The time traveler, good-natured gentleman that he is, ignores the hologram’s snootiness and continues asking urgent questions.
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Good and bad writing are on a spectrum. Underlying this spectrum is the suspension of disbelief. That is, viewers should forget where they are while watching.
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By making the Eloi more hearty and capable of surviving on their own, the writers destroy the seriousness of the threat the Morlocks represent.
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In this film, the time traveler has a girlfriend whom he is trying to save from death. But can time travel really alter the course of events?
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The film demonstrates that time travel captivates audiences if writers avoid goofy paradoxes and focus on story premises that offer believable emotional stakes.
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In the 1895 novel, Wells was working out a Communist-inspired theory of evolution but the 1960 film’s screenwriters chose an anti-war narrative instead.
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The time traveler is alarmed to discover that all the knowledge and achievements of man have been lost and he almost despairs.
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Over the last several months, I’ve talked about time travel. Originally, I’d planned to discuss the trope in more detail — when and how to use it, when and how not to use it, and whether it was better to rely on fate as a stabilizing force in the narrative. Or is it better to play around with various paradoxes? But then I realized that no in-depth discussion about the trope would be complete without reviewing the novel and subsequent movie that started it all. The Time Machine (1895) by H.G. Wells (1866–1946) can only be described as the most notable work on time travel. In fact, Wells is often thought of as the man who invented science fiction itself. Read More ›
There are kernels of a good movie in A Sound of Thunder (2005), if one is willing to look past the poor production.
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A conundrum emerges: Even if they can reset the timeline, the time travelers will have no way of warning their future selves that this incident ever happened.
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The butterfly effect is one of those possibilities that sounds frighteningly plausible until one starts going into detail.
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We learn that the butterfly effect only alters the evolution of biological material and the weather, and the effects start with plants.
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We learn that expedition leader Ryer is hoping to use his time travel trips to help bring extinct species back to life.
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I compliment the writers for constructing a scenario where it is actually conceivable for time travelers to enter the past without altering it.
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I think “A Sound of Thunder” has remained popular partially because the butterfly effect is a unique idea if nothing else.
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If writers make the old victories meaningless, the new victories will be meaningless as well, and no one will care about whatever new story appears.
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I feel confident saying that the franchise is destroyed and will never recover, unless the creators admit that they’ve made some mistakes but that isn’t likely.
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The mimicry-to-genuine humanity process can only work as a creative tool if the robot understands that humanity is an ideal to chase.
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Last Saturday, we saw that Sarah, Grace and Dani, realized that the person sending Sarah the mysterious texts was living precisely where Grace was supposed to go if she ran into trouble. Because the address is in Texas our dysfunctional trio must cross the border. Dani knows a guy she convinces to help them. Well, actually Grace cuts a fly in half, and that convinces him. But anyway. While traveling to the border, they hop on top of a train with a bunch of undocumented immigrants. During this ride, Sarah comes to believe that Dani is really another her. Sarah seems happy to relinquish her fatalistic mantle, but Grace is annoyed by this development. A less likeable Grace I mention Read More ›
There are plenty of dumb errors in movies, but Dark Fate made the most obvious mistake I’ve ever seen.
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