Last Saturday, I looked at the way the opening for the movie A Sound of Thunder (2005) compared with Ray Bradbury’s original short story, “A Sound of Thunder,” as well as with the Terminator franchise. I complimented the writers for addressing, at the beginning of the film, some of the time travel and other issues that were neglected in Bradbury’s classic.

The writers made a noble attempt to present a disaster scenario revolving around the butterfly effect. The theory behind the famous effect is that tiny changes in the past can, over time, produce great changes. Unfortunately, the movie still falls short. That’s because the butterfly effect — as presented — is simply implausible.

Attention to detail

The movie opens with a time safari, led by Travis Ryer. The travelers find the notorious T. rex, which steps into a tar pit as it tries to face them. Travis fires his gun, and the others work together to bring down the beast. Unbeknownst to the wealthy businessman who has paid for this trip, the entire hunt is actually theater. No one’s gun can fire until Travis fires his weapon first. The beast is destined to die in the tar pit anyway, and if that weren’t enough, a volcano is going to explode only a few minutes later.

These details demonstrate that the scientists who’ve constructed the hunt have spent a great deal of time making sure that the hunters cannot alter the past because they know about and fear the butterfly effect. Remember, things will later go awry because an unfortunate businessman will step on a butterfly…

But if one stops to think about this setup, even killing the butterfly would be inconsequential. Presumably, the butterfly will die once the volcano explodes. Although it could try to fly to safety, such a small bug could hardly escape the cloud of ash shown later in the film.

A notable absence at the post-hunt party

Anyway, after the hunt, the businessman is very proud of himself, and the owner of Time Safari, Charles Hatton, is sure to flatter his latest client. However, Hatton is annoyed when he learns that the leader of the expedition, Ryer, is not present at the party. He finds him in the lab working with Tammy, the AI who controls the time machine. Ryer is trying to reconstruct animal DNA because, a few years before, a virus had wiped out the last of the animals on earth. He hopes to clone them back into existence, so he’s been studying Tammy’s records of his expeditions, trying to gather new pieces of biological information after each trip.

Hatton confronts Ryer, forcing him to attend the party so he can mingle with the clients. But as Ryer is grudgingly humoring Hatton, a protestor walks in and sprays fake blood on the “victorious” businessman. The woman is quickly escorted away from the party by security, but Ryer follows her. He learns that this woman is named Sonia Rand, and she is the scientist who built Tammy.

Rand claims that she had no idea Tammy was going to be used for such a dubious purpose, and she warns Ryer about the potential dangers of traveling into the past. Ryer tries to explain why he’s helping Hatton by showing her a holographic image of a lion. He tells her he’s trying to bring animals back into existence, but Rand is unimpressed.

The red herring arrives

Shortly after his fateful chat with Dr. Rand, Ryer is leading yet another expedition with two more wealthy businessmen, Eckles and Middleton. At this point in the story, it’s important to mention that Eckles is meant to serve as the red herring. In the end, the viewer finds out that he wasn’t the one who stepped on the butterfly; it was Middleton.

This is one of the departures from the short story that I didn’t care for. There was no point in adding this subversion. Why alter Eckles as a character? It didn’t clear up any ambiguity or correct a plot hole. Somebody simply changed the plot, thinking it would be clever. It wasn’t.

A departure from the short story that worked

Anyway, during this next expedition, Travis goes to fire his weapon at the already doomed T. Rex. But it doesn’t fire. Turns out, one of the staff had placed a leaking case of ice bullets beside his gun, shorting the controls. One of the departures from the story that I liked was, instead of having the groups shoot regular bullets at the creature only to later cut them out, the writers have them shoot ice rounds so that they’ll melt inside the T. Rex.

This was clever, and I also liked the fact that this bit of cleverness was one of the things that led to the time safari’s undoing. I always enjoy an ironic twist.

Chaos theory lite

What I didn’t care for was their knock-off version of chaos theory, which is later introduced by one of the group’s regular members, Marcus. The writers basically have him state some science mumbo jumbo, which equivocates accidents with physics. It’s all science talk for Murphy’s Law: Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. This was unnecessary, and the explanation is just used as a way to explain the unlikelihood of a bunch of ice bullets being placed on top of Ryer’s gun.

Building up to the climax

Returning to the ruined hunting trip, Eckles and Middleton are told to run further down the path while Ryer and his goddaughter, Jenny Krase, use flashlights to distract the T. rex long enough for Marcus to fix the gun.

Once Marcus does so, Ryer uses the gun on the T. rex, which falls into the tar pit where it’s supposed to. From here, the movie once again departs from the short story because when the hunting party returns from the past, it looks like all is well.

I would’ve preferred for this scene to play out more like Bradbury’s story, even at the risk of making Ryer more unlikable as a character. The writers didn’t need to go as far as having Ryer try to shoot Eckles, but they could’ve had Ryer furious with Eckles for something he did during the botched hunt. Perhaps Eckles could’ve lost his cool and almost jumped off the path, or something. Why bother using a short story as the basis for a movie if that movie doesn’t include any of the story’s scenes?

After everyone returns from the hunt, Middleton confronts Hatton, furious. But Hatton uses his charm to placate the enraged client. Then Ryer returns home believing he’s narrowly averted a catastrophe. But overnight a strange wave washes over the city — and I’ll cover what happens then next Saturday.

Here are the first two parts of my three-part review of A Sound of Thunder:

Does the famous butterfly effect make sense? I am going to look at the 1952 short story first — the premises and the plot — before tackling the 2005 film. I think “A Sound of Thunder” has remained popular partially because the butterfly effect is a unique idea if nothing else.

and

A Sound of Thunder: Comparing the film with the short story What’s the same? What’s changed? What works and what doesn’t? I compliment the writers for constructing a scenario where it is actually conceivable for time travelers to enter the past without altering it.