A real plot hole
"How many other worlds are there?"
"Thousands."
Uh.. and .. all of them are UNFINISHED?
Why wouldn't they first make a WHOLE PLANET complete, before advancing to the next simulation?
It doesn't make any sense - that they have been able to create THOUSANDS of simulations, must mean that they could very well have finished at least one planet that doesn't have "the end of the world" that anyone could easily (TOO easily, if you ask me - in any computer game, you can completely block the edges in a way that doesn't reveal that it's a game and that there are polygons - why would they suddenly change into wireframes anyway, and such a tiny resolution, too - polygon-wise, I mean - you could never display as massive amount of data and detail with such low-poly models as was shown to be the 'end of the world' in the movie - think about each little twig on the ground, and their branches, and the bushes, trees, leaves - everything would have to have a super-high resolution in their modelling, and thus wireframes, and thus polygons, and so on - and yet, we are shown this unbelievably crude.. sigh.. never mind) get to!
Besides, you could just PROGRAM the units any way you want - they don't have free will, they want only what you program for them to want! There's no way any of what happens in this movie could ever happen, because it'd be all too easy to prevent with a little bit of programming, even retroactively! (Meaning, "whoops, a mistake - oh well, let's fix it" (time passes) "done, everything is again exactly the way it's supposed to be")
This movie, like the original book and the awful german 3,5 hour bore-fest that this movie is the prettier cousin of, have so many ridiculous premises that the audience must absolutely believe can be, for any of it to be even remotely plausible - but THIS really takes the cake.
I mean, WHY is the world unfinished? It can't be because of time, it can't be because of resources, it can't be because of funding or workforce problems or anything like that, BECAUSE they have had all those things for making THOUSANDS of such simulations!
The only reason I can come up with is to compare it to a computer or video game - even the flight simulators that try to model the whole Earth, are far from perfection, and not every little city is modelled, and even the bigger cities are not modelled with accuracy, and even those that are modelled extremely well (like Flytampa's Hong Kong package), can't even be compared to a crude photograph from the 1970s or a bad quality 1980s video show from a real airplane.
So if THAT is the explanation - that this particular simulation is just meant for a certain type of entertainment, like The Sims doesn't bother to model the avionics of airplanes, and flight simulators do not bother to model every little shack in the world, as long as the main features are relatively functional, so this simulation also only models a tiny area for a very specific purpose, then another thing suddenly stops making sense.
And the thing is - in THAT case, then why is every dang thing modelled with such a perfect accuracy with such high-quality textures, models, animation and super-high-FPS (presumably anyway - though it looks very jerky in the 'end of the world' scene compared to what it could be even in a 24FPS movie)?
I mean, if it's just very specific, then why make such immaculate detail? Well, ok, perhaps it's like "Take on Helicopters", which models the Seattle area very well, although the game itself is pretty limited from this point of view.
But even so, the NPCs are not going to care how well the world is modelled, or how realistic someone's behaviour or animation is - why would they even make a "drug history" possible, unless it's about drugs? Remember, this is supposed to be a limited world for a specific purpose (otherwise the whole planet would have been modelled, and there wouldn't BE any silly 'end of the world' polygon scene).
And if you really want the player(s) and NPCs to not be able to go beyond a certain limitation, just look at any 3D game with relatively free movement - you can easily see how it can be done cleverly with structures and such. To just put an easy-to-break "barricade" there, makes absolutely no sense.
As if the programmers are going to just TRUST that the simulated humans are so obedient (instead of MAKING them obedient) that such a simple measure will stop them from progressing/advancing!
There is just NO WAY around all this, it's STUPID, no matter how you turn it around. Because each time you turn away one stupidity, another one rears its ugly head from the other side.
If the programmer doesn't want a character outside a certain boundary, and the programmer is even half-competent, and his program is relatively bug and glitch-free, there is no way any character can just waltz outside that boundary!
(Why would they even let them WANT to do it? Besides, there would be SO many ways to stop them from doing it, and all of them could be used simultaneously! Like making it psychologically impossible for them, fear could be used, disorientation could be used, fainting, euphoria, any kind of looping, like the world just looping the desert ENDLESSLY, so eventually anyone going there would simply run out of gas, energy, and die of starvation/dehydration (though they would most likely turn back before that happens) -- JUST TO MENTION A FEW from the top of my head!)
This movie is proof that hollywood doesn't have a thinking brain inside ITS boundaries..
And this is just basically a handful of implausibilities that I have touched so far - this movie is so full of them that I could sit here until the polygons come home and still be writing more about them.
But.. I am sitting here.. near the end of the post. I know the truth. This movie isn't real! How many movies are there like this? Thousands?