Annihilation – content summary

1. A meteorite impact brings with it extraterrestrial structures.
2. A lighthouse is surrounded by a mysterious field (AreaX).
3. Kane is the only survivor from eleven expeditions.
4. He can not remember anything and has multiple organ failure.
5. His wife Lena was in the army and is now a professor of molecular biology.
6. She wants to know the truth and joins the next expedition.
7. Together with four women, she goes into the “glimmer”.
8. There changes their sense of time, memories and thinking.
9. They recognize new life forms from impossible combinations of DNA (plants in human form).
10. The shimmer works like a prism that splits and reassembles not only light, but also magnetic fields and DNA.
11. In the lighthouse Lena is created as an extraterrestrial copy of itself and it comes to extinction.
12. Lena returns, her memories are largely extinguished.
13. Neither she nor her husband Kane know who they are now. In the eyes they have the “shimmer”.

Lena, a molecular biologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University, explains to the freshman that there was only one cell at the beginning of life. Through exponential division and mutation, it has become what we now call human beings. The cell has thus become the structure of all that lives and dies. Lena and her husband Kane talk about it: “God did not make a mistake, because sometimes he lets the moon shine in the daytime”. Lena realizes: “Of course he makes mistakes that the cells themselves are immortal. There is only one mistake in the genes “. During this conversation in an intimate atmosphere, Kane already knows that he will join a deadly expedition. He probably will not return more than that, or if at all. Slightly confused, he says to his wife: “We are still living in the same hemisphere”.

Life and its annihilation is the central theme of “Annihilation”. Is it for us too? The most important resource you have is:

Your life in this moment – and nothing is more important!

While we declare that our children or our parents are the most important thing we have here on earth, we can only help if we are. During each emergency exercise participants are told that they have to be the first to get themselves to safety and then to help others. It follows that the most important resource we have is life itself. It’s just not oil, rare earths, water and air. But we also know what we need to pay attention to the most – on the genetic structures and the molecular basis. Unfortunately, today we often feel a little careful use of it. Profit maximization leads to disrespectful handling of life. Technical achievements allow an intervention in the genetic structure. The time when man becomes God is probably there or at least very close. Whether we are then able to make fewer mistakes than “the old one” must first show. An extinction can happen both internally (genetic engineering) and externally (aliens). The first one is in our own hands. The latter shows the film.

In the meantime, a year has passed and Lena knows absolutely nothing about the whereabouts of her husband. She takes refuge in her work and withdraws more and more. Whether she has an intimate relationship with her co-worker Professor Daniel is uncertain. She dreamed about it when she was already in an altered state of consciousness. Just as she paints her bedroom, Kane returns. The great reunion joy is disturbed very quickly. He can not remember anything. Lena: “You owe me a better explanation”. For Kane, something else is more important at the moment, so he asks, “Is that so important.” His body is falling apart and he has to be taken to the hospital immediately. But they never arrive there because the intelligence service brings them to “Reach”, the operations center for AreaX.

Now that Lena knows what it’s about, she tells Dr. Ventress: “You will not let me go”. One of them says that she wants to go home and the other wants her to shimmer to know more about her husband’s fate. So another expedition is put together and this time not from male soldiers, but from five female scientists and Lena with it.

Shortly after entering the “glimmer” first disturbances show up. The women awake in their tents and are disoriented. Based on the food they consume, they find that they have been inside for a few days. They have no memory of the recent past and all electronic guidance is out of service. Dr. Ventress urges: “We’ve lost enough time already”. Not only as an expedition leader, she wants to reach the lighthouse as quickly as possible, but also for personal reasons. She is suffering from cancer and only has a short life expectancy. All five women have very subjective reasons to participate in this expedition. Lena: “We all have our reasons to carry our parcel”. From a psychological perspective, the Dr. explains. Ventress like this:

“Almost every person destroys himself. It is not a decision to do so, but an impulse – whether drinking, smoking or career. Self-destruction is built into our code “.

For extinction, it would therefore need no intervention of aliens.

The more they approach the lighthouse, the more bizarre the life forms become. Lena: “Flowers, when you look at them, you do not believe that they belong to the same species, even though they come from the same root.” Although these plants look beautiful with their blossoms, Lena says: “If I see something like that in humans, I would think that it is vicious”. Here she refers to the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells. The women experience in the glimmer transformed life forms, duplicated living beings with crosses from most different species. First, they encounter a crocodile with shark teeth and then a bear that imitates human voices. Some of these creatures are beautiful, others disgusting and extremely dangerous.

In the meantime, the physicist has realized that: The “glimmer”, like a prism, breaks the light down into its spectral colors, works “. The same thing should happen with the electromagnetic waves, whereby a communication to the outside is not possible. If one generalizes this theory, it could also apply to the genes. Dr. Ventress: “All DNA is broken and reassembled. Even memories are so destroyed “. The Extinction.

At the end of the expedition, Lena and Dr. Ventress, separated from each other, the lighthouse. When Lena sees her partner, she is already in the final phase of the extinction:

• Disappeared chaos!
• Inscrutable Spirit!
• First the beacon and then see that!
• It’s in me!
• It’s different than us.
• Do not know what it is.
• It will grow.
• It will dissolve the body and mind into the smallest parts.
• It destroyed everything.

Lena observes this process and in her eyes the symbol of the shimmer is already reflected. At the same time a drop of blood is withdrawn from the eyelid, from which then develops a new humanoid living being. This alien is by no means evil, but merely reflects the behavior of Lena. From a left behind video of her husband, she knows that only one of these two beings can survive. She or she. Lena solves the problem in the same way as Kane did back then. He blew himself up with a hand grenade, extinguished it. So Lena takes an explosive device and places it in the hand of the mirrored alien, which then transmutates immediately as a second Lena, explodes and extinguished.

Similar to Kane one does not know for the time being, who of the two survives. Lena or her shimmer.

When asked if everything inside the screen was destroyed, Lena answers: “It did not destroy anything, it was about to create something new”.

Aliens need resources

In the SiFi films of the past, aliens were portrayed mainly as conquerors, colonialists and exploiters. The impression was given that the aliens came to visit us mainly because of the resources they need. The same is true of Avatar, where people come to Pandora to search for a rare ore and ruthlessly deal with the natives. Something different with Annihilation. It is not even sure if extraterrestrials really come to us. One sees only the impact of a fire body. If it really has anything to do with aliens, their intent is not yet apparent. But what happens behind the glimmer is an attack on life. An unknown force uses cells and reprograms their DNA. It creates completely new creatures. Have the aliens found life as a new resource to exploit? The central element of life is the cell with its coding, its ability to replicate built on chemical substances and embedded in a biosphere. From these components alone, there is still no life, even if the current genetic engineering gives the impression. What is needed for a cell genesis is an engine that processes the code (DNA) and that also requires energy.

When Lena and Kane meet again: “I had a life, I was Kane. Now I’m not so sure anymore. If I’m not Kane, who am I – am I you?

Dying transmits the genetic code – but reincarnation?