Introduction
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Instead I will discuss how time travel and fiction are the perfect combination. Let’s face it, everything you have probably heard about time travel came from a film or a book (unless you’ve read my article on Born’s theory of multiple universes, on the website above). And no, the ‘that’s just Hollywood’ argument doesn’t hold true. I hate to say it, but more often than not, they do put up a good argument, and expose you to some of the fantastic complexities of what time travel would be and could be, and consider time travel’s many ramifications.
I’ll also discuss one of the main charges laid against using
time travel in fiction, namely that it is mostly used as a
deus ex machina, and is another example of writers
being lazy. Okay, this happens occasionally, but I’ll try to
show you that occurrences of this are few and far between,
and these movies are largely seen as bad movies anyway.But more than anything, I want to discuss some clear rules that I think you need to follow to make a great time travel film. If only everyone followed these rules, this Geek VS Geek wouldn’t be needed, because everyone would be pro-time travel in fiction.
Oh, and a MASSIVE spoiler alert for the films discussed in this article! But if you haven’t seen 12 Monkeys by now, that’s your fault, not mine.
But first…lighten up
Fiction is fiction. Have you heard of the phrase ‘willing
suspension of belief’? You really need it for a time travel
film. Of course time travel is bollocks (or do I want you to
believe this? Muhahahaha…), so the first thing you need to
do when you see time travel in a movie is say to yourself
“okay, let’s see where this goes”. Did you walk out of
Déjà Vu when Denzel Washington was told about Snow
White? No, you went along with it. Did you walk out of
Click when Adam Sandler was handed the remote? Okay, it
this case you probably should have. Even I wish I had.By hanging around, more often that not in time travel films you get those magnificent pay offs. Such as learning that James was seeing himself in that haunting childhood memory in 12 Monkeys, and the brain bruise you got when you consider that it was John Conner that sent Kyle Reese back into the past for him to become his dad in Terminator. These are the movies that make you think long and hard about them for days and weeks after they’ve finished.
These movies work because they convince you to willingly
suspend your disbelief in time travel, by specifically set
out an internal logic to their usage of time travel. And
even in movies where they are deliberately having fun with
what are seen as the normal ‘rules’ of time travel (more
later), they still get you to ‘sign up’ into believing where
they are taking you, no matter how silly things are about to
get. Think of Basil in Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who
Shagged Me, assuring Austin about time travel by saying
“I suggest you don’t worry about those things and just enjoy
yourself”, then turns to you, the audience, and says “That
goes for you all too!”. Think of Rufus at the start of
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, assuring us “Don’t
worry, it’ll all make sense. I’m a professional”. That he
was.So, what exactly is a time travel film?
This is perhaps not a question asked enough. A lot of movies that have time travel in them, in my opinion, aren’t really time travel movies. Stories that involve a character being ‘transported’ far into the past (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Black Knight) or into the future (Planet of the Apes, Les Visiteurs) are what we should actually call ‘alternative history’ stories. In these stories, time travel has merely been a plot device to get a character from A to B, similar to a tornado in The Wizard of Oz, or a red pill in The Matrix. How exactly they got to the past or future is not important. In fact, according to these ‘alternative history’ stories, it seems being knocked unconscious by a blow to the back of the head is the most common route of time travel. In this case, the deus ex machina criticisms of time travel are probably valid.
To me, you only have a time travel story when the EFFECTS of
time travel are considered. In other words, the
possibilities and ramifications of time travel must be
openly discussed by the characters, either in a comedic
manner (Hot Tub Time Machine, Frequently Asked Questions
About Time Travel, Back to the Future) or in a serious,
earnest manner (Donnie Darko, Primer). And whilst
you most likely won’t hear the characters call them by what
they are, by doing so the storyteller is getting you to
consider the most fundamental concept of all time travel
films, temporal paradoxes.Temporal paradoxes, put simply are events that would seem to suggest that time travel can’t possibly happen. And yet, we just can’t get enough of them in our stories. There are many types of temporal paradoxes, such as
• The predestination paradox, or ‘whatever is meant to happen, happens’. Easily the gloomiest of the paradoxes, because it basically implies there is no free will. James in 12 Monkeys, living in a post-apocalyptic future and haunted by a recurring dream of a man dying, agrees to go back in time to stop this future world ever happening. But all he manages to do is inadvertently create the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, and then dies in vain, as a twelve-year old James watches on. The Butterfly Effect is also riddled with predestination paradoxes. It’s a sad paradox because despite knowing what is to happen in the future, no matter what you do it must happen that way. No matter what you try to do to change it, you were always going to do that, and your actions were always going to have no effect, or even worse, cause the future you are trying to avoid. Ouch.
• Ontological paradox, or ‘where exactly did you come
from?’. Again, there are many examples of these, but my
favorite would be the “Johnny B. Goode” song paradox. Marty
McFly, from 1985, plays Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” at a
1955 school dance. Chuck Berry’s cousin is there, and liking
what he is hearing, he gets Chuck Berry on the phone to hear
“the new sound he’s been looking for”. So who wrote the
song? Or was it ever created? The whole Terminator
series is also built on many Ontological complexes. Other
than John Connor sending his soon-to-be father back in time
to knock up his mum, there are also the events of
Terminator II: Judgement Day where scientists create
what will become Skynet from the wreckage of the
Terminator sent back previously. So apparently the
knowledge of how to create the machines has no origin.• And of course, my nemesis, the grandfather paradox. Surely, the killer for most time-travel hopefuls. Being able to go back and undertake autoinfanticide, thereby stopping you being born and ever stepping in the time machine seems to be an open and shut case against time travel. So how do they get around this in stories? You miss, the gun locks, your grand-dad gets away, it wasn’t actually your grand-dad, and so on. This solution to
the grandfather paradox is known
as restriction action resolution, but let’s stick to time
travel movies for now. Marty literally fading away in
Back to the Future is another example, though why he
faded away slowly is also interesting…These themes are what make a film about time travel. It’s not when an astronaut finds the remains of the Statue of Liberty on a beach. It’s certainly not Superman circling around the Earth to turn back time. This is perhaps one of the greatest deus ex machina moments of all time, so much so that Superman himself is nowadays referred to as a “deus ex”. It’s an average plot device, and not even a decent ‘got ya’ moment. It is NOTHING to do with what makes a time travel film.
First rule of time travel club. DO talk about time travel club.
As I said at the start, I believe there are certain ‘rules’ that you should follow to make a decent time travel film. Follow them well and you end up with a great time travel film. And the first rule is to make sure your audience knows that the movie is about time travel. Sometimes even stating the bleeding obvious is needed. You need to get across to the audience the internal logic of the movie as soon as possible. There are so many interpretations of time travel nowadays, you have to make sure your audience knows which one you are following, or how your new one will work.
For example, Back to the Future. It meets the rule
IN THE TITLE. No one missed that one. But very quickly Doc
is ‘explaining’ time travel to Marty (leading to the first
of many “That’s heavy, Doc!” cries), and he even gives us
the amount of energy needed, 1.21 jiggawatts (or is that
gigawatts?). Doc serves throughout the trilogy as a guide to
Marty, and to the audience, on how time travel works (what
you can do, can’t do, and absolutely should not do, but do
anyway) in the Back to the Future world. He
explains what would happen if you were to come into contact
with yourself from the future, and explains the different
alterative realities that have formed in Back to the
Future II. In 12 Monkeys we get the creepy scientists explaining how time travel works, by how they tell James what he needs to do (they of course do a poor effort with this, which is part of the movie’s intrigue). In Bill and Ted, Rufus sternly tells the two that the time in San Dimas is still passing no matter where and when they are, so they need to make sure they are not late to their history presentation. Whoa? They are in a time machine, how can they be late? But in the Bill and Ted world, that’s the rules, so you make sure you are not late.
Second rule of time travel. Don’t expect to succeed.
Another reason I love the concept of time travel is the
whole mad scientist angle. Not necessarily the kooky,
loveable mad scientist that Doc Brown did so well, but a man
dabbling with things well beyond his realm. Think of Victor
Frankenstein creating life from nothing; a gift thought to
bring great promise, but then brings unknown horrors, as
seen in his monster. Time travel has been this monster for
many a protagonist in time travel stories.Often time travel is created or undertaken to try to change or stop a horrible event in the past ever occurring. But by the end we learn that all they did was at best delay the event (Terminator, The Butterfly Effect, the latest Time Machine version -- terrible by the way), or at worst contribute to the event happening in the first place (12 Monkeys, Terminator II), hence the pre-destination paradox. These types of stories can tell trace their heritage back to the original ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ stories, Oedipus and Macbeth.
For me, these time travel movies serve as a cautionary tale on the consequences of taking our desires too far, such as dabbling with time travel. Victor Frankenstein thought he was creating life, but by playing god he created a monster. In time travel stories, man’s desire to avoid an event in the future or in the past by becoming a ‘master of time’ only seems to ensure that the event happens. In this case it is man’s desire to time travel, to control his own destiny, that is the ‘monster’. Thus, man’s most horrible creation is its unrelenting drive to seek what it most desires to the bitter end.
As Bill would say… Whoa.
Third rule. Don’t you dare cop out and go for the ‘Hollywood ending’.
This is a important one for me, and of all the rules the one
that separates a decent time travel film from a good one, or
even a great one. Films that don’t follow this rule are
undoubtedly those that my formidable opponent has used to
show how annoying time travel films can sometimes be. And
for these ones I would agree. There are few things more
annoying then when you willingly suspend your disbelief,
thereby going along with a film’s internal logic, only for
the film to smash their own logic to pieces just to score a
happy ending. Most commonly this is done when a character from the future/past returns to the past/future, having left behind the new love that he/she has found, knowing that now they will be forever separated by time. And then what happens? They meet someone that looks EXACTLY like the love they’ve just lost. Ugh. Les Visiteurs is a good example of this (though I would classify this as an ‘alternative history’ film so I won’t defend it).
Another film somewhat guilty of this is Back to the Future III. Deservedly, this series has given us some of the best time travel movies ever made, but the last scene of the last film still irritates me. Did Doc Brown really have to come back? After nearly two films of chastising Marty for wanting to use the time machine, and how he never should have created the time machine in the first place, he makes another one right at the end. Sigh. In the film’s defence, I’m guessing they did this because they wanted one more scene with Doc acting as Marty ‘guide’, as he had done throughout the series, to tell him that his future is now his and his alone to write. Hmm, perhaps not worth the breaking of internal logic, but I may be in the minority on that one.
Time travel is by no means the only genre known to break
their internal logic towards the end of the film, but
perhaps this annoys me more in time travel films because you
really have to invest a lot more in a time travel movie. It
irritates me when you’re told all along that something can’t
happen, and then it does. The Lake House; why oh
why? If he could have just turned up like that, why didn’t
he just do this earlier? Frequency; so what, now he
suddenly hasn’t died from cancer and so is still
alive to save the day. But then why didn’t his son already
‘know’ that? Err… internal logic failing… belief in humanity
dwindling... eject… eject…So… time travel movies are good right?
Absolutely. Look, any genre has those truly horrible films
in its family, doing their best to give the rest a bad name.
But I would say there are far more great time travel movies
than there are bad ones. And because you have to invest more
in a time travel film, when it is a good one the ‘pay off’
is much greater and far more rewarding than for other
genres. And as for those movies that just use time travel as a plot device, it can be done successfully, but only with care. It is a bit of risk, but storytellers use it because they know that if it works, it really does pay off. A habitual user of this plot device is undoubtedly Star Trek. Consider Star Trek Generations. Was time travel used just to get William Shatner into the film? Perhaps. Did this lead to a crass movie? No. And Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home; was the need to travel back to the 20th century a bit of gimmick? Yes. Was the movie still great? Absolutely.
For me, as long as you follow the rules above, and stick to
your film’s internal logic, you can’t go wrong. The rest is
fair game. Have fun with it (Back to the Future, Bill
and Ted, Austin Powers), make it creepy (12
Monkeys, The Jacket), or make your audience think (Donnie
Darko…still scratching my head over that one). Or even
make a new form of time travel; there is no reason why you
have to follow the logic of other films. Trust me, there are
numerous volumes of scientific journals out there devoted to
the theory of time travel, so you can argue almost anything.
Go ahead, give it a go.Personally, I think we’re due for a parallel universes time travel movie. The attempt made by The One was… shall we say… lacking…
--
William Cashin
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