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In Infini (2015), the recon team returns to Earth and is met by a bunch of doctors performing health examinations on each of them. In the scenes before, the ooze organism heals them.
So did the ooze become part of them as they went back to Earth and that's why the examination scene was so suspenseful? I'm wondering because just before they left the outpost, the ooze apparently formed into human-like structures meaning that it might have stayed on the outpost.
The ending to "Infini" is clear once you consider the character set-up and resolution scene in detail.
In the resolution scene, Whitt is indeed contaminated as he records a looped message for the PO (Primordial Ooz). At the mic, Whitt's eyes and wounds show signs of infection, and his strength slips away. At the end of the message, Whitt's last act is to commit suicide -- slicing his arm open with a scalpel -- as a sacrifice, so he does not infect his beloved family back on Earth.
While Whitt dies, his recorded loop explains to the PO that the alien failed to conquer humans because the PO replicated bad behaviors -- hatred, killing, violence -- and human beings can't and won't survive (and neither will replicated humans), without compassion, family and love. Since the PO is a "perfect organism," as divulged in the lab, with the capability of dominating and replicating cells "perfectly," it is clear that to replicate compassion, family, love, etc., the PO must depart the human hosts entirely, first returning them to their original condition. Why? Bodily possession and destruction are antithetical to love and its aspects. For the PO to truly replicate love, it must respect the human form and not harm it; only this action would be consistent with the PO's masterful ability to replicate.
In short, the PO comprehends Whitt's final message of compassion, and proceeds to mend and reanimate the team -- bringing them back to life with brief memory loss -- then the PO departs the bodies of Whitt and company. It's not a stretch to think the PO could repair cells without fully inhabiting a body; and, arguably, the PO was not able to reanimate the other 1500, or so, miners, because they have been dead too long. However, the base personnel who were killed within a week -- and were not reanimated -- remain an inconsistency.
Finally, the transparent beings, who appear to Whitt as he leaves Infini, are the final proof that the PO has retained its duplicative human form, but has done so apart from human beings; hence, it has learned Whitt's lesson of compassion and love, harming no one in its desire to exist. Once back on Earth, the further fact that the entire "away team" passes the contagion test is proof that the PO has remained on Infini; leaving Earth alone. PO is now an enlightened alien. The theme of family and love, which opens the film and is repeated throughout, plays the final motivational chord in the story.
Let's say you replace a part in your car, it's still the same car, right? What happens if you replace half the parts in your car, is it half the same car? What if, over the years, you've replaced all the parts in your car... isn't that the same as just buying a new one?
The ending is supposed to be a little ambiguous. With movies like these, the ambiguity is meant not to make you wonder about what happened at the end, but make you think about the overarching message. This film is heavy with philosophical concepts about thought, emotion, and life.
Descartes (a famous philosopher) said, "Cogito ergo sum" which means "I think, therefore I am." How does an organism survive if it cannot think? Instinct? What separates instinct from thought? Emotion? Rationality? These are the deep underlying questions that the movie explores and, purposely, doesn't answer.
1) Primordial Ooze (we'll call it Po) "copied" the crew members. It returned to Earth posing as humans, presumably to conquer.
2) Po "healed" the crew members. They returned to Earth healthy, but traumatized.
So, evidence for the first conclusion... We get a TON of info on Po from the scenes in med-bay. First, we learn that Po replicates any organic material it touches, as shown by the jarred body parts. It does this at an extremely fast rate, as shown in the journal. Whit's microscopic evidence proves how Po is a predator on a cellular level, fighting to kill until there is one clear winner. Survival of the fittest. Evolution on fast-forward.
It's also worth noting that, prior to this discovery, the crew considered Po to be a viral contagion; afterward, Whit realizes that it's actually a parasitic organism. He considers the possibility that the entire planet is one entire Po.
This is important because for the entire movie the crew thinks they are going to die. If Po is the predator, then they are the prey. Whit says that the organism is just doing what an organism does: it survives, regardless of what happens to anyone else. He says, "It's not capable of understanding."
Alright, let's move on. Another point in favor of a species-dominating Po is the fact that EVERYONE DIES. Seriously. One guy gets an ax right in the chest, several people get shot in the head, another gets beaten, a unborn baby is unprofessionally aborted, and at least two people commit suicide. Not to mention all the people that were frozen and shattered to pieces. Over 1550 people. By our current scientific knowledge, humans aren't capable of rising from the dead.
So, if the crew is dead, Po must have replicated them in their entirety, right? This is why the ending scenes are so tense - Po has evolved from a simple I-Eat-Things mentality to having to deal with human thought and emotion. Po suddenly has to use its new collective brains to manipulate ACTUAL humans who have been playing the human game for a lot longer than it has. But remember, it adapts and evolves exceptionally fast.
But wait! If Po is just replicating dead humans, why not replicate the 1550+ dead humans it has on hand? Granted, a lot of them are shattered to pieces from being frozen, but not a single one was reconcilable? While it definitely seems that an extremely low temperature is a weakness for Po, a lot of those bodies were thawed and still usable...
Shh. Po just learned how to use the human brain, remember? And it has smart brains, too. Surely it would have figured out that it's extremely suspicious to revive a ton of previously-confirmed dead people. That would lower its chances of infiltrating Earth and reproducing.
The easiest thing to dissect is the whole replication thing. The main argument seems to be whether Po is replacing human cells with new ones or if it's healing the crew by replacing... human cells with... new ones? What? Surprise surprise - the actual healing process that our bodies perform on themselves could very well be the same that Po is doing to the crew. It's a semantic argument.
The next point is also pretty easy to break down: if the crew aren't actually themselves anymore, what's the point in discussing an excuse to return home with? The crew members, after being healed, gather and unanimously decide that depressurization caused them to have lapses in memory. They can't remember much, but they rescued Whit and stopped the hazardous materials from being teleported to Earth.
The scene clearly shows how emotional and traumatic the experience was for them - all they want to do is go home to their families.
Whit has a pregnant wife. Huntington records an entry to his wife and child that he knows won't reach Earth until they're long dead. Claire has an unborn child with Morgan. Menzies has a daughter who didn't want him to leave.
Daddy loves you all the way to the Milky way. The long way, not the short way.
So here is where I tell you that I've already made my decision. I whole-heartedly support Theory 2, and believe that the crew returned to Earth 100% human. Here's why, just bear with me.
Po, simply put, is really freaking big. It's so big, it was mistaken for a planet. If Po has an exceptionally high rate of adaptation and accelerated evolution, how has it survived so long without developing higher intelligence? The answer is simple: there was no higher intelligence to replicate. Until now. In nature, higher intelligence doesn't necessarily equal better survival. But it does when you are trying to compete with intelligent organisms. When Po began to replicate cells (brain cells, as seen in the med-bay), it quickly adapted to its newfound awareness. It was suddenly smarter and craftier... the emotions came later.
"You couldn't get past your own selfish, ignorant need to dominate. If you had time to grow, time to evolve, things could have been different... we could have worked together."
Home. Family.
Why did Po save Whit's family photo at the end of the movie? It couldn't have served any practical purpose. It was a memento, a reminder of the experience of his emotion, of family and a sense of purpose.
Why did Po decide to reveal itself as multiple human-like shapes? Family. Po made a family for itself.
Why did Po heal the crew? So they could go home. And Po didn't have to travel to Earth because it was already home.
Whit Carmichael: I was never meant to be here. All I was trying to do was make a better life for my family. And you took that away from me. You took that away from all of us. And now look where it's got us. Whatever you tried to do here. You failed.
Claire Grenich: I'm so sorry Whit. We were supposed to get you home.
Whit Carmichael: It's not capable of understanding, not yet anyway.
Claire Grenich: A child needs support on all levels.
Whit Carmichael: I promised my wife I'd be home for dinner.
Rex Mannings: This moment right now, Whit, is life. And life is nothing, without choice.
I think maybe Whitt's message got through to the alien and it evolved? It repaired the team and then used their genetic material to make themselves in the team's image. This left the team OK and them on the station to further evolve. I am guessing here...
The suspense at the end of the movie could be explained as that the team are now actually the aliens, much like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" - they are indistinguishable from the humans now. The aliens seen at the end are sending their colleagues (or maybe themselves, as the ooze may be all one entity) to earth to start their parasitical invasion of humans there - and they have learnt to control their emotions of hate and violence now thanks to the experiences they have absorbed from Whit. The decontamination team nearly catch them out, but pass them in the end, to spread and take over the earth....well, that's my take on the ending anyway.
I agree with the statement about the philosophy of continuity, as you replace parts of th car you consider it the same car even after you've replaced 50% of it...
Now current topics in philosophy have covered theories of teleportation along the same lines... You teleport, who comes out on the other end? Yourself? A copy of yourself? Something completely different? If it isn't you, is it a copy of you that has all the same memories and has taken over your life?
So even if the primordial ooze replicated/replaced all the cells in the human body, how is this any different from the metabolic process which obviously takes longer?
I guess the big question that hasn't been answered in this movie are how the primordial ooze, in replacing a whole body, would differ from the regular metabolic process. Are they the same except now have primordial ooze cells? How do those cells differ. This is overlooked and Whit mentions that "it's not his thing" so we won't know.
We also don't know whether Whit was infected or not. Are Whit's flashes and crazy twitches the affects of being alone for so long, or are they the affect of being integrated into the ooze?
Last note, when looking at the problem of the question of body cell replacement, we commonly resolve this identity issue by tying "sameness" to memory. Whit seems to be trying to hold on to his identity at the end by holding onto a photo of his family. I think that this is what they movie is trying to portray that through all the challenges these characters face when deal with "sameness", through repeated teleportation, metabolic replication of cells, primordial ooze replcation/Takeover, the only thing that makes them the same is their memories. The interview on the other side of the slip/teleport shows them bring grilled, and they are believed to be the same people because they can remember details of their former selves.
Cheers,
Keith MacDougall
well for me, I think they healed as they can replicate cells.. they were suspiciousw because what happen to them is weird and they got infected if they knew about it then they will die so they had to lie, but it was hard for them to do so thats why u can see in their faces that they knew something happened..
After Witt sent his message, The Ooze creatures realized they were wrong. When the blood was dripping from the table, it reversed as the ooze started to go to the other members of the team. It evolved and started growing on better aspects of human life. Realizing it was wrong, the ooze restored life to the crew, as well as forming itself into a being (the Ooze humans at the end). They showed the picture to Carmichael and they stayed on the station. Great movie
