speak, no monitoring could be done, both tower and the small ship became, in large, “blind” to what transpired at the surface of the planet.
8. Could be alot of different things… Mushrooms, crops and/or animal “farms” below ground. Alot of dead Jack Harper clones, super frozen. Fish from sea or/and lakes, rivers etc.
9. The Odessey was on it’s way to Titan. And just as they begun their journey, Tet showed up, and the Odessey got a “side mission”, to check out that big thingy out in space. Quite a bit to Titan, thus hibernation, I’d think.
10. The drones couldn’t repair things, nor did they seem to have any extensive AI, thus low “real” intelligence and quite poor problem solver(regarding most thing not related to killing/destroying stuff). Also the clones could maintain both the drones and themself, allowing Tet to just have a minor eye on things.
11. Telescopes? Odessey maybe sent feedback as long as it could, back to earth, including of the “letting go of the sleepers”. Or/and M. Freeman worked at a place where they got/had such intel when Tet arrived and it all begun.
12. Kinda same answer as in 11. As well as… well they had 60 years to figure stuff out. And possible, M. Freeman knew it all along, but didn’t see any real use in retrieving the “sleepers”. Not until some good use could be made of them. As in “finding the right Jack clone – and activating more of his memories and feelings belonging to those”.
13. Kinda same answer as “2.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
wow, some of these people are very confused as to what went on in this movie. Others just took it way to literally and seriously. Its a movie…
LikeLike
“wow, some of these people are very confused as to what went on in this movie. Others just took it way to literally and seriously. Its a movie…”
I find it fun to discuss things that ain’t “everyday stuff”(rather boring and happens all too often anyway). Trying to find/see logic within some fantasy or sci-fi context, it’s just for the fun of it.
Just go with it, if people enjoy talking about stuff like this, all the more power to them doing whats fun for them. Wouldn’t you say?
LikeLike
Thank you! Very helpful and now I can rest in peace without trying to work this over in my mind too much.
LikeLike
Enjoyable movie but one major flaw – no clone would share the memories of its original – a clone is based purely on the DNA of the original, which never changes from birth, no memories or learned skills are ever passed to a clone!
LikeLike
Reading everyone’s questions helped me fully understand most of everything. The baby probably came from 49 that night on the lake. The voice over heard at the end is post 52 finding Julia and gives explanation as to him searching for her. The hundreds of other jacks will not be looking for her because they never met her. You have to remember 49 left 52 tied up. Really there is an entire story of 52’s life that goes some what like this. After untying himself he probably attempted to get back to base where he was given time to think about things. The Tet blows up. Eventually he realizes that was his wife and in order to be with her he must find 49, which since they are clones he knows there is a house somewhere in 49’s area (each Jack made one in his own area). At some point he runs into the skav’s who explain what happened to 49 and the Tet. Then he eventually finds the hideout and his wife who now has a daughter and gives his voiceover.
There is a whole other story for all the other Jack’s in the world. It goes like this. Normal day being curious trying to get the ginger to come outside, have dreams of random girl, then boom. Tet blows up. The entire human race is now gone! He isn’t sure what caused this. All he knows now is that he has to survive on this planet with the ginger hoping the skav’s don’t kill them. Some will get lucky and the skav’s will come to them, others might be killed by the skav’s in self defense, and some may just kill themselves out of loss for hope lol.
The only real flaws with this movie is the fact that the Tet shouldn’t need clones after the war. It should have destroyed the rest of the odyssey or pulled it in initially. It should be able to exterminate the skav’s after 60 years. Obviously Freeman knew Jack since he called him general, which explains how he knew about the rest of the odyssey and had the know how to bring it back. But the age doesn’t make sense because that would make Freeman like 85+.
The biggest question I have though is why did the Tet want his wife? What would the Tet gain from this? And why doesn’t the Tet ask for any of the skav’s if it wanted another human? Just makes no sense really…
LikeLike
It seemed to me when the scavs picked up 49 that they’d done this all before, captured countless Jacks and failed to turn each one. 49 is different because he’s met Julia, and 52 saw her as well. All the others only knew her as a fragment of a dream, but 49 realised something was horribly wrong, and so was primed to accept the suicide mission to bomb the Tet.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Excellent break-down. I was confused about how the moon actually got destroyed and if there really was a war or not. Great movie in any case.
LikeLike
What did the girl said at the end of the movie
LikeLike
Just watched the movie on HBO. Allot of holes, but I’m wondering why Julia was in a pod with a different name when she and Jack were already married at the time of the mission? If someone has explained that already, sorry – I tried to read all the posts, but may have missed one or two explanations.
LikeLike
Thank you so much for this! I watched it on HBO last night (completely sober) and was lost almost immediately. Your explanation was even clearer than the movie spoiler site.
LikeLike
Why did they not reprogram drone 166 (Jack removed it’s power source while fighting Jack 52)? Do this and Jack 49 lives. What does Jack’s wife’s pod have a different last name on it? Why are there not teams of Jack’s hunting the Skavs?
LikeLike
Just watched the movie for the second time after seeing it in the theater and enjoyed it even more. Not mentioned above is I thought the music was absolutely perfect for the story.
LikeLike
I have one question which i can’t find an answer to… If the original Jack was married to Julia, what was he doing kissing his co-pilot when they were piloting The Odyssey?
LikeLike
Mike B… Jack & Vica didn’t kiss on the Odyssey, Vica leaned in close and Jack turned into her cheek as she was snapping the picture, Jack turned his face back & looked rather uncomfortable, as did Vica. The photo just looked like they had just kissed.. I was confused about the picture as well until I watched the movie for the second
LikeLike
Thanks for the break down. I enjoyed the movie, but had a hard time piecing the ending together with the rest of the movie.
LikeLike
Many things go unanswered in this movie because most of them are almost self explanatory and the others are left for us to decipher (if we try and choose to).
Like a book, a movie is written with a perspective in mind, and the writers of Oblivion decided to use third-person limited; which basically means we as a viewer only know as much as Jack does and nothing more. Which is why we never really see Vicka’s memories, we have to assume because of her personality and motivation to complete the Tet mission, she is only focused on that and not of her residual memories. An example of this can also be seen when she tells the “original” Jack that she is staying on the Odyssey because “it is the mission.”
And Vicka does have memories as well because she reveals that is was “always her” meaning Julia when they return to the mission house after she sees Jack 49 and Julia embrace on the Empire State Building.
However, after watching this movie several times I believe that the only unanswered flaws are:
1. Why did the Odyssey’s crypto chamber not get sucked into the Tet? – unless there is some sort of mechanism that was able to push the craft at a speed that was sufficient enough to push it out of the gravitational force of the Tet.
And lastly 2. Why was the crypto chamber not shot down or discovered? The Tet has been sitting outside of Earth for 60 years and didn’t notice this spacecraft? Lol a little silly but it is minute enough to brush it off for me.
Many people seemed to be confused about how 52 knew about Julia and get the knowledge and whereabouts of her living in the mountain house. All of the techs have made the same observations and curiosities that 49 had and this was revealed when 49 went to 52’s Vicka and asked her to come down to earth and she gave the same scalding answer as 49’s Vicka. We are then left to assume that each tech shared the same life (since they are clones) and created their own “house” of some sorts. 52 just needed to find where 49 made his. And we are then left to also assume 52 found the scavs and they revealed the same information to 52 that was told to 49.
Take my opinion as you may but I believe that this is what the movie was trying to portray lol.
LikeLike
Great analysis. Can someone explain when the switch of pods (Julia for Morgan’s character) occurs? I still can’t determine when Julia’s pod gets sent to the ‘house’. The ejection occurred 60 years ago. Does Jack drop her off before leaving earth for the TET which isn’t shown.
LikeLike
Thanks for this. Just watched the movie and struggled to understand it in a lot of ways, it was OK but a bit too slow!
LikeLike
Thought I would add my observations about 2 things that bothered me……..1. If the scavs were trying to capture Jack then why didn’t they shoot or blow up his flying ship when it was on the ground and he was out of it. (Notice he always parked about 2 blocks from whatever he was checking out). 2. Also when Jack 47 and Jack 52 encounter each other how did Vicra miss that (I know she said some excuse line when Jack 47 showed up at the station (with a unnoticed bloodied nose to boot), but wasn’t she suppose to be watching.
LikeLike
@Frank
1. For all we know, the “tractor beam” from the Tet pulls whatever it is focused on, not a wide general area. If it were pulling at the front of the spacecraft, then any other part of it especially the back part would not be pulled the same.
2. The Tet was not yet at Earth when Odyssey was diverted to investigate it. Notice how when they fade from him leaving Earth in his bubble craft to showing the Odyssey flashback, it gets dark like deep space (not light aura from Earth). And mission control woke him up with “Ramble On” after 39 days in hibernation, so they were well on their way to Titan. The Tet still had to study Jack and Victoria, travel all the way to Earth, blow up the moon, etc. so it wasn’t really concerned with the jettisoned poriton, which made its way back to Earth like Jack said to Victoria(it’s programmed to return to Earth orbit). Once in orbit, and by the time Tet really arrived, it’s just another of the 1,000s of space junk orbiting Earth – until Beech cracked the codes to bring it back down 60 years later (I know, that is a stretch but its their story).
Tet likely baited them to come check it out, knowing it was going to capture, study and clone whoever it could. I’m sure it used that same MO on other worlds it had scavenged from. What better way to subdue/kill the indigenous life on a planet, then farm it for resources than its own inhabitants who are already accustomed to its atmosphere, pressures, bacteria/viruses, mobility and such. And since machines wouldn’t like the dirt and grime anyhow, or crawling into relatively tight places to maintain drones.
LikeLike
@Marie
Jack had it in mind all along to save her life. Beech (Morgan Freeman) had said he’d give anything to be there to “see its face” when the bomb went off (when it was going to be sent via drone earlier). So Jack swapped them out: he probably talked to Beech once he closed the lid on Juia, they agreed, and he helped him fly her to the lake house and then they presumably went to the crash site and got another of the empty pods for him to get in. When we see the bubble craft fly towards orbit with the pod attached to it, that is the different one they scavenged for Beech from the crash site (remember, there would be at least two empty pods laying around the crash site, the ones Jack and Victoria had been in before wakign up 60 years ago, and the drones that fired on survivors wouldn’t touch those since they had no humans in them so should have remained intact to use).
One of the few gripes I have ironically comes from these ending scenes, which otherwise I loved to death (and they make perfect sense to me) …
Jack places the nuke bundle into Julia’s pod right next to here on the side, so how did they move it to Beech’s other pod without waking her up? Every time we have seen anyone wake up in a pod once it is opened to the air, the person inside it reacts almost immediately even if a bit groggy. Did they open and slam it back down in 5 sec?
LikeLike
@Larry
1. They were trying to convince Jack to help them, by letting him uncover what happened and the truth in a way that he would side with them and not freak out. And they wanted him to go to a neighboring “radiation zone” to run into another clone aspart of that convincing. I wouldn’t take away his transportation anyhow, since it may help them carry out the goals they want (and in fact i did, right?). So good move not blowing things up that could be … and were … useful later.
2. I’ll have to watch that tech 52 vs. 49 scene again, but wasn’t the bubble ship sort of facing away from the downed drone and where the two tech’s fought? Whenever Victoria was watching form the ship’s camera, it always seemed to be straight in front of the ship; that little observation camera didn’t seem to rotate or pan. When tech 49 ran to Julia, then realized he had to go to tech 52’s house to get his medkit, he swapped jackets and only then did he end up on camera as he got into the cockpit.
LikeLike
@ Anonymous
Julia is russian, and they met while already in the international Titan astronaut program (because really, what are the odds of first being a couple and THEN getting co-jobs like that?). Likely the scenes we see with him proposing is shortly before the Titan mission, b/c they wanted to be married before going. He even gave here the ring without a gemstone in it yet, and it STILL doesn’t have a gemstone in it when we see her show it to him again 60 years later, which further indicates they got married in a hurry to go on the mission as husband and wife. Her name on the pod is her maiden name, they probably already had made them for each person before they decided to marry before leaving for Titan.
LikeLike
@Lev
We don’t know what “clone” means to Tet. To us in 2014, cloning is at best a mechanical DNA replication of an organism. Of course, no memories carry over.
But, Tet is so advanced it may have a very different way of copying organisms. Much deeper fidelity, if you will, including brain engrams and synaptic patterns from the adult source material (Jack and Victoria). After all, all those clones we see inside Tet are fully grown to the same age as the originals at the time of capture. They speak, have adult scientific intellects, and seem to have a lot of the personality of their originals. I doubt it is a coincidence.
It even explains why you NEED a memory wipe, since there are selective memories … to … be … wiped. Each clone starts with cloned memories, and Tet selectively SUBTRACTS or inhibits the longer term memories of the past. Somehow, the Tech 49 Jack clone is bleeding memories or dream snippets through whatever wiping occurred.
I think that is another of the subtle points of the movie: Love Conquers All – even an alien deep cloning hell bent on making you forgot the love of your life.
LikeLike
@Anoymous
As to 1000s of Jacks or VIctorias suddenly left on Earth wondering what to do. I assume ALL Victorias die inside their houses in the sky, since the power to fly the bubble craft would go off. Tet has a central control system (doesn’t every sci-fi movie?), and you can see it also when it shuts off power to his bubble craft when he gets knocked into the next zone – as a failsafe to keep clones from finding out about each other.
Probably most Jacks die too, either in the house at the time the power goes off, or in-flight and crashing. Only Jacks who would happen to be on the surface when tet blows up would be left alive – and even then, they are stuck wherever they are on the ground.
Tech 52 was on the ground tied up, and Tet blew up mere hours after he fought with tech 49. So it was a matter of time as he wandered perhaps into zone 49 a bit trying to figure out what tech 49 already had, and 3 years later apparently he did, and also had found the other scavs which filled him in a lot.
LikeLike
I have to say, this is one of those movies that grows on you after the first viewing. Later viewings make much more sense, and all the subtle details emerge.
Best impact scene for me: When Beech is telling Jack about how 1000s of clones of him emerged to kill wipe out much of Earth’s population; the blank, numb look on Jack’s face as he goes about converting the drone into a bomb. It’s not every day you are told that you are responsible for killing millions if not billions of people.
Best speech: The ending poem, and what it means for what Jack is about to do in the name of honoring long dead ancestors and preserving humanity …
Then out spake brave Horatius
The Captain of the Gate:
“To every man upon this Earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods.”
LikeLike
Victoria was in love with Jack even before they were captured by the Tet (watch her behavior in that scene closely). That’s why Julia was a threat to her and she was so willing to go along with the charade.
LikeLike
thanks for the explanation its finally cleared up for me… the only thing that doesn’t sit well with me now that i get it is that i understand at the end it was a big moment for Jack 52 cause he finally finds her, but now that the Tet is gone and the drones aren’t a problem, won’t there be a shit ton of Jacks and the red head running around now and when every different Jack see’s Julia he’s going to freak even more than seeing his own clones…awkward? how are they exactly suppose to restart history with a hundred jacks that all love Julia….
LikeLike
Oh, no, it wasn’t Jack or the Scavs. It was Beauty killed the Tet.
LikeLike
@MatthewD That parchment or thing that Julia rolls out was a gift from Jack 49. It was the painting that made Julia think of home.
LikeLike
Excellent explanation. Great discussion too.
LikeLike
There have to be at least 52 Jack and Victoria clones. Both 49s are dead leaving 51 pairs. Jack 52 moves in with Julia and Vic 52 is left home alone leaving 50 pairs unaccounted for. If when the Tet blows up all power to the techs loft goes out and all power to the cool tech pod ships go out then you have a lot of Jack clones crashing and dying and Vic clones left stranded in the floating lofts. Lets say 25 Jack clones died while in flight and 25 Vic clones are left stranded in the loft, then 25 Jack clones are still out there trying to find the remaining 25 Vic clones back at home base. Eventually the remaining clones will learn the truth and would most likely stay with their partner. The widowed Vic clones could marry scavs. Only Jack 52 gets to stay with Julia.
LikeLike
For you classic rock buffs, the first song played on the stereo would have been either Whole Lotta Love or Heartbreaker from the Led Zeppelin II LP. Ramble On is the third song on the second side, But Jack started it at the beginning.
LikeLike
all great comments and don’t forget, the Vics were all constantly asked if they were an effective team, so maybe many Jacks and/or Vics were zapped by drones. LOL Jack 52 actually saw Julia and who knows what happened after he was tied up in regards to Jack 49 trying to explain what was going on. Apparently Jack 52 was ” informed ” and was able to seek out Julia as if Jack 49 didn’t exist. The remaining Jacks never met Julia and would have no intention of seeking her unless they bumped into her and Jack 52 in the future. Final thought is the movie was boring to start but then became a great Sci Fi story .. reminded me of when I was young, I would read an Issac Asimov story and envision the story in my mind deciphering what I just read thus allowing my imagination to clarify what the author ws saying.
LikeLike
Hi, It is one nice post, thank you.
LikeLike
Enjoyed studying this, very good stuff, regards . A man may learn wisdom even from a foe. by Aristophanes. ecakededbeabffea
LikeLike
Reminds me of portal a lot
LikeLike
Great explanation. I just watched the movie and I was totally confused about the ending. Thanks again.
LikeLike
Ace: “9. Why were 5 crew of the Odessey in hibernation in the first place when the mission was just to investigate the Tet stationed just above the planet?”
Their original mission was to go to Titan to do research. So the 6 people, 7 if you count Julia’s baby, were in hibernation and were Jack and Victoria’s shift relief. your other statements we red spot on. Ridiculous switching to the bike instead of taking the bird.
In reply to whoever wrote the original explanation, I think that a better analogy for the destruction of the Tet would be like when Capt. Steven Hiller and David Levinson in Independence Day blew up the mothership. The only difference would be their escape, where as Luke destroyed the Death Star from the surface, shot it(instead of blowing it up), escaped, did not pretend to be on the enemy’s side, a huge space battle going on, and there were survivor from the Death Star.
I am sure that the Tet would utilize the entire ocean, setting up dozens, if not, hundreds of the water extractors. The murder-bots assigned to kill the teams if they become ineffective would shut down. Depending on the teams’ food source, many could die of starvation, dehydration, or from harsh conditions. Or they could be fine. Its all speculation.
There is another problem. At the end of the movie, all seems fine. Humanity will rebuild itself and utilize the remaining Tet technology. Yay! A happy ending. No. Without the moon, Earth’s tilt and orbit would be thrown off and it would be impossible for it to maintain a correct orbit around the sun. It is a surprise that the Earth was not destroyed in the 60 years of the war. It is undeterminable when the catastrophe of loss of solar orbit would occur, but it would happen within a few more decades.
LikeLike
Some are all miffed at Jacks wife being allowed on the mission being pregnant but isn’t it entirely possible she became pregnant even their first “night” of the mission? Advances in electronic medical diagnosis could explain how they could know virtually immediately or within hours or days anyway if she was pregnant and be able to identify the sex! Just because some can’t see how that could possible is just standard everyday doubt what can be achieved!
LikeLike
what was Julia unwrapping at the end after waking up from her sleep,,,..some say it was the painting that was in their lil house…but then why was the painting wrapped as it was already there on the wall..or was it something else ?
LikeLike
That picture, incidentally, is a famous 1948 painting by Andrew Wyeth, titled “Christina’s World”.
LikeLike
Please forgive any typos, incorrect English or punctuation errors…in just putting it out there. While there are admittedly a lot of plot holes…strangely, they didn’t bother me very much. (Usually I nitpick) I loved this movie and I sort of liked that we don’t know everything…sometimes unanswered questions are great for the imagination! I do have a theory about the ending scene that, to me, seemed crystal clear. After Jack 49 fought Jack 52 in the desert, we don’t ever find out what happened to 52 after that. (Which is ok, I have some theories about that too…) But, I distinctly remember that 49 had to switch flight suits with 52 in order for his aircraft to “recognize” him, become operational & fly him back to the sky home base of 52. (The aircraft flew him there, or else how would he know where to go? Remember when he was in danger and 49 sent his aircraft home without him and it went straight there and landed all by itself?) I digress…this all leads back to my theory at the end that even though the flight suit says 52, it’s actually Jack 49. He states that I’m not him, but I am…or something like that. They established that fact when he (49) and Julia were talking by the lake. That even though he wasn’t the “original” Jack, the one Julia loved 60 years before…he had his memories, so in effect though he wasn’t him, he was him. (& that was when she got pregnant…which explains the tears in his eyes when he sees both of them.) I think it was just poor editing when the voiceover reveals he knows about the daughter before he sees her. I think he’d already seen her. (I think once 52 came around in the scav’s bunker, he had some of the same memories and after some explanations and realizing that 49 and Julia were together as husband and wife, agreed to be the one to detonate the bomb…anyway…just my theories…but I firmly believe it was actually 49 in the end still wearing 52’s flight suit. (oh, and they had been looking at the Wyeth painting together in the scav’s bunker which also appeared to be a library of sorts…or maybe just made up of things they had collected over time…she had said it reminded her of home. It was in the pod with her, what she had scrambled to unroll and look at and what she had hung on the stone mantel in the cabin.)
LikeLike
THE MOVIES WAS SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT BUT TOO CONFUSING. EXCELLENT EXPLANATION THOUGH. JUST A FEW QUESTIONS-
WHO IS THE PERSON SPEAKING AT THE END?(PROBABLY HALF WAS WRITTEN IN THE LETTER BY TECH 49 AND THE OTHER HALF BY TECH 52.)
AND WHEN DID SHE HAVE THAT BABY?
LikeLike
how does Jack 52 have the same memories as Jack 42?
LikeLike
Can anyone explain why “sally” would allow jack inside the tet. What was “sally” trying to accomplish. There is no gain by allowing one of her many clones inside the heart of the ship, completely vulnerable.
LikeLike
What convinced “Sally” was likely the line from Jack49 when he says that he and Julia are an effective team. He was speaking from the heart, which convinced “Sally” that he was telling the truth and not lying, given that “Sally” had just stated to Jack49 that his pulse and pressure were racing and that he had been deceiving it.
This is one of the best reviews seen on the ‘net. However, some of the q’s from the posters could be answered by segments they missed, apparently. Also, there are a few interviews given by Joe Kosinski that clears up some of the mysteries, but not all. There is also a great act-by-act explanation provided by both Kosinski and Cruise on the DVD/Blueray version.
LikeLike
Jack and Julia on the Tet because they offered Sally a more “effective” team. Jack said as much before Sally opened the inner door.
LikeLike
I watched it last night and it definitely confused the h…out of me. I have searched and read but you explanation is far the best. After reading your post, bet i will enjoy it watching the second time. Thanks.
LikeLike
For those who are wondering why jack was allowed into the Tet, it was because he said that him and Julia would be a better team instead of him and Victoria
LikeLike
Amy….. I agree. I remember Jack 49 apparently swapped tech suits with 52, therefore it was really Jack 49 at the end still wearing 52s clothing. Unless the costume designer or director made a mistake, or did not make us aware of another suit swap.
I did enjoy the film, although it was confusing and needed to be translated, and I’m still not sure I get it all. I checked out the DVD at the library. Thank you everyone for your personal input. Many great points were made.
LikeLike
My only gripe is that the author did not wright a book for the story or licensed it afterwards. All questions could have (or can) answered in a well written science-based book. The lack of details makes it even more interesting and more deserving of a book. Just one example (and I think it was explained in the movie), the movie takes place in an undetermined time after the invasion, most likely a few thousand years after and not a few decades after the clones believed. Another example: everything has limited resources, even super machines so it consumed a big part of those resources during the invasion and the destruction of the Moon. And I can go on and on… Does anybody want somebody to write the book for it? I do. I know is reversed order but I’d buy it and read it even if it is not a novel… something in the line of “The Science of Oblivion.”
LikeLike
Why does the AI have to clone the humans at all. The drones could have been sufficient for protecting the energy stations on earth and keeping the human threat away. Please inform if you are aware.
LikeLike
I came across your sight while watching Oblivion for the second time today. Great explanation thank you!
LikeLike
Thank you so much for explaining this. Watching the movie twice sort of clarified things but your page helped so much more. I love this movie and thanks to you I understand it 🙂
LikeLike
So many different and interesting views to the movie. I see many imaginative directors, producers and script writers, to be…
LikeLike
if you just watch the movie you don’t need to explain It to you. it very clearly explains itself just like most all other movies but if you buy the movie now in the store it is not the same version that was in the theaters I find that happens a lot these days. they leave out the part where they went into the ship and got sucked in and show the clones and they leave out when he shoots his crew into space to save them it’s disappointing to buy something that’s not correct
LikeLike
@Corey Costello
A few years late with response I know lol but just wanted to point out the last 2 or so minutes of movie for your question about Jack regaining his memory. Paraphrasing but he asks do our souls die even if our bodies do. Since Julia was love of his life, he kept remembering her. Where in contrast for Vicky, Jack was her love so all she wanted was already in front of her…”an effective team”! Lol or that’s how I understood, I just recently watched—loved it!
LikeLike
@Corey Costello
A few years late with response I know lol but just wanted to point out the last 2 or so minutes of movie for your question about Jack regaining his memory. Paraphrasing but he asks do our souls die even if our bodies do. Since Julia was love of his life, he kept remembering her. Where in contrast for Vicky, Jack was her love so all she wanted was already in front of her…”an effective team”! Lol or that’s how I understood, I just recently watched—loved it!
LikeLike
Shouldn’t Julia’s baby have died when she got shot in the stomach when jack 49 meets jack 52
LikeLike
I think 49 was a clone and 52 was real……
52’s memories had been erased but they can’t do with clones…..
LikeLike
i thought so, most people hate it, but hell, this is one of the coolest scifi i ever see. also OST and BGM are superior. Tet design inspire me and my game much.
LikeLike
why didn’t the drones survived tet destruction? after all they are pretty autonomous every time it goes offline due to its orbit.
LikeLike
The reason why Jack 49 becomes self aware is that at 49 days the consciousness and pineal gland begin.
LikeLike
No, no, no
Original Jack & colleague werent killed on Tet, they had memory erasure (but some crept back).
LikeLike
This is a very good movie although I wish we got more details on where exactly the tet came from. At first I was very confused about the movie but watched it a second time and understood.
LikeLike
Great explanation. I found your article here, because I needed help understanding who #52 is at the end. Thanks!!! 🙂
LikeLike
Question, if they are in the mission to check on the Tet before the Earth has been partially destroyed, why is Julia’s surname not “Harper” in the sleep thingy? Aren’t they married before the war? And how come she landed in Grid 17 when Jack 49 has existed to check on it and eventually save her? There is no reason for Tet to recreate that scenario if it has happened before they destroyed the moon. I think the timeline is off.
LikeLike
So Can someone tell me what this film was about then,,,!
LikeLiked by 1 person
What about the other Jack clones? Where are they? Are they roaming around earth?
LikeLike
Thanks for the explanation man👌
LikeLike
Well explained, thanks.
LikeLike
Would have been better if at some point the alien designer/engineers of the Tet were visually realize. This atleast would have put a biological face and personality
on our alien enemy. It would make a future part 2 more enticing as something
we could look forward to. If there was one enormous energy sucking and species killing Tet, it might seem feasible that more interstellar space faring alien races would be very willing to join forces in the annihilation of the Tet. I would be willing to check out a movie based on this
kind of good versus evil, and this evil ultimately being put down. Maybe with many different clones not mentioned in the original giving room for more actors.
LikeLike
Thanks and it’s well explained.
LikeLike
My understanding was that in the original mission Jack was on, to Titan, and it was there, and not near Earth, that they were pulled in the alien ship and ejected the pod beforehand, which would travel back to earth on limited power.
LikeLike
Thank you. That helps a lot.
LikeLike
The only thing that really makes no sense to me – at the end of the movie, why wouldn’t the Tet have just killed Jack & “Julia” (which we find out is actually MF’s character) immediately as the ship was approaching. They want to kill all the humans and have infinite Jack clones. They would have instantly shot the plane down. Super weak ending. Drone delivering the bomb makes way more sense.
LikeLike
Terribly confusing synopsis
LikeLike
Wow..thank you so much! Your explanation was excellent. Some of it came together for me at the end but your summary totally helped with the missing pieces.
LikeLike
Your explanation was excellent, but for one detail: there IS a mention on how the Tet harvests energy, supposedly for bringing humanity to Titan; by extracting Water for its fusion fuel, namely deuterium. Of course it could be extracted and leave 99.9% of the water, but this would take most of the drama out. Plus it would probably be easier to mine deuterium from space. This said, as a sci-fi lover, i find this a great movie, for the plot, for special effects, and for acting.
LikeLike
I love this movie!! However I think Julia is pregnant with the original Jack’s child and that she was in hibernation sleep during the early weeks and did/didn’t know.
LikeLike
Good review, thanks. I had missed the part where the original Jack had released the sleeping crew mates, so I was confused about where they came from.
LikeLike
Another sexist movie where the women just sit around and wait.
LikeLike
Another sexist movie where the women just sit around and wait.
LikeLike
I know you forgot, but Jack 49 and Jack 52’s partners are named Vika 49 and Vika 52.
LikeLike
Ha thank you 🙂 very much. Just watched the film and was like whaaaaat. .
LikeLike
What happened to other Jack/Victoria pairs 1-51 after the Tet blew up? maybe even all the way to 53-200 pairs???
LikeLike
I get lost easily during movies and this explanation was so helpful in allowing me to understand everything. Thank you!
LikeLike
Great movie I thought, and fantastic explanation
LikeLike