Question: At the beginning of the movie, when Lincoln wakes up, he removes something from his ID bracelet. What is this and what significance does it have?
Tailkinker
7th Sep 2009
The Island (2005)
19th Apr 2006
The Island (2005)
Question: I've been trying to figure out the sequence where Jordan is captured. First question is whether it was intentional for her to use the credit/debit card? She has a reaction when she scans it, but the shot seemed more for the audience's benefit, then she waits nearby and doesn't put up much resistance. The thing is how does she know that card can be traced? It's a given she's undeveloped mentally (and we don't know the real Jordan's intellectual ability), can she make that connection? On the other hand, she's been very keen at improvising for her survival. The next is how she got the gun into the facility? Laurent's group has a female agent, so the group (or the agent) would know where to look for it. However, Laurent develops a connection with Jordan and I wondered whether he allowed it/concealed it himself. This is all speculation, and I wanted to know if there's a more definite answer?
Answer: Without reading the minds of the scriptwriters, there can't be any more definitive answers than what's given in the film. I think it's a mistake, however, to consider Jordan to be undeveloped mentally - she lacks experience, true, but shouldn't be considered stupid by any means. It seemed to me that this was a carefully considered plan to get herself inside the facility. McCord tells them earlier that they can only use the card for 24 hours and use cash after that; she knows from that that using the card will attract some sort of attention. Then she simply waits passively until she's captured. As far as the gun goes, it may simply never have crossed their minds to search her - previously she and Lincoln have gone to great lengths to avoid capture, so they may well assume that had she had a gun, she would have used it to try to escape; after all, from their point of view, why would she want to go back?
15th Aug 2005
The Island (2005)
Question: I don't understand how Lincoln Six Echo ended up with Tom Lincoln's memories. If they explained it, I missed it.
Answer: This is a concept usually referred to as genetic memory or racial memory, which suggests that an individual can receive memories and knowledge from their forebears even without direct contact with them - that the information is, in some way, coded into DNA. Lincoln Six Echo is created from a sample of Tom Lincoln's DNA and has therefore inherited some of his memories, albeit in an apparently disjointed and vague form. There's no scientific evidence that genetic memory transferral actually occurs in human beings (although some scientists have claimed to have observed it in chimpanzees), but it has nevertheless formed a major plot point in numerous works of science fiction.
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Chosen answer: It appears to be some sort of cable - it can be seen leading to the bracelet in the shot from above the bed immediately prior to the one where Lincoln unplugs it. Exactly what it does is never revealed, but it seems likely to be some sort of monitoring system, keeping an eye on Lincoln's health through sensors in the bracelet.
Tailkinker ★