Time Travel In the Movies (1 Viewer)

[Jim DiJoseph]

Colton, you bring up a common problem that is not so clear to the average viewer. Aside from the obvious cosmological problems with time travel, if one were to find a way to travel in the 4th dimension (time) and did not account for the all other dimensions, the first thing that really would happen is that the ground beneath you would speed away at 1,000mph. Why? Because that's how fast the Earth is revolving. Then you can factor in the direction and speed with with the planet is orbiting the sun (which is what you referred to). Then you can factor the direction and speed with which the solar system is traveling. Then you can factor the same variables for the galaxy's movement. We're all moving through "space" in a number of different ways in a number of different directions at the same time - all the time!

 

[Britton]

Bill and Ted was definitely one of the time travel movies that made good use of it, especially in that scene where they are trying to get out of the police office.

 

[Shawn_KE]

How about the Philadelphia Experiment? Never seen the movie, but heard about the 'event'. Battleship with huge Tesla coils, walls going transparent, sailors meshed with walls and radiation burns.

Another loop that got me was in BttF 3 when the Delorean gas leaked out they had to come up with a solution. But there is also another Delorean in their present time, the Delorean that Doc stored in the cave for Marty to find in 1955 so he could travel to 1885.

Go to that cave, get that Delorean, no need for the train at the end

 

[Colton]

Thanks for the verification, Jim. That's exactly how I see why time travel isn't as lickity split in terms to all the things that are really involved. Alas, it's still fun to imagine ...

Now, if someone could just go back in time and undelete my thread about the decapitation video clip.

- Colton

 

[george kaplan]

Actually it's impossible to see your current self. All you can see is yourself in the past. No matter how close you stand to a mirror, or how close you put your hand to your face, the light has to travel from you to your eye, into the photoreceptors, which send messages along the optic nerve to your brain, which, by the time it processes what it's seen is no longer looking at you at the present moment, but you in the past (albeit often a very short time in the past).

 

[GuruAskew]

Another loop that got me was in BttF 3 when the Delorean gas leaked out they had to come up with a solution. But there is also another Delorean in their present time, the Delorean that Doc stored in the cave for Marty to find in 1955 so he could travel to 1885.

Go to that cave, get that Delorean, no need for the train at the end

This is brought up a lot in "Back to the Future" discussions but it really isn't a goof or a logical flaw. Doc would have undoubtedly drained the Delorean of gas before storing it for 70 years, and another point often raised is that Doc, knowing that the Delorean remained safe for 70 years since Marty is there with him, would be reluctant to press his luck by disturbing the Delorean. The car could be damaged or discovered when it is revisited.

 

[todd s]

Their is a new movie coming out this summer called "Sound of Thunder" which deals with affecting something in the past.

 

[Dave Poehlman]

I like dictionary.com's description of time:

A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.

...apparently irreversible.

 

[Rich Malloy]

Here's my theory: Assuming it is possible to travel through time, you can go back in time and see yourself. You cannot, however, go forward and see yourself, because you have taken yourself out of the timeline to time travel, so the world you left behind will think that you vanished one day.

That brings to mind one of my favorite parts in "Primer", where one character is slowly revealing the truth about their accidental creation of a time machine to the other. The capper: a view through binoculars of his future self in the "present", this occuring before the "present time" characters had attempted time travel. Hence, at a point in time in the future, he/they will travel back to the present time. Thus, he proves the existence of the time machine before they actually travel through it... at least at that point in the time continuum.

Of course, the multiple dimension universe that Geoffrey brings up wouldn't seem to allow for this! But, aside from that little detail, it seems one could travel forward in time and then return to the exact point at which one departed, thus apparently never leaving the present time-line.

 

[Qui-Gon John]

For Star Trek IV, I just took it as the BoP starts toward Earth, then they go back in time, get the whales, and return to their time at the same point in time, when they crash into the bay, release the whales, who tell the probe what to go do with itself.

Another favorite of mine, not true time travel, but time communication, is FREQUENCY.

 

[PatH]

How about "The Butterfly Effect"? That seemed to play pretty straight with the viewer (I refer to the movie not the alternate ending on the DVD).

PatH

 

[Britton]

Oh, another well done time travel flick was The Final Countdown.

 

[David Rogers]

Can't believe no one's mentioned Millennium yet; a wasted future raiding the past to 'save' victims of disasters for purposes of repopulating healthy people forward.

Groundhog's Day loops across the same day repeatedly.

Galaxy Quest uses a 13second jump back in time as a significant plot device.

Minority Report uses views forward in time integrally to the story.

Tons more not mentioned yet I'm sure.

 

[Greg*go]

So, the planets (including the Earth) will continue to rotate and move around the Sun. What should have happened in The Time Machine was his machine slowly drifting away from the Earth. He would have to calculate when the Earth would return at the EXACT SAME SPOT to determine his destination. If he were to miscalculate, he would be drifting into space forever.

I could be wrong, but the earth will never be in the same space ever again, for reasons that others have said. The whole earth moving with the sun and the sun with the galaxy and the galaxy with the galaxy cluster and the galaxy cluster moving with the super cluster and what not.

Primer was a neat movie. I've only watched it once though, but definitely want to see it again. I remember at times their clothing would change during a scene which I suppose would represent a relapse of time traveling taking place during the scene. Hmmm, thinking about the movie makes my head hurt, but in a good way!

 

[DaveF]

You cannot, however, go forward and see yourself, because you have taken yourself out of the timeline to time travel, ...

You time travel ot the future, jaunt about, then return to the moment after you left. Your life goes forward as normal, determining your future. What you saw when time-traveling is what you did after you time traveled.

However, Bill & Ted did viewed this a bit differently: time flows normally in your own time-stream. Time spent time-traveling is time out of your normal life. If you miss a deadline (like your senior-presentation at San Dimas High), you can't get it back.

As I said, BATEA is the perfect time-travel movie.

 

[Patrick Soucy]

- Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn
- Army of Darkness (Evil Dead 3)

And also a perfect Travel movie, since Ash can't absolutely change nothing in the past, and his present will always remain the same. In fact, we learn that the events from The Evil Dead are the results of the mistake of him, in Army of Darkness when he is in 1300...!

Ash don't said the words in 1300, the Necronomicon was hidden in the castle, and later, in the '80, the Prof. Knowby discover it and the events we know begun. So, with all the efforts made by Ash in the third movie, nothing will ever change in his present days!

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I never really bought the alternate universe theory, I tend to think that if one could travel through time and effect things in the past, it would simply re-write the same timeline and the outcome would change.

Also, there's a problem with the concept of a time machine as well. Let's say you had a time machine like the Delorian, and the Delorian was manufactured and rolled off the assembly line on 3/17/84, if you traveled past that date, the car would begin to vanish around you because you went past the point when it was manufactured. It would have to somehow have a "bubble", for lack of a better word, around it that would carry part of the present with you.

I read articles that if time travel were ever possible, the traveling would have to be done WITHIN the time machine, meaning that the time shift would have to happen INSIDE the machine. Of course this is dangerous also, because if the traveler went back too far, he would return to infancy inside the machine, or worse yet, return to a sperm cell laying on the floor of the machine somewhere.

I like the theory of the Delorian in 'BttF', though, it's very simple. Doc had mounted a worm-hole emitter on the roof that would distort and then eventually open a worm-hole directly in the car's path allowing the car to simply drive through it with the destination waiting on the other end. Of course, if time stood still inside the worm-hole, this would explain why the car doesn't reverse engineer itself as I said above.

One problem in a film that I cannot overlook is in the film TimeCop. In that film, the police can travel into the past only and not the future, but this is a big problem because when they travel into the past to retrive a criminal, they press a button on their belt to return to the present, but their present has now become the future, so they should be stuck in the past which has now become their present!

Yikes, I need a nap.

 

[Janna S]

Also - The Navigator (the medieval version, made in 1988). I don't remember it very well - only that it was poignant and had some power.

I wish a film would someday take up the interesting implications of Merlin living backward (The Once and Future King).

And did anyone mention the Joan Collins (original series) Star Trek episode? That will be forever my favorite.

 

[Tom_mkfty]

I liked that Disney movie: Blue Yonder. Is that on DVD?

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

The Navigator (the medieval version, made in 1988). I don't remember it very well - only that it was poignant and had some power.