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Isn't that just an infinite loop then? Why is killing an alpha required for the omega to reset the day? Can't it do that whenever it wants? In fact, why does Cruise's power have any effect at all? Wouldn't it just constantly loop anyway? And let's assume that alternate ending made sense, does that mean the bad guys win?

The explanation is buried deep in the exposition, but the gist is that the Omega can reset the day whenever it wants, but generally waits until an Alpha is killed because there's no point to doing it earlier, Mimics will be killed during battles and not all of them can be spared death. The regular Mimics, despite being part of the hive mind, are not really important to the Omega, but the Alphas serve as extensions of the Omega on the battlefield and are thus precious. Kind of like how the government doesn't really care if an individual enlisted soldier dies in a war but a general being killed incites a panic in leadership. Cage gaining the power is an advantage because according to the movie only one can hold the looping power at a time. Cage stole it from the Omega and the Omega cannot loop time again until it has Cage killed. (It would become aware of its lost power when it is unable to loop time after an Alpha dies, and because it already knows how its time looping works would be able to deduce who has the power by who seems to have foreknowledge of its forces' actions. Though why the power transfers to Cage after just a little exposure to Alpha blood instead of staying with the Omega who has much more such blood is handwaved away for storytelling.)

Furthermore, there have probably been a lot of loops to get to the action of the beach. The Mimics were not supposed to know where Operation Downfall was landing, yet had traps laid, implying that long before Cage killed that Alpha there had been a ton of loops as Downfall initially worked and the Omega kept looping time (perhaps not waiting for an Alpha to die, just looping when it was surprised by the invasion and then sending scouts that direction, looping time on first contact) until it figured out the landing zone and how best to lay traps for the troops' arrival, as well as the opportune time to launch the counter-invasion of England. The original dark ending implied that the Omega regained its looping ability and continued on its war, looping and looping, defeating anyone who stole its looping power like it did Cage and Rita, until it won.

The darker ending is not an infinite loop since once the Mimics shoot down the helicopter, they bleed Cage rather than outright kill him. If they outright kill him, then yes time loops and Cage retains the power, but they would instead capture and bleed him like the Alpha tried to do at the dam the visions led Cage to. Taking his blood like that makes the Omega own time looping again and it doesn't need to revert time for its plan to succeed; Cage and company flew to Paris the night before the invasion, so the Omega's invasion trap and counter-invasion plan can proceed without Cage's interference, as he was the only one who knew what was going to happen.
 
The explanation is buried deep in the exposition, but the gist is that the Omega can reset the day whenever it wants, but generally waits until an Alpha is killed because there's no point to doing it earlier, Mimics will be killed during battles and not all of them can be spared death. The regular Mimics, despite being part of the hive mind, are not really important to the Omega, but the Alphas serve as extensions of the Omega on the battlefield and are thus precious. Kind of like how the government doesn't really care if an individual enlisted soldier dies in a war but a general being killed incites a panic in leadership. Cage gaining the power is an advantage because according to the movie only one can hold the looping power at a time. Cage stole it from the Omega and the Omega cannot loop time again until it has Cage killed. (It would become aware of its lost power when it is unable to loop time after an Alpha dies, and because it already knows how its time looping works would be able to deduce who has the power by who seems to have foreknowledge of its forces' actions. Though why the power transfers to Cage after just a little exposure to Alpha blood instead of staying with the Omega who has much more such blood is handwaved away for storytelling.)

Furthermore, there have probably been a lot of loops to get to the action of the beach. The Mimics were not supposed to know where Operation Downfall was landing, yet had traps laid, implying that long before Cage killed that Alpha there had been a ton of loops as Downfall initially worked and the Omega kept looping time (perhaps not waiting for an Alpha to die, just looping when it was surprised by the invasion and then sending scouts that direction, looping time on first contact) until it figured out the landing zone and how best to lay traps for the troops' arrival, as well as the opportune time to launch the counter-invasion of England. The original dark ending implied that the Omega regained its looping ability and continued on its war, looping and looping, defeating anyone who stole its looping power like it did Cage and Rita, until it won.

The darker ending is not an infinite loop since once the Mimics shoot down the helicopter, they bleed Cage rather than outright kill him. If they outright kill him, then yes time loops and Cage retains the power, but they would instead capture and bleed him like the Alpha tried to do at the dam the visions led Cage to. Taking his blood like that makes the Omega own time looping again and it doesn't need to revert time for its plan to succeed; Cage and company flew to Paris the night before the invasion, so the Omega's invasion trap and counter-invasion plan can proceed without Cage's interference, as he was the only one who knew what was going to happen.

Ty for explaining, so from what I understand, when Cruise bled out and lost the looping power, it went back to the Omega? And so during their final assault in Paris, a random human slays an Alpha (and presumably doesn't acquire the power from its blood) and therefore alerts the Omega to reset?

This jumping around of the power is a bit dodgy but....plot.....I guess.

Can we also confirm that the actual ending, where Cruise wakes up in the helicopter and the aliens are magically defeated, doesn't make sense at all?
 
Ty for explaining, so from what I understand, when Cruise bled out and lost the looping power, it went back to the Omega? And so during their final assault in Paris, a random human slays an Alpha (and presumably doesn't acquire the power from its blood) and therefore alerts the Omega to reset?

This jumping around of the power is a bit dodgy but....plot.....I guess.

Can we also confirm that the actual ending, where Cruise wakes up in the helicopter and the aliens are magically defeated, doesn't make sense at all?

Yes, exactly. Cruise got the power only because when he killed an Alpha, it bled on him. (Toxic blood that burned his face, if I remember.) After he was wounded in the car crash and got a transfusion, he lost a lot of the Timeloop blood and had extra human blood put in, diluting it to the point where I guess the unwritten rules of the movie transferred looping power back to the Omega. Though since that happened in London where the Omega couldn't see that Cruise had lost the power, it had the Alpha in Paris try to bleed him in the mistaken belief he still had the power rather than just outright kill him; had it known Cruise lost the power it would have just looped as soon as the Mimics became aware Cruise was in Paris and shoot him down on the next try. In the darker ending the grunt presumably killed the Alpha without it bleeding on him, keeping the looping with the Omega (and the Omega trying to loop upon the Alpha's death maybe just for kicks, to discover the power had gone back to it.)

The ending we got reeks of production decisions to keep movie crowds happy, but could still work in the movie universe since the full and concrete rules of looping or what sort of extra powers may be granted to the Omega are not clearly established. Given the continuity of the looper's memory every time loop, it hints at the possibility that information, specifically events, can be chosen to be brought from one time loop to another, so that upon Cruise gaining the Omega's blood and time looping abilities after he kills it and all the other Mimics, he chose to not only send himself back to the helicopter to avoid the whole arrest kerfuffle, but brought over the event of the Omega's demise to wipe out the Mimics with no further loss of human life.

More likely though is it's just bullshit.
 
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Transformers 4

What a confusing as hell movie, 3 hours of spinning metal, crap one liners and go nowhere plot lines...

If it was a simple straightforward action flick i would have liked it, but it wants to "go deep" something that marvel manages to do just right (sometimes anyway) and this just doesnt...
 
220px-The_Giver_poster.jpg


The Giver. A Sci-fi movie about this society with no conflicts, wars, famine, or problems. But it is also sterile and lifeless in a way. (the movie starts of in black and white as a way to show this) This kid gets chosen to be the reciever of memory from this old guy. Memory meaning the real world as we know it, somehow portrayed in a emotional way. I enjoyed this one. It feels like divergent at first but goes deeper imo. 7/10.
 
You guys didn't have to read the giver in school? I thought it was some kind of universal standard lol
 
You guys didn't have to read the giver in school? I thought it was some kind of universal standard lol

My school did weird things with reading. We were assigned a list of books we had to pick X number to read, so consequently I've never read "the classics" that most other schools force students to read, like To Kill A Mockingbird, Animal Farm, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and The Giver, among others.
 
The last book any of my schooling "required" me to read was either The Time Machine, or Isle of the Blue Dolphin. So...6th grade, perhaps?

But then again, in 13 years of once-week "CCD", or catechism, classes, I don't remember ever once being required to read anything other than a single passage from a bible, either. :dunno:
 
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I remember reading The Giver in school. I'm curious about the movie.
 
Doesn't anybody have to read Shakespeare over in America?

I had to do King Lear in year 10, Romeo and Juliet in year 11 and Hamlet in Year 12. I also remember having to read Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, William Golding's Lord of the Flies and the rest were all contemporary novels that nobody has ever heard of.
 
I think over here we do To Kill A Mockingbird, The Outsiders, Lord of the Flies...and I can't recall many more. I did Hamlet, Othello, and I'm pretty sure everyone does Romeo and Juliet.
 
The Giver.

Haven't read the novel but it feels like they left out a lot of stuff. Poorly made and they were quite insensitive when they showed hero's father giving an infant lethal injection. Boobies are so wrong but murder of a newborn is quite all right for kids. Just WOW. 2/10.
 
Is that where it should be buried?

:lol:
 
Dog Day Afternoon

I've never heard of this film, but Denzel mentions it in Inside Man. It's not terrible, nor is it great.

Rating 6/10
 
Dog Day Afternoon is most notable because it pushed the bounds of the accepted standards of what society was used to seeing. A much better movie in this regard, and overall is The Wild Bunch. Both are a bit dated now, but both changed what was to come.
 
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