SPOILER Regarding the bear with the woman’s screams. When Lena finds her corpse her neck is ripped open and assumably eaten vs everything else so I think her voice box/vocal cords melded with the bears DNA after it bit and/or ate that part of her.
Yeah but absorbing the vocal cords does not give you the ability to construct the phrase "help me". It may provide you the "voice" per se but the to conceive the intention and assembling the phrase "help me, please" requires input from the brain itself. We see that the brain of the victim is intact, atleast what was shown in the movie.
The film makes a point to say that the shimmer might effect more than DNA. Lena's house appears in the shimmer so it's logical to assume thoughts (and as such, the ability to form words) can also be transferred.
I'm pretty sure that Gina Rodriguez's character had that tattoo on her arm and when Natalie Portman comes out with the same tattoo it suggests that the refracting and mixing of DNA resulted in her taking on aspects of everyone and everything in the shimmer.
I'm pretty sure the tattoo is also seen on other characters. A friend of mine think she saw it on the soldier they cut open but only in his mushroom form.
theres a part in the movie where the women are in the same building that the previous military group stayed in..and in a separate room theres this odd looking hole in the wall where someone's legs are coming out and above the hole there is someone's upperbody with their ribs exposed and a skull. Did anybody else notice that the person had the same infinity arm tattoo as natalie portman's character?? did it have something to do with her involvement in the military so alot of military people have that tattoo or???idk...somethings up with that tattoo
Lol but a tattoo isn't part of your DNA so it doesn't make sense that she inherits the tattoo because she's taking other people's DNA Also Kane has one too
can we talk about how incredible it is that Garland has made a perfectly passive antagonist! The nature of the shimmer refracts and blends its environment, but the being in the lighthouse does nothing but the same - it copies. The figure doesn't go outside and hunt them down, it just exists there (it doesn't even take a human form until it has one to copy). It is nature itself that is the aggressor, both in the cases of the animals, and the self-destructive tendencies of the team.
Yeah, at the very beginning of the movie when Oscar Isaac returns to the house, before going up the stairs he pauses and looks at wedding photos on the wall. When Natalie Portman enters the house in the Shimmer she looks at the same photos.
Fangtorn yup..and in the beginning when she asks the Cain clone how did u get here? He answers " just outside the bedroom door " which explains how original soldier Cain designed that same Shimmer house from memory/cloned imagination for the whole time he was stuck out there.
You have to completely ignore the movie to not get Portman survives the Shimmer. Issac's doppelganger not only can't answer Portman's basic questions about what he has been up to but he also refers to the bedroom as "the room with the bed." I think the movie makes it pretty clear the doppleganger has inherited a lot of memory, language, etc from Issac but is not comfortable using it and doesn't get idiomatic stuff. And they don't show Portman habing those same difficulties.
Natalie's alien double is the one telling the story and what we see is based on it's description of the events. The alien double changes the ending to hide what it is and wants to take her place. Natalie's character died in the lighthouse.
*Refraction* Lena (played by Portman) got the tattoo from Anya (Rodriguez) and a similar thing happens with Kane (Isaac) as his accent gradually changes ...something he probably acquired from one (or more) of his teammates
I noticed when Portman's character goes into the house inside the Shimmer, there's a moment by the stairs where it seems like she notices that the stairs/house are similar if not identical to hers. For some reason, there was a definite moment where she takes in the fact that she's in the house. Also, I think it was the original Portman that made it out but at first, I thought maybe the alien absorbed parts of her mental structure (not just physical) and adapted her tendency to lie. They set up that she's a lier throughout the movie. So I wondered if maybe it was the alien being interrogated and that it lied to cover it's identity by changing how the final moments in the lighthouse went down, lying to the viewer as well. It hypnotized Portman into killing herself and then left once it learned enough about Earth biology and whether or not it wanted to continue changing the Earth. I thought it would be a fun twist if it actually won and just lied about it so it could be with its mate (the Issacs clone).
I love how the movie was able to make something as ordinary (to us) as life seem so uncanny, and to do this simply by speeding up its rate of growth, relative to selection. It shows us life in the raw--all blind proliferation and assimilation--without the filter of natural selection to lend it the illusion of order and harmony. This is, of course, precisely how cancer behaves, but we see other examples in phenomena like "driving y chromosome," which can can skew a population's sex ratio entirely male in a short period of time, resulting in a short-term "benefit" to the y chromosome (more copies of it being made per generation), but ultimately extinction. It's the blindness of these processes that gives them the appearance of being willfully self-destructive. Cancer cells don't know that by endangering the life of their host they are endangering themselves. Similarly, Lena isn't thinking about the wellbeing of her marriage, the greater whole of which she is a part, when she decides to embark on her affair; she's just acting in her own short term interest. We live in an entropic universe, meaning that there are many more ways of making it more disordered than of making it more ordered. Annihilation is not the exception, but the rule. It takes a lot of luck, time, or care to build structures that last.
I love the female characters in this movie. They are strong yet feminine, smart and intuitive, emotionally vulnerable yet brave. These characters are far more realistic than many other female roles you see in films and on shows.
Each person that goes into the shimmer is self destructive in someway. Each one must confront their self destructive behavior. Two of them are killed, but two of them accept their fate and are changed forever. Natalie Portman's character is also self-destructive. We know this because of the scene where she is having sex with her colleague, and he mentions that she can't forgive herself. And she knows this is true. When her husband leaves for this mission a day early, he knows the truth, that she has been having an affair. He loves her, but doesn't know how to deal with it, and so he goes into the shimmer. In the scene where he is talking to his double and decides that he doesn't know which is the real person, he has given up, and thus accepts his fate. Natalie Portman when confronting her double, has something to go back for, she has someone to return to, a reason to leave the shimmer. So when the double begins to copy her, she takes the grenade, and allows it to copy that part of her--the self destructive part--and then leaves. The copy then takes the newly acquired self-destructive nature and promptly destroys everything, including itself. Originally I didn't understand the title because annihilation only happens when two things destroy each other. Upon reflection of what actually happens in the film, I realized that ultimately it made sense, in that moment when the copy does in fact destroy itself, and the part of Portman it has acquired, the way it destroyed Jennifer Jason Leigh's character. Many people get stuck on the fact that when the shimmer is destroyed, it seemingly destroys everything inside, but Portman's character is able to leave, her husband/copy is just fine, and the reason for this is simple. Of all those who entered the shimmer, these two characters wanted to leave, had a reason to be something outside of the shimmer, thus when it was destroyed, whatever created the changes between the two of them died, however the changes were already made, which we know because both had the glowing eyes. The other thing people get hung up on is, the notion that there must be some point to it. And to that I say, there is. Whatever crashed at the lighthouse wasn't sure what it wanted. First we knows this because as the shimmer expands you see in an outward going in fashion that things are slightly changed, but as you go deeper, toward its singularity, whatever was in the center, you find things to be far more complex and more deeply affected. Much like the division of cells to take what is simple and create something complex. That means when the shimmer was at its finest point in the beginning like an experiment, things were minutely changed, as the simple move further outward, replaced with more complex structures the shimmer gets larger and larger. Like the ripple in a pond. We can guess that people entering the shimmer heading toward the lighthouse gave this thing an opportunity to work with their DNA, and that by the time Portman's husband reaches the lighthouse, his mind has been too far altered, that he is too far gone, a mistake that the next copy is unlikely to make with her. In the scene before her copy comes into being, Jennifer Jason Leigh's character describe the destruction necessary to create life, and that is what we see. Whatever this thing is, it has been destroying things, and making new things all in an attempt to understand. The real Lena does leave, and the copy is destroyed, however, forever changed, to the point that she might not know how much of her remains and how much is part of that thing, the same can be said of her husband who might technically be more that thing, than her husband.
John Saucier My interpretation was it is an "evolved" version of her, just as it is an "evolved" version of Kane. They both changed and are now new. They are now "perfect" forever. The end. I have only seen the movie adaptation and have not read the book.
I've seen people get hung up on what the entity wanted, assuming that the ending is signalling the beginning of an invasion. But I don't think the film is really about an invasion, it's about human behavior. Humans self-destruct. They make decisions that are against their better judgement and best interests. When humans do that, they can either let those decisions destroy them (as happens with most of the characters), or they can learn from the experience and change for the better. Kane and Lena both emerge from the Shimmer, but they are not the same people they were when they went in. They have literally become new people, having taken on the qualities of what they interacted with. They've been given a second chance to make the right decisions. So to me, the ending is actually an uplifting one.
I agree with you! And this is how I see it: Kane never accepted the self-destructive nature of human beings as a flaw. Lena did. You can see that in the bedroom scene, when they're talking about how getting old is just a flaw and can be fixed. Lena says that, but Kane is not agree. He thinks the way we were created it's something more religious. He thinks God made us this way for a reason and we can not change it. Getting back to the Lighthouse scene. What happens when they are "echoed" involves the self-destructive nature. Lena see it as a flaw, so she gives it to this alien, or the alien takes it from her. We see the alien destroying itself. On the other hand we have Kane. He embrace his self-destructive nature. He destroys himself. The alien echo doesn't have it then. They're perfect. They've evolved into something new. They aren't Lena and Kane anymore, they're something new.
The tattoo was one of the details I liked about this movie. The paramedic Anya had it on her arm, then when Natalie's character was on the boat she complains about a bruise on her arm and thinks it come from the alligator even though it never touched her, and then she has the tattoo. I sort of liked she never mentioned it, it was as if she never realized the tattoo wasn't hers.
Fangtorn don't wanna be THAT guy but it was the soldier that had his stomach cut that had the tattoo, you see it when the group see his remains on the wall.
I also noticed that it was their house right away. What really creeped me out, because I only remembered it later: Kane (the original we see in the flashbacks) has a bear tattooed on his chest.
The extraterrestrial species was experimenting with the shimmer. With all of the other people, it had failed they were all self destructive, hence the focus on this theme in the movie. With Lena, it was able to successfully get the mutation into a person that was strong enough to make it out and thus take the mutation with it. There was no longer a need for the shimmer so when Lena set the duplicate on fire, it extinguished the rest of the lighthouse. She is still Lena but she also has parts of the other characters and the extraterrestrial in her. She's the same but different. Maybe it's the evolution of humans.
The "alien" lena survived. It was the second iteration of "mimicry" where the alien finally learned what it took to survive outside area x (comeplete with memory - drinking the water did not have adverse effect) and also having TWO of them to be able to reproduce unnoticed. The second time lena wakes up from the slumber with the mimic, the switch already happened. you could see from the "steps" they were taking right before the "alien" picked up the grenade...knowing the real Lena would want to be with her husband, the alien handed the grenade to Lena (annihilation) and after it exploded you could see how Lena touches/burns her husband first and then the contamination around her. Why would the doppleganger alien do this? why would it try to "burn" the other contamination essentially destroying the entirety of the shimmer? It was the final sacrifice of Lena even though she knew the alien would get away, destroying the shimmer will give humans some time to figure out what is happening or about to happen. Yes, the aliens are alive in two human bodies, but it will take a longer time to spread than what the shimmer was doing.
1) I think the LENA we see at the end is the real one. When the fake KANE arrived, he didn't remember much. LENA remembered enough details to tell the story to LOMAX. Actually, why *would* a fake LENA tell the story? 2) At the lighthouse, why did the creature mimic LENA's movements only at times? Speaking of that scene, when the creature pushed her against the door, it looked like it was trying to rape her. Is the movie then meant to be an allegory on that subject?
It was undoubtedly "real" Lena that came back. When she lights the phosphorus grenade, the flesh burns away and you can clearly see that it's the other being.
I think the doppleganger got out, because remember the whole story is being told, by the Lena in the chair, talking to the guy in the hazmat suit. She could easily lie about what happened in the lighthouse.
it's not just DNA that gets "changed" in the shimmer. Thoughts or memories get duplicated---like Lena's house being in the shimmer, etc. Also parts of others get mixed in with other people----Kane gets a southern accent (in his video with his clone), the tattoo from the guy with the swirling intestines ends up on the EMT woman and on Lena. So DNA gets "changed", thoughts/memories are made physical and people get parts of others incorporated into themselves.
He asks her at the end if she's Lena and she doesn't answer, then they hug and her eyes shimmer like his does... Whether she's the clone or not she's definitely not herself anymore...
I’m confused about what people don’t understand about the ending. The one thing I didn’t like is that everything seemed to be overly explained, when it comes to the alien anyway. For example, im pretty sure the tattoo was on another one of her team mates, which I think implies that there may have been a chance that there were elements of her team mates becoming bonded to each other. The focus on the characters is the worst part of the film, in my opinion.
I think it wanted a way to know itself...or possibly know anything at all. Remember how it is on fire and doesn't really react until it touches Oscar Isaac's body? it seems like only then it knows that fire is damaging to its body as a human, and then gives into its fate of death presumably. The Shimmer clearly has some kind of agency, even though we don't know its intentions. Ill grant you that maybe the flora disintegrated when the shimmer dissipated but that in no way means conscious beings also eroded away.
wackydelly84 my take was that everything in the shimmer that got absorbed went up in flames. Portman was the one thing that didn't die yet. So her shimmer mutations died and she survived. However, shimmer clone Kane was outside the shimmer and unaffected. Her glowing eyes during the hug, which never ever glowed in the hospital, indicate that she was again encountering the shimmer and being refracted. Basically, clone Kane was the new shimmer source at the end. And earth is still fucked. Also, Natalie Portman completes her self destructive journey by hugging him because she knows damn well she killed the shimmer except the clone and she's annihilating herself by embracing him. Just like she knew she was screwing them by convincing them to continue.
What did you guys think about the Dr. in the lighthouse. At first, her eyes are non existent when she is mumbling to herself, but then her eyes develop before she implodes and turns into that bright yellow "black hole"? wtf happened to her orignal? do we assume she was cloned and then just died mumbling to herself and that is why the alien version was found doing the same?
1. I think the real Lena character survived the lighthouse double scenario because the double was created in front of her eyes and eventually morphed into an exact replica right in front of Natalie's character. Then, immediately the real Lena puts the grenade in the hands of the morphing double, which starts the chain reaction of fire and sparks. There is a POV shot from the real Lena's side as she observes the double on fire in the lighthouse. There's no other way to interpret it. Kane, on the other hand, is a less certain situation. Did the double blow itself up or did Kane?
I think Kane is equally obvious: it's the double that escapes. The Kane that blows himself up is scruffy, and wearing the same military clothes he was wearing in the earlier video with the intestines.
Keep in mind, this is being told from Lena's perspective (sitting in the room talking to the new director of the Reach). So, I interpreted it as the drone leaving and telling a lie on how the end happened. Which BTW, is a total butcher of the books. In the books, it's certain in book two that the real Lena dies in Area X and it's the drone (who doesn't know who / what it is). Really, the books are mostly about a descent into madness due to metaphysical effects of Area X. Anyway, read / listen to the books. Much better!
Based on all the refraction taking place in the Shimmer and how every living organism within it becomes connected to everything else, it makes sense the everything would catch on fire after the grenade was detonated. That’s a fact since the Shimmer disappears after that. The same didn’t happen with Kane because it was the real Kane who incinerated himself.
Since the movies wants to be stand-alone and not be part of a trilogy, its clear that he doesnt want to mirror the books anyway. So back to the movie: the "real Lena" stopped existing once she entered the shimmer. She literally showed & explained us how her cells changed their recreation process. So even if she didnt got cloned from the outside, she surely got changed from the inside. Either way, there is no original Lena anymore. Clone or not, Lena is alien.
Annihilation is so good! I LOVE how the bear has the human scream, it's so creepy it reminds me a bit of the evil flowers in The Ruins that make human sounds to toy with the characters like human laughing and crying sounds
My interpretation: Kane’s clone and original Lena made it out. Kane didn’t make it because he’d lost his desire to survive, whereas Lena hadn’t. The point of life in general is to spread by adapting to its surroundings, which is what I think was happening with the asteroid, the shimmer and the alien. Lena survives the shimmer because she shares its goal; to survive. Organ donor bodies reject organs if they’re too dissimilar; only Lena was a ‘natural fit’ for the shimmer. It doesn’t really matter to me if the alien has conscious intent, because survival and biological instincts don’t require consciousness. All we really see the alien do is mimic, which doesn’t require advanced intelligence. Most life gets by fine without it.
the movie is deep and thought provoking. Need to see it again... but Portman's character was damaged by her affair and the end, IMO is her possible redemption.
With so many allusions to self destruction, maybe the alien/threat wasn't necessarily a physical threat at all. It was itself a representation of the events (external in nature) in our lives that drive our own self destruction. Sometimes we succeed in that endeavor, sometimes we emerge, forever changed by the experience. Consider the metallic doppelganger, which she at first attempts to fight, she only defeats through acceptance. Ventress comes to accept it as well. She is faced with cancer and dies beautifully, when her character accomplishes her goal of reaching the lighthouse and finds peace in the struggle. As the final meteor shower suggests, we are all being bombarded by these events that threaten and change us.
I think the original Lena walks into the center of the shimmer to destroy it. She is called a fighter at the beginning of the movie and that is what she does at the end. When Lena confronts the blob in the center, you see a bit of her blood go into the blob, therefore it has her DNA and is able to create Lena2. The original Lena at the end burst into the white fire and touches her husband who is dead as if to say good by and then goes into the center to demolish it. Lena2 is shocked by this but realizes she is now Lena2 and goes back to see Husband2.
Here's my theory, I say It's the original lena that escapes area x. here's my evidence #1: when the clone caught fire, it had no clue what to do it started touching things. #2: lena doesn't get sick like Kane's clone does when it arrives, and when she drinks the water, nothing happens #3: Lena knew what she was talking about and remembers her journey, unlike Kane's clone who didn't even know what a bedroom was, and lena asks the clone Kane if he's the real Kane, and he says "I don't think so", and asks" are you lena?" revealing the fact that the clone didn't get kane's memories, while lena still has her memories #4: when the alien catches fire you can see it go back to it's metallic form aka thicc alien
There are many interpretations for the climax. But I think the simplest way to see it is as a secret invasion. Alien was trying to copy Lena when it pushed her against the door, but she kills it. When Lena gets back to her fake husband she hugs him and then we see her get the shimmer in her eyes, thus the copy was completed. Definitely want to see it again!!
Jennifer Mathis It's because all DNA in the shimmer is refracting into each other. It's becoming one. So that tattoo which started off on the dead military guys arm could have actually came from someone else who went in before. Lena picks it up from the paramedic but I can't remember if she had it before going in. It's the same reason why Kanes accent sounds different in that final video. And what that symbol represents is important to the film - from death comes life. Highly recommend checking out atzendings ending explained video even if you think you got most of this. I did but he pointed out some stuff I did not catch which is not in this video either.
Multiple strands of DNA from all of the people that went in and all of the plants, animals, etc in the shimmer are combining. The tattoo is an echo. Just like the house Christy mentions. Just like the psychologists rocky marriage.
Its super easy. The Shimmer is cancer. What if the earth got cancer. There is a lot of cancer talk in the movie. There is a scene where Portman is reading a book called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which is a book where the main character is dying from cancer.
Movie Lover206 It could be interpreted that way but that book was just more symbolism for "from death comes life". The same thing the infinity snake tattoo symbolized. Highly recommend checking out Atz show ending explained video just to hear what others thought it all meant and he did the research. There is a big metaphor in this film about marriage too.
Randomfools Alex Garland has already said his interpretation is very loosely based and more of a reaction to how he felt than a retelling. So it’s very clear
Fe H I’m aware Matt from Collider felt the same thing. Is it not possible more than one person can feel the same way? It’s exactly how I felt watching it. But if you want to assume I stole his theory go ahead.
Fe H I mean I could point you to my twitter account where I posted what I thought it was about BEFORE the article was written, but I’m not gonna please you. You act as if multiple people can’t feel the same way. I also mentioned some things that that article didn’t, like the book Portman was reading in the book.
I believe if this environment is able to interbreed and replicate endlessly, who is to say that any of them where the “original” them upon entering. None of them where able to recall the first few days suggesting they are replicas. The longer you are in there, the more likely you are to be be removed from your original self. This replicating causes short and eventual long term memory loss. Lena’s husband was in there the longest which is why he almost had no recollection.
Shimmer thing were looking for the best life project, so it didn't like any kind of expediters except Natalie and her husband, Natalie was not the clone, she liked her character (she was already mutated) and she let her win, but the project was already done, basically alien created new Adam and Eve.
I thought it was pretty clear the real human lena emerges from the lighthouse and not the double... she puts the grenade in the doubles hand and then walks out, and meanwhile the double burns up inside the lighthouse as it turns to ash... or am I remembering it wrong? I just saw this yesterday, really loved it... the ads don't do it justice at all! Only thing I don't get... why was it inside Ventriss? Seemed to imply she was the locus of the whole event the whole time, but that doesn't make too much sense
I think Ventris just got there first and was similarly doubled by the creature. Or the creature tried to merge completely with a human and failed or changed it's mind when it saw Lena as a more adequate candidate.
I'll break it down like this; as she is lying to her interrogators, what we are seeing aren't narrative flashbacks. It's the real deal and the reliability of the events shouldn't come into question. Hence it is the original to escape and Alonso's explanation holds water.
I'd have to see it again, but I thought the whole thing was just a metaphor for how people change over time and can never really remain themselves. The characters that don't look to the future and won't acknowledge change (the terminal patient, the depressive) all remain within the shimmer and fade out. Natalie Portman's character resolves to accept the changes in her relationship and fight to revive it. She comes out of the shimmer realizing that it didn't want to destroy you or help you, it didn't have an agenda, or a point of view, it was only there to bring about change, to mutate for better or worse because that's what happens in life. At then end, she asks: "are you Kane?" and he says "I don't know." She says she's not sure who she is either. Both of them have just gone through a traumatic ordeal - a ruined marriage symbolized by their travel through the shimmer - and have come out different people. Like the Swedish actress on the boat says: "More than missing my child, I missed who I used to be."
This film is odd... too many unanswered questions... why does Josie turn into a plant? Was it because she gave up? ... and why don't the rest turn? Same with the duplicates... why were some animals duplicated and not all? (I have a theory to that one actually, probably did have duplicates but they killed each other due to their instincts... but then mutated? The croc and bear). Hmmm... Plus the ending, only reason i think the clone Lena is the one that got out (apart from the eyes) is when the one left in the light house is on fire, she goes to her husband and seems to hold his head then proceeds to spread the fire around... why didn't they both ran out as they were mimicking each other? Good film overall though, would recommend it #JusBlazeArmy
Yeah, That "bear" Attack Was so sickening and realistic that it bothered me for days after. Also, a film that makes you think and have real conversation is much too rare these days.
I believe a couple lines from the movie explains the ending. Lena discusses life coming from a single cell, alone in the world, which becomes 2, 4, 8, etc. She also mentions that God makes mistakes because our DNA is not perfect. We can age, get cancer and diseases all because of how the DNA was designed. I hypothesize that this is a lone alien. Its hyper-cube look seems to suggest it is from another dimension which has more spacial dimensions. In an effort to survive and propagate, it experiments with DNA to create the perfect form. It ultimately creates two doppelgangers. So from one becomes two. Their DNA is probably much more intelligently designed to avoid aging, and common diseases. They may even retain some genes from the other organisms in the shimmer. Once the experiment was over, the failed experiments and trail stages were burned and the final products left and lied about what happened.
SPOILER- Im surprised they didnt mention the Shimmer as a metaphor for cancer or creating a cancer on earth. Such a good scifi thriller. This is like a perfect rainy day movie but its very immersive. Its has Twilight Zone mix with Invasion of Body Snatchers.
Gator-Sharknado coming soon on SyFy. Nah, you guys are on point for the most part. Of course it was the original Portman who came back out- they specifically showed when she checked her blood that she was mutating/ becoming infused with the alien DNA. It was in the process of creating a duplicate but the original person was transforming as well as a result of being in the Shimmer.. They all were.
I just wanted to mention that the bear is extremely reminiscent of a 'monster' from a Gene Wolfe book. It shows up in "the shadow of the torturer". Google "Alzabo". It was terrifying in that book. -just checked reddit and apparently lots of ppl noticed this. cheers!
She talks about how she would stay the same if her cells didn't get bored and die, but she couldn't be further from the truth. If they kept multiplying, she would turn into something like a pile of goop or something, nothing that could be described as human anymore. If our cells didn't self destruct, i don't think we would like our immortality, as it would be very alien. So be happy we can live and die,
Why doesnt anyone mention that the same fucking song plays throughout the entire movie ! Sometimes just acoustic, sometimes with the lyrics but its the same song! Please someone explain, it must have a meaning
Look up the lyrics of that song. The film can be interpreted as one giant metaphor about marriage outside of many things. Oscar Isaac spoiled it in an interview. Check out atzshows ending explained video on this film. Even if you think you got it, there's stuff you might have missed and why it was important.
The original (real) Nataly IS the one that comes out of the shimmer at the end, this is very clearly seen/suggested in the movie at the end. She is just now "infected" by going into the shimmer like all other beings/plants that get caught in the shimmer's area. But is IS the original/real Nataly that comes back, there is no question of this! =)
The bear aint the girls throat, which containing her vocal chords. Her vocal chords fused/ mutant into the bear. But I like the idea it uses the voice to lure prey
There is no alien. It's husband leaving his anger and pride behind and a wife leaving her self-destructiveness. They are reunited as two changed people to create one whole again.
I think when she hands over the grenade, unlike when she violently tries to escape, its like a symbolic handing over of her self-destructiveness. Thus when she runs and her clone burns up, it is now self-destructive like she was, burning everything else
I heard an Analysis that the shimmer is like an ecological cancer. And that is the purpose of the alien in general is just to spread and grow. Cancer comes up several times in the film and it is a nice analogy because after NP's character defeats the mimic and the shimmer gets destroyed it is like they removed the tumor, but there is always some little piece that can come back which would be NP's and OI's characters at the end of the movie.
I thought Portman's character at the end had a mix of each of the women she traveled with. Specifically, the tattoo on her arm matches exactly with one of the other characters.
It was the actual Lena who got out of the lighthouse. She states prior to the the final events that she knows she has been infected. So at the end when the alien doppelganger of Kane's eyes change, hers does as well because she's not completely human anymore.
As far as which Natalie Portman makes it out of the shimmer, the story is being told by the Natalie Portman on the outside. So the events we see in the confrontation might not have gone down as we were shown. If the alien Portman left the shimmer (as the alien version of Oscar Isaac did), she could just be telling her interrogator it was the alien version that was killed. Either it was the alien version that survived or the refraction of Area X caused the original Portman to take on a parts of the alien version. In a way, it doesn't matter because either way the biologist who left Area X was a combination of the two versions. Hell, she might not even be sure which one she started as.
One character says that the bear somehow took on some part of the woman it killed. And that’s why it makes that sound. I think that’s also what happens to Natalie Portman. She gets out (no question, you see the mimic burn) but she has taken on part of thing she killed, like the bear did. She comes back, but so does the mimic.
I thought they showed the original Natalie Portman got out because she was able to drink the water. When duplicate Oscar Isaac drank the water it showed the close up of the blood.
that's what i thought too, she looked apprehensive to drinking the water, and then relieved when she was okay after drinking it, it was like she had to verify that she was actually who she thought she was to herself, and not a double
Christy. The gentlemen on either side of you are intelligent, but talking out of their asses... You are the center and orator of this discussion. I want to hear more of your thoughts. I think you grasped the core of this film better than most. This film!!
”Its some kind of Dark Matter based life form that unintentionally affected our environment by crashing on Earth and trying to survive. Until it found a way to mimic, blend in, coexist and survive to become the next Evolutionary Step of Humankind” The Echo of Life.
Part of me thinks that it may have been the original character who made it out of the shimmer. Her husband's doubleganger was bleeding into the glass of water whereas her character in the final act didn't bleed, this could be a clue.
To be clear, Natalie Portman (Lena) gave her doppelganger the desire to destroy the Shimmer, and it did. The Shimmer is gone now...UNLESS one is contending that mutated Lena, who makes it out, now IS The Shimmer (and/or w/ the doppelganger Cane. WTF was up w/ OI's accent? It seemed "standard American" in the flashback scene, and then in the suicide video, it's all corn-pone. Unless Cane mutated w/ some local Loosianan to take on a new accent? ;-/ )
The shot with the opening of the shark alligator thing, I took it as a straight take from Jaws, when they show the dead shark’s bloody mouth being pried open
Spoiler alert! One bit that bothers me is the flashback scene where Kane is about to leave. He places a glass of orange juice next to the bed next to Lena before telling her he is going. 2 things: Kane's appearance is the same as the shimmer version of himself and what's with the orange juice? The film is full of shots of glasses of water but this one time it's different. Any ideas people?
Spoilers alert: I really loved this movie. Very compelling and satisfying in an alien way. Very enjoyable to watch. I liked the way shimmer was trying to evolve and eventually produced two of them from the bubble so they can go forth and multiply at the end, so the shimmer reached its’ goal. It seemed like a random genetic mutation that found a way to join with the DNA on planet earth and evolve into a new modes of perception and being and life.
i think its a take on body snatchers but in the way it took over her mind and eventually her body. i feel like theyre hinting at the idea that they are now the new adam and eve come out of paradise. i liked the idea that alonso said about the bear the mimickery. \ also the ouroboros was on the guys arms that got cut open so maybe just like everything began to meld together the humans began to meld into each other same matter in a way. also the ouroboros is a symbol of rebirth and change so once she has it on her arm shes already doomed shes already began a change
There's a point in the movie where Natalie Portmans character talks about duplicating as they got closer to the lighthouse and at the beginning of when they first entered they each lost time (3 days I think?) So my theory is they each were all duplicated multiple times within the shimmer so maybe the moment they entered and we see them within the shimmer awake for the first time, they've already been duplicated and their original selves are already gone and what were watching are just clones...
The alien entity was running an experiment to see which dna and lifeform will help it most survive, which was humans, but it had to figure out how to become human without the self destructive nature.
My whole portrayal of the movie was that: it's like having a group of people taking the same drug and each of them reacting differently to it, based on their pasts and the way they feel now inside.✌❤ That's what the shimmer represents in my opinion.
The fact that the movie was done via flashbacks was a huge mistake, it utterly ruined tension throughout the movie. Also, fact that the team didn't wear hazmat suites into shimmer really destroyed suspension of disbelief. Ending was bad, it should have been more ambiguous about which version of Natalie made it out and having the entirely shimmer be destroyed by a single flash bang grenade was weird and anti-climatic, especially when a flash bang grenade had previously went off in same location and had no such effect. Good premise, poor execution.
The Shimmer is the alien adapting/making sense of its new 'alien' environment -- I dont think the Shimmer ever meant to crash on Earth, so it's basically just trying to survive and maybe terraform its new surrounding into something it can call home (or not, "I dunno," to paraphrase alien Oscar Isaac in the movie) LOL
What if the real version of Natalie Portman makes it out and is fine but then her physical contact with the clone of her husband, who is a direct product of the shimmer "infects" her? Her eyes don't change until she hugs him at the end and he touches her. Perhaps she has already had genetic modifications to her cells and the physical contact is all the shimmer version of her husband needs to "turn" her or whatever you'd call it. While they are in the shimmer, it's changing them from afar. Why couldn't it change people through direct contact outside of the shimmer? Essentially any contact with the shimmer will create genetic changes?
The story is told from Lena’s perspective. If it was the double that came out it wouldn’t have her memories much like Kane’s double didn’t have his memories. Talking bear? It mimic’d sounds of its prey but was far from having a conversation.
what the hell?.. they explained what the shimmer was in the movie... not only does light get refracted by going through a prism, but it also refracts DNA then reconstitutes it into something new. also, why the radios dont work properly, mixing the signals. It also seems as if you can control the extent of the shimmer effects on your body. I was hoping the bf killed himself at the end because he knew his gf was cheating on him and the shimmer amplified his pain. Kind of like the suicide girl just wanted to die... but it didnt take that turn. He just kills himself.
Review of Annihilation (2018🌱🐉🍃) by Brilliant Director Alex Garland (Ex-Machina) A "A Psychedelic Allegory of Human Tragedy" Another pessimistic thriller and at same time a grim warning for a Civilization that seems increasingly distanced from the conditions that have guaranteed the success of humanity's journey for thousands of years to the present day such as: empathy, solidarity, cooperation and, fundamentally, a sense of unity with nature and the universe based on shamanic spiritual practices. In Annihilation, the Director Alex Garland once more distills all his pessimism against us, humanity, and makes use of several resources to validate his version of the original book: first through a kind of "ecological rebellion" where nature literally decides to "annihilate" the “cancer " of the earth (the human race) through both by a complex botanical-genetic reconfiguration and by triggering a dramatic DNA mutation processes which affected all other living things around and by doing it, tries to reconfigure the whole planet. Garland´s version is a dramatic interpretation of the famous Gaia hypothesis (by James Lovelock, 1979), which claimed that the earth is a "self-regulating" living being, with fever, caused by the frantic industrial and urban activity of mankind in last 700 years and, therefore, it is about to expel these undesirable beings ... On the other hand, It is also an interesting approach to the profound "transformation" that happens with those who experience an authentic psychedelic journey (references to mushrooms, fungi and mycelia are everywhere in the movie) and once on the other side "would come across a totally different "environment" from the so called "real " world of language, culture and ideology built by human beings in the last 10,000 years to support the male centric, dominator civilization ... It is important to mention the hypothesis advocated by the psychedelic philosophy on the dissolution of ego-delusions, on the rationalizing dimension of the human psyche which underpins the culture of civilization. Such approach appears in the final scene in which Natalie Portman´s character (after an induced psychedelic trip in the interior of the magical tower) wages a desperate struggle against his own "other" (her ego) to immediately fall back on what it means to become aware of things and become a conscious being ... Such dissimulated posture of the protagonist, now “self-conscious” manifests itself throughout the film, in the cold interrogation carried out by various narrow minded scientists and their useless technological machines, unable to understand what happened (or is happening!) on the other side of the shimmer without understanding that , as Natalie's character, in order to get into the swings of things, they also would have to go through the experience of crossing the boundaries of the language / culture / ideology of the so-called "human reality" (the psychedelic experience itself). That would be a sine qua non condition for "understanding" the truth that Nature (through its own "alchemical" language) has been trying to tell us for centuries and the stoned hunter-gathered humanity that lived at 12000BC knew very well: that the transition to agriculture and its tragic corollary, the alpha dominant Technological Civilization, is an evolutionary misfortune, ultimately an error, an unwanted mutation that transformed those special primates into blind, belligerent, misguided and deluded beings with their alleged superior technological civilization and for that very reason, destined to self-annihilation.
My guess is that the shimmer was trying to perfect it's recreation of earthly lifeforms and the last Natalie Portman was perfection achieved and thus the shimmer destroyed itself knowing it would survive through her.
I don’t think Natalie Portmans character expected to come back... I mean she just did it out of love and remorse... Kane was basically dead with all of the horrible health problems he cane back with at the time.. the ones that ultimately made it through the farthest are the ones that felt dead inside already.. the one that actually expected to come back was the one that lost her marbles first
My interpretation for the bear was it showed that the bear ate the throat & voice box thus consuming her final voice/screams. Thank you Alonso for mentioning "where the hell the tattoo came from?" I was real focused on it, not sure how it went from Gina Rodriguez to Portman but...Hot damn did I dig this movie, so interpretable, discussable, and seemingly will be endlessly rewatchable.
Sam Anderson it's explained how everyone's DNA gets absorbed and transferred to other people. Oscar Issaca character has a southern accent in the recording, most likely picked up from one of his unit members. Portman's character got the tattoo transferred. Muchoke the bear picking up the girls scream
The Gina Rodriguez character originally has that infinity tattoo and Natalie doesn't get it until after (SPOILERS) the Gina character is killed by the bear. So there's something.
I kind of thought about the flood from halo with this movie. Except for a gravemind behind everything, it’s just nature. Idk it was a mix of the flood from halo and like alien? I have no clue if that makes sense but yeah
The talking bear was one of the most unsettling scenes iv seen in a movie since Under The Skin
I could feel my showing try to find it's breath when that moment ended. Such amazing tension it was palpable.
i think that idea was lifted from the hunger games - the "muttations"
So true. One of the most tense scenes in recent memory
I agree. I haven't seen anything like that in a film, ever. It was a completely unique concept.
That and the spinning guts. I don't get unsettled easily either. Definitely crept me out
SPOILER
Regarding the bear with the woman’s screams. When Lena finds her corpse her neck is ripped open and assumably eaten vs everything else so I think her voice box/vocal cords melded with the bears DNA after it bit and/or ate that part of her.
BucketDwarf wow yeah that makes perfect sense
good catch...I thought of her throat last night as well...also there was a human face on the side of his head
Its kind of Jeepers Creeper it take parts & add that to its body
Yeah but absorbing the vocal cords does not give you the ability to construct the phrase "help me". It may provide you the "voice" per se but the to conceive the intention and assembling the phrase "help me, please" requires input from the brain itself. We see that the brain of the victim is intact, atleast what was shown in the movie.
The film makes a point to say that the shimmer might effect more than DNA. Lena's house appears in the shimmer so it's logical to assume thoughts (and as such, the ability to form words) can also be transferred.
I'm pretty sure that Gina Rodriguez's character had that tattoo on her arm and when Natalie Portman comes out with the same tattoo it suggests that the refracting and mixing of DNA resulted in her taking on aspects of everyone and everything in the shimmer.
I'm pretty sure the tattoo is also seen on other characters. A friend of mine think she saw it on the soldier they cut open but only in his mushroom form.
Julian P yes it was on gina Rodriguez
I'm getting that tattoo!
theres a part in the movie where the women are in the same building that the previous military group stayed in..and in a separate room theres this odd looking hole in the wall where someone's legs are coming out and above the hole there is someone's upperbody with their ribs exposed and a skull. Did anybody else notice that the person had the same infinity arm tattoo as natalie portman's character?? did it have something to do with her involvement in the military so alot of military people have that tattoo or???idk...somethings up with that tattoo
Lol but a tattoo isn't part of your DNA so it doesn't make sense that she inherits the tattoo because she's taking other people's DNA
Also Kane has one too
can we talk about how incredible it is that Garland has made a perfectly passive antagonist! The nature of the shimmer refracts and blends its environment, but the being in the lighthouse does nothing but the same - it copies. The figure doesn't go outside and hunt them down, it just exists there (it doesn't even take a human form until it has one to copy). It is nature itself that is the aggressor, both in the cases of the animals, and the self-destructive tendencies of the team.
Good catch Christy. I kept asking myself “Isn’t that their house?” but I wasn’t sure if I had imagined it.
I noticed that right away!
Yeah, at the very beginning of the movie when Oscar Isaac returns to the house, before going up the stairs he pauses and looks at wedding photos on the wall. When Natalie Portman enters the house in the Shimmer she looks at the same photos.
Fangtorn yup..and in the beginning when she asks the Cain clone how did u get here? He answers " just outside the bedroom door " which explains how original soldier Cain designed that same Shimmer house from memory/cloned imagination for the whole time he was stuck out there.
It wasn't there house lmao
It was a replication of it. Its not just the staircase, its the position of the photos on the walls and the kitchen aswell.
You have to completely ignore the movie to not get Portman survives the Shimmer. Issac's doppelganger not only can't answer Portman's basic questions about what he has been up to but he also refers to the bedroom as "the room with the bed."
I think the movie makes it pretty clear the doppleganger has inherited a lot of memory, language, etc from Issac but is not comfortable using it and doesn't get idiomatic stuff. And they don't show Portman habing those same difficulties.
Yes & no. She may dont be a clone, but her cells got altered for over 4 months in an alienating way. In one way or another, she is alien now.
Natalie's alien double is the one telling the story and what we see is based on it's description of the events. The alien double changes the ending to hide what it is and wants to take her place. Natalie's character died in the lighthouse.
Exactly, at last someone got it
*Refraction*
Lena (played by Portman) got the tattoo from Anya (Rodriguez)
and a similar thing happens with Kane (Isaac) as his accent gradually changes ...something he probably acquired from one (or more) of his teammates
Aritro Roy i had the same question about his accent. i didnt think he had it at the beginning
The tattoo was on the body on the wall in the pool
I noticed when Portman's character goes into the house inside the Shimmer, there's a moment by the stairs where it seems like she notices that the stairs/house are similar if not identical to hers. For some reason, there was a definite moment where she takes in the fact that she's in the house.
Also, I think it was the original Portman that made it out but at first, I thought maybe the alien absorbed parts of her mental structure (not just physical) and adapted her tendency to lie. They set up that she's a lier throughout the movie. So I wondered if maybe it was the alien being interrogated and that it lied to cover it's identity by changing how the final moments in the lighthouse went down, lying to the viewer as well. It hypnotized Portman into killing herself and then left once it learned enough about Earth biology and whether or not it wanted to continue changing the Earth. I thought it would be a fun twist if it actually won and just lied about it so it could be with its mate (the Issacs clone).
I love how the movie was able to make something as ordinary (to us) as life seem so uncanny, and to do this simply by speeding up its rate of growth, relative to selection. It shows us life in the raw--all blind proliferation and assimilation--without the filter of natural selection to lend it the illusion of order and harmony. This is, of course, precisely how cancer behaves, but we see other examples in phenomena like "driving y chromosome," which can can skew a population's sex ratio entirely male in a short period of time, resulting in a short-term "benefit" to the y chromosome (more copies of it being made per generation), but ultimately extinction.
It's the blindness of these processes that gives them the appearance of being willfully self-destructive. Cancer cells don't know that by endangering the life of their host they are endangering themselves. Similarly, Lena isn't thinking about the wellbeing of her marriage, the greater whole of which she is a part, when she decides to embark on her affair; she's just acting in her own short term interest. We live in an entropic universe, meaning that there are many more ways of making it more disordered than of making it more ordered. Annihilation is not the exception, but the rule. It takes a lot of luck, time, or care to build structures that last.
EinSophistry excellent comment! Thank you. I never thought of this aspect of the meaning of the film. Now I do have to see it again!
Great analysis
Also this movie had the South Park Man-Bear-Pig
Late Cambrian lmfao
Late Cambrian this comment deserves more likes
I love the female characters in this movie. They are strong yet feminine, smart and intuitive, emotionally vulnerable yet brave. These characters are far more realistic than many other female roles you see in films and on shows.
Each person that goes into the shimmer is self destructive in someway. Each one must confront their self destructive behavior. Two of them are killed, but two of them accept their fate and are changed forever. Natalie Portman's character is also self-destructive. We know this because of the scene where she is having sex with her colleague, and he mentions that she can't forgive herself. And she knows this is true.
When her husband leaves for this mission a day early, he knows the truth, that she has been having an affair. He loves her, but doesn't know how to deal with it, and so he goes into the shimmer. In the scene where he is talking to his double and decides that he doesn't know which is the real person, he has given up, and thus accepts his fate.
Natalie Portman when confronting her double, has something to go back for, she has someone to return to, a reason to leave the shimmer. So when the double begins to copy her, she takes the grenade, and allows it to copy that part of her--the self destructive part--and then leaves. The copy then takes the newly acquired self-destructive nature and promptly destroys everything, including itself.
Originally I didn't understand the title because annihilation only happens when two things destroy each other. Upon reflection of what actually happens in the film, I realized that ultimately it made sense, in that moment when the copy does in fact destroy itself, and the part of Portman it has acquired, the way it destroyed Jennifer Jason Leigh's character.
Many people get stuck on the fact that when the shimmer is destroyed, it seemingly destroys everything inside, but Portman's character is able to leave, her husband/copy is just fine, and the reason for this is simple. Of all those who entered the shimmer, these two characters wanted to leave, had a reason to be something outside of the shimmer, thus when it was destroyed, whatever created the changes between the two of them died, however the changes were already made, which we know because both had the glowing eyes.
The other thing people get hung up on is, the notion that there must be some point to it. And to that I say, there is. Whatever crashed at the lighthouse wasn't sure what it wanted. First we knows this because as the shimmer expands you see in an outward going in fashion that things are slightly changed, but as you go deeper, toward its singularity, whatever was in the center, you find things to be far more complex and more deeply affected. Much like the division of cells to take what is simple and create something complex. That means when the shimmer was at its finest point in the beginning like an experiment, things were minutely changed, as the simple move further outward, replaced with more complex structures the shimmer gets larger and larger. Like the ripple in a pond.
We can guess that people entering the shimmer heading toward the lighthouse gave this thing an opportunity to work with their DNA, and that by the time Portman's husband reaches the lighthouse, his mind has been too far altered, that he is too far gone, a mistake that the next copy is unlikely to make with her. In the scene before her copy comes into being, Jennifer Jason Leigh's character describe the destruction necessary to create life, and that is what we see.
Whatever this thing is, it has been destroying things, and making new things all in an attempt to understand. The real Lena does leave, and the copy is destroyed, however, forever changed, to the point that she might not know how much of her remains and how much is part of that thing, the same can be said of her husband who might technically be more that thing, than her husband.
John Saucier My interpretation was it is an "evolved" version of her, just as it is an "evolved" version of Kane. They both changed and are now new. They are now "perfect" forever. The end.
I have only seen the movie adaptation and have not read the book.
I've seen people get hung up on what the entity wanted, assuming that the ending is signalling the beginning of an invasion. But I don't think the film is really about an invasion, it's about human behavior.
Humans self-destruct. They make decisions that are against their better judgement and best interests. When humans do that, they can either let those decisions destroy them (as happens with most of the characters), or they can learn from the experience and change for the better.
Kane and Lena both emerge from the Shimmer, but they are not the same people they were when they went in. They have literally become new people, having taken on the qualities of what they interacted with. They've been given a second chance to make the right decisions. So to me, the ending is actually an uplifting one.
I agree with you!
And this is how I see it:
Kane never accepted the self-destructive nature of human beings as a flaw. Lena did. You can see that in the bedroom scene, when they're talking about how getting old is just a flaw and can be fixed. Lena says that, but Kane is not agree. He thinks the way we were created it's something more religious. He thinks God made us this way for a reason and we can not change it.
Getting back to the Lighthouse scene.
What happens when they are "echoed" involves the self-destructive nature. Lena see it as a flaw, so she gives it to this alien, or the alien takes it from her. We see the alien destroying itself.
On the other hand we have Kane. He embrace his self-destructive nature. He destroys himself. The alien echo doesn't have it then.
They're perfect. They've evolved into something new. They aren't Lena and Kane anymore, they're something new.
I dont think all the soldiers that went into the shimmer were suicidal aswell. Sure, you can argue that, but I dont think many people would agree.
Yatsura2 yeah, that’s one of the aspects that doesn’t make sense to me.
The tattoo was one of the details I liked about this movie. The paramedic Anya had it on her arm, then when Natalie's character was on the boat she complains about a bruise on her arm and thinks it come from the alligator even though it never touched her, and then she has the tattoo. I sort of liked she never mentioned it, it was as if she never realized the tattoo wasn't hers.
Fangtorn don't wanna be THAT guy but it was the soldier that had his stomach cut that had the tattoo, you see it when the group see his remains on the wall.
I also noticed that it was their house right away. What really creeped me out, because I only remembered it later: Kane (the original we see in the flashbacks) has a bear tattooed on his chest.
The guy that was torn apart by the "worms" in his stomach had the tattoo. Natalie Portman's character touched it.
The "bear" was one of the most terrifying and fascinating creatures I have ever seen on film. It stunned me.
Garland5 mimic mosters have been done many times in cinema. T1000 from Terminator 2 uses the same trick. Nothing new.
The extraterrestrial species was experimenting with the shimmer. With all of the other people, it had failed they were all self destructive, hence the focus on this theme in the movie. With Lena, it was able to successfully get the mutation into a person that was strong enough to make it out and thus take the mutation with it. There was no longer a need for the shimmer so when Lena set the duplicate on fire, it extinguished the rest of the lighthouse. She is still Lena but she also has parts of the other characters and the extraterrestrial in her. She's the same but different. Maybe it's the evolution of humans.
The "alien" lena survived. It was the second iteration of "mimicry" where the alien finally learned what it took to survive outside area x (comeplete with memory - drinking the water did not have adverse effect) and also having TWO of them to be able to reproduce unnoticed. The second time lena wakes up from the slumber with the mimic, the switch already happened. you could see from the "steps" they were taking right before the "alien" picked up the grenade...knowing the real Lena would want to be with her husband, the alien handed the grenade to Lena (annihilation) and after it exploded you could see how Lena touches/burns her husband first and then the contamination around her. Why would the doppleganger alien do this? why would it try to "burn" the other contamination essentially destroying the entirety of the shimmer? It was the final sacrifice of Lena even though she knew the alien would get away, destroying the shimmer will give humans some time to figure out what is happening or about to happen. Yes, the aliens are alive in two human bodies, but it will take a longer time to spread than what the shimmer was doing.
I want to see this one again. I just hope it's still playing next week
coming to netflix on the 2nd of march
Same. Going to see it again on Saturday
Christy's right. It's the same house because the way the camera framed the staircase was exactly the same.
The house was the same because of... budget.
1) I think the LENA we see at the end is the real one. When the fake KANE arrived, he didn't remember much. LENA remembered enough details to tell the story to LOMAX. Actually, why *would* a fake LENA tell the story?
2) At the lighthouse, why did the creature mimic LENA's movements only at times? Speaking of that scene, when the creature pushed her against the door, it looked like it was trying to rape her. Is the movie then meant to be an allegory on that subject?
It was undoubtedly "real" Lena that came back. When she lights the phosphorus grenade, the flesh burns away and you can clearly see that it's the other being.
I think the doppleganger got out, because remember the whole story is being told, by the Lena in the chair, talking to the guy in the hazmat suit. She could easily lie about what happened in the lighthouse.
it's not just DNA that gets "changed" in the shimmer. Thoughts or memories get duplicated---like Lena's house being in the shimmer, etc. Also parts of others get mixed in with other people----Kane gets a southern accent (in his video with his clone), the tattoo from the guy with the swirling intestines ends up on the EMT woman and on Lena. So DNA gets "changed", thoughts/memories are made physical and people get parts of others incorporated into themselves.
He asks her at the end if she's Lena and she doesn't answer, then they hug and her eyes shimmer like his does... Whether she's the clone or not she's definitely not herself anymore...
The scene where the Biologist is looking into the mimic is mindblowing.
I’m confused about what people don’t understand about the ending. The one thing I didn’t like is that everything seemed to be overly explained, when it comes to the alien anyway. For example, im pretty sure the tattoo was on another one of her team mates, which I think implies that there may have been a chance that there were elements of her team mates becoming bonded to each other.
The focus on the characters is the worst part of the film, in my opinion.
why would the characters also go up in flames? that outcome doesn't make any sense to me
I think it wanted a way to know itself...or possibly know anything at all. Remember how it is on fire and doesn't really react until it touches Oscar Isaac's body? it seems like only then it knows that fire is damaging to its body as a human, and then gives into its fate of death presumably. The Shimmer clearly has some kind of agency, even though we don't know its intentions. Ill grant you that maybe the flora disintegrated when the shimmer dissipated but that in no way means conscious beings also eroded away.
I think the original natalie portman is alive cause when she drank from the cup, there wasn't any blood at least i don't think so
wackydelly84 my take was that everything in the shimmer that got absorbed went up in flames. Portman was the one thing that didn't die yet. So her shimmer mutations died and she survived.
However, shimmer clone Kane was outside the shimmer and unaffected. Her glowing eyes during the hug, which never ever glowed in the hospital, indicate that she was again encountering the shimmer and being refracted.
Basically, clone Kane was the new shimmer source at the end. And earth is still fucked. Also, Natalie Portman completes her self destructive journey by hugging him because she knows damn well she killed the shimmer except the clone and she's annihilating herself by embracing him. Just like she knew she was screwing them by convincing them to continue.
are you suggesting water affects the alien in a harmful manner?
What did you guys think about the Dr. in the lighthouse. At first, her eyes are non existent when she is mumbling to herself, but then her eyes develop before she implodes and turns into that bright yellow "black hole"? wtf happened to her orignal? do we assume she was cloned and then just died mumbling to herself and that is why the alien version was found doing the same?
1. I think the real Lena character survived the lighthouse double scenario because the double was created in front of her eyes and eventually morphed into an exact replica right in front of Natalie's character. Then, immediately the real Lena puts the grenade in the hands of the morphing double, which starts the chain reaction of fire and sparks. There is a POV shot from the real Lena's side as she observes the double on fire in the lighthouse. There's no other way to interpret it. Kane, on the other hand, is a less certain situation. Did the double blow itself up or did Kane?
I think Kane is equally obvious: it's the double that escapes. The Kane that blows himself up is scruffy, and wearing the same military clothes he was wearing in the earlier video with the intestines.
Keep in mind, this is being told from Lena's perspective (sitting in the room talking to the new director of the Reach). So, I interpreted it as the drone leaving and telling a lie on how the end happened. Which BTW, is a total butcher of the books. In the books, it's certain in book two that the real Lena dies in Area X and it's the drone (who doesn't know who / what it is). Really, the books are mostly about a descent into madness due to metaphysical effects of Area X. Anyway, read / listen to the books. Much better!
Based on all the refraction taking place in the Shimmer and how every living organism within it becomes connected to everything else, it makes sense the everything would catch on fire after the grenade was detonated. That’s a fact since the Shimmer disappears after that. The same didn’t happen with Kane because it was the real Kane who incinerated himself.
Since the movies wants to be stand-alone and not be part of a trilogy, its clear that he doesnt want to mirror the books anyway.
So back to the movie: the "real Lena" stopped existing once she entered the shimmer. She literally showed & explained us how her cells changed their recreation process. So even if she didnt got cloned from the outside, she surely got changed from the inside. Either way, there is no original Lena anymore. Clone or not, Lena is alien.
Annihilation is so good! I LOVE how the bear has the human scream, it's so creepy it reminds me a bit of the evil flowers in The Ruins that make human sounds to toy with the characters like human laughing and crying sounds
The bell flowers in the Ruins! That's exactly what it was like!
Yeah they are creepy as hell
Ego. What you resist persists. Everything as one. I am, you are. Choice.
My interpretation: Kane’s clone and original Lena made it out. Kane didn’t make it because he’d lost his desire to survive, whereas Lena hadn’t. The point of life in general is to spread by adapting to its surroundings, which is what I think was happening with the asteroid, the shimmer and the alien. Lena survives the shimmer because she shares its goal; to survive. Organ donor bodies reject organs if they’re too dissimilar; only Lena was a ‘natural fit’ for the shimmer. It doesn’t really matter to me if the alien has conscious intent, because survival and biological instincts don’t require consciousness. All we really see the alien do is mimic, which doesn’t require advanced intelligence. Most life gets by fine without it.
the movie is deep and thought provoking. Need to see it again... but Portman's character was damaged by her affair and the end, IMO is her possible redemption.
With so many allusions to self destruction, maybe the alien/threat wasn't necessarily a physical threat at all. It was itself a representation of the events (external in nature) in our lives that drive our own self destruction. Sometimes we succeed in that endeavor, sometimes we emerge, forever changed by the experience. Consider the metallic doppelganger, which she at first attempts to fight, she only defeats through acceptance. Ventress comes to accept it as well. She is faced with cancer and dies beautifully, when her character accomplishes her goal of reaching the lighthouse and finds peace in the struggle.
As the final meteor shower suggests, we are all being bombarded by these events that threaten and change us.
I think the original Lena walks into the center of the shimmer to destroy it. She is called a fighter at the beginning of the movie and that is what she does at the end.
When Lena confronts the blob in the center, you see a bit of her blood go into the blob, therefore it has her DNA and is able to create Lena2. The original Lena at the end burst into the white fire and touches her husband who is dead as if to say good by and then goes into the center to demolish it. Lena2 is shocked by this but realizes she is now Lena2 and goes back to see Husband2.
Here's my theory, I say It's the original lena that escapes area x. here's my evidence
#1: when the clone caught fire, it had no clue what to do it started touching things.
#2: lena doesn't get sick like Kane's clone does when it arrives, and when she drinks the water, nothing happens
#3: Lena knew what she was talking about and remembers her journey, unlike Kane's clone who didn't even know what a bedroom was, and lena asks the clone Kane if he's the real Kane, and he says "I don't think so", and asks" are you lena?" revealing the fact that the clone didn't get kane's memories, while lena still has her memories
#4: when the alien catches fire you can see it go back to it's metallic form aka thicc alien
There are many interpretations for the climax. But I think the simplest way to see it is as a secret invasion. Alien was trying to copy Lena when it pushed her against the door, but she kills it. When Lena gets back to her fake husband she hugs him and then we see her get the shimmer in her eyes, thus the copy was completed.
Definitely want to see it again!!
Travis Spazz it was pushing against the door because it was copying her moves, it didn't want to hurt Lena.
What I don't get about the infinity tattoo is the man they find grafted to the pool wall has the exact same tattoo in the exact same spot.
Jennifer Mathis It's because all DNA in the shimmer is refracting into each other. It's becoming one. So that tattoo which started off on the dead military guys arm could have actually came from someone else who went in before. Lena picks it up from the paramedic but I can't remember if she had it before going in. It's the same reason why Kanes accent sounds different in that final video. And what that symbol represents is important to the film - from death comes life. Highly recommend checking out atzendings ending explained video even if you think you got most of this. I did but he pointed out some stuff I did not catch which is not in this video either.
Multiple strands of DNA from all of the people that went in and all of the plants, animals, etc in the shimmer are combining. The tattoo is an echo. Just like the house Christy mentions. Just like the psychologists rocky marriage.
Its super easy. The Shimmer is cancer. What if the earth got cancer. There is a lot of cancer talk in the movie. There is a scene where Portman is reading a book called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which is a book where the main character is dying from cancer.
Movie Lover206 It could be interpreted that way but that book was just more symbolism for "from death comes life". The same thing the infinity snake tattoo symbolized. Highly recommend checking out Atz show ending explained video just to hear what others thought it all meant and he did the research. There is a big metaphor in this film about marriage too.
Randomfools Alex Garland has already said his interpretation is very loosely based and more of a reaction to how he felt than a retelling. So it’s very clear
Randomfools Atz is a joke. Don’t like his channel. He’s often incredibly wrong.
Fe H I’m aware Matt from Collider felt the same thing. Is it not possible more than one person can feel the same way? It’s exactly how I felt watching it. But if you want to assume I stole his theory go ahead.
Fe H I mean I could point you to my twitter account where I posted what I thought it was about BEFORE the article was written, but I’m not gonna please you. You act as if multiple people can’t feel the same way. I also mentioned some things that that article didn’t, like the book Portman was reading in the book.
I believe if this environment is able to interbreed and replicate endlessly, who is to say that any of them where the “original” them upon entering. None of them where able to recall the first few days suggesting they are replicas. The longer you are in there, the more likely you are to be be removed from your original self. This replicating causes short and eventual long term memory loss. Lena’s husband was in there the longest which is why he almost had no recollection.
Shimmer thing were looking for the best life project, so it didn't like any kind of expediters except Natalie and her husband, Natalie was not the clone, she liked her character (she was already mutated) and she let her win, but the project was already done, basically alien created new Adam and Eve.
I thought it was pretty clear the real human lena emerges from the lighthouse and not the double... she puts the grenade in the doubles hand and then walks out, and meanwhile the double burns up inside the lighthouse as it turns to ash... or am I remembering it wrong? I just saw this yesterday, really loved it... the ads don't do it justice at all!
Only thing I don't get... why was it inside Ventriss? Seemed to imply she was the locus of the whole event the whole time, but that doesn't make too much sense
Luis Torres this may be a dumb observation on my part but maybe when the being became a part of ventris the stuff coming out of her was her cancer.
I think Ventris just got there first and was similarly doubled by the creature. Or the creature tried to merge completely with a human and failed or changed it's mind when it saw Lena as a more adequate candidate.
I'll break it down like this; as she is lying to her interrogators, what we are seeing aren't narrative flashbacks. It's the real deal and the reliability of the events shouldn't come into question. Hence it is the original to escape and Alonso's explanation holds water.
frod79 that's a pretty cool theory. I like it
But remember the transformation had been completed. Who was who?
I'd have to see it again, but I thought the whole thing was just a metaphor for how people change over time and can never really remain themselves. The characters that don't look to the future and won't acknowledge change (the terminal patient, the depressive) all remain within the shimmer and fade out. Natalie Portman's character resolves to accept the changes in her relationship and fight to revive it. She comes out of the shimmer realizing that it didn't want to destroy you or help you, it didn't have an agenda, or a point of view, it was only there to bring about change, to mutate for better or worse because that's what happens in life.
At then end, she asks: "are you Kane?" and he says "I don't know." She says she's not sure who she is either. Both of them have just gone through a traumatic ordeal - a ruined marriage symbolized by their travel through the shimmer - and have come out different people. Like the Swedish actress on the boat says: "More than missing my child, I missed who I used to be."
This film is odd... too many unanswered questions... why does Josie turn into a plant? Was it because she gave up? ... and why don't the rest turn? Same with the duplicates... why were some animals duplicated and not all? (I have a theory to that one actually, probably did have duplicates but they killed each other due to their instincts... but then mutated? The croc and bear). Hmmm...
Plus the ending, only reason i think the clone Lena is the one that got out (apart from the eyes) is when the one left in the light house is on fire, she goes to her husband and seems to hold his head then proceeds to spread the fire around... why didn't they both ran out as they were mimicking each other?
Good film overall though, would recommend it
#JusBlazeArmy
Yeah, That "bear" Attack Was so sickening and realistic that it bothered me for days after. Also, a film that makes you think and have real conversation is much too rare these days.
I believe a couple lines from the movie explains the ending. Lena discusses life coming from a single cell, alone in the world, which becomes 2, 4, 8, etc. She also mentions that God makes mistakes because our DNA is not perfect. We can age, get cancer and diseases all because of how the DNA was designed. I hypothesize that this is a lone alien. Its hyper-cube look seems to suggest it is from another dimension which has more spacial dimensions. In an effort to survive and propagate, it experiments with DNA to create the perfect form. It ultimately creates two doppelgangers. So from one becomes two. Their DNA is probably much more intelligently designed to avoid aging, and common diseases. They may even retain some genes from the other organisms in the shimmer. Once the experiment was over, the failed experiments and trail stages were burned and the final products left and lied about what happened.
HOLY SHIT Christy blew my fucking mind with the house thing.
SPOILER- Im surprised they didnt mention the Shimmer as a metaphor for cancer or creating a cancer on earth.
Such a good scifi thriller. This is like a perfect rainy day movie but its very immersive.
Its has Twilight Zone mix with Invasion of Body Snatchers.
Gator-Sharknado coming soon on SyFy. Nah, you guys are on point for the most part. Of course it was the original Portman who came back out- they specifically showed when she checked her blood that she was mutating/ becoming infused with the alien DNA. It was in the process of creating a duplicate but the original person was transforming as well as a result of being in the Shimmer.. They all were.
I also thought it was brilliant that the way to make the "cancer" die was to force it to replicate itself on fire. and destroyed itself.
I just wanted to mention that the bear is extremely reminiscent of a 'monster' from a Gene Wolfe book. It shows up in "the shadow of the torturer". Google "Alzabo". It was terrifying in that book. -just checked reddit and apparently lots of ppl noticed this. cheers!
She talks about how she would stay the same if her cells didn't get bored and die, but she couldn't be further from the truth. If they kept multiplying, she would turn into something like a pile of goop or something, nothing that could be described as human anymore. If our cells didn't self destruct, i don't think we would like our immortality, as it would be very alien. So be happy we can live and die,
Nature is one big chemistry set without it there is nothing and no man needs nothing.
Why doesnt anyone mention that the same fucking song plays throughout the entire movie ! Sometimes just acoustic, sometimes with the lyrics but its the same song! Please someone explain, it must have a meaning
Look up the lyrics of that song. The film can be interpreted as one giant metaphor about marriage outside of many things. Oscar Isaac spoiled it in an interview. Check out atzshows ending explained video on this film. Even if you think you got it, there's stuff you might have missed and why it was important.
He goes over the song too and why and when it's used. Highly recommend
The original (real) Nataly IS the one that comes out of the shimmer at the end, this is very clearly seen/suggested in the movie at the end. She is just now "infected" by going into the shimmer like all other beings/plants that get caught in the shimmer's area. But is IS the original/real Nataly that comes back, there is no question of this! =)
The bear aint the girls throat, which containing her vocal chords. Her vocal chords fused/ mutant into the bear. But I like the idea it uses the voice to lure prey
There is no alien.
It's husband leaving his anger and pride behind and a wife leaving her self-destructiveness.
They are reunited as two changed people to create one whole again.
I think when she hands over the grenade, unlike when she violently tries to escape, its like a symbolic handing over of her self-destructiveness. Thus when she runs and her clone burns up, it is now self-destructive like she was, burning everything else
I heard an Analysis that the shimmer is like an ecological cancer. And that is the purpose of the alien in general is just to spread and grow. Cancer comes up several times in the film and it is a nice analogy because after NP's character defeats the mimic and the shimmer gets destroyed it is like they removed the tumor, but there is always some little piece that can come back which would be NP's and OI's characters at the end of the movie.
I thought Portman's character at the end had a mix of each of the women she traveled with. Specifically, the tattoo on her arm matches exactly with one of the other characters.
The tattoo is even older. The soldier on the wall had the same tattoo.
Saw this yesterday, the commercials and trailers didn't do it justice, I look forward to seeing it again. Great cerebral sci-fi!!!
It was the actual Lena who got out of the lighthouse. She states prior to the the final events that she knows she has been infected. So at the end when the alien doppelganger of Kane's eyes change, hers does as well because she's not completely human anymore.
As far as which Natalie Portman makes it out of the shimmer, the story is being told by the Natalie Portman on the outside. So the events we see in the confrontation might not have gone down as we were shown. If the alien Portman left the shimmer (as the alien version of Oscar Isaac did), she could just be telling her interrogator it was the alien version that was killed. Either it was the alien version that survived or the refraction of Area X caused the original Portman to take on a parts of the alien version. In a way, it doesn't matter because either way the biologist who left Area X was a combination of the two versions. Hell, she might not even be sure which one she started as.
Love this, please continue to do analysis for non-blockbuster films in the future!!
One character says that the bear somehow took on some part of the woman it killed. And that’s why it makes that sound. I think that’s also what happens to Natalie Portman. She gets out (no question, you see the mimic burn) but she has taken on part of thing she killed, like the bear did. She comes back, but so does the mimic.
I thought they showed the original Natalie Portman got out because she was able to drink the water. When duplicate Oscar Isaac drank the water it showed the close up of the blood.
that's what i thought too, she looked apprehensive to drinking the water, and then relieved when she was okay after drinking it, it was like she had to verify that she was actually who she thought she was to herself, and not a double
A piece of art is never finished, it's only abandoned
Christy. The gentlemen on either side of you are intelligent, but talking out of their asses... You are the center and orator of this discussion. I want to hear more of your thoughts. I think you grasped the core of this film better than most. This film!!
”Its some kind of Dark Matter based life form that unintentionally affected our environment by crashing on Earth and trying to survive. Until it found a way to mimic, blend in, coexist and survive to become the next Evolutionary Step of Humankind” The Echo of Life.
Part of me thinks that it may have been the original character who made it out of the shimmer. Her husband's doubleganger was bleeding into the glass of water whereas her character in the final act didn't bleed, this could be a clue.
It was her "CLONE" that came out,original character hardly surviving.NOTE TATOO 8 on clones arm...!
To be clear, Natalie Portman (Lena) gave her doppelganger the desire to destroy the Shimmer, and it did. The Shimmer is gone now...UNLESS one is contending that mutated Lena, who makes it out, now IS The Shimmer (and/or w/ the doppelganger Cane. WTF was up w/ OI's accent? It seemed "standard American" in the flashback scene, and then in the suicide video, it's all corn-pone. Unless Cane mutated w/ some local Loosianan to take on a new accent? ;-/ )
The two of them are going to have children spreading the alien! I DONT KNOW
Will we ever get a follow up movie that shows exactly what the clones do moving forward
The shot with the opening of the shark alligator thing, I took it as a straight take from Jaws, when they show the dead shark’s bloody mouth being pried open
Spoiler alert! One bit that bothers me is the flashback scene where Kane is about to leave. He places a glass of orange juice next to the bed next to Lena before telling her he is going. 2 things: Kane's appearance is the same as the shimmer version of himself and what's with the orange juice? The film is full of shots of glasses of water but this one time it's different. Any ideas people?
The fuck? This movie came out of nowhere. It blew me away.
Spoilers alert: I really loved this movie. Very compelling and satisfying in an alien way. Very enjoyable to watch. I liked the way shimmer was trying to evolve and eventually produced two of them from the bubble so they can go forth and multiply at the end, so the shimmer reached its’ goal. It seemed like a random genetic mutation that found a way to join with the DNA on planet earth and evolve into a new modes of perception and being and life.
She makes a good point.
i think its a take on body snatchers but in the way it took over her mind and eventually her body. i feel like theyre hinting at the idea that they are now the new adam and eve come out of paradise. i liked the idea that alonso said about the bear the mimickery. \
also the ouroboros was on the guys arms that got cut open so maybe just like everything began to meld together the humans began to meld into each other same matter in a way. also the ouroboros is a symbol of rebirth and change so once she has it on her arm shes already doomed shes already began a change
It's funny that Matt referenced Swamp Thing, as opposed to, John Carpenter's The Thing in regard to Annihilation when most critics refer to the later.
There's a point in the movie where Natalie Portmans character talks about duplicating as they got closer to the lighthouse and at the beginning of when they first entered they each lost time (3 days I think?) So my theory is they each were all duplicated multiple times within the shimmer so maybe the moment they entered and we see them within the shimmer awake for the first time, they've already been duplicated and their original selves are already gone and what were watching are just clones...
The alien entity was running an experiment to see which dna and lifeform will help it most survive, which was humans, but it had to figure out how to become human without the self destructive nature.
The opening of the alligator's mouth reminded me of Jaws.
My whole portrayal of the movie was that: it's like having a group of people taking the same drug and each of them reacting differently to it, based on their pasts and the way they feel now inside.✌❤
That's what the shimmer represents in my opinion.
The bear didn't scare as much as Rodriguez.
The fact that the movie was done via flashbacks was a huge mistake, it utterly ruined tension throughout the movie. Also, fact that the team didn't wear hazmat suites into shimmer really destroyed suspension of disbelief. Ending was bad, it should have been more ambiguous about which version of Natalie made it out and having the entirely shimmer be destroyed by a single flash bang grenade was weird and anti-climatic, especially when a flash bang grenade had previously went off in same location and had no such effect. Good premise, poor execution.
The Shimmer is the alien adapting/making sense of its new 'alien' environment -- I dont think the Shimmer ever meant to crash on Earth, so it's basically just trying to survive and maybe terraform its new surrounding into something it can call home (or not, "I dunno," to paraphrase alien Oscar Isaac in the movie) LOL
What if the real version of Natalie Portman makes it out and is fine but then her physical contact with the clone of her husband, who is a direct product of the shimmer "infects" her? Her eyes don't change until she hugs him at the end and he touches her. Perhaps she has already had genetic modifications to her cells and the physical contact is all the shimmer version of her husband needs to "turn" her or whatever you'd call it. While they are in the shimmer, it's changing them from afar. Why couldn't it change people through direct contact outside of the shimmer? Essentially any contact with the shimmer will create genetic changes?
The story is told from Lena’s perspective. If it was the double that came out it wouldn’t have her memories much like Kane’s double didn’t have his memories. Talking bear? It mimic’d sounds of its prey but was far from having a conversation.
Watching Annihilation and get an ad of Childish Gambino dancing with his clone... Coincidence? I think not...
what the hell?.. they explained what the shimmer was in the movie... not only does light get refracted by going through a prism, but it also refracts DNA then reconstitutes it into something new. also, why the radios dont work properly, mixing the signals. It also seems as if you can control the extent of the shimmer effects on your body. I was hoping the bf killed himself at the end because he knew his gf was cheating on him and the shimmer amplified his pain. Kind of like the suicide girl just wanted to die... but it didnt take that turn. He just kills himself.
Ed So that’s how it works, not what it is...
I thought he volunteered to go into the shimmer because he knew she was cheating on him. Then she volunteered to go in because of guilt.
Subliminal Lime that’s exactly what happened
that doesnt explain anything tho
possibly poetic that the plant life appeared to grow out of the woman's scars (the Tessa Thompson character)
Review of Annihilation (2018🌱🐉🍃) by Brilliant Director Alex Garland (Ex-Machina) A "A Psychedelic Allegory of Human Tragedy"
Another pessimistic thriller and at same time a grim warning for a Civilization that seems increasingly distanced from the conditions that have guaranteed the success of humanity's journey for thousands of years to the present day such as: empathy, solidarity, cooperation and, fundamentally, a sense of unity with nature and the universe based on shamanic spiritual practices.
In Annihilation, the Director Alex Garland once more distills all his pessimism against us, humanity, and makes use of several resources to validate his version of the original book: first through a kind of "ecological rebellion" where nature literally decides to "annihilate" the “cancer " of the earth (the human race) through both by a complex botanical-genetic reconfiguration and by triggering a dramatic DNA mutation processes which affected all other living things around and by doing it, tries to reconfigure the whole planet.
Garland´s version is a dramatic interpretation of the famous Gaia hypothesis (by James Lovelock, 1979), which claimed that the earth is a "self-regulating" living being, with fever, caused by the frantic industrial and urban activity of mankind in last 700 years and, therefore, it is about to expel these undesirable beings ...
On the other hand, It is also an interesting approach to the profound "transformation" that happens with those who experience an authentic psychedelic journey (references to mushrooms, fungi and mycelia are everywhere in the movie) and once on the other side "would come across a totally different "environment" from the so called "real " world of language, culture and ideology built by human beings in the last 10,000 years to support the male centric, dominator civilization ...
It is important to mention the hypothesis advocated by the psychedelic philosophy on the dissolution of ego-delusions, on the rationalizing dimension of the human psyche which underpins the culture of civilization. Such approach appears in the final scene in which Natalie Portman´s character (after an induced psychedelic trip in the interior of the magical tower) wages a desperate struggle against his own "other" (her ego) to immediately fall back on what it means to become aware of things and become a conscious being ...
Such dissimulated posture of the protagonist, now “self-conscious” manifests itself throughout the film, in the cold interrogation carried out by various narrow minded scientists and their useless technological machines, unable to understand what happened (or is happening!) on the other side of the shimmer without understanding that , as Natalie's character, in order to get into the swings of things, they also would have to go through the experience of crossing the boundaries of the language / culture / ideology of the so-called "human reality" (the psychedelic experience itself).
That would be a sine qua non condition for "understanding" the truth that Nature (through its own "alchemical" language) has been trying to tell us for centuries and the stoned hunter-gathered humanity that lived at 12000BC knew very well: that the transition to agriculture and its tragic corollary, the alpha dominant Technological Civilization, is an evolutionary misfortune, ultimately an error, an unwanted mutation that transformed those special primates into blind, belligerent, misguided and deluded beings with their alleged superior technological civilization and for that very reason, destined to self-annihilation.
Matt has lost so much weight, got damn son well done.
My guess is that the shimmer was trying to perfect it's recreation of earthly lifeforms and the last Natalie Portman was perfection achieved and thus the shimmer destroyed itself knowing it would survive through her.
I don’t think Natalie Portmans character expected to come back... I mean she just did it out of love and remorse... Kane was basically dead with all of the horrible health problems he cane back with at the time.. the ones that ultimately made it through the farthest are the ones that felt dead inside already.. the one that actually expected to come back was the one that lost her marbles first
My interpretation for the bear was it showed that the bear ate the throat & voice box thus consuming her final voice/screams. Thank you Alonso for mentioning "where the hell the tattoo came from?" I was real focused on it, not sure how it went from Gina Rodriguez to Portman but...Hot damn did I dig this movie, so interpretable, discussable, and seemingly will be endlessly rewatchable.
Sam Anderson it's explained how everyone's DNA gets absorbed and transferred to other people. Oscar Issaca character has a southern accent in the recording, most likely picked up from one of his unit members. Portman's character got the tattoo transferred. Muchoke the bear picking up the girls scream
The Gina Rodriguez character originally has that infinity tattoo and Natalie doesn't get it until after (SPOILERS) the Gina character is killed by the bear. So there's something.
I kind of thought about the flood from halo with this movie. Except for a gravemind behind everything, it’s just nature. Idk it was a mix of the flood from halo and like alien? I have no clue if that makes sense but yeah
Listen to these people discuss Annihilation gives me the impression they only saw it once if that and didn’t actually care for it at all.