I just watched “Terminator 2” again and was thinking about this.
(HINT HINT: I’m going to talk about “T2”, so if you’re one of the five people on the planet who hasn’t seen it, you might not want to read past this point.)
Miles Dyson based his work of the CPU from the first Terminator, right? Obviously, it’s circular reasoning: The fact that the Terminator was sent back in time (or even existed for that matter) was because of Miles Dyson’s work, but his work was based on technology that came from the future. And so on and so on and so on.
But for whatever reason, I didn’t mind it one bit. Granted, it’s science fiction, so maybe I just didn’t mind suspending disbelief a little bit more? I swing on this matter. I guess if it’s a good movie, I’ll go along with the time travel paradox (even if it doesn’t make any sense).
Anyone else like this? Any other thoughts on time travel paradoxes in movies?
I hate it when they have to invent a psuedo-“paradox” to serve as an important plot point, a la Timecop. Dear Spam, that was an atrocious pile of freshly-felched reindeer doody. Additionally, I hate it when a so-called “paradox” is left entirely unexplained to the audience, a la Planet of the Apes (the new one). That just left everybody going, “What the fuck?”
Beyond that, however - instances where time-travel is poorly dealt with - I don’t mind a bit.
I don’t mind so long as the type of paradox that is tolerated is the same throughout. A book that bothered me by messing this up is Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.
For most of the book, when you travel through time you create a new time stream where things have always been that way and you just have aberrant memories. But at the end we find out that a sofa, which has been stuck in a stairwell through out the book even though it impossible for it to be there, got stuck in the stairwell because the presence of the time machine opened up enough space to maneuver it.
By the logic of the book, the sofa should not have been stuck there until they returned to the present, at which point the protagonist would be shocked to find his sofa stuck on the stairs.
It was a great funny moment in the book, but it disagreed with how time travel was presented everywhere else.
Time travel stories nearly always involve paradoxes in causality, but it’s a branch I’ve always been unable to suspend my disbelief in, consequently there are few time travel stories I enjoy. I have a real problem with any story that involves traveling back in time and then returning to the point you left, whether or not that world is somewhat changed. The problem is, say you go back to December 6th, 1941, and try to convince somebody at Pearl Harbor that an attack is coming the next day. In your own history, you weren’t there (not even born in my case). Yet in your present you are. So which four dimensional point is reality, given the 3 spatial coordinates of Pearl Harbor and the one of time-date? Four coordinates are enough to specify a point in space-time, there’s only one Pearl Harbor Dec 6th 1941 and either you were there or you weren’t. Can’t have both, as in your present perspective after entering the wayback machine vs. the one in your past, because, again, it’s a single point in spacetime. A twist on one person being in two places at once. This way, there’s two different “places at once”.
Most time travel stories progress as though the only time reality is the present time of the hero, which is allowed to assume characteristics that mimic points in the hero’s past, but allow for his/her presence. But it’s preposterous for both to represent reality unless you rely on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, or perhaps two or more temporal dimensions. I’ve read stories that used the former, but not the latter. And somehow the many worlds stuff never seems to work in a story - nearly everything already exists in some sense already, so the hero’s actions always seem kind of pointless in those stories. You saved the world? Poo, it was already saved, and lost, in a billion different ways anyhow, so what’s the point?
I realize this is kind of subtle, but it’s always killed time travel stories for me, except for one’s like Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee in which the time traveler’s original world utterly ceases to exist. There are still problems here, but at least it avoids the dual reality issue I have so much trouble with, and I enjoyed that one quite a bit.
I think it’s pointless to try and go back in time in order to change something. If you decide to go back, then you’ve already been back and whatever it was you tried to do, either had no efect or caused things to be how they are now.
I have kind of wondered though, if you could go back in time with a book of Beatles music and go up to the Beatles and say, “hey guys, have a listen to THESE songs” Then the Beatles go “Wow they are cool lets record them, we’ll also write some scribbles on pads so it looks like we actually worked on them”. So then no one has actually written the songs eh? They just ARE.
Same as with the chip from the Terminator I guess.
I think it was Stephen Hawking who said he didn’t believe time-travel would ever happen because, otherwise, why aren’t we being invaded by hordes of “tourists from the future”?
But I would suggest that those people not acquainted with Superstring Theory get acquainted fast.
Superstring Theory is the latest cutting-edge physics theory and it posits the idea of either 10 or 24 dimensions and an inter-dimensional traveller would be able to do all kinds of amazing things like make themselves invisible or jump between two different points in space in an instant.
Space-time is considered to be one and the same thing. When you jump space, you jump time.
Another physics theory that is gaining popularity is the use of “wormholes” which would propel you to a different space-time.
Doc didn’t just send Einstein “one minute into the future”, he sent him to a specific time. I don’t remember the specifics, but say at 10:05, he sent Einstein to 10:06. At 10:06, Einstein “caught up” with them.
Oh, and did anyone see Frequency? No time traveling per se, but definite time altering. Paradoxes ahoy, but I did enjoy it.
I fail to see the distinction. He sent Einstein to 10:06 (by the way I think that is right). Einstein should then have existed in 10:06 and continued to move forward from that point. The Doc and Marty should never have caught up with Einstein.
They were consistent with this throughout all the movies, which is good, but I just don’t get how they could have ever caught up with Einstein. He should have always remained 1 minute ahead of them in the future. Be it 5:04 and 5:05 or 11:51 and 11:52 etc.
I should probably just accept it huh? But it hurts my head a little.
I think it’s even better when the whole paradox thing is exploited in the story (like the technology thing in T2) - there’s a wonderful story called ‘By his bootstraps’ by Heinlein(I think) that does this masterfully.
The theory goes thusly: You make an artificial wormhole (assuming it’s possible), then you “accelerate” one end of the hole to a different location (or something). Now whenever you step through the wormhole on the “accelerated” side, it’ll take you back to the “not-accelerated” side, which, since it didn’t move, will provide a door to the moment the time machine was turned on.
Here’s a good idea for a story… they build one of these time machines, but the second it’s turned on, thousands of mutated demons from millions of years in the Earth’s future begin pouring through… apparently, things take a “turn for the worse” over the next several hundred millenia. Eh? Eh? Good idea? Bad idea?
Then there’s the time travelling paradox about time travelling paradoxes. It’s sort of like the Beatles example up above.
Suppose you’re ready to sit down and invent The Time Machine. You look behind you and see yourself, but ten years older!
“Here you go,” your older self says.
“What is it?”
“It’s the plans for creating the time machine. My older self gave it to me when I was you and now I’m handing it down to you.”
So who created the time machine then?
Often times I’ll say to myself “OK, when I get older I’m going to invent the time machine and come back and visit myself right now.” When no one appears, I think “well, that settles it. I’m never going to invent a time machine.”
As for time travel in the movies, there will ALWAYS be paradoxes. I’m not even sure it’s possible to make one without them.
I like the explaination in Slaughter House 5. That time is like a mountain range. Man is on a train traveling through those mountains but he is strapped in his chair and can only look out one side of the train and not the other and actually he has a metal ball over his head with a long hollow tube sticking out of it in a fixed way and that is all man can expierence of time.
When Billy tell the tralfamadorens (sp) to beware of humans because they will probably end the universe they laugh and tell him how one of their own will end the universe. When he asks why don’t you stop him they tell him that the guy will always press the button (that ends the universe), that he always had pressed the button and that he always is pressing the button.
Just because we have not expierenced a moment in time dosen’t mean it hasn’t already happened.
Back to the OP
I don’t mind unless they really take me out of the movie.
Time paradoxes only bother me if they are blatently obvious! If its really bad it can ruin the whole story… t2 didn’t bother me so much while watching the movie, but afterwards when I thought about it, I didn’t care. Other movies (and I can’t think of any right now…) will be ruined by the time paradox.
Reminds me of the one scene from Austin Powers 2… I don’t remember how it goes… but before Austin goes back to the 60’s he points out the Time Paradox to his superior who says… “Well, I suggest you just don’t think about it…” then him and Austin look at the audience and he says, “… and that goes for you, too!” (or something similar… cracked me up!)
