After watching the movie, I feel like I am no longer me

Lew 2021-10-20 17:48:30

Based on the information available in the movie, we can probably conclude this story:

Three years ago, aliens invaded the earth and landed on the lighthouse.

The alien produced a "flash" through a pulse of light.

The flash is a prism that refracts everything, not just light and radio signals, but also the DNA of animals and plants.

Therefore, people become plants, fish become transparent, crocodile teeth become sharks, trees grow crystals, antlers grow plum blossoms, and the internal organs of soldiers are flowing. Anya (Gina Rodriguez) (Decoration)'s fingerprints are changing.

In addition, the bear ate the vocal cords of Cathy (Towa Novoni), and the DNA of the bear and Cathy was refracted, so the bear made a human voice.

The scientific expedition organization launched drones, animals, and personnel teams from land and water to conduct investigations, and there was no return.

An alien cloned into Kane (Oscar Isaac), walked out of the X area, and pretended to be Kane.

As for whether it is Lena (Natalie Portman) or the clone Lena who walked out of the X area, there is no standard answer.

It is worth noting that the whole movie is developed from Lena's perspective, which is equivalent to a story she told the scientist Lomax (Benedict Wang), and we don't know the authenticity of this story.

What she said may be true, it may be false, or it may be half true.

At the end of the film, the director did not reveal the answer, but left an open ending for the audience to guess.

We can guess that it was the clone Lena who walked out of the X area.

The reason is that her eyeballs are still changing at the end of the movie, and at this time the X area and flash are gone, and there is no reason for her DNA to continue to refract.

Secondly, Lomax said that she only took 2 weeks of supplies, but stayed in it for nearly 4 months, which is unattainable for the people on earth.

Moreover, because people's DNA in the X region will constantly change, causing internal organs and fingerprints to constantly change, and even people turn into plants, so that no one can stay alive for 4 months and survive unscathed, after all, the only one to come out after staying for a year Kane is actually a clone.

In addition, the clone Lena in the movie can predict Lena's actions, take the lead in defeating Lena every time she is attacked, and stop Lena when she is about to run out of the lighthouse.

Therefore, there is no reason to say that the clone Lena would stupidly hold the phosphorous bomb and stay away and be burned alive.

In other words, it may be the clone Lena who killed Lena (maybe even the five members of the team were killed by her), then set fire to the X area, and walked out of the X area, pretending to be the real Lena, and told Lomax Half-true stories.

Now that these two aliens are a male and a female, they can continue to breed more aliens, and they can also reproduce offspring with the children of the earth, gradually integrate into the earth society, and realize their invasion plan.

As for the purpose of the aliens, we have no way of knowing. As the captain (Jennifer Jason Lee) said: I don’t know what it wants, or if it wants it. But it will grow until it surrounds everything.

Although it is only March, "Annihilation" has been booked in advance as one of the best sci-fi movies of 2018 and one of the most brain-burning movies of 2018.

The film is adapted from the first part of the science fiction novel "Lost Southland" trilogy, which defeated "Three-Body" and won the 2014 Nebula Award.

This is the second film directed by Alexan Garland. In 2015, his debut "Mechanical Girl" was a blockbuster and received critical acclaim.

Alexan Garland played very steadily. The word-of-mouth of "Annihilation" and "Machine Ji" are comparable, and they are also well received. As of March 14th, "Annihilation" had an MTC score of 79, and the freshness of Rotten Tomatoes was 87%. Science fiction films have reached this rating and are already quite good.

"Machine Ji" is a movie about artificial intelligence. It tells us that when artificial intelligence is too smart, it may in turn harm humans.

In addition, the protagonist cuts his arms to see if he is a segment of a robot, which also makes the movie point to the topic of "who are we" and "are we artificial intelligence", thus sublimating the theme.

"Annihilation" is better than "Mechanical Ji", and once again raises the issue of "Who Am I", full of depth, connotation, and metaphor.

"Annihilation" is not a popular movie, nor is it the kind of popcorn movie that fights, tells jokes, and makes the audience enjoy it. It is a movie that requires calming down and thinking.

There are no superheroes, Star Wars, and world-saving elements in the movie, but a sci-fi film based on plot, similar to "Arrival" and "The Night Comet".

"Annihilation" can be regarded as one of the most WTF movies of the year, which means that it cannot be evaluated by good-looking and bad-looking, but astonished, shocked, and mixed.

Our first reaction after watching a movie is not that it looks good or not, but that we don’t understand and don’t know what the director wants to express. After watching the second and third times, some doubts can be answered in the movie, and some are open-ended questions.

The film is about where the aliens came from, what did they do or what technology they used to produce the flash, what was the purpose of the aliens being cloned into Kane and Lena, what the aliens wanted to do... There was no director in this series of questions. answer.

Because the director dug too many holes but didn't fill it, many audiences couldn't understand it.

But at the same time, just because there are no standard answers to many suspense, the audience can interpret different answers by themselves. Those ambiguities brought depth to the film. Just like whether the spinning top at the end of "Inception" has stopped, a thousand viewers have a thousand opinions.

But it is undeniable that "Annihilation" has a solid script, rich imagination, wonderful audio-visual effects, clever endings, and profound philosophies. It can be called an excellent or even a great science fiction film.

The logic can withstand scrutiny, and the implication is endless. It must not fade with time for many years, but can withstand the test of time, like fine wine, becoming more mellow under the brewing of time.

The film's art and setting can be described as the pinnacle, second to none. The flashes, transparent fish, crystal trees, humanoid plants, and "sika deer" are breathtaking, especially the dazzling and dazzling fragments of the underground tower, which can be called a visual spectacle.

Secondly, the movie also refreshed our understanding of aliens.

The aliens in the movies in the past are always the same; and our scientists look for extraterrestrial life, first of all to see whether there is water on the planet.

In fact, aliens are not necessarily carbon-based creatures, they can be metals, or even stones, and the energy clusters in Annihilation.

Of course, I fully understand the practice of scientists in real life that "you have to find water to find aliens". After all, we simply cannot understand non-carbon-based organisms, so we can't search for them, and even if we find them, we can't communicate.

But I can't understand that the current movies are all the same aliens, so the imagination is too thin. And "Annihilation" jumped out of this thinking framework.

"Annihilation" is not only forward thinking, but also discusses the topics of human nature and philosophy.

The captain in the movie said: If I don't get to the lighthouse right away, the beginning and the end of this journey will not be the same person.

Cathy said: From a certain point of view, I lost two relatives, my beautiful daughter, and the former me.

Kane also said: If I am not Kane, who am I? Am i you? Are you me?

Lena's husband did not return until a year after performing the mission and became another human clone Kane.

And Lena may become a clone Lena after entering the X area and then coming out.

Even if it was the real Lena who walked out of the X area, it was not the same Lena.

After all, DNA will be refracted in the X area, people's bodies will flow like liquid, and their thoughts will change.

So, I began to think: Are the people around us still Ta himself?

Are you still you?

Am I still me?

There is such a text circulating on the Internet:

Human cells will be metabolized and replaced every three months. Old cells die, new cells are born, and new replaces the old. It took seven years to replace all the cells in the body. In other words, physiologically, we are another person every seven years. You are you, and you are not you.
Many things will not be transferred by human will, just like our body, seven years, all are replaced, there is no old one, and it will always live in growth. All moments are changes. And we are not actually us.
Forgetting is human nature, and one day you will no longer remember him. Think about it, our bodies are emptied day by day, and we believe that memories can't be escaped either.
Every seven years is emptied, and all the dust is dreamy. No matter how many mountains and peaks are piled up, it is impossible to stop this undercurrent from the origin of life.

Life and movies are flashes. They are like a prism, changing our thoughts, character, three views, and heart.

After every second, we are no longer the one we were in the previous second.

After watching the movie, I feel that I am no longer me.

View more about Annihilation reviews

Extended Reading
  • Foster 2022-03-15 09:01:02

    Who and what is "I"? How to delimit the boundary of "me"? From where, at what moment, and where does it end? What is more or less, "I" will not be me? The "I" is changing all the time. The so-called "find the true self" and "stick to the true self" is a false proposition, and the "true self" never exists. The film slots are dense, the supporting characters are scribbled, and the motivation and behavior lack a bit of logic, only to force the plot to advance, and the whole action is a bit self-destructive.

  • Adalberto 2021-10-20 19:02:31

    From the futuristic minimalism in Mechanic Ji to the apocalyptic/wasteland aesthetics of this film, you can see the director’s superb personal taste. The plot is controlled and the narrative is slow to come. The novel itself carries a heavy adaptation to simplify the plot clues, but open discussion and different endings, audiences can get different answers

Annihilation quotes

  • [the team kill an alligator & examine it's mouth]

    Lena: Lena: Whoa. It's exactly the same as the flowers. Look at the teeth. Concentric rows. Something here is making giant waves in the gene pool.

    [the paramedic, Anya, holds the alligator's mouth open. She has no tattoo on her arm]

    Cass Sheppard: Sharks have teeth like that, don't they?

    Dr Ventress: Do you think it's a crossbreed?

    Lena: You can't crossbreed between different species.

    Anya Thorensen: Lena, this is getting heavy.

    [Later in the movie, Anya has acquired the tattoo]

  • Lena: The mutations were subtle at 1st; more extreme as we got closer to the lighthouse. Corruptions of form. Duplicates of form.

    Lomax: Duplicates?

    Lena: [She looks at the tattoo on her arm & lifts her arm up] Echoes.

    Lomax: Is it possible these were hallucinations?

    Lena: I wondered that myself... but they were shared among all of us. It was dreamlike.

    Lomax: Nightmarish?

    Lena: Not always. Sometimes it was beautiful.

    [the movie then cuts back in time to show beautiful translucent single-tailed wormfish swimming alongside double-tailed duplicates. Lena is in a canoe on a swamp located quite near to a corpse that bears the same tattoo as Lena]

    Lena: Oww. Ow.

    [She clutches her arm - there is no tattoo yet. However, a dark blue mark has appeared at the same place on her arm]

    Cass Sheppard: You're hurt?

    Lena: It's just a bruise. I must have gotten that from the gator.