Time Travel in films
- Thread starter Termite Man
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Termite Man
zombie flesh eater
Reno said:
OK so I don't like hitchcock and that makes me cluless . At least I'm not a twat who thinks people with different opinions to themselves aren't worth engaging with .
Termite Man
zombie flesh eater
Reno said:
oh and just to point out , I do actually realise that I was just being curios . And as for the Hitchcock thing anyone who decides to pigeon hole people isn't worth bothering with . He made 2 good films and thats it IMO but of course having an opinion makes me clueless doesn't it .
scifisam
deleted
Termite Man said:
Almost. In both these films, time is not a straight line, but a flow chart. Each separate branch on the flow chart is like a parallel world of its own.
Just like a flow chart, you can travel backwards as well as forwards.
If, in travelling backwards, you make a different decision to the one that you did when you went forwards, you can be flipped onto a different branch of the flow chart.
When Marty went back in time to the 1950s in BTTF2, he flipped himself onto the BTTF1 branch of the flow chart. BY doing so, he created a sub-branch of that flow-chart, where there are briefly two of him there, but the first Marty's decisions then bring the sub-branch back to the main branch.
The Terminator films are similar, except that, whatever decisions the main character and the future evil robots make, they get flipped back onto the same branch of the flow-chart - the one where evil robots take over the world, John Connor's born, and he sends Kyle back to the past.
You might think, why doesn't he just not send Kyle back, give up his own life and change the way the future went? Well, he can't do that. The machines had already got the gear to send the terminator back, so if he hadn't sent Kyle back then he, John Connor, the great leader, would not have been born, and humanity would have had even less of a chance. Course, he's only a great leader because of the knowledge he has of the future...)
All makes sense to me.
It would be so much easier to explain this with a diagram, but I can't do them on here.
Reno
The In Kraut
Termite Man said:
Yes, anybody who glibly dismisses the filmmaker who invented the cinematic language the whole of modern popular cinema is built on (including The Terminator and Back to the Furture films) is clueless when it comes to film. Of course everybody is entitled to their opinion, etc, etc...
Anyway, neither the Terminator nor Back to the Future films are really that difficult to figure out as the characters constantly exlain the plot to each other.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
Crispy said:Whereas Primer needs a flowchart:
did it really need graphage crispy, or did you just spot a graph-opportunity
Termite Man
zombie flesh eater
Reno said:
I haven't glibly dismissed him . I've seen hitchcock films and I didn't particualaly enjoy them , doesn't mean I can't appreciate film though does it . The fact that hitchcock feels he can just put labels onto people like that is what made me glibly dismiss him because people are more complex than just being a "plausible" or whatever tags hitchcock wants to label them with . In terms of your comment in relation to this thread you clearly thought I was one of these people which is far from the truth and you seem to have used that as some sort of way of judgeing my intentions in starting this thread ( trying to claim I was doing it to make myself feel smart ) when in fact I was just mildly curious about the thought process of making these films which rely heavily on time travel and how the film makers use it in the film .
The fact that I admitted to the use of time travel in BTTF and Terminator confusing me pretty much indicates that I haven't done this tread to look smart but to try and understand part of the process used to create the plot . As an aside I actually really like both films ( BTTF is probably in my top 10 favorite films ) so any inconsistencies there may be don't bother me .
Have you never been to see a film and thought that the plot had "holes" in it , or wondered how something has happened in the film which maybe just doesn't seem right ? I reckon I may have been a bit harsh on Hitchcock but that was more of a reaction to how I percieved your post and the implications I saw in it . I may have been well off the mark with that but I still think Hitchcocks idea of segmenting people is a very narrow way of looking at people who watch films !
Termite Man
zombie flesh eater
Reno said:
Thats sort of my point though , they explain the time travel but I don't quite get how that idea of time travel works when you take into account the examples I gave in my first post . I reckon I've got BTTF sussed ( the 2nd marty changed the course of events in the minor characters which didn't affect the first marty ) , but I'm still a bit at odds with Terminator . When it comes down to it , it's still an enjoyable film and the fact I don't think the time travel adds up doesn't reduce my enjoyment of it !
Reno
The In Kraut
Termite Man said:
Well Hitchcock was good with soundbites, but I think he had a point. Audiences (and now people discussing films on the Internet) often rather unimaginatively judge quite abstract or fantastical films by how plausible they are, which is completely missing the point of something that's supposed to be allegorical or expressionistic. If I misunderstood you there then I apologise.
I don't think Hitchcock segments people though, he dismembers them (in his films at least)
Termite Man
zombie flesh eater
Reno said:Well Hitchcock was good with soundbites, but I think he had a point. Audiences (and now people discussing films on the Internet) often rather unimaginatively judge quite abstract or fantastical films by how plausible they are, which is completely missing the point of something that's supposed to be allegorical. If I misunderstood you there then I apologise.
I don't think Hitchcock segments people though, rather he dismembers them (in his films at least)
I get you ! I wasn't judgeing the films on their plausability , it's just one of those things that got me thinking and then I started over thinking which is never a good thing
I just looked up what films Hitchcock did and he's done some damn good films thatI didn't realise were his , I think the most well known ones are the ones I don't particularly like that much and I was also getting him confused with Orson Welles as well 
Termite Man
zombie flesh eater
Crispy said:
thats not good enough . I want a crispy made graph , the quality on the one you posted wasn't that good
Agent Sparrow
AGENT TRAITOR; fools 8 year olds
Isn't this just a simple case of suspension of disbelief?
Obviously in the case of termite man, the logical holes are too great to keep belief in the story being told. In the case of most of the other people on this thread, they can overlook them.
I think that if time travel was ever a possibility (which it probably isn't), then all this paradox stuff would be crap. After all, once you've gone back and changed something, and changed it back, the final result is what would have happened (I don't see how history can be "relived"). But at the end of the day, when it's part of a gripping story, who gives a fuck?
It is science fiction, not science. I don't think the theories are meant to be watertight. The illusion of being watertight though is very helpful though.
Edit: One of my old housemates always found it impossible to see why people didn't float through the floor when they were ghosts, or for some other reason could walk through walls etc. She used to mention this quite often. It did get a bit irritating at times.
Mind you, slightly different subject, but I quite enjoy it when I spot major omissions on the part of whoever is in charge of continuity in a film. SoD usually disappears, but it can be rather amusing.
Obviously in the case of termite man, the logical holes are too great to keep belief in the story being told. In the case of most of the other people on this thread, they can overlook them.
I think that if time travel was ever a possibility (which it probably isn't), then all this paradox stuff would be crap. After all, once you've gone back and changed something, and changed it back, the final result is what would have happened (I don't see how history can be "relived"). But at the end of the day, when it's part of a gripping story, who gives a fuck?
It is science fiction, not science. I don't think the theories are meant to be watertight. The illusion of being watertight though is very helpful though.
Edit: One of my old housemates always found it impossible to see why people didn't float through the floor when they were ghosts, or for some other reason could walk through walls etc. She used to mention this quite often. It did get a bit irritating at times.
Mind you, slightly different subject, but I quite enjoy it when I spot major omissions on the part of whoever is in charge of continuity in a film. SoD usually disappears, but it can be rather amusing.
cybertect
It's grim up north (London)
Termite Man
zombie flesh eater
Crispy said:
do it ! and do a photoshopped animal on it as well
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