Things the movies have taught me

[Tippster]

Originally posted by D.St.:
...Here's my rub with time travel movies. There are all sorts of these movies with the main character going into the future to visit his or herself how ever many years later. However, in the event you are able to jump to the future instantaneously, you wouldn't be able to meet yourself. Your physical form would have been absent in the time between your leaving the past and arriving the in future. Therefore, you wouldn't be able to see yourself as you may appear x-amount of years in the future...

The timeline works as long as you return to the "past." The obvious problem is that your future "you" would know that you're coming, since you have to return to become the future "you."



Boy, Geek talk makes me soooo HOT!

Let's talk about another impossibility - Warp speed travel!

 

[Run&Gun]

Every six-shooter in every western is capable of firing at least 18 to 24 rounds without being reloaded.

 

[Shaky & Blue]

Originally posted by D.St.:
However, in the event you are able to jump to the future instantaneously, you wouldn't be able to meet yourself. Your physical form would have been absent in the time between your leaving the past and arriving the in future. Therefore, you wouldn't be able to see yourself as you may appear x-amount of years in the future.

Sure you would, because in the future you will have already come back from your time travel trip into your own time. Then, when you see yourself there, you can be sure you got back to your own time safely. If you get there and CAN'T find yourself, you should worry, because it means that you aren't going to return to your own time.

 

[D.St.]

Originally posted by Shaky & Blue: Sure you would, because in the future you will have already come back from your time travel trip into your own time. Then, when you see yourself there, you can be sure you got back to your own time safely. If you get there and CAN'T find yourself, you should worry, because it means that you aren't going to return to your own time.

The movie I was referencing was Back to the Future II, where Marty McFly was able to go see his own future without having been there. I now see how you can see yourself in the future. Hopefully, if I'm in this situation and I get to meet my future self, I'll be filthy rich from all of the investments I came back and made after visiting the future.

 

[D.St.]

Two more rubs:

1. It seems as though everytime someone needs to assimilate into a place of work, they always lure a security guard into a hiding place, knock him/her out, steal their uniform to almost never be discovered. What would happen if the security guard got the upper hand and kicked their ass? Plus, wouldn't someone around the office notice a stranger walking around snooping into things?

2. No matter how many times someone is shot or what kind of ammunition is used, they always manage to stay alive long enough to impart their last words to someone.

 

[<TeeVee>]

you can also go live going down the freeway with the reporter strapped to the side of the van and the photog shooting out the window.

from "The Chase" with Charlie Sheen

 

[SeattleShooter]

Originally posted by D.St.:
In a lot of space movies, it doesn't seem to matter which planet in the universe you're on, the conditions will almost always be suitable enough for humans to walk around in street clothes.

Here's my rub with time travel movies. There are all sorts of these movies with the main character going into the future to visit his or herself how ever many years later. However, in the event you are able to jump to the future instantaneously, you wouldn't be able to meet yourself. Your physical form would have been absent in the time between your leaving the past and arriving the in future. Therefore, you wouldn't be able to see yourself as you may appear x-amount of years in the future.

OK...all three Back to the Future movies are my favorite movie. Dont hate me but I do love them. That movie is so tightly written it is sick. I got the DVD and in the bonus programs it explains the problems with time travel and the story. This was one. It is soooo good that I am going to go home today and watch it!

 

[<Cobra Commander>]

One guy has a much better chance of killing all twenty guys than those twenty have of killing that one guy.

All babies born appear to be a few months old.

Guy receives a call from someone, telling him to turn on the TV, because there's an important news story involving him or whatever. Guy turns on the TV, and that report is just beginning.

When a group of people are watching something on TV, immediately following the most important part of the news report, there's always someone there to step up to the TV and turn it off.

The lone guy in the back seat of any vehicle always sits in the middle, just so he can be seen better by the camera.

All cross country road trips are driven on two-lane county highways, instead of interstate highways.

Nazi uniforms: One size fits all.

Set in Chicago...shot in Toronto.

 

[D.St.]

Originally posted by Seattle Shooter:
OK...all three Back to the Future movies are my favorite movie. Dont hate me but I do love them. That movie is so tightly written it is sick. I got the DVD and in the bonus programs it explains the problems with time travel and the story. This was one. It is soooo good that I am going to go home today and watch it!

I have the DVD's myself though I have yet to watch the commentary. They're some of my favorite movies as well, and they are for the most part very tightly written. For instance, I love how Twin Pines Mall all of a sudden becomes Lone Pines Mall after Marty destroys the one of trees for which the mall is named.

Unfortunately, I'm one of those geeks that can't watch a movie without trying to find holes in them. Other than what I've mentioned, the Back to the Future triolgy doesn't have many.

Here's a question that my brother and I always discuss when Part III comes on: After Marty and Doc defeat Buford Tannen, they haul butt to steal the train and take-off for the future. If Buford's no longer a problem, why don't they just stick around and repair the DeLorean instead of stealing the train?

Oh, this is sooooo much fun!!

 

[Run&Gun]

Originally posted by D.St.:


Here's a question that my brother and I always discuss when Part III comes on: After Marty and Doc defeat Buford Tannen, they haul butt to steal the train and take-off for the future. If Buford's no longer a problem, why don't they just stick around and repair the DeLorean instead of stealing the train?

Oh, this is sooooo much fun!! [/QB]

Then the movie would be too long.

 

[SHOOTFIRST]

Oh Oh!!!

I got one!!!

Never tell a woman to wait in the car, cause we all know that she will NEVER stay in the car!!!

 

[SeattleShooter]

Originally posted by SHOOTFIRST:
Oh Oh!!!

I got one!!!

Never tell a woman to wait in the car, cause we all know that she will NEVER stay in the car!!!

I agree with that one but it is also true in reality!!!!

 

[PhrozenPhoto]

Originally posted by <TeeVee>:
you can also go live going down the freeway with the reporter strapped to the side of the van and the photog shooting out the window.

from "The Chase" with Charlie Sheen

The funny thing, and someone with more technical knowledge than I can correct me, but rumor has it the next generation of microwave, using something like CODFM or some other gobbldygook of letters will allow you to drive and maintain a clean signal, I thought I saw an ad in a trade pub. where some station testing it used it in like a live traffic mobile for their morning show or something like that. I could however be totally off base.

And while we're on the subject of movies, even though there are some pretty big stretchs, you have to give props to Broadcast News, especially the scene with Joan Cusak running the tape in at the last second. Granted the un-realistic part of it was the tape wasn't even fully in the machine and it was airing... but who hasn't had that mad dash to the tape room before? In our pre-server days our tape room was actually one floor up from the edit area. Well thought out!

 

[shootist]

My son just gave me this one:

No laboratory spill can simply be cleaned up.

It will, instead, unquestionably result in a genetic mutation. Unfailingly a wimp will become a superhero and a jerk will become an arch-villain.

 

[BluesDaddy]

Originally posted by KCPhotog:

quote: Originally posted by <TeeVee>:
you can also go live going down the freeway with the reporter strapped to the side of the van and the photog shooting out the window.

from "The Chase" with Charlie Sheen

The funny thing, and someone with more technical knowledge than I can correct me, but rumor has it the next generation of microwave, using something like CODFM or some other gobbldygook of letters will allow you to drive and maintain a clean signal, I thought I saw an ad in a trade pub. where some station testing it used it in like a live traffic mobile for their morning show or something like that. I could however be totally off base.

More Info Here

 

[queen of blue]

If you are an alien-chasing FBI agent DO NOT - UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES - drop your cell phone. If you do drop your cellphone, just assume that something bad will happen to you in the next minute or two.

Yeah, it's TV not the movies - but still if I had a nickel for every time I uttered "Uh oh, there goes Mulder's phone...."

 

[Eye of a Tiger]

You know your the hero when...

after a twenty minute car chase in which you have blown through several busy intersections, caused pedestrians to dive out of the way, you've hit many road signs and garbage cans, gone airborne...

then you chase the bad guy on foot a few blocks while firing on a dead run never hitting anyone including the bad guy...

in the end there are massive explosions and fire, twenty dead bodies....

You never get hasseled by the Police...or you never get asked to do a live interview.

 

[Oblivion]

all villians must offer the hero an opportunity to join them.

bad guys must tell every excrustiating detail of their master plan rather than killing the hero while they have the chance before he escapes.

the villans are always rich.

 

[Shaky & Blue]

Originally posted by D.St.:
The movie I was referencing was Back to the Future II, where Marty McFly was able to go see his own future without having been there.

It's been a while since I've seen those movies, but I think it's okay that he could see his own future because, in that future, he had already returned to the past to screw up the rest of his life. If he had gotten to his future and found that in that future he had disappeared as a teenager and never returned, he then should have been worried.

I had more of a problem with him fading out in the first movie when things weren't going well. If you go to the past and screw up your own creation, you wouldn't simply disappear, because that past is not really yours. The past you knew would still exist as a separate past from the one you're currently in. These stories always assume that there's only one timeline, but that can't be true the way these stories are written. If it's actually possible to change the past (which is arguable), then from the point at which you change it another timeline would branch off into a separate past, leading to a different future. Otherwise, the change you make is already part of your past and cannot be changed, because your present already has the changes you make in the past factored into it.

Let's assume, however, that you can change the past. If you were then to try to move back into the future, you would be moving along a new timeline and would find a different future from the one you once knew. Your old future would still exist on another timeline. You would just have a very difficult time getting back to it.

I can prove this logically. If there's only one timeline, and you can change your past so that you cease to exist, then you would not only disappear from that past. No, every trace of you would also disappear throughout the timeline. That means that you would never exist to travel back in time in the first place. If you never travelled back in time in the first place, you wouldn't have been able to do anything in the timeline to prevent your existence. For Marty, that means that if he screwed it up so that his parents didn't get together, and he didn't exist, then he would never be able to screw it up in the first place, so his parents would get together anyway as if he was never there (which he wasn't).

But it's still a great trilogy, and I'm willing to ignore problems in stories like this if it's entertaining. However, if you want to see a movie with a premise that is completely and conspicuously logically impossible, check out Minority Report and try to work out the possibilities. Unfortunately that movie wasn't good enough otherwise to overlook the fact that the movie simply can't happen.

[ June 29, 2004, 11:23 AM: Message edited by: Shaky & Blue ]

 

[D.St.]

Originally posted by Shaky & Blue:
It's been a while since I've seen those movies, but I think it's okay that he could see his own future because, in that future, he had already returned to the past to screw up the rest of his life. If he had gotten to his future and found that in that future he had disappeared as a teenager and never returned, he then should have been worried.

I see your point that since Marty had already been the future to straighten out the lives of his kids, he could have gone back to the past to be present in the future when his younger self returns.

However, when Marty does go to the future in part II, he finds his life screwed up, the root cause of which is a car accident he had during a street race in 1985. In part III, after returning to 1985 from 1885, he doesn't enter the race, and so his screwed up future is no longer ahead of him. Shouldn't the future self from first trip have been without the problems brought on by the accident?

Damn, this is fun!!! But like yourself, I do enjoy a good story despite the holes in the plot (24, for instance, is one of my favorite TV shows).

[ June 29, 2004, 12:30 PM: Message edited by: D.St. ]