Oblivion

a) I think the line "other movies have done it better" can be applied in about 150 different places in this.

b) There won't be any more cerebral sci-fi movies. It all needs to be action shlock with aliens as a backdrop. And there were no aliens! (d)

c) I think it opens normally but she just locked it for that dumb jealousy scene. Victoria's character was made of cardboard...

e) Oh yeah, I remember rolling my eyes when that happened.

f) Everything about Scav designs were dumb and made no sense.

g) Yep, they needed a "big dumb action scene" to make this movie a hit.

h) Cause he knew about the body armor? Though the body armor doesn't really make a difference at all through the rest of the movie. Don't you know, the most expedient and safest way of knocking out a protagonist is to beat them with the pistol butt or rifle stock?

i) Yeah, everything about that place smacked of weird and impractical. How did he get all that crap out there without strapping it to his ship?

j) Yeah it was described recently by the folks at Red Letter Media as a combination of about 26 movies. I'm okay with taking things other movies have done and doing them better. DOING THEM BETTER.

k) Dumb sells. The movie-going public don't want anything that will challenge them emotionally or intellectually. They want everything to be the same so they don't have to think. My friends are like that. Don't forget about the second wave of drones looming ominously just to fall out of the sky when the hero sacrifices himself. It adds extra heroic-ness.

i) In a lot of ways, movies aren't flowing expressions of a writer's mind but a collections of movie tropes all collected and put together in a clever order. Everything possible has been done before, and in some ways being too original can suck you out of the movie as well. Things don't seem quite right when the hero's rival doesn't offer the hero the hand of acceptance after a particularly hard-fought battle together. Show me a movie with nothing we've ever seen before, and I'll show you something truly alien.

Prometheus, eh? I might head over there and tear that movie a new one too, it'll be MUCH easier than this one. :P

May 2 - 07:49 PM

Oscar Galvan

Very interesting points of view here. I try to not let the flaws of the science and story ruin my enjoyment of the movie. I liked it. Especially the music too.
However, as an engineer, I overanalyze things all the time. Bane of my existence. But I think a few things can be justified about the inconsistencies of the movie.

1. Someone pointed out that the gravity of the moon wouldn't be affected because all the mass is still there. That isn't true though. Think about it. The moon's mass has been dispersed into a much, much larger volume with maybe less than half of it remaining in it's original relative position. Gravity's strength is not determined by it's total mass, but by it's DENSITY. If you were to compress the Earth to the size of a marble, it would become a black hole. This thought experiment proves that density is what manages gravity's effects. After all, gravity pulls you to the CENTER of mass right? If the Earth is less dense then it's more voluminous and so you'd be further away from the center so the gravity would be weaker. If it were more dense, the surface would be closer to the center and so gravity would be much stronger.

If you disperse the moon's mass the way it was in the movie, you can bet there would be some serious repercussions because the usual wobble the moon causes on the Earth to keep it stable would be severely altered. The moon is a big reason the Earth remains stable on it's axis as well. It is a very delicate balance. The representation of repercussions of the dispersal of the moon in the movie was slightly exaggerated at worst.

2. I agree with this one, but the plot basically is the reason for this. Plot mechanics and suspension of disbelief ;-)

3. I partially agree with you here. They could have said hi and show they are human, but the clones may have been preprogrammed with certain stigmas and ideologies and may have initially deduced the presentation of their humanity as a trick, until he found out on his own with the presence of his wife. Plus, with the masks off in the archive room/cave the droid would have made quick work of them anyway. The drones distinguishes clones, as in Jack and Victoria.

4. To revealing. Plot mechanic.

5. Probably a reaction to his incomplete recognition of his own wife. Plus, she may have sensed Victoria's nonchalant advances toward Jack back at the ship 60 years before.

6. Lol. Will have to watch out for that next time I see it.

In reference to some of the comments regarding the irradiating of the Earth:
I don't think the Earth was irradiated at all. I think the "radiation" zones were just a construct to keep the clones in check and prevent them from running into each other in the other "sectors". All the radiation zones were just different zones where different sets of the same clones existed. When our Jack decided "screw that" and went into the radiation zone, he found out it was all crap and ran into himself.

It would also appear that the aliens were harvesting water from the planet as well. The whole movie seemed to be devoid of water so this may be part of what they were harvesting. Liquid water is surprisingly uncommon in our Universe so that may be another reason for invasion. I also figured hydrogen from the water, but then again, hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe so it is not likely. Perhaps they were mining the moon for Helium-3 to fuel fusion reactors? And got REALLY carried away? Or maybe a show of force, who knows. Maybe the water was needed for a crazy cooling system for the machines? Seems unlikely though since space is really cold already. I'm rambling. End of justification for this aspect of the movie.

The recovered black box... I hadn't thought of that conundrum. It was in the jettisoned part of the ship and somehow recorded the voice back in the cockpit. I assume it may have been recording through simple radio wave transmission and so would have maintained contact with no issues for a while, until the cockpit entered the Tet and blocked all transmissions. Wouldn't be too hard for something that massive and metallic.

My justification for the "tractor" beam that grabs the ship with Jack and Victoria with the passengers is that the tractor beam was grabbing onto an essentially single solid mass. When the rear was jettisoned, the masses split in two and the front is closer. Additionally, the back of the cockpit is now a surface from which to propel the jettisoned portion, thereby not affecting the split portion. The jettisoned part must have been travelling REALLY slow to take 60 years to make it back to Earth, but it's plausible assuming the rest of the science in the movie makes sense.

At the end of the day, it's movie. I madly try to justify everything so that my suspension of disbelief stays intact, but then it's back to the real world. Despite the reviews, I liked the movie quite a bit. And the music was phenomenal.

Apr 29 - 11:02 AM

1) Wow, that's some great info! I didn't know that about density. I have heard that if the moon vanished the earth would fall off its axis and spin around, really bad stuff. Though it looks for the purpose of the movie that hasn't happened.

3) The drones were barely trained not to shoot Jack! They made quick work of survivors, masks or no masks. It might have been an indoctrination thing, or a subliminal plant. That's what I'd do if I had an army of brainwashed clones. But then the Tet's a dumbass and didn't think to do that.

4) The movie obscured a lot of essential information on the grounds that it would lay bare their poorly contrived plot twists.

5) So... love triangle? That would have been a great angle to peruse. Too bad it didn't happen...

Yeah, I just got done posting to someone below just how boneheaded the concept of these... holographic walls of radiation death were. Radiation does not work that way!

The way they ham-handedly explained it, the moon thing was an 'attack', but hey it may have just been for the Helium-3. What about Deuterium? Someone mentioned that too. Aliens were taking our water in Half Life 2, for no apparent reason. Fear of losing our water is a trope I guess.

Yeah, I think the black box was a radio too.

Haha, I had a laugh already about how apparently the unseen alien tractor beam apparently can't lock onto two things at once. Some aliens. But it might not have taken 60 years to get back, it might have been in orbit for a while already with no one left to bring it back down. It just took that long for Morgan Freeman to decrypt NASA's codes.

It's hard to suspend disbelief when everything is dumb and makes no sense. :P

May 2 - 07:34 PM

Diego Tutweiller

1) Since we don't really know what the aliens were after (some kind of mineral that powers their ship...?), they must have mined out the Moon for any natural resources. Maybe they use some kind of power that we don't

2) Because Plotline.

3) They didn't want Tom Cruise to report them to the Tet. Also, they didn't want Tom Cruise himself knowing because then the Tet might kill all the clones to ensure that they don't know too much, and Earth would be lost.

4) I think the bigger question was... WHY WAS SHE RUSSIAN?

5) She must have known that Tom Cruise wasn't himself because he didn't recognize her.

6) Hmm... didn't notice that. Gotta watch it again.

Apr 28 - 06:33 PM

3) But... they report every Scav sighting to the Tet. Scav = Human. He already does that. The whole "he might do something stupid and get himself killed" angle holds a little more water. But his death doesn't mean the doom of earth. Every other Jack was having these feelings, the same dreams, they were all losing their indoctrination. And on top if it all, Morgan Freeman knew about them! "If I told you, you'd say I was crazy." So this particular Jack was nothing special, any one of them could be influenced. Sorta makes his 'savior' role a little less special, eh? And apparently the only thing the Tet could do to a fully aware jack was send drones to kill him, which it did, and failed.

4) Hrm, maybe the mission to Titan was an international effort?

5) He was just standing there looking at her. She clammed up at moment one. He could have just been brooding. She didn't even let on that she KNEW him, what possible purpose what that serve?

6) Don't go watch it again on my account. :P

May 2 - 07:19 PM

Since Jack knew how to read, couldn't the Scavs just write messages around and lure JAck to them with a beacon from a drone? He'll start thinking about who could have written them...or direct him to another tower, for example 52 so that he could discover the Tet's tricks..

The drones when attacking the scavs disintegrate them instantly EXCEPT for Julia who has ample time to stay alive and EXCEPT Morgan freeman too...instead of being disintegrated like others, the drones just wound him...ain't life great?

OK...remember when Jack repaired the drone with some chewing gum???he's got 4 drones after the attack on the base...can't he try to fix those with another chewing gum?

Doesn't the bubble jet have any kind of automatic piloting where it can go directly to the Tet?

The plan is to put Julia in her life booth with the bomb and....WHAT??? in her life booth? Which life booth? The one that was left on tower 49 when Jack brought her there?? No? Then this booth must be a new one then...(and if you watch closely when it reopens in teh safe heaven it says HARPER on it...when did a booth with the name was made or found???).

Morgan freeman hides in another of Julia's life booth...WAIT...how many of those did they have in hiding? Others were destroyed during the attack...they couldn't have any of those

And Julia was made to sleep with the bomb...if the bomb was substituted for the painting, she would have woken up as it happened when Jack opened the booth...so when was the switch made?

During the flahback, the Tet drags the WHOLE spaceship with boosters on max and still Cruise can't get out of its attraction. But he just jettisons three quarters of the Odyssey with no special rockets or turbo and it easily and quietly get out of the Tet's attraction? And why didn't Vika and Jack just jump in the jettisonned shuttle and manually eject the piloting cabin???

The recovered black box was inside the jettisonned part of the spaceship...how could it have recorded the speech in the seperated piloting cabin?

What is the thing about all the drones just falling dead after the Tet is destroyed? Weren't they supposed to be working autonomously without any kind of communication from the Tet when it was on the other side of the Earth? Why can't it be the same once the Tet is destroyed? It's the same as being without communications, right?

There you go, have fun!

Sorry for my english, it's not my first language

Apr 28 - 12:58 PM

Guns: Even with all the lights and shit, Jack's guns apparently still fire standard bullets and not the cool vaporizing stuff the drones use. Why again did the Tet use Jacks and not drones to invade?

Chewing gum is Magic.

Autopilot: Dunno.

Secret Stasis Pods: I was confused about this too. Where did the other pod come from? After thinking about it I figured it out. Jack would have had to have a pod on-board the NASA ship too, along with Victoria. It's a long way to Titan. There were probably 2 unused pods in that crash then. But the movie couldn't show them to us for risk of giving away... everything! So instead it leaves us confused by not giving us enough info.

Switcheroo: Here's how it happened. He stuffed Julia into the stasis pod with the bomb. Then he took her to his cabin and left her there, opening the pod just long enough to take out the bomb and quickly closed it again. Then he went to the crash site and picked up HIS old pod, then took that pod back to Morgan Freeman (who wonders why he's coming back), offers a glorious death (which Freeman apparently accepts), then stuffs him in the pod and takes that to the Tet. Easy, no?

Tractor beams: Don't you know? Tractor beams can only lock onto SINGLE OBJECTS. Two objects confound them and can't be locked onto at the same time. It's standard Sci-Fi, durr. :P

Why didn't they climb into the back and... then jettison the front? .... fuck. Wow, that's a big one.

Recorder: I'm guessing it was recording the radio chatter until interference cut it off.

Absolute victory: Another standard movie trope. Defeating the big-bad instantly defeats everything else. Works with the borg, works with armies. Kill the commander and everything under their command either drops dead or surrenders immediately. The drones are designed that if their mothership is destroyed they will instantly shut down in respect for the victorious humans. It's essential for a 'feel good' ending for the victory to be absolute.

Thanks for the points! I understood you perfectly.

May 2 - 07:10 PM

Guns: that's the major prob with all sci-fi movies...they got technology to travel through space to different galaxies (Aliens, Starship Troopers for ex) yet still use regular bullets shooting guns...

Autopilot: it sure has the emergency return to the tower but nothing is said about any autopilot function to the Tet

Pods: The NASA pods Jack and Vika had were jettisonned along with the others (julia etc). They were simply cloned and sent to earth. I highly doubt that they had any type of additional pods just on standby in the towers. And if you look carefully at the moment when Julia's pod opens up in the end, there is HARPER written on it. I should try to look at the one Morgan Freeman comes out of...

Switcheroo: nah. Once closed the pods get in a kind of pressurised stasis mode. Just look at when he opened Julia's pod in the first time, she woke up immediately. She would have done the same.

Tractor beams: only single objects? Guess they were thinking of Star Wars Ep IV when devising the tractor beam plot...the escape pod with R2D2 and C3PO was jettisonned but was not attracted, just like in Oblivion.

As you said, the tractor beam was locked on the cockpit...Jack and Vika could have gone into the big part with the pods, and launched/seperate the two sections...

Recorder: nah

Absolute victory: It's good for an easy and quick ending, just like in the Avengers...as for Oblivion, the Tet had absolutely no communication with the drones at night, nothing went or came through. It's the same as the Tet not being there. The drones were still on auto mode all by themselves, so even with the Tet destroyed, they should have been still operational

May 4 - 09:44 AM

Here is what I retrieved from the movie:

How is the harvesting of the ocean water becomes energy and more importantly, how is it even transferred to the Tet? Bluetooth connection? AA batteries?

Ok...story says that the whole earth is contaminated with radiations...but even Jack (without knowing if it's really true or not) just walks around wearing only a jacket and no kind of protection (and no it's not a non irradiated area because he picked the flowers in the 'safe' region but they were thrown away by Vika because of radiations...

Ok...the drones were shot down during night but no kind of impact was seen? And you canjust repair those uber technological war weapons with some chewing gum? WTH? - and those 'baddies' just shot down the drones and didn't even tried to salvage any part from them?

On the way to the second drone which 'one cannot locate' he just takes his bike and all of a sudden the beacon homes towards the location of the drone?

The bike was stolen???? What the hell??? Vika had several hundreds of cameras all over the place to follow Jack's whereabouts and where is it those 'baddies' take the bike to? The library was just in the middle of nowhere with no structure to hide it...Jack would at least see it being driven away but none of that! - Oh and it was stolen during the day!!! Jack didn't find it strange that the Scavs stole it during the day when they were not supposed to be out???

OK...big transparent outside pool on radioactive planet...nothing strange here?

Did the Scavs just swim to the seawater extractor and drop the bomb around it? or were they gone by kayak? What were the drones doing? sleeping? out on a picnic?

The radioactive zone is shown by a line? What if they step a meter inside the 'radioactive zone' they die? Lots of people must have had fun in Tchernobyl methinks!

Jack built a whole home with brick chimney without Vika finding it strange all his disappeareances? 'oh hi Jack, you have been out of the radar for the past 10 hours&...but i'll say nothing because you're Tom Cruise...

The Scavs just sent a message out of earth and the best thing Jack finds in doing is go to sleep near his 'home'?

Jack leaves his 'home' to investigate the crash landing = it's day. He gets there it's pitch dark...how long did the trip take in his super quick bubble jet???

How convenient is it that Jack's bubble jet has the exact perfect place to fix in one of those survivor's booth...

Julia says 'jack' when she wakes up and no one tries to ask how is it that she knows his name...Tom cruise just takes a strange look at Vika ans then nothing, just cut to the next scene...

Jack leaves the base with Julia at dawn and get to the wreckage site in a super dark environment!...woudl it be so hard to make a good timeline work?

As from the moment Morgan Freeman's character removed his helmet, no one will ever ever ever put a helmet back again...wouldn't have it been easier for the Scavs to just remove their masks in the first encounters with Jack so that he could start realising what's happening first? without him trying to kill them off! Would have been easier!!

The drone looking for Jack can detect his ADN and that of a foreign person (in red line) from tens of meters high but it can't even detect the ADN traces of two soldiers hidden behind a rock at the entrance of the secret base???

Julia is telling Jack how everything happened during the mission with the Tet being discovered and the mission strayed to go investigate......HOW THE HELL could she know that if she was in hyper sleep or delta sleep or whatever sleep she was in??? She knew nothing of it since she thought she was still going for Titan and that she needed the black box to discover what happened!

The drone chase.....didn't they get the memo to how to use those lasers? Since when do attack drones just bump into objects hoping to make they drift from their course?

Jack 49 came back from Tower 52 with the first aid kit, not noticing that Jack 52 was gone? And Jack 52, after seeing Julia and being amazed at finding the girl he dreams about just vanishes like that without asking any question or investigating???

Humanity couldn't win against a huge army of Tom Cruise???????????? Was he too short for human bullets to hit him???? What were the drones for? Just guard the towers and stuff?

And the clone army....didn't the Jacks on seeing other Jacks around them start thinking that something was wrong????? Was it so normal for someone too have millions of clones???

How did the Jacks not know that the Scavs were humans? I doubt that all human soldiers fighting agains the JAcks all had those silly black helmets on...

So COOL...Morgan freeman can read minds...he delivers the speech exactly the same as the random page Cruise opened the book back at the tower

Since Jack knew how to read, couldn't the Scavs just write messages around and lure JAck to them with a beacon from a drone? He'll st

Apr 28 - 12:51 PM

Transference: Magic. Or maybe they had great big power cells on-board and needed to be manually brought up to the Tet every five years.

Radiation: Radiation was a lie. There was none. Or if there was, the Tet had ways of scrubbing it away... with micromachines or something. The Japanese Miracle. :P

Drones: They do shoot them down and salvage them. I think the one he gum'd was disabled just to watch him while he fixed it. They were using salvaged power cells to destroy the water things and make the bomb.

Beacon: Might have short-range. But it didn't stop him from just flying low. Excuse for motorbike scene.

Stolen Bike: True, the Tet would have seen it, and the drone would have wrecked the shit of whoever stole it. Where did they take it? How? It was in the middle of a desert, the drone would have seen them.

Pool: Hey! Don't talk shit about the transparent pool! That was cool. :3

Water transport: They held their breath, used scuba tanks... I duno, they did it somehow. The drones never check under the water? I unno.

Radiation line: Yeah, it's like in a multiplayer game, you'll die within 10 seconds if you cross out of bounds. Jack shat bricks when he thought he was going to cross a couple meters over the imaginary death-line in his sealed, shielded fighter. Radiation sticks to the ground, it wouldn't have touched him if he just flew a couple hundred feet up. He never ONCE decided to fly above the radiation zone to see what was up outside his area? He can fly in SPACE with that ship of his!

The house that Jack built: Not to mention collecting VERY LARGE items to put into his house. "Hey hon, why do you have a stove strapped to your ship-ah nevermind."

Re-entry: My memory is fuzzy there. Didn't he immediately call Victoria and tell her about it? I thought he was supposed to be out of contact, that would mean she could contact his ship and know where he is.

Long trip: No idea, couldn't be far if it was still within his 'area'.

Pod-slot: Yeah, I was wondering where he was going to strap that pod, I guess it has some sort of magnetic thingy on the tail.

The reunion: Man... everything is wrong with that scene.

More daytime issues: Time and space are a mystery to me. @_@

Scav masks: Yep, everything about Scavs is wrong too, wrong and stupid.

DNA tracking: Yep, another McGuffin device that's used once and never used again, even when it would be a great help.

Change of Mission: I'm guessing that before they got started the mission changed. Got their briefing, went into sleep.

Drone shots: Considering how deadly accurate they are later on in the movie, yep. Ram him, that'll work.

Vanishing Jack: Yeah I too found it absurd that Jack 52 up and vanished in the middle of a friggin desert with a dying woman nearby. Where did he go and why? I would have hidden in the sand and just jumped back into my ship when 49 was tending to Julia. "So long suckers!"

Powerful Jack: He used the power of Scientology! I duno, why would you use a bunch of this guy to conquer the world when you had hordes of brutally efficient drones that could vaporize people instantly.

Warrior Jacks: They mention that the initial army of Jack clones had no humanity or personality, just mindless killers. God that's so uninspired...

Brainless Jacks: Every new Jack has no memory and is indoctrinated to think he had his memory wiped. The Jack invaders at the beginning were designed to kill humans. My question is why did the Tet need to give him more personality to be able to function as an engineer?

Morgan Freeman Knows All.

Notes: Yep, you hit on the same thing I figured out.

May 2 - 06:52 PM

Pod slot: the pods were attached, you can see straps holding them onto the bubble ship's tail

Change of mission: There's no change of mission. Here's how it went. They depart from Earth, everyone in hyper sleep, during the trip Tet is encountered, Nasa or the ship itself wakes up Jack and Vika (looks like contact with an alien life form is not important enough to wake them all), the others are still sleeping, Jack jettisons them. 60 years later Julia wakes up and relates everything which happened with the Tet encounter and Jack being woken up while all this time she was alseep... yeah right.

Warrior Jacks: not sure. mindless killers or not, out of the probable millions who came out of the Tet's invasion force, there must have existed the probability of having one or two who would have found it strange to find other JAcks around

Brainless Jacks: just thought...what if Jack 49 was the real original jack? lol...nah, just joking. The question you asked yourself just proved the above point.

May 4 - 09:55 AM

I like how the 'Tet' is able to detect a life form on the bubble ship, yet not realize that it's not a woman. Also, it just conveniently ignores that the bubble ship Jack 49 is in when flying to the 'Tet' is actually Jack 52's bubble ship.

Apr 28 - 12:18 PM

Damn, good catches. Also, drones can sniff out individual genetic codes! GENETIC CODES. They tracked him and Julia to the rebel compound thusly. Yet they didn't bother so much as sniffing his ship at the end to make sure it WAS Julia.

May 2 - 06:26 PM

It's not the drones fault that the writers didn't notice these plot holes. :P

May 4 - 05:43 PM

Josh Gara

They didn't blow up the planet itself because they needed to harvest it. They landed, and we used nukes.

Apr 25 - 12:07 PM

We're not actually sure if humans used nukes. That's part of the fake back story Jack was told. Unless, of course, Beech said this at some point, but I don't remember any real human's explaining much about what REALLY happened to Earth.

Apr 27 - 10:40 PM

Josh Gara

Yeah, she recognized Jack and then fell back asleep. However, while still groggy, she was told she was asleep for 60 years. So it's possible at that point she decided to keep her mouth shut. Also, who was Morgan Freeman referring to when he said "She thinks he's different."

Apr 25 - 12:06 PM

Andrew Kafoury

Tet was involved in a misinformation campaign. It ruled by making chaos and confusion. Bombing anyone who didn't participate in its game. Tet was, obviously, not perfect, too. It made mistakes.

Apr 25 - 05:27 AM

Haha. Seriously though, some good points brought up.

1) I thought the same thing. "Cool, they blew up the moon to create Earthquakes and tsunamis. That's a rather easy way to hurl humans into chaos... wait, they can blow up a moon but can't use that same technology/firepower to destroy humans? Hmm..."

I just kind of had to ignore it and make excuses for the movie. Also, I doubt the moon being blown up the way we saw would do much to the Earth. The explosion distributed the moon into smaller bits spread about a larger volume. The gravitational effects wouldn't be very much, so you're right, I doubt the tidal forces would be much different than now.

2) We don't know if the Tet is full of drones or not. It probably made only as many as it needed to preserve supplies/energy with a few extra for when things go wrong.

3) They're not sure how Jack will react. He used to be programmed to kill humans at one point, remember? The remaining humans might not know if he's changed or not. They'd be taking a gamble. It's the reason they lock him up when they capture him. I'm assuming a few things here. It'd be nice if there were parts in the movie that addressed this.

4) Can't you get married and have both people keep their last name?

5) Yeah, this is... just rather lazy/bad writing. I think her first reaction would be to hug her husband [or who she thinks is her husband], then freak the fuck out when she realizes there was an alien invasion, most humans died, 60 years have passed, her husband hasn't aged much somehow, that he's with the other crew member, that he doesn't seem to fully remember who she is, etc. I'm pretty sure she'd divulge the classified information to them that very night and the movie would take a much different turn depending on which of the characters believed her... Jack probably would but Victoria would freak out and probably end up getting them all killed in the morning by contacting the Tet.

Aha. Not sure what else I could talk about.

Apr 24 - 08:27 PM

Hey thanks for the replies!

1) Rob: IIRC, Morgan Freeman explained that the moon was destroyed to throw off the tidal system of earth and weaken us before the invasion of the Jacks. And collateral damage?? What, the Tet missed the earth with one of its shots and hit the moon instead? I don't think mankind has the firepower to even put a dent in the moon.

2) Mitch: I could swear I saw at the end of the movie when Jack entered the Tet for the last time, the interior of the ship was lined with hundreds if not thousands of drones. It makes sense since you can't take over an entire planet with nothing but infantry, you need air superiority. (even though Freeman didn't mention the drones being part of the initial attack force)

So with only two weeks left on their 'mission', presumably before being liquidated and replaced with new copies, what reason would there be NOT to drop all the pretenses and simply send down a few hundred drones when one of the 'mission critical' water converters got bombed. This is how the Tet is sucking our world dry, they're IMPORTANT. Just pop these two clones, scour the entire area with hundreds of drones to find the rebel base and annihilate them before sending a fresh couple.

3) Mitch: Oh right, they wouldn't know if he'd listen or just yell and shoot his gun at them. Boy I'm glad they handled it the way they did. :P

Rob: The suspense is ruined for me when characters intentionally act bone-headed for the sake of the plot.

4) I guess. It's still weird... and overly convenient.

5) Mitch: Exactly what I would have though. First words out of her mouth should have been "Oh wow Jack, I love you so much! What happened to our mission? You know, the one with the alien pyramid?" And it'll f*** everything up. :3

Rob: Julia didn't know anything from the point she was put into Delta-sleep at the beginning of the original mission to the point she woke up. She never entered the Tet and didn't know what happened. Maybe they were all briefed with some kind of 'first contact' orders that warn if they make contact with aliens, they might use the images of friends or family to interrogate them with weird alien mind control crap. I unno... sounds like something NASA would have in a top secret plan book somewhere.

Oh, here's a new one.

7. Line of sight?! If the Tet waited after destroying the moon for the earth to get rocked by tsunamis and earthquakes, it doubtless caught a re-run of Independence Day. How dumb could it be for a PLANET-EATER that makes a living out of sucking planets dry not to have an ability to communicate around the entire planet? The Independence Day aliens had their shiz together. They used our satellites against us. Least the Tet could have done was outfit some drones as communication relays to keep in contact 24/7 with its pawns on the surface. Why take the chance of losing contact for 12 hours with mission critical resources?

8. Review the footage. Why wouldn't the Tet watch the footage of its own drones? It can take direct control of them, why not watch the video recordings? It's obvious that an incident where a tech FIRES on a drone would get flagged for review the next day. The Tet should have known what happened the very morning after Jack rescued that pod.

Okay, okay. My view of this movie is going down every time I come up with a new plot hole, and I wish to continue liking this movie. Bleh.

Apr 26 - 12:47 AM

Aha. I think you're being overly critical. If an actual 'Tet' came to Earth, we'd all be fucked. A super-advanced machine/robot tetrahedron spaceship with the ability to blow up a moon [that's a LOT of energy] would definitely destroy all of mankind.

Even if we assume that perhaps it wasn't designed to handle alien life forms [which we would be to it], it would probably still be smart enough to kill all humans without much of a problem. This movie would never happen [same with Independence Day]. The aliens [or machines] would most likely attack us from far away without any real damage happening to it. *BAM!* No movie for us to watch. :P

If you sit down to think about movies, since most aren't real life, there are bound to be a lot of errors and plot holes, especially with science fiction. You should probably stop thinking about all the negative parts of the movie and focus on what you did enjoy about it if you want to keep enjoying it. Don't let these plot holes ruin the experience. :)

However, to address your points.

2] I was more in awe of how huge the 'Tet' was. I didn't notice if there were drones in the walls or not. I only remember that two of them followed Jack into the centre of the ship.

I agree, they'd send a shit-tonne of drones [assuming you're correct about having a lot of drones to spare on the 'Tet'].

3] It seemed the remaining humans were questioning Beech, so I doubt they trusted Jack and wouldn't risk their lives by taking their armour off, since they assume he's made to kill.

4] Yeah, it is. :P

5] Yeah, Julia would address Jack and Victoria, asking them what happened to the mission [as she's first truly conscious in their home]. Their minds explode.

7] I actually thought about that while watching the movie. "Wait, what? Why does this giant space station have to be in a geosynchronous orbit, especially if there are remaining aliens on the surface and it'd be dangerous to have people there for 12 hours in case anything happened." Then, once it's revealed that the 'Tet' is the alien craft, "Okay... even WORSE. Super advanced machine spaceship is in a geosynchronous orbit, can blow up a moon, can make advanced drones [and all the equipment Jack uses], but yet can't create satellites to keep in contact with the surface? Shenanigans!"

8] Easy: the super advanced machine spaceship is ACTUALLY Joseph Kosinki's writing. :P Therefore it herps and derps.

Apr 27 - 10:37 PM

Well a movie needs to make sense to me. I'm told the Tet blew up the moon and sent millions of Jacks to overtake the world. Either he didn't give the whole story or that's a very inefficient way of conquering worlds. Couldn't you have just done the same with drones and no Jacks? Those things were terrors! They just didn't give us enough info about the Tet for me to fear it, in a lot of ways it seemed inept in its methods.

I'm a student of movies, I like finding plot holes and figuring out how I'd fill them if I were the writer. It's entertaining for me. Heck, I get more enjoyment out of a bad movie than a good one sometimes. :D

2) If we're going to compare it to Independance day, the Tet didn't FEEL huge. It was too smooth and featureless to get a sense of scale when in orbit.

3) Okay, then why not leave him notes? He can read, they saw him do it. One well-written note explaining everything would have done the trick.

7-8) A movie gets a serious black mark when it intentionally makes the characters act boneheaded because the script writer is either lazy or inept. The Rebels had 60 years and didn't try to TALK to Jack. The Tet had the same time and never figured out how to defeat the almighty line-O-sight. When we end up rolling our eyes at the stupidity, it breaks the immersion.

May 2 - 06:23 PM

I messed up #7. It's not in geosynchronous orbit. It's in an orbit where it's always between the sun and the Earth, which would explain why they lose communication every night because the 'Tet' is on the sunlit side of Earth. No stable orbits exist like that, so they'd have to use power to maintain that. INEFFICIENT. :P

The whole 'Tet' is very unclear. We never know exactly what it is. We're not sure why it made up this cover story about what happened to Earth. It's unclear why it let Jack reach the centre of the ship. The 'Tet' lacks empathy, yet spares Jack's life for some reason so that he can get to the centre? Alright. It wasn't explained very well with unclear motives, making the decisions seem random and almost going against earlier decisions.

It's hard to make up science-fiction stories that don't have plot-holes or errors. If you were going for an alien invasion story, you'd have to give the aliens some key weakness that the humans could overcome, one that doesn't feel cheap or stupid. I mean, these aliens have to be intelligent enough to travel through space to another planet. :P

To be fair, I don't even remember what the mother ship for Independence Day looked like. I think we got a sense of size, though, during the beginning part of that movie.

I guess notes could work. They can't use that though because the writers didn't let them. ;) Haha.

Yeah, I'm rather anal about those things as well. Once a movie starts ignoring its own rules, then it gets rather annoying. I'd write a much longer reply than this, but I'm hungry. Food time!

May 4 - 06:06 PM

ur dum

dats al i hav 2 sai

Apr 24 - 08:04 PM

Rob Grishow

Here are my interpretations:
1) I assumed it was either collateral damage during the battle or maybe an alien show of force.
2) It seemed the Tet was keen on keeping them in the dark as much as possible so they go about their work w/o asking too many questions. It was all a ruse.
3) not sure it matters, or that it made it more cinematic and suspenseful. (?)
4) I didn't notice that -good find. Who knows though.
5) We don't know what they saw when they entered the Tet ship -maybe that had something to do with it.
6) Didn't notice -maybe it's her eyes' natural dialation? Does it matter?

Just get lost in the movie and stop picking every little detail apart. No offense.

Apr 24 - 02:46 PM