The Movie Thread Reloaded

[HappyDaze]

Even Avengers Endgame managed to fuck it up (Loki's escape should've had all sorts of repercussions).

So, there's this entire show called "Loki" that covers exactly this. They went with "bug as feature" and embraced that it should have had repercussions...and why it (maybe?) didn't.

[Ghostmaker]

I watched Amazon's movie The Tomorrow War with Chriss Pratt and I agree with the general assessment that the time travel part doesn't make any sense.

That got me thinking ... Are there any good time travel movies that actually hold up to scrutiny? Even ones that are serious, like Primer, fall apart of you think about them too much. The only one that seems to work out is The Terminator. Skynet sends back a T-800 and the humans send someone to protect Sarah Connor who ends up being the father of the man that Skynet was trying to get rid of. A nice neat loop that fits together. Of course, it ceases to work with T2.

Is that in any way related to the Forever War?

Nope. I'm kinda glad. Nowadays I don't want any more adaptations of my favorite books turned into shit by Hollyweird.

[Ratman_tf]

I watched Amazon's movie The Tomorrow War with Chriss Pratt and I agree with the general assessment that the time travel part doesn't make any sense.

That got me thinking ... Are there any good time travel movies that actually hold up to scrutiny? Even ones that are serious, like Primer, fall apart of you think about them too much. The only one that seems to work out is The Terminator. Skynet sends back a T-800 and the humans send someone to protect Sarah Connor who ends up being the father of the man that Skynet was trying to get rid of. A nice neat loop that fits together. Of course, it ceases to work with T2.

Is that in any way related to the Forever War?

Nope. I'm kinda glad. Nowadays I don't want any more adaptations of my favorite books turned into shit by Hollyweird.

God, yes. I don't look forward to movies anymore, I just kinda hope a few decent ones squeak by the Process they use to generate their bland but noisy garbage.
Dune, Foundation, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc, etc...

[oggsmash]

  Tomorrow war did have the "bad" time travel.   I have only ever seen one movie where the time travel was made to look like anything that could actually follow a consistent rule/law (Primer) and there is no way the modern movie audience is going to watch that movie en masse.  To be honest the time travel was about 4th on my list of WTF!! on really, really bad ideas people in the future seemed to be overflowing with.  I guess maybe that was intentional given the path society is taking, a massive alien invasion fought 30 years down the road by the folks I see reimagining society...well its a lost cause. 

    That said, bad time travel and some other REALLY bad ideas for how to handle the problem at hand, it entertained me and honestly that is all I am looking for from a movie these days. 

[Ghostmaker]

I watched Amazon's movie The Tomorrow War with Chriss Pratt and I agree with the general assessment that the time travel part doesn't make any sense.

That got me thinking ... Are there any good time travel movies that actually hold up to scrutiny? Even ones that are serious, like Primer, fall apart of you think about them too much. The only one that seems to work out is The Terminator. Skynet sends back a T-800 and the humans send someone to protect Sarah Connor who ends up being the father of the man that Skynet was trying to get rid of. A nice neat loop that fits together. Of course, it ceases to work with T2.

Is that in any way related to the Forever War?

Nope. I'm kinda glad. Nowadays I don't want any more adaptations of my favorite books turned into shit by Hollyweird.

God, yes. I don't look forward to movies anymore, I just kinda hope a few decent ones squeak by the Process they use to generate their bland but noisy garbage.
Dune, Foundation, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc, etc...

It's kind of heartbreaking in a way. I'd love to see an adaptation of some of David Weber's works.

But I don't trust Hollywood. Honestly, I haven't trusted them to not fuck it up for a long time. The current day just cements my opinion on the issue. I'd sooner turn the treatment over to Bollywood (India's homegrown cinema industry) even if we got jank sFX and weird musical numbers.

[hedgehobbit]

I agree the time travel in Tomorrow War didn't really work. For instance, if we use the rafts analogy, how did they make the first jump back in the first place? And they ignore whether events in the present can affect the future, which leads to some really big questions that should be answered but aren't.

When the people from 2061 show up in 2021, it was clear that they were from an alternate future as the people of 2061 didn't experience the time travel 40 years ago. This is explicit when they have death records for everyone sent forward in time even though they died of other reasons. So there is no reason for the people of 2021 to send poorly equipped and untrained citizens to the future when that future isn't the future that they will experience.

[hedgehobbit]

  Tomorrow war did have the "bad" time travel.   I have only ever seen one movie where the time travel was made to look like anything that could actually follow a consistent rule/law (Primer) and there is no way the modern movie audience is going to watch that movie en masse.

I liked Primer but it didn't make sense for them to physically travel back in time just to play the stock market when it would have been easier for them to send a newspaper back in time instead and make their stock trades with that information. This is especially true once the people find out that time travel damages their nervous system (which, itself, doesn't make sense as they aren't making copies of themselves but are just sitting in a box).

[Pat]

I agree the time travel in Tomorrow War didn't really work. For instance, if we use the rafts analogy, how did they make the first jump back in the first place? And they ignore whether events in the present can affect the future, which leads to some really big questions that should be answered but aren't.

When the people from 2061 show up in 2021, it was clear that they were from an alternate future as the people of 2061 didn't experience the time travel 40 years ago. This is explicit when they have death records for everyone sent forward in time even though they died of other reasons. So there is no reason for the people of 2021 to send poorly equipped and untrained citizens to the future when that future isn't the future that they will experience.

Yep, that's the mess I was referring to. The entire plot requires a single timeline, while the details only make sense with alternate timelines. Two more details that add to the confusion are the wave of worldwide nihilism after the connection is cut, and the way only people who were recorded as having died between the two time periods are qualified to make the jump. As I hinted, the narration spends almost no time on explaining how time travel works, so there's never even an attempt at in-movie explanation. Which is probably a smart move -- if the time travel in your movie makes no sense, it's probably better not to draw attention to it, and hope people just get swept up in the action and don't think about it.

I watched a few reviews on YouTube that seemed to entirely miss this. They just assume changes in the present make changes in the future, and treat that as established fact, despite all the details that contradict it.

[oggsmash]

I agree the time travel in Tomorrow War didn't really work. For instance, if we use the rafts analogy, how did they make the first jump back in the first place? And they ignore whether events in the present can affect the future, which leads to some really big questions that should be answered but aren't.

When the people from 2061 show up in 2021, it was clear that they were from an alternate future as the people of 2061 didn't experience the time travel 40 years ago. This is explicit when they have death records for everyone sent forward in time even though they died of other reasons. So there is no reason for the people of 2021 to send poorly equipped and untrained citizens to the future when that future isn't the future that they will experience.

Yep, that's the mess I was referring to. The entire plot requires a single timeline, while the details only make sense with alternate timelines. Two more details that add to the confusion are the wave of worldwide nihilism after the connection is cut, and the way only people who were recorded as having died between the two time periods are qualified to make the jump. As I hinted, the narration spends almost no time on explaining how time travel works, so there's never even an attempt at in-movie explanation. Which is probably a smart move -- if the time travel in your movie makes no sense, it's probably better not to draw attention to it, and hope people just get swept up in the action and don't think about it.

I watched a few reviews on YouTube that seemed to entirely miss this. They just assume changes in the present make changes in the future, and treat that as established fact, despite all the details that contradict it.

   I think the best way to view it is as I did Pacific Rim.  The drift technology in that movie is just fucking stupid, and so are lot of other things.  Then I realized...I am here to WATCH GIANT ROBOTS PUNCH GIANT MONSTERS!!! and let my brain relax and enjoyed what I was looking for from the movie.   I have to shut my brain off for probably 99 percent of movies that fight scenes are there, so I just pretend all movies are in some magical universe where stuff is just different. 

[Pat]

   I think the best way to view it is as I did Pacific Rim.  The drift technology in that movie is just fucking stupid, and so are lot of other things.  Then I realized...I am here to WATCH GIANT ROBOTS PUNCH GIANT MONSTERS!!! and let my brain relax and enjoyed what I was looking for from the movie.   I have to shut my brain off for probably 99 percent of movies that fight scenes are there, so I just pretend all movies are in some magical universe where stuff is just different.

Agreed. My bigger issues are the stupid third act and that they didn't utilize Chris Pratt very well. His comedic charm didn't get enough play. But overall, it works as a forgettable popcorn movie.

[oggsmash]

   I think the best way to view it is as I did Pacific Rim.  The drift technology in that movie is just fucking stupid, and so are lot of other things.  Then I realized...I am here to WATCH GIANT ROBOTS PUNCH GIANT MONSTERS!!! and let my brain relax and enjoyed what I was looking for from the movie.   I have to shut my brain off for probably 99 percent of movies that fight scenes are there, so I just pretend all movies are in some magical universe where stuff is just different.

Agreed. My bigger issues are the stupid third act and that they didn't utilize Chris Pratt very well. His comedic charm didn't get enough play. But overall, it works as a forgettable popcorn movie.

   Yeah, you would think a guy who can smuggle you into Russia would have a sat link you could at least send an email with very specific GPS coordinates before doing something so foolish.  It made no sense, for the one person who had a good idea (find out where the problem originated) to go in solo and hope for the best.   Now one thing that did occur to me, I was a big fan of the Dark Horse run on Alien years and years ago.  In that series, the government tries to turn the xenomorphs into bioweapons.  In this case, there is an alien space craft and accompanying technology along with what is an uber bio weapon.  I can understand to a degree being distrustful of the same people who can not give straight answers about virology labs they did, or did not have any connection to.

    That, and if there is one things humans do on the regular, is make mistakes.

[jhkim]

As you said, Ratman, at least BttF was consistent in how it worked. Even Avengers Endgame managed to fuck it up (Loki's escape should've had all sorts of repercussions).

So, there's this entire show called "Loki" that covers exactly this. They went with "bug as feature" and embraced that it should have had repercussions...and why it (maybe?) didn't.

So, I haven't seen any of the Loki series, but I really liked that Endgame at least could fit with a logically consistent branching scheme. I'm disappointed that it sounds like the Loki series doesn't stick to the branching scheme, but I haven't seen it.

Open-loop movies like "Back to the Future" have a mystic one true timeline, and if you stray from it too far there are supposed problems - but it makes no sense because it leads to out-of-sync points -- like Marty disappears from his own photo and his hand starts to fade, but he can see his own head disappear. Not to mention the ethical oddity that it's supposedly wrong to make yourself rich, but somehow it is OK to get a cool and better new life by other means.

In Endgame, the rule that they say is that the past is unchangeable. If you go back, you create a branched timeline. That's a consistent and sensible rule for time travel, and the movie plot perfectly fits with this -- they don't change the past at all, but just use the past to change their own future. The only unclear point is when Steve Rogers appears as an old man. Since he doesn't appear on the platform, some suggest that he rewrote the main timeline and old man Steve was actually around all the time in the background of the previous movies. However, it's also consistent that he lived out his life in a branched timeline, but some time over the decades his suit broke, and he had to use an alternate means to jump back (like getting help from the Hank Pym in his branch).

[hedgehobbit]

In that series, the government tries to turn the xenomorphs into bioweapons.  In this case, there is an alien space craft and accompanying technology along with what is an uber bio weapon.  I can understand to a degree being distrustful of the same people who can not give straight answers about virology labs they did, or did not have any connection to.

While it would have been cool in Tomorrow War if the government swooped in at the last minute to steal an alien for "research", it's a nice change of pace for a movie to just be a standalone movie and not sequel bait for a new franchise.

...
...

And they just announced Tomorrow War 2.

[oggsmash]

In that series, the government tries to turn the xenomorphs into bioweapons.  In this case, there is an alien space craft and accompanying technology along with what is an uber bio weapon.  I can understand to a degree being distrustful of the same people who can not give straight answers about virology labs they did, or did not have any connection to.

While it would have been cool in Tomorrow War if the government swooped in at the last minute to steal an alien for "research", it's a nice change of pace for a movie to just be a standalone movie and not sequel bait for a new franchise.

...
...

And they just announced Tomorrow War 2.

LOL yeah, I was just thinking that myself when I saw that announcement.   I do wish creatives would take some time to be...creative.

[HappyDaze]

Watched Black Widow. I like almost all of the Marvel films, but this one just didn't hold my attention. IMO, it was mediocre at best (on par with Iron Man 3).