Oblivion - Tom Cruise goes WALL-E

How the other ?? remaining clones cope with (as far as they know) their only link to humanity getting blown up. What a bummer. The chick probably would have swan dived off their totally cool Jetson's apartment with the sky-pool that I totally want.

But I suppose that's what Jaime Lannister was up to at the end, as payment of sorts - going around letting the clones know what really happened. And that's how he came across 52, who unlike the others knew his wife was alive and was searching for her.

If 52 had just wandered into the cabin on his own I'd have probably broken something.

The original invasion was thousands of Jack clones - they couldn't have been given the same 'programming' or they wouldn't have gone along with it. So why the deception with the clean up crew? We can only assume it was to make them "an effective team." The invasion clones must have had some sort of limitations that was overcome by allowing the clones to be more human / have more memories. There could have been a scene explaining such - maybe they were only useful as shock troops and died off quickly. Perhaps without memories they weren't able to care for themselves and simply starved to death. Easily explained, should have been in the movie.

The aliens being humans, the clone reveal when he crests the hill, the woman getting shot... it just got to be bit eye roll

When he goes into the radiation zone, and sees 52, 52's ship should have visual of their fight (felt like the triangle choke was awesome). Thus, 52's redhead should realize it's the wrong fucking Tom Cruise coming home.

I was thinking the same thing, but they sorta covered that by having her not at her desk. Notice when Cruise returns, she is not up there monitoring the flight/mission.... perhaps their team was less effective that way, or they had less issues so she could go enjoy a cup of tea
BUT... on the same note his flight suit has the number 49 on it while the cruise in the radiation zone had '52' on his suit.. on the right upper breast plate. I was SURE that she would notice that when 49 came home to 52's... but she didn't. Not really a plot hole, she was just not observant.

(1) Why is it that the aliens use mind-wiped human drone clone things to do the work, while keeping them in this big perpetual lie about what is going on? My best excuse was that: Obviously, since the aliens are doing this, it is (easier/less-expensive/quicker/more effective) to clone humans to do this drone repair work than it is to make their own robot clones to do the work. Despite all that, how on earth did this whole thing happen in the first place? Does anyone have a better explanation than that? I tried to think of one, but that is the only "logical" one that seemed to fit.

(2) Why do the survivors on earth pretend to be aliens? I got the heads-up from Morgan Freeman with the whole "these masks/vocal doohads confuse the drones" bit, but why would they keep the act up when they're actually facing the human repair workers? Again, my best explanation is that this obviously seems to be the best way to deal with it, because they've tried coming out as humans to all the previous Tom Cruises they encountered, but that didn't go well for them. Like before, a tad bit of back story here would make it seem like an odd thing instead of a giant plot-hole.

(3) So, magically, these survivors know to send out a beacon that will bring home the escape pod from the original mission? Morgan said it had been like, 50 years or so, which means that it took the escape pod this darn long to get back to earth, but if so, how did these guys know when it was coming? My best explanation is that, given that all the Tom Cruises are replaced/have their memory wiped every 5 years, the survivors hook up a beacon signal every few years, and this was the first time that this Tom Cruise saw it, but it has been happening every 5 years for the past 50. Maybe it was never actually intended to land ON EARTH, (especially given how broken up it was when it landed), and the technology that sent all these people out towards the Tet/Saturn was expecting them to dock at some international space-station type thing that is no longer there due to the war.

I mean they used an army of brainwashed Tom Cruise to conquer the earth, but suddenly they have to put together the most elaborate of long con to have these clones repair the drones? And more importantly.... how did he know how the Superball played out???????!!???

They didn't send the signal 50 years ago. They sent it just then, because they wanted its core to build their nuke to go on the drone they had captured. At that point they still didn't have a way of actually reprogramming the thing, though.

I figure "why clones that think they are human" was simple efficiency. Machines break down, need repair, need spare parts etc. The tet did not have unlimited resources to shit out robot armies like the Star Forge.

And he likely made up the story about the Super Bowl. His real self didn't see it and the clone self thought his memory was erased.