MovieChat Forums > The Time Machine (2002) Discussion > What's the point of the blow guns / dart...

What's the point of the blow guns / darts?

posted 11 years ago by stuglennie
4 replies | jump to latest

When the Morlocks attacked they used blow guns with darts - fine. But why?

What good were they? When Mara gets hit by a dart and Alexander pulls it out and gets the black goo all over him - nothing happens to him - or her. When Mara's brother is hit in the leg with a dart - nothing happens to him.

So the black goo isn't a poison or sleeping agent. What's it for?

Did I miss something?

[–] geo1284060 11 years ago

The darts were markers fired by the scout Morlocks. The black goo (oil, probably) gives off a scent detected by the hunter Morlocks so they would know who to capture.

[–] stuglennie 11 years ago

Oh. I wondered about that.

It looked to me like they were just grabbing people at random, I guess not.

Thanks!

[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Panthro44 11 years ago

Ah, thanks, I was wondering the same thing! I'd thought it was some sort of tranq drug that just took a *really* long time to work.

Though it seems like an unnecessary complication when they could have just grabbed any of the healthy young food people running around them. Then again this film's plot has more holes than a fishing net, so I'm not surprised.

Not necessarily. It's kinda like picking fruit. You want to pick the fruit that is the ripest vs fruit that is still ripening. Older fruit, or people, in this case, may not be available to eat later on. If you eat all the young ones too soon, they can't reproduce to create and grow more food. It'd be like killing baby cows to get hamburgers.