MovieChat Forums > Oblivion (2013) Discussion > What about the other clones?

What about the other clones?

posted 10 years ago by bmtolles
29 replies | jump to latest

One plot point I'm surprised I haven't seen/heard mentioned yet, and stay with me here, is: I'm assuming there's Jack Harper and Victoria clones all over the world, doing the same thing that 49 and 52 are doing. What happens when the Tet gets blown up? Are they confused as to why Sally stops communicating? Do they just live out their days in their towers, or do they go exploring in the radiation zones and find the truth? Do they get up with the other humans? If so it would probably make repopulating the earth difficult, as each offspring of the clones would genetically be a sibling of every other offspring a clone made, which would result in a huge chance of inbreeding. Idk, maybe I'm being too literal and looking beyond too much, but these are questions that plagued me since seeing this movie, which I still feel that, despite the holes (couldn't Sally/Tet remotely control his ship to stop him, etc.), is the best piece of Sci-Fi I've seen since the Matrix (15 years.. Wow I feel old)

[–] howard_w13 10 years ago

Your plot points have been addressed but the threads must have been deleted for some reason.
As for what the other clones do after the TET stops communicating-well; it's pure speculation but mostly likely all the Jacks will come down to the surface and try to adjust to a different type of life while the Vikas will either kill themselves or reluctantly go down to the surface with Jack, eventually finding other humans and learning the truth. As for repopulation; there should be other pockets of humanity around so there should be little chance for inbreeding.

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The movie has a plot hole?!?
EVERY FRIGGIN' MOVIE HAS A FRIGGIN' PLOT HOLE!!!!!

[–] Defenseman13 10 years ago

seeing as this is a movie and not real life, feel free to imagine whatever you want about the other clones. If these guys are living in that secluded valley, they'll probably never see another one.

[–] Jonny_B_Lately 8 years ago

seeing as this is a movie and not real life

This, right here, should be a routine assumption by all the "plot-hole" critics.

Watta ya lookn here for?

[–] kaneforgov 10 years ago

It's never said that there are any other clones, so there aren't any.

[–] Harvest-R 10 years ago

When Jack and Beech enter TET you can see thousands of tanks filled with other Jack- and Victoria-clones. So if there was 49 and 52, the logical conclusion and extrapolation is: There must be 1-48, 50, 51, 53-...

[–] canada22 10 years ago

It is possible that only 49 and 52 were left which is why they are shown in the movie. The other Jacks and Vika's may have already died. The clones in Tet died with the explosion. Vika 52 is a question. She may have perished because she was too afraid to leave her comfort zone. Great movie!

[–] urasawa 10 years ago

??
Morgan Freeman tells him that he saw "him and thousands like him" coming out of the ships when the earth was taken over. It is implied that the whole planet is split in little areas each taken care of by a set of clones.

[–] Mellow-Fellow 9 years ago

Yeah hard to miss that, and the thousands of pods of clones in the ship, lol.

As for the Jacks on earth, I imagine a good sum of them are flying while the Tet is destroyed and he crashes and dies, the others sleeping and wake up with no coms and no ability to even get out of their little offices, remember the machines are broken, would the flyers still work?

As for Vicka who cares, hopefully she drowns herself a thousand times in that stupid pool they have in their safe houses. Shes not all that bad, but she is, it's recounted that she does have memories about her earlier life but chooses to discount them, she even says she "Doesn't want to remember" because she has Jack now, without him, who knows.

I'd wager most of the Vickas disappear over time for lack of survival skills and direction if nothing else.

[–] RickSPI 10 years ago

as was said, this was discussed extensively in deleted pages.

I think the Vika clones are sterile. The Jack ones are not (unless Jack 49 had super-sperm or something). Just a little joke there.

I agree with the one poster saying that some will come down, look around etc.. Some may starve to death if the food machines don't work or run out of whatever it uses to make 'food' for the clones. Some Jacks or Vikas or both may kill themselves.

I think the 'stations' are nuclear or other powered autonomous entities so can make food and water, process waste, etc. for 1000 years and not shut down. That feeds my 'fantasy' that some Jacks and Vikas are still around up in the stations having wild sex all the time and swimming in the glass bottom pool ...

The other Jacks don't KNOW that the wife is real, so may be 'haunted' by dreams if they even have them about Julia, for the rest of their lives. Maybe clones live forever unless terminated for 'not being an effective team'? or maybe they keel over after 5 years and 1 day ...

[–] howard_w13 10 years ago

The other Jacks don't KNOW that the wife is real, so may be 'haunted' by dreams if they even have them about Julia, for the rest of their lives. Maybe clones live forever unless terminated for 'not being an effective team'? or maybe they keel over after 5 years and 1 day ...

IIRC; the clones are only terminated on direct orders from the TET. My guess is that the 5-year timeframe could be just the average time that the Jack/Vika clones stop being "effective".

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The movie has a plot hole?!?
EVERY FRIGGIN' MOVIE HAS A FRIGGIN' PLOT HOLE!!!!!

[–] RickSPI 10 years ago

certainly seems plausible.

My guess is that the 5-year timeframe could be just the average time that the Jack/Vika clones stop being "effective".

I certainly agree with you that this is the most likely scenario.

my 'wild speculations' just illustrate that none of this was 'told' to us in the movie, so we are free to imagine. Someone claimed that since no other clones were mentioned that they don't exist ... no imagination!

[–] AfroGeek 10 years ago

I absolutely agree with this. The 5 year tour is how long the TET has figured out Jack and Vik last. That's why she's constantly asking Vik about their effectiveness. Apparently, the Viks remember first, then when the Jacks do which blows up the relationship. Vik is willing to tolerate the fantasy because of her love for Jack.

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Call them ISIL. Isis is an overloaded term that has many other legitimate uses.

[–] mark-maples 10 years ago

The effective question is due to suppressed memories, I say the "Jack's" regain their memory and want to find the fiance, and Victoria, if you haven't figured it out, she is obsessed with Jack, you see that when he brought the other woman in, I believe she knew long before he did, she uses sex for control. I say once they regain enough memory, they are destroyed and replaced, it's why they are constantly asked if they are an effective team, the cloning process must retain memorys, talk about science fiction, not only is the person regrown/duplicated, so is the memory. Pay close attention to Victoria when the shuttle is flying toward the Ted in the beginning, must have been like Christmas getting to live out her fantasy, I wonder how long she knew, she kept changing the subject on him when he talked about going down to the planet with him.

Wasn't me

[–] RickSPI 10 years ago

interesting ... I instantly realized that Vika used sex for control (to get Jack to want to return to the tower etc.), but figured she was 'programmed' to act that way by the TET. Maybe that was the case initially, but yes, I can appreciate that she may have figured out "something's wrong" and had a feeling that there was 'another woman' at some point, then used sex more as a control thing for her own 'devices'.

I don't know that she actually remembered flying toward the TET or that she was a real person in the past ... I believe the tower (and what the TET instilled in her mind as the 'back story') is all she really knows.

I don't think she has dreams/memories like Jack does, but maybe I'm wrong of course. I'll have to watch it again ...

[–] howard_w13 10 years ago

I don't know that she actually remembered flying toward the TET or that she was a real person in the past ... I believe the tower (and what the TET instilled in her mind as the 'back story') is all she really knows.

I don't think she has dreams/memories like Jack does, but maybe I'm wrong of course. I'll have to watch it again ...

I've always believed that Vika retained some pre-TET memories as well. But perhaps she was more willing to dismiss those memories since she was living the dream life that she wanted. It's not conclusive; but she did ask one time: "It was always her, wasn't it?"; which strongly indicated that she had dreams of Julia as well.

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The movie has a plot hole?!?
EVERY FRIGGIN' MOVIE HAS A FRIGGIN' PLOT HOLE!!!!!

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] maryj482 10 years ago

Obviously a setup for [i]Oblivion II - Even More Oblivious.[/i]

[–] StinkyPoopyPants (3114) 7 years ago

LMAO!!!!

[–] ljbha 10 years ago

Firstly, some of them will know what happened because the giant Tet blow up in the sky, at least half of earth will see it.

As for confrontation with other humans, I don't really know how inhumane these other Jack Harper would be. Will they come to senses after they realize the truth? Probably, because morality is probably left in all those other Jack Harpers and Victorias, or Tet won't have to make up lies to get them to work.

As for genetic variety problem, I don't see it as big a problem as it is imagined to be. I'm not an expert on biology, but I know that genetic mutation happens very often, it happens every time when an individual breeds, otherwise, all your children would look like identical twins. Inbreeding will probably cause flawed children often, and morality issues when discarding those child, but human as a species will survive and genetic variety issues will fade over time. They probably have enough technology to screen out those genetically flawed embryos even before it became infants. Plus, there're other human beings survived, remember?

[–] jfitzpatrick3 9 years ago

Any Jack clones on earth would eventually find the trut and hopefully convince their Victoria to join them, especially since there are no clones of Julia ;)

"At the end of life, we will be judged by love" ST John of the Cross

[–] lightningcows 9 years ago

But if you remember the drones (IIRC) blew up when the Tet did.

...actually, I think the drones just deactivated. Apparently, they have the same weakness as the aliens in ID4 in which they are unable to function after the central "mothership" is destroyed.

On the main topic, I tend to agree that it is probably likely that some of the clones eventually explore on their own, and that some may die out. There were probably other "scav" groups around the globe, and it is possible that some of the clones are hunted, some die on their own, while the other clones may join the remainder of humanity.

[–] Lootrock 9 years ago

First I have to acknowledge how hilarious this was

Obviously a setup for Oblivion II - Even More Oblivious.



Anyway, these posts have been very interesting. I don't see why at all someone would think there are only 52. As we all have seen, Jacks in different sectors co-exist in the same time frame. Since the TET(jeez the vietnamese just can't catch a break) controls the whole planet, it must be assumed that there are Jacks patrolling all areas of the earth, more or less, within their own boundaries so that they do not encounter each other("radiation zones"). What is curious however is that Julia was in space for 60 years and the Jacks still look pretty young so either they don't age or they do in fact get replaced every 5 years or so. This leads me to my next question. If they are replaced after five years then that would mean that since the beginning(60 years ago), there have been at least 12 Jacks at each post(we only know that 50+ exist) which would then imply that there are only ~4 sectors which is ludicrous(~4sectors * 12 Jacks = ~48 Jacks). Why would there only be 4 sectors? Anyway, all of this leads to my main question: how does a 49 and a 52 still exist? They must live past 5 years and just have their memories wiped just as they say in the film. Or perhaps these numbers actually represent their sectors, unbeknownst to them, rather than their actual numbers as clones.

As for life after the TET, Jacks themselves are not hostile. The "scav's" only appear to be scavs with all the weird gear and communication devices in order to confuse the robots so once they are deactivated(they don't blow up) the scavs have no reason to use their weird communication devices or gear so the Jacks would be just as receptive to real human beings since he still thinks he is one. I honestly think they dropped the ball on the issue of them being able to reproduce. If Jacks can then there will be severe genetic bottle-necking since one Jack per couple hundred people isn't a safe mix I don't believe if we are talking about the whole eventual population of the eart. However, I do think that 10,000+ fatal attraction scenarios will play out between all the Victoria's and Jack's worldwide .

[–] RickSPI 9 years ago

I don't know about the other parts of your essay, or if this answers what you're asking, but the '49' and '52' are STATION numbers. There may have been 12 Jack 49s and 35 Jack 52s or whatever (maybe the 'scavs' killed off some of them too).

Maybe somewhere there's a pair of Jack 69s that live together ... :D down the road from the pair of Vika 96s ...

[–] KittyDuran 9 years ago

Too bad the former threads were deleted... but after having watched the film again here's my take (actually two takes):

First take: When Jack 49 goes into the inner chamber of the TET-the TET destroys the remaining earthbound Vickas. Why would Vicka clones be needed if Julia will now be cloned with the new mission? Assuming that everything is the same on each station, wouldn't there be a "terminating" drone that needs parts in the dock that would do the task of killing? The Vicka clones in stasis and possibly the Jack clones would probably be destroyed as well.

Second take: When the TET is destroyed, the stations are either destroyed or rendered non-functional-like the drones. The stations could be self sustaining but in the movie the TET controls (when online) certain things like the terminating drone and the command console. If the Vickas are still alive (not destroyed w/station or terminated by a drone), what happens? Station 52 was built on a mountaintop so Vicka 52 could descend. Did Jack 52 return to the station? If yes, what did he find? Of course, he could've been so haunted by the sight of the real Julia that he just starts walking eventually meeting up with the survivors from sector 17 taking 3 years to find Jack 49's house.

The numbering of the clones, drones and hydro-plants seem to be for Jack and Vicka (and the audience) benefit - the drones seen in the TET have no numbers. So who knows how many clones have been used or how many were situated around the globe. Vicka 49 did mention that in two weeks all the scavs will have left is dust and radiation - so maybe there are only 2 sets of clones (or 4-Jack/Vicka 50 and Jack/Vicka 51) patrolling the coasts. When the opening credits come up you see the TET then the Universal logo with the devastated earth in the background-the sub-Atlantic ridge is exposed so most the Atlantic was already gone. Have to watch it again to see if I notice the Pacific.

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]