2067 Ending Explained [SPOILER!]

SPOILER ALERT: the following article contains massive spoilers, including the ending. If you have not yet seen the movie, proceed at your own risk, or better, come back to this article later!

The second directorial endeavor of Seth Larney, visual effects wizard behind ‘The Matrix Reloaded and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, the high-concept sci-fi film ‘2067’ pulsates with ambition and idealism from start to finish of its almost 154-minute runtime.

The Australian movie obviously doesn’t have the budget of a regular Hollywood science-fiction blockbuster, however, the depth it lacks in the pockets of its makers is easily repaid with the daring vision of its director. There has been a lot of savior-like characters in movies that resemble ‘2067’, for example, Interstellar and Twelve Monkeys. What makes it unique are both Ethan Whyte’s (Kodi Smit-McPhee) sheer normality and how he ultimately uses a similar trait as a hero for the whole of humankind.

SPOILERS AHEAD

2067 Video Summary

2067 Plot Summary and Synopsis

In the year 2067, Earth has been devastated by climate change. With all plant life on Earth extinct, civilization has collapsed around the globe; only one city in Australia has been barely able to hold out against these catastrophic changes, thanks to synthetic oxygen produced by the Chronicorp corporation. However, this oxygen is tainted and gradually causes a deadly affliction known as ‘The Sickness’.

Ethan Whyte, a tunnel worker for the city’s power plant, reveals the harsh fact that his wife Xanthe is afflicted with The Sickness. One day, Ethan is called before Regina Jackson, a Chronicorp research CTO, who explains that the Sickness will eventually wipe out humanity.

During a test of the Chronicle, a prototype time machine Ethan’s late father, quantum physicist Richard Whyte, had worked on before his death twenty years prior, the scientists received a radio signal from 407 years in the future with a message to specifically send Ethan to them to prevent the extinction of mankind.

Despite the chance that Ethan might never be able to return, and his resentment against his father for apparently prioritizing his work over his own son, Xanthe and his guardian and work colleague Jude manage to change his mind.

After surviving the traumatic time displacement, Ethan finds himself in a lush but lifeless rainforest, with only a device permanently fitted to his wrist by his father during his childhood and a hand computer named Archie as his only surviving piece of equipment.

Following Archie’s instructions, he finds the entrance to a bunker-like structure, and before it, a skeleton wearing his jumpsuit and with a bullet hole in its skull, as well as a decaying Archie and the familiar wrist device.

Shocked by the discovery of his apparently inexorable death in the near future, and sick from eating poisonous berries, Ethan finds himself rescued by Jude, who followed him through time after his life readings, transmitted through the Chronicle, were failing.

After sharing their findings, they follow Archie’s directions to another, still-functional bunker, which is revealed to be a Chronicle lab. It is there that Ethan’s wrist device is revealed to be a DNA analyzer specifically made to grant him access to the Chronicle, which sets itself for automatic reactivation in four hours.

From a holographic recording left by Richard Whyte, the duo learns that the Chronicle project originally entailed the reactivation of an atmospheric monitoring station that would ascertain the Earth’s atmosphere breathability in the future and then transmit the data back to the past.

When first activating the machine, Richard was surprised to receive a message to send his own son to the future, so despite his misgivings, he prepared Ethan’s wrist analyzer.

However, an immediate follow-up mission was rendered impossible because safely sending living matter through time requires an operational link from both sides.

The activation of the Chronicle triggers a malfunction in its nuclear power core, threatening to unleash a nuclear explosion before the countdown is completed. Ethan and Jude make their way to the power core, which is located beneath the overgrown ruins of their home city.

Finding the ruins littered with skeletons, including Xanthe’s, they are forced to conclude that a cure against the Sickness was never found. When Jude attempts some comforting words, Ethan recognizes Jude’s voice from a recording he found on the decaying Archie computer, taken moments before his future self was killed.

Exposed, Jude directs Ethan at gunpoint to the reactor’s control room. Unable to activate the emergency override, Ethan willingly allows himself to be locked inside the depressurizing chamber to initiate a manual reboot.

He succeeds in rerouting the power, preventing the meltdown, and reopening the control room.

With 37 minutes to spare, the duo return to the Chronicle lab, where Ethan finds another exit that opens to the entryway with his skeleton. Upon its sight, Ethan suffers a nervous breakdown and implores Jude to kill him, which Jude refuses to do.

Jude then confesses that there was no actual hope of ever-changing the future; refusing to believe that, Ethan locks Jude in and plays back the remainder of his father’s last message. From it, he learns that his mission was a sham from the beginning: Jackson intended to flee from her dying timeline into the future with just a few chosen to start anew, while Richard maintained the hope that the return message must have been sent by somebody, indicating that there is yet hope for all mankind.

In order to prevent its abuse, Richard keyed the time machine to Ethan’s DNA, but when Richard’s colleague announced that the machine could be rigged to send a person into the future one-way, Jackson killed Richard.

Jude, who had accompanied Jackson, was appointed as Ethan’s guardian to ensure the full use of the Chronicle when the time was right.

Refusing to allow this, Ethan tries to shut the Chronicle down but Jude breaks out and moves to stop him.

When Ethan refuses to fight him, Jude, guilt-ridden, commits suicide. Just before Jackson can put her plans in motion, Ethan sends the “Send Ethan Whyte” message, a copy of Richard’s recorded murder, a large collection of live jungle plants, and a personal farewell gift to Xanthe back to the past and then permanently shuts down the Chronicle.

This creates a significant change in the time continuum.

2067 Ending

In the past, Jackson is arrested and the plants are used to revitalize the planet; and in the future, Ethan returns home to find the city advanced and populated.

Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The Ending Explained

The protagonist overcame his fears and succeed in an otherwise hopeless mission proving the theory that the future is not set in stone and be changeв by means of time traveling. However, he is stuck in the future with no way to return back to his loved ones. It is left unclear if he decides to meet the people of the future, or if they remember him as a man who saved humanity.

Cooncel Rating

Source: © Cooncel.com.