Ask the CIRCLE Filmmakers

First I just want to say, thanks for checking out the film! I like this theory a lot, though I'm sorry to report that the Aliens had nothing to do with the first guy's death, or ANY death for that matter... Not directly, anyway.

The aliens were 100% hands off this entire exercise, once the players begin the game. The machine they're in has rules - Don't move, Don't touch anyone, etc. - But it's all automated. Their goal was to let the humans decide who should survive... Any interference on their part would taint the proceedings completely.

Whatever mechanism the aliens used to sedate the players after abduction made their memory foggy. Like any drug, it affects everyone differently. Some people wake up before others. Some people remember more from the time before and during sedation. Man 1 was one of those people. He remembered they had been abducted. He remembered the ships. When the Teenage Girl asks where they are, his response is "where do you think?" He knows what's going on, at least on some level. His awareness would have been an asset to the game... had a random vote not taken him down. In some ways, it's unfair that the rules weren't told to the players ahead of time. Though really, we don't always know all the rules before we play in the real world, either.

From a storytelling perspective, it was important to us to establish that no one's safe in this group and that valuable people often do not get the chance to live up to their potential. Players are frantic, closing their hands, shouting, not realizing that they're choosing others around the circle for death. In this early stage, it would only take two votes...

For us, Man 1 was, in many ways, an example to the players and to the audience that all bets were off.

-Mario

Thank you, that's really kind.

The group of people waiting outside were all other survivors of other circles. The "winners" of their own ordeals.

-Mario

Thanks for watching!

The machine is automated... The red circles sense life, that's why you can't vote for empty spots or spots with dead bodies on them. No life, no engagement with the game. When the pregnant woman was killed, she was, as you said, knocked off her circle.

However, if you look at where she landed, she actually fell onto ANOTHER circle, one that used to belong to a neighbor. She landed in such a way that the baby was positioned just over it. The machine has a set of parameters it follows. Life signs off the circle, it fires. Life on a circle, it continues its cycle. Sensing life on two circles after a round ends, Eric and the baby, the machine triggers a tie. Not realizing that one of those lives is an unborn child without a vote.

It's a bit twisted, admittedly, but we wanted to explore a few things with this route, including forcing Eric to justify and face one final decision against an "innocent" non-participant within the circle. It also gave us an opportunity to go a little more in depth about how the machine works. The automation is an important characteristic - Who lives and who dies was ALWAYS in the hands of the players, even when they didn't realize it. The machine just helped keep things moving along.

You're right, though. Had she fallen in another direction or off the circle entirely, no tie would have been activated. The machine would have fired again on her fallen body and finished the job before the round got very far.

-Mario

Hi! And Thanks for watching!

When talking about the motivation of the aliens, we have to look at what we know:


A) The aliens never kill anyone directly. They're giving the humans the mechanism to make this choice.

B) The aliens allow the winner of each circle to go back down to earth. This isn't a trap or a trick, they're really free (if they wanted to keep torturing them, they'd have left them locked up).

C) They don't destroy anything. The buildings around the survivors are very much intact.

D) The ships are moving away from the cities (very slightly noticeable at the end) and speeding up their spins. They're actually leaving.


So with all this in mind, it's clear they're not intent on destroying humanity completely. What if they're trying to save it? This is something we humans do all the time to animal species that have gotten out of control. What if the aliens wanted to give humanity a chance to start fresh, but didn't want to be the ones to randomly choose who was valuable as they don't know our societies and cultures. It's more "fair" of them to let the humans decide who deserves to start over in this new world.

As for the sorting of the humans in the ships after abductions, we don't know a lot about this time as most of the characters don't remember. Was Eric telling the truth about the red room? What about the old man who everyone thought was lying? I will say this, it's possible the aliens engaged in a little stereotyping of their own when determining who would go into each circle. Knowing that a circle made up of all the same kinds of people may not yield a very productive exercise (only one or two viewpoints represented when aliens are looking for OVERALL value), they may have sorted the humans so that each circle had several types of people, at least superficially, all given the opportunity to argue their place.

Essentially, the aliens most likely purposefully designed the circles to be microcosms of our society.

___

As for my own choosing, I can't decide! (Though "red suspenders" - THE LAWYER - was really asking for it, huh?)

I think in playing the circle, we have to realize that sometimes it's beneficial to keep the crappy people alive. Lawyer and Rich Guy specifically drew ire away from other characters. If I was in the circle, I may keep them alive as long as I could, knowing that at some point they will self destruct (as they did.) I think this is why you see these characters last as long as they did in the film. This is arguably a very viable strategy in the real world, too, but I digress.

___

As for fun stories, really the entire production was a lot of fun. Regarding the cast, one thing we really went out of our way to do was to cast a large number of diverse actors with a wide range of notoriety. We wanted actors who looked and felt like everyday people. A few recognizable names that we were big fans of, several character actors with years of experience, and many younger, newer actors who we felt were up to the challenge.

Filming was grueling but rewarding, it felt a lot like summer camp, with everyone laughing and having fun when the cameras weren't rolling. Saying goodbye to a handful of characters every day as you killed them off was really sad in a way. We shot in order, so 50 actors on set one day to 4 actors on set for Day 10 was a surreal experience.

Hope I answered your questions! Thanks for taking the time to ask them!

-Mario

The aliens didn't "want" anyone to survive...they let the people decide for themselves. At the end, you see other survivors, and it seems pretty obvious that people in other ships chose to allow the young and the pregnant people to survive.

Hey, thanks for watching!

I think it's important to note here that the aliens are not controlling who wins or who loses. The humans are. The aliens are just putting the humans in the situation where they have to choose. The aliens have no "favorites" or any real interest in particular characters.

As for why they're doing this, what if they're doing it for our own good? Humans are arguably overpopulated, greedy, destructive. What if this force is actually benevolent? What if they looked at humanity and said, there is some good here, but they're killing themselves. They need to start over. This is something we humans do on a fairly regular basis with "lesser" species. Culling them down to protect them as a whole.

So imagine if this force decided we need to cut down the human numbers, but we don't know their society well enough to decide who should be left to start over. We'll let them decide. We'll put them in a situation that allows them, as a group, to decide who is valuable.

Now, I'd argue that the aliens perhaps underestimated the complexity of human culture and emotion by thinking that survival wouldn't bring out the worst in people, or maybe they did see that coming. Maybe people who will "survive at all costs" are incredibly important to have when the world as you know it ends...

The others looking up at the ship at the end were other survivors of other circles. We see a variety of people, including some children and pregnant women who were clearly spared (unlike in our circle). The circles happened all over the world, so the makeup of survivors would vary very much depending on where you are and what your culture values. The group we see are survivors from Los Angeles, California.

Hope that helps!

-Mario

Thank you for watching!!

Thanks for watching and your kind words!

Aaron Hann (co-writer and co-director) and myself were wrapping up our webseries THE VAULT and talking about possibly doing a feature. We wanted to take the filmmaking strategies we had developed in creating that show and apply it on a larger scale - simplified, minimal, single set design, a large cast of characters, a sci-fi twist. But what to base it on? One day Aaron suggested "What if we told a story about 50 people who had to choose only one among them to survive?"

This to me sound sounded very much like an episode of the Twilight Zone, a show I'm a huge fan of. I was immediately intrigued. We sat down and started fleshing it out - Who are the people? What are we trying to say? Who is responsible for all of this? Who should win and why? The rest is history.

In writing it, we were definitely inspired by Twilight Zone and 12 Angry Men. We wanted to tell a compelling, speculative fiction story in an unexpected location and try to still keep it cinematic, despite the fact that no one could move and the players can only defend themselves with their words.

As for a sequel, it's too early to say. We think this story definitely is its own beast in a lot of ways, but certainly the idea behind it is rife with possibilities.

We very purposefully included many pregnant women in the ending survivor group. We wanted to show that there is a certain reverence, culturally, for mothers. You want to protect them, and many circles would have done so. But on a more practical scale, if humanity is going to get to start over, it does make sense that pregnant women would be helpful in that regard.

Thanks again for watching and commenting, it's been really great reading everyone's thoughts on the film.

-Mario

it kinda makes sense that a lot of pregnant woman would survive to rebuild society because they would be caring, compassionate and ready to educate a new generation.

Thanks for watching and commenting!

We do cover a lot of topics in this film and there is definitely going to be characters and ideas that rub viewers the wrong way. The conversations and the characters we presented here were based on real experiences and real people. These are discussions happening every day, not on a life or death scale necessarily, but they're happening nonetheless. Our production team is made up of a variety of people of varying political opinion, for the record.

The Circle was designed to be a reflection of the world we live in. The scenarios presented in it are, of course, small bite-sized reflections on issues that require a lot of nuance and contemplation... But when you only have two minutes to argue a point, the characters simplify. This is something you see everyday in discourse, from soundbites to internet message boards. In reality, no issue is black and white.

I'm curious which moments you're referring to as "PR for liberalism"?

Also, which "bad guys" do you think we make look "smart = cool"?

For example, if I had to think of two characters who defy this "liberal/conservative" characterization off the top of my head, it would be the Deacon and the Atheist.

Arguably one of the most sympathetic characters in the film is the Deacon (a "conservative" idea). He's someone who is devoutly religious, doesn't attack anyone, and ultimately sacrifices himself because he was horrified that he actually voted for someone in the frantic 5 way tie. A vote he made out of fear.

The Atheist (a "liberal" idea), conversely, could be seen as aggressive and emotional. He attacks others out of fear and ultimately turns the circle against him.

Several other characters are found to have varying conservative and liberal values. They exist on a scale and no one is any one single thing. Some one might be pro-gay marriage but anti-illegal immigration, for example.

As for the ultimate survivor, we know very little about his actual values, only the ones he presents to the group as a front during the film. He could be conservative, he could be liberal, but like most of us, he's probably a little of both.

-Mario

Glad you liked the film! It's a circle of 50 with strong opinions in a high stakes environment. So naturally were not going to agree with everyone in there. Hopefully the movie presents a lot of view points without necessarily pushing an agenda of any kind.
-Michael