There have been many attempts in film to make a movie about time travel and even though many have survived the inevitable argument of creating more problems than they solve by keeping the film light it has been possibly the one most difficult plot device ever conceived for film. Many have always had the thought “if I could go back and do things differently” and therefore we have always dreamed of time travel. However, it’s something that raises so many philosophical and logical questions.
Imagine for a moment that something horrible happens. You have figured out how to stop this horrible thing from occurring and you go back in time and stop it. Therefore this horrible thing never happened. So why did you go back in time? It’s a paradox. Because of this horrible thing, you go back in time. So if this thing didn’t happen did you ever go back in time? Every action is a reaction and therefore without the action one cannot react.
A staple in the time travel genre is the “don’t mess up the continuum” shtick. In which characters accidentally do something in the past which causes a chain reaction of events which change the future (i.e. their present). However, what I like even more is when they decide to claim that what happened has already happened. Therefore in their present, the past was that they came back and did what they did. Therefore all they need to do is hang tight and act natural, or whatnot. This therefore begs to question: can one mess up the time continuum?
One of my favourite films of the last decade to use time travel and have so many paradoxes that your brain almost explodes is Timecrimes. The film begins by a man being chased into a capsule which turns out to be a time machine, only to find out that he is the one who chased himself. So the question is raised, why did he enter the capsule in the first place? You are forced to try and trace back every reaction to its originating action and therefore finding more and more illogical actions in the film. So once again I beg to question, can time travel work?
A film that I am yet to see but I hear takes this concept seriously is Primer. Is this the film that tops the genre? Or another science-fiction film that is forgiven just because it gives its audience what they think they want?
What’s your favourite time travel movie?
I loved time travel in Harry Potter in the Prisoner of Azkaban. The way it was presented in the movie actually made more sense than it did in the book, it really was very clever.
Besides that, I guess it's used in a hilarious way in Star Trek IV, Voyage Home, I mean any plot that involves going back in time to get whales is awesome.
I feel this entire question will be answered for you once you watch Primer…
Primer is the only movie that actually takes time travel seriously. You have to watch it about 5 times but I think it works perfectly.
What about terminator? The whole concept of that show is boggling. The Terminator goes back in time to kill a man that s fighting them, yet if they did not try o kill John Connor, he would not be born because there would have been no reason for Klye Reese to travel back in time. AND the terminators could not be made (because skynet got the technology from the terminator-T-800 that went back into the past). That is a show, although its main premise isn't time travel, took the concept VERY seriously.