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Strangers dying out
- How can a race of RealityWarpers be dying? And what makes them think that something about human psychology can save them?
- Their powers clearly have limitations. All we see them do is straightforward manipulation of unliving matter and telekinesis. It would appear that they cannot, for instance, create a living human being themselves. For how they are dying off, with any species that boils down to that they are dying faster than they are reproducing. As we have no idea how these being reproduce, neither can we know the precise nature of how and why they are dying off.
- Alternately, they may still be capable of biological reproduction, but their psyches are failing in some way. If they originally had a Hive Mind with millions of Strangers in it, but lost vast numbers of their kind to a war or disaster, they may have been unable to maintain their mental gestalt upon which they depend for sanity and/or civilized life. In which case, humans' individuality and identity actually becomes a sensible thing for them to research: they want to know how we maintain a sense of "self", despite the chaos of varied experience, so they can learn to do it too without a Hive Mind.
- Their powers are clearly failing, since more and more people are starting to figure out the illusion.
- In the novelization, they are described as a parasitic species that was already on the verge of extinction before space travellers happened upon their dying world, and taking control of them and their ships only prolonged their extinction. They are still parasites that are destructive to their hosts—stealing their bodies and their technology while developing none of their own, and it is a limitation that is inherent in their very nature which they cannot overcome no matter how many other species they conquer. And they think by merging with humanity (who has imagination and emotions — something they've never encountered before in any other species), they can evolve beyond merely being parasites to become true symbiotes, and thus save themselves.
Bumstead and his shoes
- Inspector Bumstead appears to be developing Reality Warping powers of his own given how he could just will his shoe into having its laces in a tied state. Why and how is this happening? Is it enough to start developing those powers that you simply begin to grasp the true nature of the City?
- Possibly the city itself is breaking down, as the mechanisms that keep it operational wear down after so many 12-hour rounds of re-engineering reality. Humans' beginning to tune is a side effect of this slow erosion of the mechanisms that focus the Strangers' own tuning efforts. If the Strangers are indeed dying out, then there may not be enough of them to keep those mechanisms working properly anymore, especially if they've lost some of their number to experiments-gone-wrong before the film's events started killing them off in increasing numbers.
Group consciousness
- Dr Schreber explains to Murdoch that the strangers share a 'group consciousness', yet the film does not really show them possessing any of the actual attributes of a shared collective mind, nor does the film expand on the nature of that ability in any real way. In fact, the strangers, all appear to have individual identities and memories, and even personalities. Nor do the various strangers seem to have shared knowledge of current events as they happen in the film. Mr Hand, Mr Book, Mr Wall for example, all seem rather distinct. For example, a true group mind would have no need for a 'leader', Mr Book: any stranger would suffice as a spokesmen. Their are possible explanations for this, Schreber was simply wrong about that aspect of them and doesn't fully understand their nature. OR perhaps they do have sort of collective consciousness, but its very limited and Scherber again, overstates its importance and utility.
- Or maybe, since they're trying to gain insight into the human soul, the Strangers who work on the City-experiment have suppressed their links to one another, because otherwise they couldn't even begin to understand how humans tick. In which case, many of the mistakes they make in their "work" or in maintaining their human facades make more sense: they're the result of them not being entirely competent when they have to operate as individuals.
- Alternately, they're dying out because their Hive Mind has failed them due to some catastrophe - the loss of huge numbers of its members to a war or disaster perhaps, or some kind of plague that severs their mental connection to one another - and their civilization is collapsing because they can't work together without one. In which case, their inquiries into human identity and individual consciousness are intended to teach them how to live without their mental gestalt.
- Note that we do see at least one example of a link between two Strangers: the way the death of Mr. Quick brought John's other attacker to his knees, clutching at his head. Possibly their "group consciousness" is limited to sensing one another's presence and state of being when in close proximity to one another, not to sharing actual information or decision-making processes. Hence, Hand could feel Quick's death from a few feet away, but still had to report it to the others back at their underground headquarters.
- Or they simply all have the same memories. Not necessarily shared memories but the same basic set, with no difference between them. Humans have unique individual memories, whereas the Strangers are all interchangeable.
Linking
- One of the biggest questions, of course: would John "linking" with the Strangers have saved them? And if John is more than the sum of his memories then why, when given the power to do whatever he wants, does he build a life almost identical to the false memories the Strangers gave him in the first place?
- One is that John Murdock is as good as any other name and it's one he will respond to. Second is that everyone remembers Shell Beach and he could really go for a vacation after all that.
- Plus, it's wonderful symbolism.
- Also, what other concept of a "good life" does he have to draw upon...? Even if he knows they're fake memories, they're the only ones he has to work with.
Ending
- The ending at first appears to be a fairly unremarkable happy conclusion; the protagonist wins a telekinetic duel with the apparent leader of the Strangers, blows up their hideout, and finally brings light to the city. He then informs one of the last dying Strangers that memories aren't what makes us human, and their experiment was flawed to begin with. Yay humanity. But then something interesting happens: the protagonist, who has complete control over the city, and the power to be anybody and have anything he wants, decides that he wants his fake wife back, even though they never really had a relationship. He wants to go to Shell Beach, the fake place from his childhood, so he creates it. And when his fake wife, her memories of him completely gone, asks him what his name is, he delivers the last line of the film: "John. John Murdoch." His fake name. For all his talk about memories not making us human, John has immediately chosen to build his new life around the few things that he actually remembers.
- Of course. It starts with memories. But then it builds outwards towards relationships with other people, something that the Strangers, being a hivemind, could never reproduce.
- "I love you, John. You can't fake something like that." "No, you can't." That's probably what John means when he tells Mr. Hand that the Strangers have been looking in the wrong place, and why he decides to pursue a romantic relationship with Emma/Anna at the end. He believes she loves him (and that maybe he loves her despite his lack of memories - since he chose to protect her rather than let Mr. Hand kill her), and is willing to give it a shot.
Memories
- If the injected memories are mixed and matched from human memories, how is it possible to create a lifetime of using Tuning, if no other human ever used this power before? Or has the human race mastered Tuning before it got locked up in the city?
- The doctor presumably had access to the Strangers' collective memories, as they'd expected him to inject Murdoch with those instead of the modified version of his own Shell Beach childhood. He could've based Murdoch's remembered "lessons" on how the Strangers, themselves, learn to Tune.
- When the Strangers make a change to one person's memories or role, does Schreber then have to go around to all of the people who knew that person before and 'update' all of their memories as well to incorporate the change? Likewise, when they erase or add new buildings or features, does Schreber have to go around to all the people in the city and give them the memories that that building was always there or isn't there anymore? Or can the Strangers simply do 'general' programming of the population during the Tuning when the change is minor?
- It is shown that when the humans have trouble remembering simple facts, they almost immediately dismiss it. All the people who are asked where the beach is try for a second and then shrug it off. When Uncle Carl is asked where the day went (the literal daylight part of the day-night cycle), he shrugs his shoulders and says that they must have missed it because they were tired. Thus it can be assumed that there is some general underlying fault in their memories, likely placed there intentionally by the Strangers/Schreber, that will have them simply shrug and ignore it if things don't quite line up. Close friends of experimental subjects probably get an update to their memories, but that would be it.
- Touched on in the original version DVD commentary. The Strangers could only create just enough to make their little scenarios work. Thus why no one could remember anything but the recent past, e.g. Bumpstead forgetting when his mother gave him his accordion. Subjects were supposed to be reassigned before they started noticing the inconsistencies, but it seemed the "Murdoch crisis" had the Strangers leaving subjects in their roles too long.
Earth
- In the opening narration of the cinematic version, Schreber explains that the Strangers hatched their current mission after coming upon a small blue world, yet later, he states that he has no idea where humans come from, apparently having no knowledge of Earth at all.
- Schreber says that he was forced to erase his own memories too, and only keeps his knowledge of psychology and the human condition. So presumably that means he erased his memory of where he came from too.
- "Small blue world" could be the words the Strangers used to describe Earth, and Schreber was parroting them.
- My personal interpretation of the latter line is what he precisely meant was that he does not know the location of Earth relative to the City, with the underlying implication it is therefore impossible to try to return there.
The sleep power
- The Strangers have the ability to knock people out by telling them to "sleep" and using their powers to knock them out. Yet they don't use this power on Murdoch until the end. I might be misremembering the story, but how comes they didn't just do this to Murdoch as soon as they found him?
- Mr. Hand tries to make John sleep when they confront him on the Shell Beach billboard; he looks discomfited when it fails and pulls his knife instead. Towards the end, after John is thoroughly exhausted from being awake for so long, Mr. Hand successfully makes him sleep and brings him underground.
