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@HAL 9010' said:

Updated: 30 March 2017

**** Contains Spoilers ****

I have seen the movie a few times and I do not know anything about the book, and I may change my interpretation upon further views or brilliant comments (I already did many times). However, I had some trouble understanding:

why the Omega died in the end and why before Cage woke up?

why Cage jumps to the Chopper that last time?

why try killing something that controls time, seem like a mission impossible?

This is my explanation to this great film:

THE PREMISE:

º The invaders work as a singular organism, where the Omega and the Brain controls its soldiers via its Alphas. The Alphas are a direct extension of the Omega, and they are few in between – very rare.

º Its secret weapon is the ability to reset time by transporting its (the Omegas) consciousness back in time. And thus react to future plans of the enemy.

º It is only the consciousness that travels, not the body. In a sense, it is information and nothing physical. In other words, whoever travels will only keep memories and experiences. It is not an actual restart of the day; it is a travel back in time of the consciousness. This is important to understanding why he does not have to find and kill an Alpha every single time (as some incorrectly consider a plot hole).

º Only the Omega has this ability, and it works it via one of its Alphas. The ability can only be held/executed by the connection to one individual Alpha in one timeline.

º Only an Alphas deaths can initiate a time jump

º The dead Alpha jumps together/connected with the Omega (essentially they are one and the same). In the jump the Alpha is dead, and the Omega is alive. The Omega will not learn from a jump until the Alphas experience with its future death is shared in the past/present. In a way, the future Omega backup are restored in the past, now with knowledge of the future.

º When Rita and Cage hijacked the power, it means their respectful Alphas that they met are off the grid. However, when they jump it is still together/connected with the one Omega. Albeit, this time the Omega never gets the update about why a reset happened and it is none the wiser about the details surrounding the death of its Alpha or Rita or Cage etc. and is therefore forced to more or less repeat what it does/and knows until either it regains the power/ability or until it somehow learns more about the details.

º When the power is hijacked, the Omega will not gain any information about why and who hijacked it. It can however, vaguely communicate one-way to whoever has the power. Normally, it would have a two-way communication with the Alpha’s memories but in case of a hijack it is a one-way communication which is why the power remains locked until the carrier loses this power somehow.

º The resetting happens in the same timeline, it is not a multiverse kind of situation. If more than one has the ability, only one will survive the reset.

º When the ability is owned by a human, the first jump happens back about one day to a point where this mind was at rest. And this is hence forth the re-entry point to the past/present on every jump. The person realizes this at the point they wake up, but the time jump might very well be any time during that rest.

º A hijacker, like Cage and Rita, can lose this ability through blood transfusion only. In other words, either by bleeding out, or exchanging blood.

THE STORY:

Cage merges by a freak chance with an Alpha’s blood and hijacks the ability to reset time. His consciousness is transported from his point of death to about one day back, at a time his consciousness was at rest (read: when he was asleep/passed out on the duffle bags).

The Omega wants its power back, as it can only be held by the connection to one “Alpha” in one timeline. So the Omega then tries to get it back by fake visions to lure Cage close enough (as they are still connected on some level via the jumps), for the Omega to have him bleed out and to lose his grip on the power.

Cage losses the power to a blood transfusion in London and at that point the Omega gets it back.

He kills it in Paris and in the process, he again merges with its blood and thus regains the Alpha power of time reset. This time, though, he wakes up about one day earlier the last time he was at rest, which was when he was napping in the Chopper – and therefore before he got into trouble for attempting to blackmail the General.

SIMPLIFIED, THE TIMELINE IS LIKE THIS (timestamps are for illustrative purpose only):

First Act

03:00 PM (day 1) – Arrives on the Chopper in London

05:00 PM (day 1) – Wakes up on the duffle bags

05:00 AM (day 2) - D-Day invasion and death and gets power to reset

[resetting 12 hours back, and he therefore wakes up on the duffle bags 5 o’clock PM on day 1. Which is his point of re-entry every time.]

Second Act

05:00 PM (day 1) – Wakes up on the duffle bags... from a previous death

11:00 PM (day 1) – Fly to Paris

03:00 AM (day 2) – Kills the Omega, and gets the Power again to jump 12 hour back

Final Act

03:00 PM (day 1) – Wakes up in the Chopper in London, cause he jumped back from his death 12 hours later in Paris on (day 2)

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Q: HOW CAN THE OMEGA BE KILLED, IF IT CONTROLS TIME?

A:The Omega is the central hub of the enemy. It can initiate time jumps by the death of one of its Alphas, which will bring it and the Alpha’s memory back in time. But since each jump in connected with the Omegas own consciousness, killing the Omega first will make a jump ineffective.

So to kill the Omega, it is important to not kill an Alpha shortly before as it is the death of an Alpha that initiates a time jump. If the Omega itself dies, their whole system collapses, and thus no jump will occur, as all Alphas then also ceases to function instantaneously. The mimics (the foot soldiers) will still exist, but without leadership, coordination and essential purpose.

Q: HOW COME CAGE CAN JUMP THAT LAST TIME, AND WHY DID THE OMEGA ALSO DIE IN THE PRESENT/PAST?

A: If we accept my premise that each jump is based upon a connection between the Omega and one of its Alphas, it means Cage or Rita hijacked the role of an Alpha during their jumps. But since Cage and Rita have their own consciousness during their jumps, the Omega was never informed about any details (which is why it repeats its strategy until it lures the hijacker out of the equation - aka having Cage bleed out at the Dam).

This is important to realize: The Alphas are a direct extension of the Omega, and this direct dependency explains why the Alpha is ineffective in the end and Cage is not, as he unlike the Alpha kept his consciousness even after the Omega explosion.

The first explosion in the end is effectively severing the connection to the Alphas (whose consciousness consequently parish instantly). And since there are no conscious Alphas anymore in the world, no jumps can ever occur again. However, Cage is not dead (mortally wounded and drowning, but his consciousness is still intact). So when he merges with the blood and he still has his consciousness, he can then hijack the role of an Alpha once more. And he does.

You might then ask: If the Omega is killed in the explosions, then there must be no longer any connection as the premise dictates, and therefore it doesn't matter if Cage has become an Alpha once more?

Yes this is partly true, but not the whole truth: The central hub of the enemy consists of two parts: The Omega and the Brain (as explained by the scientist earlier in the movie). We see two explosions in the end. The first one severs the connection to the Alphas, and the second one has reaching effects above ground too. This discussion considers the Brain and the Omega the same, but they are not and we do not know how they work. All we do know is that the movie deemed it necessary to differentiate them. And we also know that the ability to time jump is connected with this hub somehow. Perhaps the Omega is only the connection to the Alphas, and the Brain is the actual time jumper? We do not know. We do not even know if the Omega or the Brain is effectively killed in the explosions. What we do know is that Cage again gets the ability.

On all the previous jumps the Omega/Brain were intact and it was the Alpha (or Cage) that was destroyed. In the last jump, however, the Omega/Brain is the one who is destroyed and this changes the outcome for this last jump.

In principle, a jump would be impossible as all the Alphas were incapacitated as a consequence of destroying an Omega. But Cage is the anomaly here and as he merges with the blood he become the last living Alpha and so this connection is re-established and it makes a final jump possible.

He is an anomaly in the system and the consequence is that the jump this time around brings back an "empty" or rather a dysfunctional or erroneous Omega/Brain. The last jump restores a bad copy.

Either the Omega is simply mortally wounded and Cage can take it back and overwrite the healthy Omega in the past, or Cage this time bypasses the Omega and connects directly with the Brain, and thus jumps with a dead Omega. Such detail matters little…. what matters is that Cage re-establishes a connection somehow and in his jump, he takes either a destroyed Omega or simply a dying Omega back. Either way, his last jump overwrites its consciousness in the past with a bad copy from the future.

[I refute the explanation that the Cage simply grabs the full ability from the Omega. There is no evidence in the movies that the Omega can initiate jumps without its Alphas, and so it makes no sense for me to grant it this power in the end. I instead say, the premise of an Omega-Alpha connection still stands and it does through most of the movie, and above I explain how Cage get the Alpha role once more, and how he thusly can bring back the dying Omega. This way we also avoid the question if he still has the power to reset in the very end? No he does not, the connection is effectively lost upon his wakening. The End.]

Q: WHY DID THE LAST JUMP EFFECT THE OMEGA BEFORE CAGE HIMSELF WOKE UP?

A: The death of the Omega in the present (one day earlier) happens just before dawn, but still while Cage is sleeping on the Chopper. This is because the jumps happen at a time where the mind of a human carrier is at rest, not when he wakes up from his rest; as many assume. So during his rest, the mind from the dead Omega is jumped back to the awaken Omega at that time, and thus initiating the deletion/destruction of its mind before he himself wakes up with then updated knowledge. Or said shortly; the jumps happens to a point in time when the carrier is resting, not when he or she wakes up.

Q: WHY ONE DAY AND NOT TWO OR LONGER JUMPS BACK IN TIME?

A: Since the travel is strongly connected with the mind, perhaps the cycle of about one day is because this constitutes kind of a default limit of the mind – we simply need a rest about every 12-18-24 hours, for our minds to work properly, and therefore the first time jump of the mind is defined on some level by this interval.

The above timeline assumes 12 hours, but it might as well have been 24 hours.

The first jump will define the re-entry point, and this will be the re-entry point used on every jump hereafter. That is, until the carrier loses the power and another Alpha can define a new re-entry point.

Q: WHY DOES HE JUMP BACK TO THE CHOPPER ON HIS LAST JUMP?

A: My best rationalization to this conundrum is that the first jump is related to the typical cycle of the mind, and happens to the point of rest furthest away from the death, but still within the 12-18-24 hour interval, which length I explain above. The above simple timeline illustrates this too.

So the short answer is simply that the jump is defined within about 12-18.24 hours, and the nap in the Chopper fits that pretty well from when he got the ability back in Paris. Just like the nap on the duffle bags fits this pretty well too, from when he got the ability later on the beach. In other words, the jump is about a day back from each of the two times he hijacks the ability.

[I refute the explanation that the Chopper is now the only possibility, as his rest on the duffle bags consequently doesn’t exist anymore qua the deletion of the Omega. This is illogical if we accept my explanation to why the Omega is killed in the present and not only in the future. The Omega’s present death is a function of his jump, and thus his jumps defines when the Omega dies – not the other way around. Logically this jump could still have been on the duffle bags. However, since it is not, I deduce the above simpler explanation that each initial jump just happens about 12 hours back from when the power got hijacked - logical fallacies or complicated paradoxes are avoided this way]

Q: WHY IS IT **NOT A MULTIVERSE?**

A: Many seem to explain the movie with multiple time lines, like that the Omega transcends them all, and each death creates another line etc. It is my view that the multiverse concept defeats the whole idea of the movie. I will try to explain why:

If it is a multiverse kind of situation, it means the universe continues every time Cage is killed. In other words, we will have countless universes where Rita is prosecuted for killing Cage. Also, the struggle and fight through the whole movie is about saving that one timeline – I think it is also the point of the Omegas jumping ability. If the jumps are to other timelines, or to setup other timelines, it trivialises their otherwise brilliant tactics, as the jumps then will not change anything at all in any particular timeline.

I am not abandoning the theory of multiverses in general, however for the sake of this story and the way it is presented to us, a singular timeline simply makes more sense to me.

If you instead imagine the singular timeline loops each time Cage dies. Time doesn't stop, but the line intersects with itself and continues in a "new" direction on each reset. This way one line can have many limited futures (one in each loop, and limited by each loop) but ultimately is has only one history...

From a timeline perspective, branches of new lines is simpler to understand, and it fixes all paradoxes, like why the Omega also dies when he arrives in London. But, from the story perspective it is much more multifaceted to grasp and really opens a can of complexity that is fundamentally not needed for this story to work.

In fact, everything in the movie supports a singular timeline perspective, except why the Omega “also” dies when he lands in London. My above explanation seeks to avoid paradoxes; it seeks to explain why the Omega dies in the “past” and it seeks to keep the more sensible singular timeline perspective.

GREAT FILM

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** I am normally not a praying man, but if you are up there, please save me Superman **

I was just gonna say that... all of it.

You beat me to it.

@Halberstram said:

I was just gonna say that... all of it.

You beat me to it.

LOL @Halberstram