MovieChat Forums > Circle (2015) Discussion > So.... what happens now?

So.... what happens now?

posted 9 years ago by JeepersCreepersSemiStar
6 replies | jump to latest

I still haven't watched this a 2nd time, but I've been thinking about it for over a week now and the more I do the more I really love this movie. I know from comments here that some people hate it as much as I loved it, but I think they're just looking at it the wrong way. The aliens, the ships, the Circle itself are just the setting. The impossible reason why any of this dialogue would take place.

I don't think there should ever be a sequel made to this movie that took place after the events of the first movie. All it could possibly do is ruin the first movie like the Matrix sequels did to the original.

That being said, it doesn't mean it's not fun to think about what happens next...

Here's some interesting questions I ask myself about the movie:

1. This couldn't possibly be just an experiment on the human condition, could it?

Think of the massive amount of resources that they would have spent, assuming that this was taking place all over the world at the same time. In the final shot we see more than a few ships hovering over what seems to be a densely populated area.

2. They probably didn't want us as labor slaves.

They could have easily overpowered and "kidnapped" the 6.5 billion of us with their technology if they wanted to. Why kill 49 out of every 50 potential slaves if all you were after was free labor? Who gives a crap how cunning you are if your captors are just going to work you until you die?

3. Maybe they were interested in our resources?

This is possible, but again, why use such a random method of killing us off if that were the case? If all you were interested in were the resources of your newly conquered planet, wouldn't you just kill off anybody who could fight back and keep the ones who are already educated in resource extraction/refinement and make them work for you?

4. How many Circles were on each ship?

Watching the end and seeing all the ships around, and the circular nature of the ships, you might think that each ship was the Circle. I think if this took place in the middle of Rural Kansas you wouldn't have seen any other ships in the distance for hundreds of miles. If each ship were processing only 50 of us, they'd need more than 130 Million ships to do this. It's impossible to tell without actual specs of the ships, but I would think that each ship would be capable of processing at least 500,000 people at a time, which would be 10,000 circles on each ship.

Think about that size and scope for a minute though. They would still need 13,000 ships worldwide if this were the case.

The largest warships we have in the world are the Nimitz class Supercarriers. There are only 10 of them in existence and they only serve roughly 6,000 people at one time. They cost close to $5Billion USD to make and after a service life of 50 years cost nearly $1Billion USD to safely de-commission.

All in all that is $60Billion in costs for ten crafts that only carry 60,000 people. (Don't forget the costs to fuel those beasts let alone the regular and irregular maintenance and all the costs to feed and clothe the people on deck).

5. Why did they want "the best of the best"?

Replay this movie 130 Million times in your head, and every time do it with different people. Maybe one ship has all men or all women. Maybe one ship has all one race. Maybe one ship has all teenagers. Maybe one ship has all smokers. Maybe one ship has all one religion. Maybe one ship has all one sexuality.... The list goes on and on.

We got to see a single circle of many on a single ship that happened to run the gamut of many of these things. It wouldn't be unreasonable to believe that an alien race capable just of what we saw wouldn't also be capable to filter their circles in sub-categories if they wished.

It's apparent that they want the "winners" for something. But for what?

I can't think of a reason why they would want these particular winners.

6. What type of person would win a majority of the time?

Honestly, I believe that your average sociopath would be the winner 9 times out of 10. Our "Hero" of the movie. It wouldn't be the kids or the pregnant women that won on most ships. They would only be tools for your average sociopath to use as a means to the end that we saw. On the ships that didn't have such easy marks, the sociopaths would be the ones to say the right things at exactly the right times to make sure they got to the final 3 almost 100% of the time.

That is why I'm confident that this had nothing to do with "free labor" or even the natural resources Earth has to offer.

I don't know why the Aliens want them, but they were looking to build an army of people with Sociopathic behaviors.

[–] jayzenden 9 years ago

I had a thought that the invaders were specifically reducing the population. And perhaps lacking insight of who deserved to live or die, created these machines as an automated jury and execution chamber so the populace had input on their own demise. I'd suspect these invaders' job is to "cull" the population of overburdened planets.

[–] z098979 9 years ago

Maybe the aliens are gamblers and they are placing bets on who survives, who goes next or whatever else they can think to wager on.

[–] oneagain 9 years ago

@z098979 : i like this idea. But only if intergalactic travel is easy for them, like bending spacetime. Or elsz its a waste of resource and time, an expensive trip.

[–] big_hair_x 9 years ago

My thoughts on this in no particular order.

In order to travel between stars in the first place, the aliens would have to be at such a vastly superior technological level compared to us that it would essentially cost them nothing to build and maintain a fleet of these ships. I don't think resources or conquering were their goal.

The capacity of the ships is impossible to gauge since we only see them floating in the distance. Maybe they have thousands of circles each ship. Maybe they have one circle but bend time and space so millions of people can be put through the process at once. Maybe the circles are a virtual environment transmitted into their brains and the ships are just loads of red rooms with piles of bodies. Given that the circles are the right size for humans, even down to the circles each person is stood on being the right size, it's feasible that there's no real physical space that the circle occupies, or that the alien ships are like a TARDIS and adapt for whatever purpose or shape of room is necessary for the subjects.

As another poster suggested, it could be a population cull in as clinical a way as is possible. Let us decide who lives and dies, etc. This could be done to help save our species as overpopulation is going to be he biggest contributor in damaging us as a species. That said, it won't result in the best and brightest possible population as, with the exception of the sociopaths as you suggested, most people who win the games will be the ones perceived as the victims of the group (women, pregnant women, and children.) That's not a great basis to work with if you're reducing the population to 2% of its current level. Weighting the population in any way is going to remove a number of strengths from the survivors and emphasise a number of weaknesses. Not to mention that stupidity will win out as most survivors would likely be children and there'd be few people to teach them or take care of them once they're returned.

Gambling is a nice idea as well, though I wonder if it's circles on every ship as the same game multiplied by thousands would make for some dull gambling, wouldn't it?

If it were just an experiment then why put people back at all.

I feel sorry for the one person in the inevitable circle which was filled with toddlers. Since unborn babies are considered suitable to vote, as per the end of the film, then presumably young kids would be as well. As soon as they woke they'd scatter out of their circles and it'd be a massacre. Yikes.

Different countries with different cultural perspectives might result in a different type of survivor. India, for example, with its caste system and male priority would possibly result in a skewed survival rate of obnoxious men who assume they have a right to live over others. That'd be bad news for the world. Like the banker in this film being the only survivor.

I think the most logical explanation is a population culling, but given how it goes down, I don't think it was the best way to do it.

[–] transmentalist 8 years ago

The filmmakers themselves posited population control as a possible justification, though they didn't want to lock themselves down to that rationale explicitly

I agree that the human race would wind up disproportionately, perhaps fatally, weighted in favor of "victims," e.g., younger kids and pregnant women. But the filmmakers would probably just say that it's our choice, as a species, and that the aliens wanted to leave it up to us.

In other words, if we're not smart enough to preserve doctors, farmers, engineers and scientists, we simply aren't smart enough to survive long term.

That may actually be true of us right now, no aliens needed. Global climate change is a perfect example; it's our own planet, and we'd be stupid to pollute it enough to wipe ourselves out. But that's exactly what we deserve if we're dumb enough to believe a tiny minority of climate scientists all of whom are paid by fossil fuel companies.

[–] MoviemanCin 9 years ago

I think the aliens were just *beep*

Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar and doesn't.