Jay Walker
Temporal Navigator
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In case you haven't seen this trailer, I wanted to bring it to this site's attention.
So far, I have only seen this preview and haven't watched the movie yet. However, I would still like to critique the premise that the trailer offers because it highlights two major Hollywood Time Travel trope that leans on outdated time-travel concepts as a crutch.
1. Plutonium. Having Danny Trejo playing a bad guy that has plutonium stolen from him is a nod to Back to the Future. Doc Brown steals plutonium from Libyan terrorists in order to produce 1.21 gigawatts of electricity. However, that is not how nuclear power works. The fission reaction at a power plant produces heat. Heat to boil water. Boiled water produces steam. Steam turns a turbine. The turbine generates electricity. Btw, I think it would take an entire nuclear power plant running at full tilt to produce that much electricity.
2. In this movie trailer, the writers try to introduce the grandfather paradox into the script. I assume they are also introducing the audience to the Many Worlds Interpretation. They ask the question, if you go back in time one minute into the past and kill your past self, suddenly you become someone that doesn't belong there. However, if we use TT_0's narrative we would come to a totally different conclusion. Instead of being a rogue element, you actually just become... you. You are dead. In the worldline that you came from one minute into the future nothing would have changed. The minute ago worldline that you murdered yourself, now there is just a different future that contains an unsolved random murder of you. Then there is a point towards the end where the protagonist seems to have brought back with him, many versions of himself that came from recent worldlines. I will have to watch to figure out why that would be useful, but if you take yourself from different worldlines, now there are many worldlines that you mysteriously disappear. That is all that would happen. No causality paradoxes.
Why am I bringing this up?
I’m not suggesting Titor had the ‘right’ version of time travel, but compared to Hollywood’s decades of noise, his myth offers a rare moment of clarity, that is still simple enough of mechanisms, and layered consequences, for most audiences to not feel talked down to and a respect for causality that most scripts avoid or whisk away with magic. E.G. Hand disappearing in front of his face while playing Johnny B. Goode.
I will still watch this movie, but with John's posts in my mind, watching movies like this will not be like watching Back to the Future as a kid, it will feel condescending, like Hollywood thinks I am stupid.
Shout out if you feel the same way or let me know if you disagree.
- J