Genre: Sci-Fi/Thriller
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Writer: Dominic Wilkins
Sequel to Doppelganger
Cast: Natalie Portman, Colin Farrell, Sarah Paulson, Millie Bobby Brown, David Tennant, Christopher Eccleston, Fionn Whitehead, Tommy Lee Jones, Carrie Coon
Plot: On Earth, the very real General Charles McDaniels (Christopher Eccleston), who now acts as the Chief after Anne Rutherford’s tragic demise, smiles with satisfaction as the clones of astronauts Mary Franklin (Natalie Portman) and Stephen Newton (Colin Farrell) are sentenced to death for their role in the death of former Earth Chief, Anne Rutherford. As his first act as Chief, McDaniels shuts down the space exploration program to try to avoid a situation similar to the Franklin / Newton debacle. He’s sitting in his office quietly, silently savouring his new position, when someone comes in and brings him back to reality. It’s Susan Franklin (Carie Coon), the sister of Mary, herself an astronaut, who thinks it’s not the real Mary Franklin they’re about to kill.
Dr. Lise Curry (Sarah Paulson), with the help of the Charles McDaniels clone, is leading her assault on Planet Earth. She communicates with all her spaceships and tell the reasons behind her assaults. She says that the Earth government abandoned its colonies hundreds of years ago and it’s now time for them to pay for their selfishness. She says she wants to accomplish what others didn’t have the balls to do: attack AND defeat the biggest and baddest of them all, planet Earth. The real human beings in her army react positively and the clones soon follow, copying the reaction of the others. A monitor on Curry’s ship announce that they will reach Earth in about two months.
The real Mary Franklin and Stephen Newton are on board of the Pontius with Nicholas (David Tennant) and his daughter Rachel (Millie Bobby Brown) who doesn’t seem to feel very well since they got off Earth Prime. She tries to remember what Curry did with her during all those years, but struggles, as Curry was very secretive in her research. Nicholas starts to feel guilty for what he did to his daughter. He says he should have seen it coming and that Curry, with her rebellious and anarchist tendency shouldn’t be trusted. He only wanted the best for her and after she started to suffer from regular migraines and hallucinations, he went to her for help, after all, she was Earth Prime’s best scientist. She was never able to give him any answers. He now believes she used Rachel for her own cause and that she never intended to cure her. Rachel interrupts them and she says she has a vision. She warns them that there’s a vessel coming right behind them with the intent to kill and it turns out she was right.
Mary Franklin takes the command of the Pontius and she does her best to avoid the vessel chasing them. She enters a field of asteroids against Newton’s wishes and zig-zags through the space rocks to avoid the guided missiles it fired at them. Two missiles crash on asteroids and after getting through the asteroid belt, one last missile remains. Franklin gains valuable time by rotating around a gas planet but after their third revolution, the spaceship is waiting for them and fires another and his last missile at them. Newton says he has a plan and takes the commands from Franklin. Since the missiles are going in opposite directions, he believes that if he shuts down the engines and wait at the very last second, he could move down really fast and the two missiles will collide. He proceeds with his plan and it succeeds. There’s no signs of the enemy spaceship. They are all relieved when the threat vanishes. Rachel has another hallucination; a whole fleet is coming right at them and they won’t be able to avoid their missiles this time.
Back on Earth, General McDaniels tries to investigate Susan Franklin’s claims with the help of world-renowned and socially-awkward scientist Albert Hawking (Fionn Whitehead) He refuses, as he already did research of both clones and couldn’t conclude anything. McDaniels turns on the news and he finds out that he’s about to lose the upcoming elections. His decision to delay the public execution of Franklin and Newton wasn’t well received by the population. The previous Chief, Anne Rutherford was loved by all and they all want retribution for the ones who unceremoniously killed her. He pays a visit to Hawking and he violently pressures him to accept the deal, to the pleasure of Susan Franklin, who starts to fall for McDaniels.
It turns out Rachel Bell was right once again. After they were able to dodge the missiles of the first threat, the Pontius was now the target of multiple ships, led by Dr. Lise Curry and a fake Charles McDaniels. Mary Franklin has a desperate solution to avoid a seemingly inevitable death: propel the Pontius to its maximum speed, which is way too fast for Curry’s fleet. That way, nobody will be able to follow them in the Universe. The only problem is that they’ll need to fuel the Pontius soon, even sooner if they follow up with her plan. After just a few seconds of hesitation, Newton accepts her plan and he has a destination in mind.
The election results are in and the surprise of absolutely no one, Charles McDaniels lost his campaign to the more conservative candidate Robert Sampson (Tommy Lee Jones). He vowed to take action regarding the murder of Anne Rutherford and he promised the population that no one will be able to stop him. As McDaniels still had a chance, Sampson put the final nail in his coffin by releasing a compromising video in which McDaniels has sex with Susan Franklin. He accused McDaniels of protecting his lover’s sister. After Sampson hears that the two accused astronauts are in Hawking’s possession, he’s determine to get them away from the scientist.
Dr. Lise Curry is still in her spaceship when she hears the news of McDaniel’s loss in the election and she also leans by the same media that he’s now persona non grata on Earth. She deactivates her McDaniels clone and stars looking frantically at her cameras on Earth, especially the one in Sampson’s office. She zooms in and sees a piece of paper with Sampson’s password for the Earth resource database on it. After the Pontius went away at maximum speed, she hasn’t been able to find them. With Sampson’s password, she accesses the database and finds out that Earth keeps a fuel station active on their old Terra Nostra colony. She takes a chance and redirects her entire fleet in Terra Nostra’s direction.
It was indeed there the Pontius landed to refuel. The vast and devastated landscape of Terra Nostra is all purple and black, with a glimpse of orange as the clouds move away from the distant sun. Rachel, who warned them about a threat ever since they landed on Terra Nostra, is starting to feel weird, like her sort of sixth sense was trying to warn her of something. As the group is exploring the surrounding of their landing zone was they refuel the Pontius, they start to hear weird noises, some kind of signal. As they begin to look around, Nicholas realises that his daughter has been kidnapped by a dark creature. He starts running in her direction, when the hideous monster holding his daughter, tears her in half, right in front of him. It turns around and starts eating her. Nicholas falls unconscious on the ground. Mary starts shooting at the creature with her plasma gun as they get the hell out of there with the Pontius.
Dr. Hawking is working the two alleged clones in his laboratory, when he receives the visit of Robert Sampson, who asks him what he’s doing with the two murderers. He tells him he was asked by the then-Chief to try to find out if they were the real Mary Franklin and Stephen Newton. Sampson starts to question Hawking on his work. He admits that the DNA test, the blood test and the saliva test were all positive. All the fingerprints are matching. So, there’s no clear signs that they are clones and not the real deal, which prompts Sampson to signal his bodyguards to come and grab the two murderers. Dr. Curry, who’s been watching the scene from far away, orders her two clones to wake up. They both get up and they strike quickly, disarming the bodyguards and taking everyone hostage. Hawking can’t believe it, as they were both heavily sedated. He’s now certain that they are not human, it would be impossible for a human being to wake up from that.
Dr. Curry also stopped at Terra Nostra and found what remains of what was Rachel’s body, confirming that they stopped there. She also refuels all of their ships. She leaves with only one intention in mind. She’ll reach Earth sooner than she thought, the unexpected refueling allowed them to travel at their maximum speed. They can be around Earth’s orbit tomorrow.
A still shaken Nicholas wakes up after fainting earlier. He silently sobs the loss of his daughter to the creature. He goes to see Franklin and Newton who are comprehensive and give him a little space. He sees that they are going to their maximum speed in Earth’s direction. He shows regret that they didn’t listen his daughter after she was right the two previous time and he assures that he’s not mad at them. While both Franklin and Newton aren’t looking, he slightly changes the Pontius’ direction. He walks away wishing them both to go to hell in his head.
Lise Curry is proud of her two clones on Earth and with their help, she hacks into the lab’s communication system and her face his shown on a screen. She talks to both Sampson and Hawking. She tells Hawking that there was no chance that she would differentiate her clones from real humans as they both are perfect. She grabs her Charles McDaniels clone by the arm and show him to the camera. At the same moment, the real Charles McDaniels break in the laboratory. She tells Sampson to decide if McDaniels is a clone too, after all, he was determined to save both of them. The Mary Franklin clone holds a gun to McDaniels head and she’ll only shoot him if Sampson orders her to. The McDaniels clone from Curry’s feed assures Sampson that he’s in fact the real Charles McDaniels and he proceeds to tell him the entire life story of McDaniels and how he ended up on Earth Prime. Convinced of his story, he feels betrayed and orders Franklin to kill the real McDaniels, despite his pleas. After he drops on the ground, she tells him he made the wrong decision.
Before she disconnects, she shows Sampson her entire fleet flying around planet Earth and no one will be able to stop them. She disconnects. She then orders her ships to start shooting on the groud. Their missiles touch the ground and most of them hit the ocean. She continues the assault and some missiles hit the ground. The Earth military bases start to defend themselves and shoot missiles at them. She orders her fleet to regroup at a certain distance and they will all focus on the same spot, the United States.
The Pontius slows down near Jupiter. The astronauts don’t understand what happened as they were supposed to stop around the Earth’s orbit. Nicholas tells them that he did it on purpose so they would arrive after Curry. It was his form of retaliation for not listening to his daughter, leading to her death. Newton tries to punch him, but Franklin stops him, as Nicholas expresses remorse. He says he regrets his decision as the huge loss of human lives he caused was bigger than the loss of his already doomed daughter. He says he will do everything he can to make it right. They both leave him be as they concentrate on resolving the issue. Both Franklin and Newton try to contact Earth when they see Curry’s fleet attacking the planet, but they get no answer. They both decide that they have no choice and they conclude that they will launch a desperate attack. The Pontius carries a nuclear weapon for cases of extreme danger. They both decide to shoot it.
Franklin sits down and gets ready to launch the missile as Newton will guide it. She presses the button, but the missile doesn’t launch. There’s an error message, telling them that there’s something blocking the door. They try again, to no avail. They hear someone going in the SAS and they both look around and see Nicholas Bell in Stephen’s astronaut suit. He ejects himself from the Pontius. They contact Nicholas and he tells them that the least he can do is save the lives of the people still alive to make up for the deaths he caused. He unjams the door and Franklin fires the missile. Newton guides it and it lands successfully on Curry’s ship, leading to a chain explosion destroying her entire fleet. They see Nicholas floating in space in front of their ship, dead. The explosion when the missile took off killed him. When Franklin and Newton land on Earth, they’re forgotten of the crimes they didn’t commit and they’re regarded as heroes. Both of them don’t forget to mention Nicholas Bell’s action that day and from that point on, May 28th will be Nicholas Bell’s day, in honor of the man who saved Planet Earth from the the Doppelgangers who attacked it.
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