"Art exists by imagination. As a kind of fantasy art, science fiction movies need imagination even more."
A comet-like light has crashed into a lighthouse off the coast of the United States, creating a mysterious area. People could not learn any information in this area, and none of the dozens of scientific expedition teams sent out returned. The area of the light's influence is slowly expanding, and no one knows anything about the source or purpose of the flash. People call this mysterious phenomenon a flash. This is the beginning of the story.
A plot setting
It looks like a low-budget sci-fi movie, without the direct depiction of aliens and external spaceships in Arrival, nor the cosmic landscapes of different planets in Interstellar. However, like many good science fiction movies, there is a very imaginative and worthy of scrutiny to support the core of the story setting.
"Arrival" depicts a kind of external creatures living outside the time and causality - the heptapods. If you learn their external language, you can predict the past and the future. Although it is mysterious, it is better than interesting and open-minded. The black holes, high-dimensional space, and relativity in "Interstellar" are all parts that can be discussed in current physics, and they seem to be quite satisfactory, but it is quite difficult to present them in visual art, and no one has been able to do it before. After all, once physics rises to the theory of relativity and quantum physics, many phenomena are contrary to common sense, and ordinary people cannot imagine it, and it is even more difficult to describe it in visual language, but "Interstellar" did it.
In "Arrival" and "Interstellar" there are bridges about time travel and insight into the past and future. In Arrival, Heptapod, as a creature with insight into the past and future, chooses to save humanity in the present so that future humans can save Heptapod in the future. In "Interstellar", human beings in the future placed a wormhole in the solar system, so that the current human beings can explore suitable planets through this wormhole and avoid the fate of extinction. However, the means they use are different. The insight into the past and future of the heptapods in "Arrival" comes from their language, or their cognitive system. Their language is out of chronological order and causal logic. The past and the future are at the same time. presented before their eyes. So after the heroine learns their language, she also lives between the past, present and future at the same time. The insight of future humans into the past and future in "Interstellar" is because they have become high-dimensional creatures, and time, as a dimension, is completely transparent to them, so they are familiar with the past and future of the three-dimensional world.
Annihilation is another feast of the imagination, envisioning a mysterious environment that can refract any information, including electromagnetic waves and DNA—flash. It is worth mentioning that many people understand the magical phenomenon in the film as the refraction of DNA. This is not exact, to be precise, it is a kind of information refraction. Flash can not only refract electromagnetic waves to interfere with information communication, but also refract DNA information. Therefore, different species can merge with each other to produce new species, like the same flower blooming Flowers of different shapes and colors, vines with human form and beasts with human voices.
The identity of the two replicas
Is the last heroine who walked out of the lighthouse the main body or a replica? Whether it is the main body or the replicator, there is actually evidence and doubts. But I prefer the ontology. At the end of the story, the heroine put the flashbang in the hands of the replica and rushed out the door. The duplicant fell into the flames of the whole body, and then degenerated to that metallic luster state, which was obviously the characteristic of the duplicator. Then there is no doubt that the heroine is the one who escaped.
But how to understand the behavior of replicas before they die? Why would she touch the face of the male protagonist's corpse and climb into the cave to destroy the lighthouse? This is because, ideologically, the clones are completely the heroine herself, so they will naturally have the same behavior. The clone is a complete copy of the heroine, not only at the genetic level, but also at the thinking level. If it is the heroine who is ignited, and she knows that she has no hope of survival, the heroine as a human should also linger on the time with her husband and choose to destroy the lighthouse. In this way, the clone's behavior before death can be understood, because she is the heroine herself in her mind!
Accepting that the replica is exactly the same (ideologically) as the heroine can indeed explain the behavior of the replica after being ignited, but how to explain the difference in behavior between the replica and the hero? After all, at the beginning, the clone attacked the heroine and prevented the heroine from escaping.
This is because when the clone first appeared, it did not copy the memory information of the heroine. At this time, it did not have a clear thinking, and what remained was the instinct to imitate the behavior of the heroine. So when the heroine attacks, it will fight back and try to stop when the heroine opens the door. When the clone copied the heroine's memory and possessed the heroine's appearance, the clone was exactly the same as the main body in thought. They have the same memories, the same love for their husbands. It can be said that the two of them are not only completely the same physically, but also ideologically. That's why the replica will fondly touch her husband's face after burning, and choose to go to the cave to destroy the flash, because this is completely the wish of the heroine herself.
So, another question comes, although the clone has the thoughts of the heroine, does she realize that she is a clone? My point is that the replicants themselves are aware of it. When the heroine saw the DV left by her husband in the lighthouse, she already understood the identity of the husband who returned home, and she also understood that the flash will copy humans. Even when the clone is not yet fully mature (doesn't have the appearance of the heroine), the heroine's body has realized that the metal doll on the opposite side is her own clone, which is a knowledge that has already existed in the heroine's mind. Then when the replica is fully mature (with the heroine's appearance and memory), this knowledge is also copied, so of course the replica is aware of the fact that she is a replica, but she still thinks that she is a human being, So what she does is still in the interests of mankind. In this way, the behavior of the replicator can also be understood.
The behavior of the clones reminds me of the plot about clones in "Battle Fairy Yukikaze" that I watched not long ago. The unknown alien life form Gam tries to disintegrate the human camp from within by cloning human beings. These clones not only have the exact same appearance as the original human, but also have all their memories and personalities. These replicants also know their identities as clones made by Gam. But they did not all choose to be enemies with humans. There are two people (one is the Indian engineer who repaired the air carrier escorted by the deep well zero, and the other is Brigadier General Wade, who jointly formulated and personally implemented the anti-international plan with the senior military) or Choose to identify with your own human identity, even knowing that you are a clone made by the alien Garm. In the end, the anti-international plan was successfully executed, and the replica Brigadier General Wade successfully led other replicas into the traps that humans had already laid out. Humanity finally won the game of Cam. The female protagonist in "annihilation", I think, is someone like Wade. Although he is an "alien", he chooses to fight for mankind.
Of course, this kind of identity of "Han Xin Chinese Tubo body" is actually quite embarrassing. Humans will not really treat them as human beings. Just like the end of the story of "Snow Wind", human beings have killed all the replicants, even if these people have been Think of yourself as a real human being. At the end of the story of "annihilation", the heroine has not disclosed to the military that the military flash will copy the human body, I am afraid there is such a concern. Once it is revealed that her husband is a clone, the heroine herself may become an experimental material. After all, the heroine herself cannot prove that she is not a clone.
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