Time After Time

Continuing my series of time travel columns, I've decided to look at a couple of movies that were recently released that deal with time travel in interesting ways. These movies are able to side step the paradox issue rather intriguingly.

First on my list is the Butterfly Effect staring Ashton "That 70s" Kutcher. Ashton is not a big selling point for me in pretty well any movie he's in. Up until Butterfly, the only movie of his I really liked was Dude, Where's My Car, which may or may not be saying much for his career. He does a fairly decent job in the role he's given in BE, although the role consists of him going half dazed from one time sequence to the next, acting like an idiot in the after effects every time... so yeah, bout the same role he always plays... but, about the movie.

Hopefully everyone out there at least knows that Ashton's character develops the ability to travel backwards in time to his former self (usually somewhere between the ages of 7 and 16 I believe). He does this by focusing on journals he wrote during those years of his life. His mind, for whatever reason, allows him to go back and, if he wants, make changes. Well, of course he starts changing things around, and the future starts changing as well.

The thing that both works and holds the movie back at the same time is how it conveniently sidesteps paradox. Ashton can go back and do anything he wants, changing anything, hell, even kill someone, and the future will always unfold. While he retains his old memories, he gets a whole new set as well. And if something changes that he doesn't like, he just goes back and makes another change. Over and over again. So, there's no paradox, which is interesting, but at the same time, nothing Ashton does has any bearing. He can just keep jumping until he gets a reality he likes. There's little suspense.

On the flip side, we have Paycheck, staring Ben Asslick... errr... Affleck. Ben is apparently a Reverse Engineer (something he portrays only half as well as he could have). He's hired by a company to build a device that... well you all probably have seen the trailer, so yeah, the device allows the user to see the future. After the machine is built though, Ben has all his memories erased. Luckily, he sent himself 20 items that would allow him to navigate the future as it unfolded and prevent his own untimely death.

The weakest part about the movie itself is that it feels more like an adventure game than a movie. Sure, there are a couple of great action sequences, but for the most part it's like"You have these items in your inventory. One of them will allow you to move on to the next situation. Choose wisely." Actually, it would have been a fun movie if they kept having Ben screw up, die, and re-spawn. I'd pay 5 bucks to watch that movie.

The machine itself has potential though. For instance, and this is a spoiler if you want to skip to the next line, it predicts a coming war. So the US preemptively attacks the other country, and starts the war. A plague is predicted, so the US gathers all the sick people to stop the plague... and causes the plague. It's a cause and effect scenario that's rather intriguing.

I enjoyed both flicks... may even pick both of them up. The science in both pictures is light, but the concepts are pretty neat.