They Cloned Tyrone Plot Summary
They Cloned Tyrone is a new film on Netflix that may blow your mind. The film is a mix of satire and humour with elements of science fiction. The latter part has a dystopian feel which will be familiar to readers of Orwellian literature. There are also many modern-day inspirations that first-time director Juel Taylor references in his stellar work, including such movies as Sorry to Bother You, Get Out, and Under the Silver Lake, to name a few.
At almost 2 hours long, the Netflix film has a lot to unpack. While it doesn’t necessarily move at a languid pace, They Cloned Tyrone is a little slow to kick things off. However, once that happens, there is no looking back.
The story is based around three characters – Fontaine, Slick Charles, and Yo-Yo – who come together when they are fuelled by a growing conspiracy that something may be wrong with their neighbourhood in the Glen.
In this piece, we break down the entire movie for you with an analysis of the plot summary and explainer for the wild ending.
The story is set in The Glen, a neighbourhood with a lost sense of community and exhibiting signs of moral decay. Nefarious and petty vices like drugs and crime have taken over its inhabitants. Our focus is on Fontaine, a drug dealer who lives alone at his house with his mother. Quite strikingly, she chooses to remain in her room whenever he is home. They communicate with the door closed. Fontaine had a younger brother Ronnie, who was killed by the police for an innocuous crime.
One night, he runs over a mule selling stuff from a local rival gang. Fontaine invites him to bring his leader, Isaac, to exact revenge. Unbeknownst to Fontaine, Isaac follows him a few nights later to the spot where Fontaine’s business of prostitution operates from. Slick Charles is a pimp and he has several prostitutes under his wing. Yo-Yo is the most cherished of them all. Fontaine demands that Slick pay his dues to him. After collecting, he goes back to his car but is boxed in by Isaac, who shoots him multiple times.
How is Fontaine resurrected and by whom?
Fontaine dies on the spot but miraculously wakes up the next morning. He is absolutely fine with no stitches or wound marks. The events of the last night repeat as Fontaine has no idea what happened. Slick is shocked to see him alive and not remembering anything.
On the same day, Fontaine had spotted a mysterious black SUV kidnapping a Glen resident in broad daylight. He goes to Yo-Yo, who confirms Slick’s version of events, leaving Fontaine speechless.
They track down the SUV and go inside the house where it is parked. The house is deserted but the trio stumble upon an elevator that takes them to a secret lab underground. They sneak up on a technician and look around. Slick tastes a white powder-like substance he thinks is cocaine and begins to laugh uncontrollably while pointing his gun at a technician. He is spooked by Yo-Yo and ends up killing the man.
Before they escape, Fontaine is shocked to see his dead body lying on a stretcher.
How is it possible for him to have a clone? Is that really what he sees or is he daydreaming? The trio cannot get their minds around it and visit Damn Good! Fried Chicken to have food. When they start laughing, Yo-Yo is convinced that something is wrong with the chicken. On investigating further, she learns that the fast food place uses the same white powder that Slick Charles tasted in the lab.
Yo-Yo investigates by seducing the manager and going through his stuff in the office. She discover things like Compound H, Control Group, and test groups named after Latin letters.
What is the underlying conspiracy that the trio uncovers?
Somebody is watching all the places in their neighbourhood and conducting experiments on the people!
When Fontaine returns to the house, the elevator and the lab are gone. The trio is convinced something is very wrong with the Glen and takes a vow to get to the root of it. During their investigation, they discover that it is not just food that is affected; it is every consumable product. Hair dye, toothpaste, grape drink – you name it. Some make them laugh and the other makes them trip.
We meet Ree-Ree, a friend of Yo-Yo’s who owns a hair salon. Slick breaks into a van offloading goods into the salon as Fontaine and Yo-Yo go inside. After Isaac and his guys confront him, the van drives off with Slick. The others chase after the van but can’t find him.
The duo is convinced that every consumable product is drugged to control their minds. They go to Frog, a homeless man Fontaine sees outside the store every day. His remarks, “Straighter is greater” catch his attention and Frog gives them their next clue: the Zionist church. On arrival, they finally find Slick in the back of the van. Slick finds a keycard in the van as well. The trio go into the church where they’re serving grape drink, causing the congregation to behave crazily. After everyone leaves, the trio stay behind. Fontaine inserts the keycard in a machine attached to the table and a secret elevator opens.
They go inside and down to a lower floor. They take the suits off some of the people who work there. It’s a different kind of world under the Glen. The widespread operations are organized and extensive. The trio’s fears that everyone is being drugged to be controlled are true. They go around the facility and watch numerous experiments involving music and lighting being performed on people.
Slick and Yo-Yo are spooked and want to leave but Fontaine doesn’t want to leave until he finds out how he was resurrected. They walk into a giant room where they find that the controllers are cloning handpicked people from the Glen. Slick and Fontaine find their respective clones in the decanting chambers but Yo-Yo does not.
Who is the mastermind behind the project?
Fontaine is livid and takes out his gun and starts shooting at the clone, raising the alarm. They run and end up in a stripper club. The guards are instructed to intercept and subdue them. They discover that the song is also laced with something.
They escape out of the club but the entire mob is sent after them. Their minds are being controlled by the music. Chester (who is Fontaine’s clone) and a mysterious man (played by Kiefer Sutherland) walk up to them. They are experimenting on these people unnoticed. The man explains that the objective of the experiment is to make them a better species.
“Keeping the US united” is the motto of the invisible corporation pulling the strings from above the ground. Every aspect of the Glen’s residents has been controlled by the corporation without them realizing it.
The mystery man manages to control Fontaine and the cloned group with a codeword, “Black Olympia.” This also pulls Chester into action. He manipulates Fontaine, leading to a life-or-death scenario, but he ultimately chooses to let everyone live. The trio begrudgingly accept defeat and go back to their regular lives.
Fontaine is troubled by recent events as he realizes his purpose as a dope dealer is to drown his hometown in drugs and violence while the men in black beneath the town conduct their obedience experiments undeterred. The disconnected community of broken people unable to escape the fate written for them haunts Fontaine, whose misery is further compounded when he then discovers his mother isn’t real. The voice of his mother turns out to be from a machine that has been set with pre-recorded phrases.
They Cloned Tyrone Ending Explained:
Fontaine goes to meet Slick, who has similarly shut down since the previous night. Meanwhile, Yo-Yo has been fighting against the underground people. She is determined to expose them in the papers, using her ambition to become a journalist to prepare an entire case with evidence against them. But before she can post it to “The Post,” Yo-Yo is taken by the black SUV.
Why do Slick and Fontaine decide to team up with Isaac?
Slick finds his charm back and they go to Biddy, a local gossiper who is always on the street and knows everything about everyone. She reveals that Yo-Yo has been taken. This drastic development pushes them to team up with Isaac. But he kills Fontaine, who is then picked up by the black car. A new clone is breathed with Fontaine’s memories. He goes back to his daily routine. Slick kidnaps him and tries to make him remember. But it turns out it was all a setup. The real Fontaine actually wakes up underground. Isaac was convinced by them to come on board with the idea and didn’t really kill him.
Fontaine takes a hostage and enters the control room with his help. Charles gathers all the thugs from the neighbourhood and uses an elevator to go down. Yo-Yo is being experimented on with the perming cream. When the scientists think she has fallen unconscious, Yo-Yo gets up, revealing that she was actually wearing a wig and hence the perming cream had no impact on her.
How does Slick outwit the man in black?
The thugs run over the place and try to destroy most of it. Slick finds Yo-Yo and the two head to the clone room to free all of them. The man in black (Sutherland) corners them, while Fontaine comes up against Chester.
When it seems that Slick and Yo-Yo will be killed, Slick uses his presence of mind and tricks the man into thinking he killed him. Instead, Slick had taken off his clothes and put them on his clone, who wasn’t wearing his shiny rings. Due to the smoke on the ground, the man wasn’t able to notice this. Yo-Yo distracted him as Slick ambushed him from behind and killed him.
Fontaine is beaten down and brought to the original Fontaine – the “chosen one” who started all of this. He is the original geneticist who combined the DNA of around 378 people and brought the idea to the corporation. His explanation of the entire project is very vague and almost incomprehensible, other than the fact that it is related to Ronnie. He claims it’s because no one should have had to suffer the pain he did when his younger brother was gunned down but it makes no sense.
Who is Tyrone?
Fontaine uses the codeword “Black Olympia” to get Chester to kill the original Fontaine and escape with Slick and Yo-Yo. All the clones are released and the news media takes over. The trio decide to go to Memphis together to further spoil other underground projects.
The movie ends with a glimpse of Tyrone, who is Fontaine’s clone, in Los Angeles, watching the news with his mates and seeing his clone on the tv. Needless to say, he is surprised to see himself!
Read More: They Cloned Tyrone Movie Review
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Hey Trinib, thanks for commenting! If you could point out which elements are wrong or incorrect, we’ll be more than happy to go in and edit those. Thanks again for reaching out and letting us know,
Greg W.
After watching came back to say this review has so many mistakes.