ARQ
Defiance of physics aside, this movie had such promise but is let down in the last five seconds.
Before You Read
Triggers Warning: This movie, and thus this article, contains mentions or depictions of war, murder, blood, gunshots, suicide, torture, and electrocution. Mentions of such events have been kept to a minimum.
Accuracy: Reasonable efforts have been taken to maintain the accuracy of any information presented, mainly by relying primarily on the source material. However, for the sake of brevity and fair use, quotations from the movie that I have included have been edited to only include the relevant sections of dialogue.
Effective Theories of Time: I base this temporal analysis on my “theories of time”, which at the the time of publishing (01 June 2024) there are presently three (3).
Copyright Disclaimer: This article and any attached images are claimed as acceptable uses of the copyrighted source content. I consider this as permissible, without requiring prior authorisation, under the following laws: the United States Copyright Act, Section 107, for purposes of criticism or comment; and the Australian Copyright Act of 1968, Section 41, for purposes of criticism or review.
Preamble
Stories based around looping time are always problematic from a temporal standpoint. If people trapped in a time loop remain unaware of the loop, then they will inevitably carry out the same actions over and over again (assuming that nobody outside the loop’s area-of-effect intervene, of course). If the people inside do become aware, however, that means that the matter and energy that constitute their memories is different between each instance of the loop. The tricky question is, why would every atom and subatomic particle be reset when the loop resets, except for those forming their memories?
ARQ tries to explain how one cannot be aware, and then later aware of being in a loop, but it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Incidentally, for those wondering, ARQ stands for Arcing Recursive Quine. I’d note that at no point does the ARQ actually noticeably produce an arc (except when somebody touches it, but that appears to be a defensive system Renton added, as he was able to disable it later.
The word quine seems to be, and I’m guessing here, to be a reference to computer programs that create their own source code, or quotations that append to themselves. I suppose Renton was trying to be clever in his naming by referencing the machine recharging itself (like a program coding itself).
The Timelines
◷ Timeline A: 6:16 AM
The timeline begins a year before the film’s events begin. The world is starving for resources, and pretty much all animal species (except humans) are extinct. There is currently a war happening between Torus, a major corporation, and a faction called the Bloc.
Renton is working for Torus and invents a perpetual motion machine that seemingly generates limitless electricity. Torus claims it doesn’t work, but then takes it away from him. Renton breaks into Torus and steals it back, along with a large number of “scrips” (based on context, scrips in the movie are either currency or a rationing system).
RENTON: My supervisors called me a fraud when I told them the ARQ was generating limitless energy. I couldn’t really blame them, though. Perpetual motion’s a myth. Then Torus seized the ARQ. Now why take something that didn’t work? Because it does. They want it back. Torus wants the ARQ for their war machine.
Torus can’t locate Renton, so they arrest his girlfriend, Hannah. She doesn’t about his theft, so they take away her citizenship and her home, throwing her into a refugee camp for several months. She meets Grimm there, who helps her survive the camp and recruits her into the Bloc. One day Renton locates Hannah and tells her he needs to see her again. She agrees, wanting to make sure he was okay, but brings along other members of the Bloc with the intent of stealing his scrips. Among her team is “Sonny” and “Cousin”, supposedly members of the Bloc who are in reality mercenaries working for Torus. They are ordered by Torus to recover the “energy turbine” from Renton.
Both Renton and Hannah fall asleep in his bed, and at some point during the night the Family sneaks in. The plan is to break in and capture the two of them at 10 am, but at 6:16 am “Cousin” accidentally electrocutes himself on the ARQ. Upset, “Father” (aka Grimm) accelerates the plan, breaking into the bedroom and dragging the two of them to the garage.
Or tried to, anyway. Renton fights back and makes it as far as the stairs, but loses his footing and falls down the stairs, dying in the process.
It is not known what the Family did at this point but given Sonny’s actions in other timelines it is likely that he kills Hannah, Grimm, and Brother, since without Renton he didn’t need to continue pretending to be working with the others. His main objective at this point would be figuring out how to recover the ARQ, so he would be attempting this until the ARQ resets itself at 9:25 am.
◷ Timeline B
Renton wakes up again, and once again the Family breaks into the bedroom and drags him to the garage. He changes his mind against fighting back on the way, though, and therefore does not die at the stairs.
Renton and Hannah are tied up and left alone in the garage. Renton cuts himself and her free, but the noise they make draws the attention of the intruders. They come back in, and in the following struggle Renton is killed.
Sonny then continues in a similar manner as in Timeline A until the ARQ resets at 9:25.
◷ Timeline C
Renton wakes up, is captured, taken to the garage and is tied up. He cuts them both loose. Renton decides to kill the Family, and the two sneak past them to the basement. He hands a cyanide gas canister to Hannah to put in the air vent when he turns on the furnace, but he doesn’t realise that Hannah is with the Bloc and wouldn’t carry through with the plan. When he returns to the garage and finds Hannah apparently being held at gunpoint, he relents and hands over the scrips. Having acquiesced to their demands, he is caught surprise when Hannah is revealed to be the Family’s leader, “Mother” before he is abruptly killed by “Sonny”.
Sonny then probably continues in a similar manner as in prior timelines until the ARQ resets at 9:25.
◷ Timeline D
Renton wakes up, is taken to the garage, tied up, and left alone.
He cuts himself and Hannah loose, and the two of them sneak to the basement as before. This time, Renton confronts Hannah and she reveals that she’s working for the Bloc. They then go to the kitchen and confront the Family, turning the tables and tying them up in the garage. Hannah then turns on Renton and demands his scrips at gunpoint. Renton tries grabbing Hannah but she reflexively fires the gun, killing him.
I think it likely that Hannah would untie the Family, at which point Sonny would likely get his hands on the gun and kill the rest of them. He’ll then continue in a similar manner (attempting to secure the ARQ for Torus) until the ARQ resets at 9:25.
◷ Timeline E
Renton wakes up, but so does Hannah, now aware that she’s in a time loop. They are taken to the lab and left alone.
Renton explains to Hannah about the time loop, showing her the logs on the computer.
RENTON: You see these time logs? These are the four loops we’ve gone through. They always begin at 6:11 and end at 9:25.
HANNAH: So we’ve looped five times. How? Why?
RENTON: At 6:11 am, Cuz electrocuted himself on the ARQ. This caused forward time to bend back on itself, creating a closed time loop.
HANNAH: And the day repeats.
RENTON: Time resets itself every 3 hours, 14 minutes, and 15 seconds.
HANNAH: How does the ARQ work?
Renton: Essentially, these fuel cells power the ARQ. In turn, the ARQ recharges the fuel cells. It never needs an external power source, but how it’s looping time, I have no idea.
HANNAH: An unlimited energy machine that also produces unlimited time? No wonder Torus wants it back.
RENTON: Not unlimited time. The same amount of time over and over. The loops always reset at 9:25.
They decide to maintain Hannah’s cover and destroy the ARQ, and she ties Renton’s arms to the chair again. She calls the Family in and they take the scrips, but Hannah changes her mind and decides to take the ARQ to the Bloc.
Sonny notices that Renton’s legs weren’t tied up, and figures out that Hannah was playing them, so he shoots Hannah and Brother.
Renton realises that Sonny is a mercenary working for Torus and goes for the gun, but Sonny shoots him.
He’ll then continue in a similar manner (attempting to secure the ARQ for Torus) until the ARQ resets at 9:25.
◷ Timeline F
They both wake up and Renton is taken to the garage. Renton “escapes” and Hannah takes charge, ordering Sonny and Brother to search the house while she and Grimm (aka Father) searches the garage.
In the house, Sonny renders Brother unconscious. Sonny returns to the garage and claims that Renton killed Brother, before shooting Grimm. Renton returns and kills Sonny, but is soon after shot by Brother, who had regained consciousness and misunderstood the situation.
◷Timeline G
This time, Sonny has become aware of the looping time, so he immediately shoots and kills Grimm and Brother. He hides Brother in a nearby closet before returning to the garage and pretending to be dead Brother as Renton and Hannah arrive.
Renton looks at the logs and makes some conclusions on what the ARQ is doing with time and their memories.
RENTON: The ARQ emits electromagnetic frequencies that could affect memory.
HANNAH: We’re farthest away from the ARQ when it resets.
RENTON: Yeah, which is why the effect wore off on us first.
HANNAH: And now Sonny.
RENTON: (looking at computer log) Data’s still the same. Loops begin and end at the same time, then everything resets.
HANNAH: Why doesn’t the data also reset?
RENTON: The time logs are housed in the ARQ’s core structure, above the… fuel cells. (realises) The loop ends at 9:25 because that’s when the power source runs out.
HANNAH: When the fuel cells go dead?
RENTON: When the loop resets, the fuel cells are still charged. The ARQ isn’t producing unlimited energy. It’s just using the same energy.
They don’t realise the body of “Brother” is actually Sonny, so Renton leaves to search for him. He finds Brother’s body, and realising the deception runs back to find Sonny holding Hannah at gunpoint. Renton pretends to play along with Sonny’s demands, but by now he’s realised that he can use the time loop to his tactical benefit — he grabs Sonny and the ARQ at the same time, electrocuting and killing himself and Sonny together.
Hannah is now left alone with the ARQ, which she cannot move because its defensive system is still active. She doesn’t have much time to do anything before the loop resets at 9:25.
Before I progress to the next timeline, there is an element that is introduced in this timeline:
HANNAH: In the last loop, before the ARQ reset… it’s not as if something happened, it’s more that everything stopped happening.
When he was searching for Sonny, Renton observed his bedside clock advancing forward at an accelerated rate of around 150x (about 2 or 3 minutes on the clock per second of real-time). This… is very problematic, and I’ll explain further when I do my analysis later in this article.
◷ Timeline H
The instant the ARQ resets the time loop and Sonny becomes aware of Cuz (Cousin) being electrocuted by the ARQ, he kicks him off before it kills him, saving his life. Grimm remarks about deja vu, and Sonny pre-emptively shoots him and Brother. If Grimm remembered the prior timeline, he’d remember that Sonny had murdered him.
Renton and Hannah lock Sonny and Cuz in the garage and head for the basement to deploy the cyanide gas. The mercenaries smell the gas, and Sonny realises that he’s lost this time loop. He kills Cuz before shooting himself.
Renton and Hannah enter the garage, and they soon decide to shut down the ARQ and flee. Hannah investigates one of the bodies and is electrocuted by… something. I’m not sure if the electricity came from the ARQ or the glove-taser — the movie wasn’t very clear.
Regardless, Hannah is now dead, and Renton holds her as time speeds towards 9:25… and the ARQ resets.
◷ Timeline I
Sonny saves Cuz from being electrocuted again. Instead of killing the rest of the Bloc right away as he did the previous loop, he Grimm and Brother upstairs to get Renton and Hannah. As they escort them to the garage, Sonny and Cuz ambush them on the way.
Starting this loop, Grimm becomes aware of the time loop.
In the garage, Cuz shoots Brother and tortures Hannah until Renton gives up the code shutting down the ARQ’s defensive system. The lights go out and Renton and Hannah flee the garage for a few minutes. Sonny turns the ARQ back on, and Renton and Hannah return and attack Sonny. Renton kills Sonny and checks the computer logs.
Then he discovers something terrible.
RENTON: (looking at time logs) “Interruption”. These time logs are the nine loops we’ve gone through. Nine loops makes one sequence. There’s been… there’s more sequences.
HANNAH: So we’ve looped more than 9 times? How many?
RENTON: Thousands. Maybe more.
HANNAH: This can’t be happening.
RENTON: The last timeline in every sequence is broken. It’s when I shut down the ARQ and Sonny rebooted it. When the ARQ reboots our memories must reset.
(noises upstairs)
RENTON: They’re in the house!
HANNAH: If Torus gets the ARQ… they win the war.
RENTON: We have to destroy it.
(Renton starts, then stops the self-destruct).
HANNAH: What are you doing?
RENTON: We let the loop reset. We try again.
HANNAH: We’ve tried already, thousands of times.
RENTON: We send a message to ourselves in the next loop. You were right. We have to try.
HANNAH: Hurry.
RENTON: (starts recording) Listen carefully. Torus… Hannah!
(is attacked by the ZMP and dies)
Well, this is annoying. Renton is in front of a computer, looking at the logs scrolling past, and says that they’ve been going through these nine timelines over and over again thousands of times.
So why was this “sequence” different? He hadn’t left a video message for himself before this one, so how did they get the idea of leaving a message in this one? If the thousands of sequences before played out the same way, why didn’t this one?
Moreover, how do I factor in “thousands” of timelines prior to the events of the movie? “Timeline [n] + 1000s?”.
◷ Timeline J + 1000s
Both Renton and Hannah fall asleep in his bed, and at some point during the night the Family sneaks in. The plan is to break in and capture the two of them at 10 am, but at 6:16 am “Cousin” accidentally electrocutes himself on the ARQ. Upset, “Father” (aka Grimm) accelerates the plan, breaking into the bedroom and dragging the two of them to the garage.
Or tried to, anyway. Renton fights back and makes it as far as the stairs, but loses his footing and falls down the stairs, dying in the process.
… yes, this is the same as Timeline A. In fact, Timelines J through R are almost identical to A through I, except that this time there is a video message stored on the computer.
These are the timelines we observe in the movie.
◷ Timeline M + 1000s
In this timeline, when Renton looks at the computer, he sees the recording he made in timeline I before dying.
RENTON: Listen carefully. Torus… Hannah!
◷ Timeline R + 1000s
After killing Sonny in this timeline, Renton checks the computer. The conversation happens differently to the one they had in Timeline I.
RENTON: (looking at time logs) “Interruption”. These time logs are the nine loops we’ve gone through. Nine loops makes one sequence. There’s been… there’s more sequences.
[…]
RENTON: When the ARQ reboots our memories must reset.
HANNAH: That’s why we don’t remember the video.
RENTON: The video was recorded in the last sequence. It was a message to us.
HANNAH: And a ZMP stopped the message.
(noises upstairs)
RENTON: They’re in the house!
[…]
RENTON: We send a message to ourselves in the next loop. You were right. We have to try.
HANNAH: Hurry.
RENTON: (starts recording) Listen carefully. Torus found you! Take the ARQ to the Bloc and trust Hannah!
(is attacked by the ZMP and dies)
◷ Timeline S + 1000s
Both Renton and Hannah are asleep in his bed, and Hannah suddenly wakes up, gasping. It isn’t stated, but heavily implied that she remembers that she’s in a time loop.
If that is true, then Timeline S and onwards will play out very differently. As the leader of the Bloc, she can maneuver to stop Sonny before he calls Torus for reinforcements. Renton will see the video message he saw of himself, and he and the ARQ will go to the Bloc. In theory, this could be the final and stable timeline resulting from the ARQ’s looping of time.
This last five seconds of the film also carries some major problems for the film’s temporal mechanics.
Analysis and Ranking
Oh boy, I’m going to have to break this down into sections.
Renton can’t read his data properly?
At one point Renton tells Hannah that the loop resets every 3 hours, 14 minutes, and 15 seconds. He also says that the loop resets at 9:25. However, the loop resets at 6:16 am.
6:16 am + 3h, 14m is 9:30, not 9:25.
3 hours and 9 minutes can also be expressed as 3.15 hours, so maybe Renton just misread the screen? No, that can’t be, because he specifies the seconds as well. If he’d just said “3 hours, 14 minutes”, I could suppose that he saw 3.14 on the screen and misread it as “h.mm” format. The screen, however, would not be showing “3.14.15”.
Given that the time logs visually show the reset happening at 9:25, I’m going to go with the loop actually lasting 3 hours and 9 minutes.
Why is it always daylight outside?
In all of the loops, we can see that it is day outside, not night — it’s full daylight when Renton and Hannah go outside, and daylight can be seen coming in through the windows. However, the ARQ is explicitly shown to have a limited area of effect. So, time outside the loop would be advancing forward while time inside the loop would be resetting back to 6:16 am.
Here’s a table to further illustrate what I mean:
LOOP # INSIDE TIME OUTSIDE TIME
1 6:16 am 9:25 am
2 6:16 am 12:34 pm
3 6:16 am 3:43 pm
4 6:16 am 6:52 pmThis should have caused some confusion during some of the loops, because from their perspective as soon as Cuz died at 6:16 am, the morning would have instantly become night.
Even the weather should have been different, since that also originates outside the loop. During some of the loops, it would have been clear at 6:15 am (from the perspective of inside the loop), and suddenly stormy a minute later.
How many times was Sonny’s call for backup received?
From the perspective of observers outside the loop, activity inside the loop would be repeating over and over again (with a complete loop happening after nine iterations, or every 28 hours and 21 minutes).
That means that Torus would be getting multiple radio calls every day from Sonny, requesting backup. They’d also be sending that backup every day.
There is one, and only one, possible solution to this issue I can think of — that Torus is completely aware (somehow) that Renton’s house is in a time loop. They are receiving multiple calls every day, and they pretend each time that they’re receiving the call for the first time. They also send in a ZMP each time, in the hope that it can get the ARQ before time resets again.
This is entirely possible, given how desperate the circumstances are shown to be. Torus can and would throw every possible resource at getting the ARQ back — they can afford to lose ZMPs many times, and they only have to “win” just once.
In that scenario, though, why wouldn’t Torus be sending in a ZMP every single loop? They don’t need to wait for Sonny to call in backup — they already know where he is, and that the ARQ is there.
Either way, it doesn’t make much sense.
Why does being electrocuted on the defensive system create a time loop?
This is not adequately explained. All we get is this:
RENTON: At 6:11 am, Cuz electrocuted himself on the ARQ. This caused forward time to bend back on itself, creating a closed time loop.
HANNAH: And the day repeats.
Where does the ARQ gets its energy from, anyway?
This is the explanation we get:
HANNAH: How does the ARQ work?
Renton: Essentially, these fuel cells power the ARQ. In turn, the ARQ recharges the fuel cells.
Also:
RENTON: The loop ends at 9:25 because that’s when the power source runs out.
HANNAH: When the fuel cells go dead?
RENTON: When the loop resets, the fuel cells are still charged. The ARQ isn’t producing unlimited energy. It’s just using the same energy.
It’s a bit confusion, from what I can figure out the ARQ generates its energy from the fuel cells. When the fuel cells run empty, the ARQ… somehow… grabs the fuel cells from the past and brings them into the present. This has the appearance of the ARQ charging the fuel cells, when the cells are actually being pulled from the past.
When Cuz is electrocuted, it creates a malfunction in the ARQ that expands the radius of the time loop from being just the fuel cells to mostly encompassing the house.
The problem? If the charged fuel cells are coming from the past, when there are no fuel cells until the present, and the ARQ would shut down, ending the loop as soon as it begins. The timeline should have looked like this:
TIMELINE A
* Renton installs full fuel cells.
* Renton turns on the ARQ.
* The ARQ runs until the fuel cells are empty.
* The ARQ pulls the full fuel cells from the past,
presumably swapping in the empty ones.
* The ARQ continues running.
TIMELINE B
* Renton installs full fuel cells.
* Renton turns on the ARQ.
* The ARQ at the end of Timeline A swaps in the empty fuel cells.
* The ARQ, with empty fuel cells, tries to pull the full fuel cells
from the past. These cells, however, have already been claimed by
Timeline A's ARQ.
* The ARQ shuts down.How is the ARQ still working?
If the ARQ had only been running for 9 time loops, that’s fine. If it had been running for 18 loops, that’s also fine.
But thousands?
At an absolute minimum, when Renton turns about them being in “thousands” of loops, he has to be talking about at least 2000 loops. It’s also been established that each loop is 3 hours, 9 minutes long (from 6:16 am to 9:25 am).
So let’s do the maths:
- 189 minutes * 2000 = 378,000 minutes.
- 378,000 minutes / 60 / 24 = 262.5 days
- 262.5 / 365.25 * 12 = 8.6 months
I find it difficult to believe that the ARQ could keep spinning continuously, at a high RPM, for eight and a half months. A quick search online tells me that real-life generators can run non-stop for about a day and need maintenance every hundred hours or so. At minimum, the moving parts in the ARQ would need lubrication.
But hundreds of days with no maintenance? I’m very doubtful it would still be working.
Why does time accelerate as the ARQ approaches reset time?
It’s shown that as the time approaches 9:25, the ARQ starts accelerating and time starts running faster. Renton sees his bedside clock running considerably faster than real-time.
I can buy that the ARQ makes time run faster as the fuel cells start running empty. We’ve already established that it can manipulate time. The change of rate could be hand-waved away as changes in fuel-cell voltage or pressure.
What can’t be explained is why Renton recognises that time is accelerating. If the clock is running in accelerated-time, then so would he, and the clock would be running normally from his perspective.
What determines whether one remembers prior loops or not?
For most of the loops, only Renton is aware of time looping. Hannah then becomes aware, then Sonny, and then Grimm.
This is the only dialogue that addresses this:
RENTON: The ARQ emits electromagnetic frequencies that could affect memory.
HANNAH: We’re farthest away from the ARQ when it resets.
RENTON: Yeah, which is why the effect wore off on us first.
First of all, kudos to the writers on this point. Radiation can, in fact, affect memory.
However, if proximity is the key factor, then there are two issues that come to mind. First, Renton and Hannah are right next to each other. If Renton remembers, then Hannah should also remember. Later, she starts remembering, but that leads to the second issue: the dosage of radiation would be the same in each loop. Remember, when time resets, their bodies do as well — fatal injuries are undone, so any exposure to radiation would also be undone.
If the dosage of radiation received at 6:16 am was enough to affect Hannah and cause her to not remember, then it would be enough in every single loop. By the film’s own logic, Renton should be the only one remembering in each and every single loop.
That is beside the point that when the ARQ resets time, their bodies are reset as well. Their brains are part of their bodies, so even Renton should not be remembering events from prior loops.
The last five seconds of the film make this completely non-sensical. The ARQ has been rebooted, and this apparently has the effect of causing everyone to forget prior loops, even Renton. But when we enter Timeline S, it is Hannah that wakes up, not Renton.
…HOW?!?!?!?!
Hannah waking up instead of Renton completely breaks the film’s internal logic. The ARQ had been rebooted — nobody should be remembering.
Yes, the film stops before she can say or do anything, so it doesn’t actually confirm that she remembers the previous loop. However, in all prior loops she was still asleep when Renton wakes up at 6:16 am, and here she’s awake and instantly alert. I don’t think the movie shows the bedside clock in the scene, so I can’t say for certain what the time is, but it does show daylight outside, so it’s certainly implying that the time is 6:16.
Conclusion
I was going to give this a SILVER rating. But…
- The movie seems to can’t make up its mind as to whether it is just the house looping (as shown with the circle of petrified ground) or the entire universe looping (as indicated by the identical daylight levels and the ZMP showing up only after Sonny calls). But perhaps the ARQ operates on several levels of looping — maybe the house loops every three hours, and the world loops when the ARQ is rebooted? It requires some hand-waving, but it doesn’t break the movie’s temporal logic (just flaws in the character’s understanding of what’s happening).
- The ARQ still working despite no maintenance could be explained away as future manufacturing techniques. Perhaps the spinning cylinder is magnetically suspended, and thus doesn’t require any lubrication?
- The perceived time acceleration, and Hannah saying that “everything stopped happening”, could be explained as the effects of the radiation creating some kind of hallucination.
But Hannah waking up, implying that she remembers, in the final five seconds? That can’t be explained. Not that I can explain, anyway.
So instead of a SILVER rating, I have to give this the rating of:
Visual Timeline
