Just watched this movie on the SciFi channel, I'm wondering what Spencer was expecting to find when he opened the ship? Wasn't it the imposter of himself that crashed before completing it's mission?
Now he sees it and suddenly thinks it's the real Spencer, and that he must be the imposter, so he blows up...makes no sense.
Too weird to live, and too rare to die.
Yes i(for impostor)Spencer expected to find iSpencer in the ship. He realizes it's Spencer in the ship for three reasons. He remembers being with Maya in those woods during their camping trip which was at the time of the crash; He sees Maya's body before Spencer's is discovered; it's impossible that iSpencer would be in the ship with Maya so he must be iSpencer. Now why not blow up and kill as many as you can since you can't reach your primary target, the Chancellor.
shareAlso, if I remember right, the Spencer that was in the ship has his throat sliced open or something. He had obviously been killed in a brutal way. The obvious explanation to that is that the sliced up body is human, and since he knew it was the job of the impostor to kill the real Spencer and take his place, the rest of it quickly made sense.
shareBut the Major said he knew about the (now) fully decrypted enemy message,.. so shouldn't he know there were two bodies to be found in the wreck, and shot them both on the spot?
"What kind of bomb?"
"The exploding kind."
I always thought he should have found the pilot of the aircraft!
Be Seeing You
Drmorbius2
******Eight years later!!!
Just a note, the message wasn't fully decrypted. They decrypted more of it. Which would explain why they didn't know about both Olham's.
. . ."and shot them both on the spot? "
Yes, or the flunky who was so intent on revealing second body in ship.
Spencer was hoping to find iSpencer dead of a crash.
Instead, he found Spencer, and one of the minions holds up the knife with which his throat has been cut to emphasise that this was no accident.
The primary trigger for the bomb is the presence of the Chancellor. The 'secondary trigger', mentioned earlier in the film is when the bomb realises that it is a bomb...
I think we need to go back to the original short story.... Im sure that may give us what should have happened.....
Be Seeing You
Drmorbius2
In the short story the last part reads as:
"Olham was trembling. His teeth chattered. He looked from the knige to the body. "This can't be Olham," he said. His mind spun, everything was whirling. "Was I wrong?" He gaped. "But if that's Olham, then I must be—" He did not complete the senence, only the first phrase. The blast was visible all the way to Alpha Centauri."
In the short story, he was searching for the crash, expecting to find the remains of the robot along with it. Peters (Hathaway in the movie) and Nelson (He's still around in the book and wants to kill Olham even more than Peters) have him cornered, when Olham insists they look around the ship. They find the body and at first believe Olham that it is the robot. (Mary, or "Maya" in the movie, is not around at this point in the story and she isn't a robot) Then they find the knife and Olham begins to question himself.
Isn't Olhams theory that the ship crashed and that he was never snatched flawed? When they drilled the first bio-android its death triggered the bomb, and considering that the aliens would not want to deliver advanced technology into human hands you gotta assume that all of these have a dead mans switch. So if the ship crashed and killed its assumed to be only occupant (I'm assuming this was a one way mission) the ship would have been blown to smithereens. Yes it would have ignited the forest fire but there'd be no ship left to find, except scattered pieces. In fact the only way there should be a surviving ship is if the pilot survived, destroyed/erased all sensative info and technologies, and then carried out its mission. The fact that there's a relatively intact ship should prove to Olham that he IS the bomb.
I'm wondering if Olham expected to find an alien onboard running the whole assasination attempt and that's the pilot he expected to find, that wouldn't make sense either. To further complicate things, why would the clone-Olhams leave their counterparts intact? Why not completely destroy the bodies to prevent any evidence of which Olham is which?
If there is a dead mans switch, then why doesn't Maya blow up when she is killed ?
I think that the idea is that the bomb assembles when the host is killed. It doesn't trigger, however.
Regarding the forrest fire: There where as I recall no burned trees around the crashed ship. This supports your theory. But it raises a new question: What caused the forrest fire?
The Regarding your last question: This is also what puzzles me the most. Additionally: Presumable, they wasn't killed in the ship. Why the imposters would bother dragging the bodies back to the ship?
The movie is different from the book in ways that demands differing plot devices. Althoough some of the literature may help for background info, all the logical answers should be found in the movie.
1.There is no "Dead Mans Switch". There is the main proximity-to-target mechanism. There is also a second trigger mechanism, which is when a replicant realizes it's true nature. It's reffered to in the interrogation scene, but Hathaway/ESA doesn't know it's nature. This is why the guy getting his chest ripped open doesn't explode. Hathaway/ESA don't need actual proof to detain suspects and since the knowledge of the replicant/bombs is pretty basic, the methods they use are crude and experimental. He admits to killing ten or eleven innocent men before finding the first replicant. The replicants do not explode when killed because the bomb is not actually a bomb in a triggerable form until one of the mechanisms are activated. It the changes in the body and explodes. The reason Maya did not explode is explained by 2 or possibly 3 reasons. First, since Spencer is off the hook, she won't comprimise his bomb and the mission by exploding. Also, she is in shock and doesn't have a moment of realization before she is shot by Hathaway. Hathaway says earlier that the only way he knows of preventing the explosion is shooting the replicants. The 3rd possible reason is that Maya didn't actually see the real Maya's body in the spacecraft before being shot, just Hathaway's and Spencer's reactions. Someone mentioned this on another thread and it may be a possibility. Even if she does see it, it does not refute the earlier 2 points.
2. ALL THE TREES AROUND THE SHIP ARE BURNT AND BARE. All of them. The evidence of the fire is clearly all around them. The crashing ship caused the forest fire.
3. The bodies in the ship are both of the real Olhams and both have their throats cut. The Olhams were camping in the vicinity of the crash so dragging the bodies back would actually not be very far. A couple reasons for the bodies to be taken back to the ship are that they may have wanted to make it seem superficially that the replicants died in the crash. Also, there was a forest fire at the time and they didn't have much time to cover their tracks properly. If they had just left the bodies out, anyone with a simple scanner would have been able to scan their sim-chips in the burnt bodies and find out who they actually were. Plus, it's possible that the ship had scanner blocking properties like the magnetic engine in the elevator shaft and the lead-based paints on the delapidated buildings in the (whatever it was called)-Zone where Sinise meets Phifer. And lastly, the replicants only needed a couple days to carry out the mission. Anything to buy them a little time would be done. Precautions that would have allowed for long term infiltration were unnecessary.
"Are you an imaginary character from the land of Krull?" - d{^_^}b
Yes, I got the ending, but what are the last words the replicant says as the knife is held up, and the major turns to him with sudden realization: 'Oh God, that isn't a ....?'?
Mind you isn't it a bit of a goof that the major didn't know that there should be two targets as an earlier poster pointed out?
I don't mind, I think it's a neat film, but ...
Best!
Lloyd
[deleted]
what happened at the end of the movie? A major in the ESA who led to the arrest and termination of many aline impostors was killed by an alien impostor. Obviously hathaway must hae been the real target of Ohlam. But a trigger was necessary and the aliens decided to use spencer finding his real body as the trigger...knowing the spencer probably would find his wrecked body sooner or later...hathaway being killed in this movie is like harrison ford being killed by replicants in blade runner....means a lot less dead replicants running around....
shareQuote
"The 'secondary trigger', mentioned earlier in the film is when the bomb realises that it is a bomb... "
Then why didn't Maya blow up?
Then why didn't Maya blow up?
Yeah why? becouse she was shot down or what?
I would say it's questionable that Maya ever realized the truth at all, and was shot before she had the chance, or even if she did realize it, before she had a chance to trigger.
I liked the film, but I certainly see all the other problems mentioned. One issue I have is a writing problem, and I've seen this before. If the interrogator (Hathaway) knew that the replicant didn't know it was a replicant, his questioning and harrassment was an unnecessary, pointless waste of time, and unnecessarily cruel. Also, you would think that in any society like the one this is set in, they would do everything medically possible to prove that the 'person' was (or wasn't) a replicant before drilling into its chest for a bomb that should show up on one kind of scan or another. All they'd have to do is knock the subject out, and do the scan then (so it would never see the results and realize that it's a replicant thereby triggering the bomb).
[deleted]
(I liked the film, but I certainly see all the other problems mentioned. One issue I have is a writing problem, and I've seen this before. If the interrogator (Hathaway) knew that the replicant didn't know it was a replicant, his questioning and harrassment was an unnecessary, pointless waste of time, and unnecessarily cruel. Also, you would think that in any society like the one this is set in, they would do everything medically possible to prove that the 'person' was (or wasn't) a replicant before drilling into its chest for a bomb that should show up on one kind of scan or another. All they'd have to do is knock the subject out, and do the scan then (so it would never see the results and realize that it's a replicant thereby triggering the bomb).)
Yikes! Well, D'Nofrio CAN sure play an unnecesarilly cruel character, but Yikes! I guess the thinking is: It never hurts to try and interrogate, if only to see how the 'device' reacts, although with the thought that iOlham could have gone off, that seems like a risky move. Hathaway WAS absolutely convinced that this was an evil alien killing machine that horribly murdered one of earth's best people, so you really can't blame him for wanting to get some jabs in.
And the solution to finding out? Yeah you're really really right, but I don't remember if they had that 'option' in the short story and it might have been put in just to give Olham something to do for 2 hours. Filmaking Mill 101. If a 'Voight-Komf' test actually existed they probably would've used it eh? But as they say 'Then there wouldn't be this movie'. *sigh* great story though, and I agree the end shot with the pupils was priceless, left me 'wonderfully stunned'.
I may be adding things that weren't in the movie due to the fact that I watched it shortly after reading the short story, but I'm pretty sure this trigger is never mentioned in the movie. In the story (and I believe in the movie as well) they mention that their is a "key phrase" which activates the bomb. Maya's phrase would have been something that she would say when greeting the Chancellor. Olham's phrase (presumably due to the alien's perverse sense of humor) is something he would only say when finding his original body and realizing he's a replicant. :)
shareNo he did expect to find an impostor of himself but when they told him they decoded more of the message and it was really his wife who was the impostor and then he finds his real wife murdered he thought it was over but then they find another body stabbed and stuck in the ship just like his wife was so how could that be the impostor who would have killed it, so obviously he was the impostor.
"I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
I'll agree that the "keyword trigger" must have been what Spence said when he realized what he was, which would also give a good reason as to why the bodies were left behind. Only problem with that though is that it doesn't make for a very tactical strike, unless they wanted Spence to go off at the landing area... which would defeat the purpose of getting under the shields.
shareOr... His wife simply didn't believe she was a bomb. She had just found out seconds ago and had plenty of reason to doubt it, where as Spence had been through this entire ordeal where he had been doubting and questioning, and there is the fact that he sees the army guy pulls the bloody knife out of the real Spence's neck which pretty much rules out accident...
The trigger isn't the bomb thinking it's a bomb, it's KNOWING it's a bomb, it wasn't just a possibility for him anymore, he knew without a doubt...
If I was a bomb I would detonate earlier on at the "Special Weapons Research" where a really danger called "80-ton babay girl"... But that's just me...
If I was a bomb I would detonate earlier on at the "Special Weapons Research" where a really danger called "80-ton babay girl"..Yup. I hope everyone realizes that if the aliens were aware of who the person was that they replicated, this movie would have been a 5-minute short.
Yeah that's a point. If they knew enough to copy the scientist so it believes its the real scientist, why didn't they knew he was working on a super weapon to use against them and use the duplicate to detonate it as soon as it saw it?
And BTW there was no keyword. Why the heck would the imposter ever say "Oh my god, if that's Olhem..." while meeting the chancellor? He self destructed because he finally accepted the truth about himself. The "wife" didn't because she was still in denial. He had plenty of time to wrestle with the question of his true identity, she didn't.
Poor Major, he realized too late he was right all along.
Poor Major, he realized too late he was right all along.
as if there was anything he could have done, the guy had to kill 10 people to find one bomb, and said he could sleep pretty well.
they clearly had no clue on the biology of the assassins.
Two points are made in this thread:
1. Obviously, they found the body of his wife Maya first, and shot her (imposter) in the back on the hearsay of the Major. Spencer wasnt sure then.
2. Obviously that society was divided up in the rich and poor, who had no medicine.
SO it was NOT exactly an open and equitable society. so yes it was possible that the centauris were the defenseless race using guerilla tactics rather than frontal attacks
http://myimpressionz.tk
Someone said in another thread the ship crashed as it was taking off. Perhaps they put the bodies in the ship for a return trip. Something went wrong and it crashed which is what started the fire.