Discussion of Time Travel in Films and Books

[vodkafan]

Hi guys this is the companion thread to the list of movies and films and TV.
Why have I started it? Well I think that most of the ideas about time travel have been explored in films and literature. They make interesting stories because of the problems and paradoxes. I want us to be able to thrash them out here. What individuals think works and what doesn't. Also any real known research about the nature of Time in physics. I will try to keep up Is there any chance of pinning this one admin?

For instance I will kick off with a film I saw recently, Looper. (spoiler alert)
Near the end of the film the Bruce Willis character kills Abe and all the gangsters at their base in the city. Apart from the stupid one with the bad foot, who is killed on the road later by the younger version of Willis.
Later the young Willis kills himself to save the boy who will grow up to become the Rainmaker . By pinching out his own loop, the older Willis never existed , therefore all the gangsters and Abe are still alive back at the city. Those events never happened. However, because the stupid one was mixed up in those events, he has now NO REASON to go out on the bike and meet his destiny/death an hour later on the road at the hands of the Younger Willis , who was still alive at that point.
OK that's one point. But there is also a MUCH BIGGER LOOP. Because now the boy and his mother survived, future history has been MAJORLY changed. The inference from the film is that the boy no longer becomes the criminal boss Rainmaker in the future. So no Loopers are sent back to get bumped off by their younger selves; in fact, the whole Looper lifestyle probably doesn't ever arise.
Anybody got any thoughts? Agree or disagree?

 

[vodkafan]

Here is another one:
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Neiffenager, book and film.

This story is quite interesting because there is no time machine; the main protagonist is naturally able (involuntarily and uncontrollably) to jump between different points on his own personal timeline. So, while his wife's timeline is linear, her hubby pops in and out of it at different ages. In fact he is accidentally killed by her brother and father before they have even met him. Which is a bit of a shock when he later marries into the family. So although his personal timeline ends there (near the beginning of the book) he still has years of popping in and out of his wife's normal linear timeline. Confused? You will be. But read it, it's good!

 

[jwill27]

Looper was a great movie, but very hard to understand for me since at the time I was not using a caption device I am hard of hearing and I own a Cochlear Implant. It was very hard to understand what was going on in the movie, I understood parts of the movie, but never the whole part of the movie, which is why captions are a viable source for me to understand many film or shows. I do not know if you ever watched the TV Series Doctor Who, but it deals with a Time Travel machine (the phone box) which goes back into time and forward as well. Many things happen throughout the series that change things. But the one that really struck a nerve with me was the episode of the father, in which the Character Rose Tyler goes back in time to visit her father who died.

The major reason is because at 11, I lost my father in a car accident to a truck driver on a road in Alaska. I knew my father-- who he was and what he did, but I didn't get the chance to grow up with him doing the things that Father and sons do later on in life, not to mention the absence of him in watching to see me become married and so on and forth. I thought about this many times. If I was given the chance to travel back in time, how would I go about explaining to my own father, that I am indeed his son.

I often would envision things getting in the way of me telling him the full extent of my visitation, maybe some rules by the government who applied that you must not in-tangle with the past in such a major way that it could change the future completely. Leaving me silent about warning him of his coming death in 1999. It always ends up with me saying, I cannot tell you the full extent of these things, but that I insisted on visiting you.

-J.

 

[vodkafan]

Hi Jwill, I am sorry to hear of your loss.
That would indeed be hard not to warn your dad.

 

[jwill27]

Thank you. And I know it definitely would be. Even if we were given Time Travel Technology in this day and age, I would still fear that the Government would use it for monetary gain. I think the Important part of what John Titor was telling us is that there are many divergences from Worldlines that it would be hard enough to reach an Original timeline you came from. It wouldn't matter if we traveled forwards or backwards twenty seconds, our timeline would be somehow different that the original. There could be a high possibility that my father was not the man I knew him to be as my Original timeline. I have already accepted that death takes it's part on life, and moved on, although I never forget the memories that I have.
-J

 

[vodkafan]

I don't know of course, but I am of the opinion that it would take something very major to alter a timeline significantly. I am of the opinion that minor perturbations get "smoothed out". There will be small differences but over a big window of time these would be insignificant. Not a big believer in the "Butterfly Effect".

 

[HDRKID]

Marty McFly really did time travel - Disney Star Wars Episode VII.
(HUMOR)

 

[Num7]

LOL That's a pretty good one.

 

[TimeTravel_00]

You know what? Minus the ridiculous looking spoiler on the trunk, that car could totally pass for a Chrysler Sebring Convertible, now known as the 200.

 

[T.A. Walters]

The key to the future lies in the past ... so goes the secrets of the pyramids and time travel used in the exodus of lost civilizations; Incas, Mayan and Ponctoan people. If not a machine to the parallels of destiny, what might these people discovered to transport their entire human existence from even our most skilled Paleontologist?