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Ahoy-hoy,


An auspicious event occurred today: I finally saw Back To The Future 3.


I know, I know. I can already hear a chorus of  "so what" ringing across cyberspace. Why is this occasion even remotely blogworthy? Two reasons: 1. This was one of those movies that while I was vaguely interested in finally seeing, I was never so interested as to actually rent, buy, or borrow it. So it was a matter of waiting for the proper confluence of events(an airing on TV, nothing else on, nothing better to do).

Well, I think it's a good reason.

And, much more importantly, 2. It reminded me of how difficult it is for people like me (obsessive, nitpicky geeks) to enjoy time travel movies.

In such cases, my evil alter-ego, "Buzzkill McSmartass" , rears his ugly head(this is especially problematic when I'm not alone--I've had friends refuse to watch movies with me). Now, I can usually tune him out enough to enjoy good performances, or funny jokes, or the like--but he doesn't go away, he just starts plying me with questions as soon as the film's over. There's nothing on earth Buzzkill McSmartass loves more than ripping a time travel flick to bloody shreds, and since I've also recently seen  the high-concept, low comedy train wreck that is Hot Tub Time Machine(that's a little cruel, it's certainly funny if you don't mind turning off your brain), ol' Buzz has had his knives out for the genre.

So, to placate him, and perhaps share a measure of Geek Wisdom with my beloved readers, I present The 5 Things Every Movie Time Traveler Should Know.

1. YOU'RE ALREADY SCREWED!

In your average time travel film, there will inevitably be a character who has a hissy fit about making sure the timeline isn't altered. They spend the film walking on eggshells, doing their best to make sure none of their actions accidentally screw over the future.

Well guess what Sparky? You pretty much shitcanned history as you know it when you arrived in the past. Sure, maybe you're presence in 1955, or 1986, or whatever will have absolutely no ill effects--but the fact is, you're not supposed to be there. You've added a variable to history--and no one can say what its ultimate effects might be. Even if you get back to the present and everything seems normal, it may be that whatever events your trip to the past set in motion wont have noticeable effects for years, or decades, or centuries--it's impossible to know.

Fact is, if the characters in a time travel film actually took their own advice and did nothing at all to alter history, you'd end up with one boring-ass picture. All I'm saying is if you should, by accident or design, end up in the past, it's pointless to worry about mucking up time--the cow's escaped, no sense in fixing the barn door now.


2. CHANGING THE PAST WON'T CHANGE YOU

Another mainstay of the time travel film is the crucial decision that will result in a signifigantly improved life when the character in question returns to the present. In the aforementioned Hot Tub Time Machine, there's a character named Nick who, back in 1986, had aspirations of becoming a pop star. But by 2010, he's a p-whipped nobody married to a cheating shrew. So, naturally, his trip back in time enabled him to fulfill his ambition--and when he returned to the present, he discovered that not only had he become a very successful recording artist, but he'd actually founded, and was the president of, his own record label. Sounds great, right? Going back to 1986 was the best thing that ever happened to Nick, yes?

JUST ONE SMALL PROBLEM...

The past 24 years that Nick remembers are completely different from the 24 years that the rest of the world remembers--Nick has no clue how to run a record label! That part of his history essentially happened to someone else. How long do you think it's gonna be before his employees realize he has no idea what he's doing? And what about his past as a musician? What if he's asked to play some of his hits for a benefit concert or something? He doesn't know what his hits are, much less how to play them--they were written and performed by someone with 24 years of experience in the music business, not him.

And as for the Back To The Future series--I don't want to judge too harshly, the movies are classics. However, as far back as 1985 I remember being troubled by the notion that Marty has no knowledge of the new, improved present his trip to 1955 created.

Think of it this way--we as individuals are shaped by the environments we are raised in. Consider a child raised by George and Lorraine McFly as we knew them at the start of the first film--the offspring of a gutless corporate drone and a depressed, overweight housewife. Now picture the son of the McFly's version 2.0-- raised by a smooth, confident, successful author and his cheerful, attractive wife. Clearly, the end result would be two completely different people--two Marty McFlys that probably wouldn't recognize each other if they met on the street.

I'm not necessarily saying that changing one's past for the better is a bad idea--I merely point out that if you do, the You that you remember won't be the same You the world remembers. And you better be ready for that, or it'll seriously fuck with your head.

3. RELAX, YOU'VE GOT A FREAKIN' TIME MACHINE!

This is for movies where the characters have access to a relatively reliable and easily operated means of time travel--and nowhere is it better(and more amusingly)illustrated than in the Bill And Ted movies.

In the third act of Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure, the duo is confronted with a number of challenges which are easily resolved through the use of time travel. My favorite is the matter of stealing Ted's father's keys to release the "historical figures" from jail. At the beginning of the film, Ted's dad found that his keys were missing and asked Ted if he'd taken them, he answered honestly that he didn't know where they were--because the decision to steal them wasn't made until after they were actually stolen, and Ted didn't realize he'd done it.

BILL: We've gotta remember to do this or else it won't happen!
TED: But it did happen--hey! It was me who stole my dad's keys!

This is called Reverse Causality, and it's a lot of fun to think about. By the end, they realize all they have to do is remember to go back and set things in motion, and whatever they need will appear(Trash can, remember a trash can!)

Here we have a rather satirical example of what most characters in such movies never think of. Truth be told, there's really never any need for any kind of tension or worry in a time travel film--something goes wrong, go back and fix it, period. Most of these films will do their best to short-circuit this concept by establishing the dangers of time travel and how they increase exponentially with repeat trips. Which brings us back to Item 1...

And remember "The Terminator Principle"--Time travel means literally endless possibilities for sequels, prequels, and TV shows.

4. DONT TRY TO EXPLAIN HOW IT WORKS, YOU'LL ONLY EMBARRASS YOURSELF

Fortunately, most time travel movies--particularly the ones that are more comedy than sci-fi, understand this. However, once in a while, you'll find films with a high enough opinion of themselves to trot out their questionable theories of temporal mechanics, to the endless delight of nitpickers and nerds like me. Filmmakers of the world, heed my warning: Unless your screenplay was co-written by Stephen Hawking, DON'T BOTHER.

My favorite example of this phenomenon comes from the ultraviolent Van Damme vehicle Timecop. This film explains that while travel to the past is possible, travel to the future isn't as it hasn't happened yet. You don't need to be a sci-fi geek or a Physics major to immediately spot holes in this concept.

Most obviously, if travel to the future is impossible, then how do you get back to the present? Time doesn't work that way--if you accept that travel through time in one direction is possible, then you have to accept travel in the other. It's like this: Time as we know it is one-dimensional, it only goes forward. The only way travel to another point in time is even theoretically possible is to assume at least one more dimension. And if we picture time as two-dimensional, then obviously one would be able to move backwards AND forwards.

To say travel to the future is impossible because it hasn't happened yet is absurd--because in the same sense that the future doesn't exist yet, the past doesn't exist anymore. If anything, I'd assume that travel to the future would be easier, as time's already going that way anyway(don't know if this is true, I 'm pulling most of this out of my ass).

It would seem to me that the makers of hard sci-fi feel it's necessary to find some way to explain how their time traveling doowhacky functions, but the best time travel stories have proven this isn't the case:  Terminator never offered a lick of explanation for how the "time-displacement equipment" worked, and the movie didn't suffer a bit. An even better(and much nerdier)example is Dr. Who. Now I've gotta be careful here, all I know remotely well of Dr. Who is Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor(and half the reason I watched that was to ogle Billie Piper), it's my secret geek shame--well, it was. Anyhoo, as I understand it there's no living human capable of understanding how the TARDIS works, I'm pretty sure even the Doctor doesn't understand it fully(Doctor Who fans--feel free to correct me), but this lack of information hasn't dissuaded forty-something years worth of diehard fans.

5. THERE'S ONLY ONE PAST.

Guess what:

90% percent of what I've written here is utterly meaningless(I mean pertaining to this subject, not in a deeper, abstact sense). See, history only happened one way. If it were feasible to go back ten years and, say, propose to the one that got away, the two of you would already be happily married. You may have just now decided to go back and fix things, but whatever it is you did or attempted to do happpened ten years ago as far as history is concerned. So unless you've got a ring on your finger and 2.5 healthy children--its safe to say that your endeavor will fail.

Oddly enough, the best example of what I'm on about here is in Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban. Specifically, when Harry and Hermione use the Time Turner to save the Hippogriff, Buckbeak.

If you notice, nothing is actually changed--we the audience never see the executioner's axe behead Buckbeak. We hear the axe chop into something which we assume is the Hippogriff, but when they go back we learn that the axe was driven into a pumpkin, presumably out of frustration as Buckbeak himself had mysteriously vanished.

More important is earlier when Harry encounters a mysterious figure who saves him from the Dementors by summoning a Patronus. Though Harry believes that somehow his father returned to protect him, he was actually watching his near-future self, and keep in mind this happened BEFORE Harry and Hermione even considered traveling back in time.

History doesn't sit back and wait for us to decide if and when we'll change it--if we can, it's already been done(see the Bill and Ted example in item 3).

So at long last we come to the end of this drivel, and I'm sure there are folks out there who would like nothing more than to explain to me how laughably weak my grasp of temporal theory is.

How do I know this? Because of what I have decided to call "Scooter's Law of Exponential Increase in Nerd Magnitude"(y'know what? how 'bout just "Scooter's Law"?)

Scooter's Law states that whenever a nerd publicly proposes a theory concerning a work of fiction, particularly if it's scientific or pseudoscientific, an even bigger nerd will inevitably appear to debunk said theory, and a bigger nerd still will appear to debunk the debunker, et cetera. If left unchecked, nerd magnitude will continue to increase exponentially until it destroys the universe--so be careful, Geeks!

Ta