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I Am Mother (2019)
An over simplified explanation
The Netflix movie: "I Am Mother," an over simplified explanation with SPOILERS
What came before:
Humans create the robots and the AI that controls them. Its purpose is to protect and nurture the whole of humanity. The AI determines that the greatest threat to the wellbeing of humanity are the individual humans themselves. They are selfish and self-indulgent. The AI logically concludes that the best course of action is to remove the current humans and raise a new, caring, and self-sacrificing breed of humans. The AI executes the plan.
What happens during the movie:
The robot Mother is raising and training (or indoctrinating and programming) a single human, Daughter. Why just one? It reduces the number of variables, thus increasing the possibility of success. Why a girl child? The selection of a girl child may be based on the sexist assumption that females are inherently more nurturing than males, more motherly or maternal. This may be a good time to address the possibility of there being other incubation facilities. There could be thousands of them scattered around the globe. Each facility tests different variations of the plan in an attempt to improve the chances of achieving success. That would, however, be an entirely different movie. This movie shows the events at a single incubation facility. There have been previous daughters, but the movie is only concerned with the current effort. This Daughter has successfully passed each stage in her development, so far.
Then came Woman. She is purported to be from a small remnant colony of humans who have survived the robot apocalypse and are living in a mine somewhere. However, in reality, Daughter has entered the next stage of her training, and Woman is part of that - the temptation of freedom, of cutting the apron strings and becoming your own person. This test too, she finally passes by sacrificing her desires to her brother's needs.
One of the robots seeks out Woman, and the AI speaks through it, "as if someone had a purpose for you, until now." The Woman was created by the robots solely for the final test. Now that she's played her part, she's no longer needed.
Daughter becomes Mother.
IO (2019)
Slow, thoughtful, chatty, sad, hopeful, and Sam is totally bonkers
Netflix's IO
¡ Warning ! Spoilers Ahead ¡ Warning !
This is not an action movie, it is a mood movie and that mood is one of dreamlike reflection. The characters, both of them, spend the whole movie chatting with one another. Okay, there's more than two characters and they do do a little more than talk. There is the main character Sam Walden and then there's Micah the second character. Sam's scientist father Dr. Henry Walden is a mostly unseen presence through-out the film as is Sam's putative boyfriend/pen pal Elon. There are also a couple of voices on the radio whom we never see (one of them is automated) and an old recording of a TV host interviewing Dr Walden. There is also Lucy the pig, the bees, and at the end there is the boy. There is also the presence, the hope, of Exodus.
This film has a timelessness to it. We know it's set in the future, but how far into the future? We don't know. How long after the present day and before the events of the film did the Earth turn on us? When did the first of the Exodus ships launch for IO? How long from the first ship to this final Exodus ship? Specific measures of time are only mentioned during the broadcasts about the final Exodus launch. This should impart a sense of urgency to our pair of lost souls, yet somehow it does not. Sure, Micah gets angry a couple of times because the wind is blowing the wrong way for them to take off*. Despite this he still seems resigned to wait.
What of Sam?
Through-out the film Sam is motionless, lost in a dreamlike state of denial, loss, and isolation. She is in an endless loop, caught between a living a damned existence and a hopeless fantasy of living, of no longer being alone. A dream of looking out over the ocean, the wind blowing freely through her hair.
What of Micah?
What will Micah report when he arrives at Exodus? That Sam is alive and breathing in the toxic atmosphere that no one can breathe? Or will he report that Sam died in his arms with a strange, contented smile on her lips, as if in the midst of a happy dream? Her forever-hopeful dream of a life, a future, of no longer being alone. A dream that has been slowly revealed through-out the film.
What of the Bees, the marks on Sam's ribs and Lucy?
Dr Henry Walden and Sam seem to be heavily invested in the bees, in adapting them to the toxic environment. Was it just an experiment that Sam obsessed over because it was all she had left? Could the marks on Sam's ribs be bee stings or some kind of antitoxin made from a queen bee? Did Sam give herself one more injection from that final adapted queen bee that Micah found? Is that why she was ready to take her mask off? Lucy the pig, Sam was rather evasive about how Lucy died. Did they take her into the toxic atmosphere too many times or for too long a time? Did she become fully acclimated and ran away or was she unable to return to the clean air after becoming accustomed to breathing the tainted air?
What of the Sam's dream and the boy?
It is a boy, not a baby we see in the final scene. Are we expected to believe that Sam gave birth, alone, in a toxic environment? Is this perhaps just Sam's dream, finally revealed to us completely. Her final dream as she died in Micah's arms no longer alone.
*I'm not an aeronaut and I'm sure it's far more complicated than I'm presenting it, but I thought that balloonists controlled their direction by changing altitude until they found an air stream headed it the right direction.