Don’t waste your money on this one- it has plotholes you can drive a medium sized asteroid through.
The good part:
Billy Connolly as an eccentric archaeologist
The bad parts: Everything else.
Random observations:
Paul Campbell is to great acting what Dorf videos are to the films of Charlie Chaplin.
History books are wrong: there’s no real difference between the English dialect and accent of the 21st century and that of the 14th; in fact residents of one can understand residents of the other perfectly, even unto the slang.
A few spoilers:
[spoiler]Dramatically altering the course of a major battle, particularly in changing who lived and who died, would in no way alter the future; it’s not as if the any of the men who lived in Timeline 1 but died in Timeline 2 went on to father any children and generate descendants whose nonexistence would change anything.
Most medeival monasteries were very welcoming to and trusting of outspoken young women whom they had never seen before, particularly those who desecrated/destroyed holy artwork.
It is possible for a woman whose death altered the course of a battle to nevertheless have a tomb from another Timeline in our Timeline.
Most big companies would gladly risk exposure of their most top secret project by sending unprepared people (including a guy who admits he knows nothing about history) into the 14th century without language preparation, weaponry or coins.[/spoiler]
Lots more suckage areas, but I’m tired. A total waste of film, especially if you’ve ever been a medeival history buff. Generally speaking, a meeting of the SCA is more historically accurate and has more convincing dialogue.
All inconsistancies in the book were explained away as quantam physics. Actually it was a little more complicated than that but suffice to say the book sucked too.
in the 14th century, communication for someone of our time would have been difficult. I believe that was the transitional phase from middle english to modern english.
And how does someone without any martial training do combat against knights?
This pisses me off more so, because most people would not really consider this major plot hole simply because it’s medieval europe, not feudal japan.
If the movie had been about some modern guy going back to 15th century japan and started kicking samurai ass people would say “What the heck?! How could a person who never picked up a katana before kill trained samurai?!”.
Well same thing applies here. Medieval knights would have made short work of any 20th century person.
The book explained martial arts and time paradoxes as such:
Martial Arts: the book had a character that had devoted his entire life to learning the European martial culture. Once he found himself back in the 14th century, he was still shocked to find that the nights moved so much quicker than he could have imagined and had to change his fighting style accordingly.
Time paradoxes: quantum physics. They’re not going back to the 14th century of their own time, but the 14th century of a parallel universe.
As I recall from Crichton’s crappy book, the story takes place in France, so it was Middle French they were dealing with. They used small translation computers and, if I recalled, pretended to be foreigners from Bohemia or something. So, in the movie do they just ignore the language problem? Amazing.
And Crichton spent pages on what seemed to me a half-baked treatise on quantum physics, with the insistence that they weren’t really travelling in time, but were travelling to a parallel universe. Then later there’s a half-baked speech about how even if you did really go back in time, you couldn’t change anything. And finally an ending that only makes sense if they had actually been back in the 14th century of our own timeline. So don’t try to make too much sense of it.
If somebody wanted to make a movie with this basic premise, there are lots of books by real science fiction writers they could have used. (Crichton writes mediocre science fiction, but for some reason it doesn’t get classified that way; instead it gets released as a mainstream novel and becomes a bestseller. Go figure.)
So… if I get in my Time Machine, and go back to the 14th century, I am in fact NOT going back to my own 14th century, but a parallel universe in which it just happens to be the 14th century?
So… I park my Time Machine, diddle with some knights, distress a few ladies.
Now, how do I get home? Theoretically, if time travel is impossible and I’m just bouncing between parallel universes, wouldn’t the 21st century to which I’m “returning” just be another parallel universe? Would I be waiting for me? Or would I have left earlier for yet another parallel universe, thus leaving a home and family into which I could step?
Read Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. It’s another book about traveling back in time to the Middle Ages, but the premise is that it’s only possible to travel back in time if the traveler will not end up affecting history. It then uses the premise of not being able to change the past to devastating effect.
It also deals with the language issue, albeit with a hand-waving Star Trek-like translation device.
It would make a great movie (annyoing subplot nonwithstanding); too bad Hollywood will never make it because in the end
all the main characters in the past die: the time traveler has arrived at the time of the Black Death.
Uh . . . as is the idea of time travel itself? It’s pretty difficult to logically explain something that is hardly possible, even theoretically.
I agree with everyone who says the book sucked; if you want to write an action novel, Mr. Crichton, why throw in all the time travel bullshit and use modern characters in the 14th century? How is this any more interesting than 14th century characters in the 14th century, or modern characters in a modern action story? Is it even science fiction, since it doesn’t really involve the future in any way, just use a standard science fiction idea (time travel) as a plot gimmick?
Despite claims that his characters go back to some other 14th century, they still leave notes back them that are picked up in our 20th century. Despite the facts that CRichton says Time TRavel isn’t possible, he has pretty straightforwrd time travel in his novel.
I agree - Crichton doesn’t write great novels, and you can find other science fiction writers who cover the same ground. Generally better. But Crichton can get the publicity, somehow. God knows how or why. He loves the idea that people will want to use the science/technology to create a super theme park (Westworld, Jurassic Park, Timeline, where at one point they discuss sending people into he past for recreation.) But he always has his scientists and engineers – who are so sure that they have all the bases covered – being defeated by something they forgot. He thinks he’s writing about engineering hubris. Engineers and scientists who read his books, on the other hand, are annoyed by his arrogant and clearly short-sighted technologists. You’ll notice he doesn’t have this kind of stuff going on in E.R..
The way the movie raced through the set up, I was afraid that anyone who hadn’t read the book would be hopelessly lost. But, it ended up that they changed so much, it really wasn’t a big deal.
Amusing anecdote:
8 of us went to see it tonight. 4 of us had read the book. The 4 who hadn’t read it really liked the movie. The 4 of us who had were simply tolerant of it.
I think you people need to lighten up. It’s based on a Michael Chricton book, not the workings of Stephen Hawking. It’s like those people who complain that Armageddon isn’t based on actual astrophysics or that Indiana Jones isn’t historically accurate.
Now I haven’t seen this movie yet, but I imagine that it will be the best movie in the “lets travel back in time to hang out with knights” since Martin Lawrences Black Knight.
Your four friends must have thought more of the book than I did. I found the movie slightly more coherent than the book, mostly because the parts where some of the characters are here, and some are there, and you keep forgetting where people are, were mostly left out of the movie.
I know they changed a lot in the movie, but I think I’d have to have actually prefered the book plot to be upset by it I’d wondered how they were going to translate Crichton’s babble about QP into the movie - but they left it out, which amused me greatly. A bad explaination isn’t really much more valuable than none at all, and movie goers have all seen time travel films before, so why put it in?
Was anyone else thrown by Frances O’Connor’s casting as Kate? The only memorable thing I’ve ever seen her in is Manfield Park (and she looked prettier in that, but I guess Kate is supposed to be a geek…) so my mind keep protesting " Fanny Price would never do that!" as she did what were brave things in the book, but less so in the movie. I’m looking forward to one of her next movies though - let’s see if they butcher The Lazarus Child too; but I can picture her as Dr. Chase much more easily than Kate.
I’d wondered how they were going to translate Crichton’s babble about QP into the movie - but they left it out, which amused me greatly. A bad explaination isn’t really much more valuable than none at all, and movie goers have all seen time travel films before, so why put it in?