Oblivion

[jedijeff]

One thought I did have about the movie that stuck with me a bit, maybe I did not pickup on it

[spoiler]When we found out Jack Harper was a clone of the Original, they mentioned at first they made Thousands of them as Soldiers to wipe out the Earth. After that they made them into Repair men after. If they rewrote their minds and wiped out the memories, then why bother with the Charade that they were real human beings? Why not just rewrite the clone as what he was, a repair man. I guess I did not really pick up on that. They kept asking if they were an effective team, and checking that they were still operating under a certain belief. Just did not see the point for it.[/spoiler]

[Bryancd]

One thought I did have about the movie that stuck with me a bit, maybe I did not pickup on it

[spoiler]When we found out Jack Harper was a clone of the Original, they mentioned at first they made Thousands of them as Soldiers to wipe out the Earth. After that they made them into Repair men after. If they rewrote their minds and wiped out the memories, then why bother with the Charade that they were real human beings? Why not just rewrite the clone as what he was, a repair man. I guess I did not really pick up on that. They kept asking if they were an effective team, and checking that they were still operating under a certain belief. Just did not see the point for it.[/spoiler]

The movie suffers with a lot of issues like that....

[spoiler]1) Isn't this just Moon, only not nearly as good?

2) Why is cloning Tom Cruise and Andrea Riseborough and maintaining an elaborate charade involving lots of hardware and deception the most expedient way of maintaining an otherwise straightforward fleet of military attack drones? It would be much, much easier in terms of both work and resources to simply replace the drones.

3) Cruise's character witnesses kills made by drones. Why, in nearly five years of doing this job, has he never realised, upon viewing the bodies, that they're human?

4) Isn't there a massive risk for the alien intelligence that the underground resistance could contact the maintenance people at any time? Couldn't they just have left Harper a note, or something? Isn't the whole charade just laughably easy to circumvent?

5) Why do the human survivors use sound effects in order to sound like aliens? The only people they might hope to fool are a) an alien intelligence which knows exactly what they are, and b) the tower technicians, who they have no reason to deceive (see above).

6) Why does Harper's craft have the capability to reach orbit? The alien intelligence has no reason to have him actually visit, other than in exceptional circumstances, and this gives the humans the capability to reach and perhaps attack the alien, a capability they should never actually need. For that matter, why do the drones have the capability to reach orbit?

7) Harper's craft can easily reach orbit. Why can't everyone live on the "space station" and deorbit for work, or at least maybe go back on weekends? Why the five year mission? Well, we know why, but why wouldn't the alien expect the humans to query this?
/spoiler]

[Bromptonboy]

Yes you both make good points.

[spoiler]I believe the muted voices was explained away as a means of encryption to keep Sally from picking up on their communications.  Just like the suits were 'stealth' technology of a sorts.  An American flag on the uniform would have told a lot...but then perhaps that would have just gotten the Jack in questin killed.

You are quite right that there had to have been many opportunities to communicate with the various Jacks.  But I am thinking that perhaps they were all just killed off by Sally or dimed out by the girl companion.  That is a stretch on my part.

I didn't quite understand the need for an army of Jacks when they have so many drones that could have done the work.

I am usually tough on movies like this - I am just glad for a serious attempt at a thoughtful idea.

Anything including Horatious at the Bridge goes up points in my scale!  :0[/spoiler]

[WillEagle]

Yes, I agree, good points. I think I just went with it for most of the movie but[spoiler]when the drone was scanning Jack I thought it was doing it to see if he was human but It was scanning for a clone. And again I was let down with the "Sally" reveal, I was expecting something a lot different from a triangle thing.[/spoiler]