I’m sorry to do this to you fine readers, but i’m going to have to talk once more about Time Travel.

I was watching something on TV recently, and within the dialogue of the show it was said that the past could not be changed. That the present or future was an inevitable and unavoidable period in which events must take place. Were a person to travel back in time to try and stop John Wilkes Booth before he shot Lincoln, either you would fail in doing so, or even had you succeeded in stopping him, someone or something else would have killed Lincoln.

This same argument about the unavoidable future has not only been a mechanism used in movies that deal with time travel, but has often been the foundation what the movie was trying to say to its audience.  Movies, Series, sitcoms, books all have started to adopt this train of thought from the biggest Blockbusters to the shittiest scifi channel originals.

And oh yes, it’s completely stupid.

Monkey Kombat: Wrath of Kano

Lets run off some fine examples, starting off with what sparked my writing of this article.  Before I do, I’d like to warn you that, if you don’t want anything spoiled please skip the paragraphs labeled by the show/movie, that you don’t want spoiled.

LOST
In this season of lost, as well as two seasons prior, it was mentioned that the past could not be changed. This prevented Sawyer from entering the hatch, because he had apparently never met Desmond. I guess this is used to explain Lock’s stupidity for not mentioning to Alpert that in 50 years Widmore would be sending back troops to kill all of his people, and that he should probably take care of the problem before that happens.

FINAL DESTINATION
In final Destination, it is not time travel, but a premonition of death that is the basis for the movie.  Upon forseeing the death of a group of people, the cause of their death was averted. These living people having “beaten death” are now hunted down by Death himself. The idea that Death is unavoidable is quite ridiculous, but at the very least these movies try not to use “science” to justify it.

TERMINATOR
The continuance of the series hinges on Unavoidable Futures, but suggests that rather than an outright change to inevitable circumstances, you can just simply delay them. At the same time the movies are trying to push this idea, they are creating a situation where the terminators interference is itself pointless. No matter how hard the humans try they can’t avoid judgement day, and no matter how hard the robots try they can’t stop the humans from eventually winning the war. So why bother.

12 MONKEYS
Suggests that the past is unchangeable, and as we discover through the course of the movie, all efforts of theirs in the past have already been accounted for by the future.  Regardless of how many times you try, Bruce Willis will always look silly with long hair.

THE TIME MACHINE
When the girl he loves is killed Alexander Hamilton creates a time machine to attempt to stop her death. While at first appearing successful, a series of events occur shortly thereafter which leads to her death. This happens regardless of how many times he tries to rescue her. Once again, her death being “written” in time, is unavoidable.

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Now I told you i’d never argue the “mechanics” of movie science. I do so, so long as the explanations are left either vague enough that I don’t know or care about the mechanics, or that a device is made in order to achieve its goals. If you want to say “The Force” is due to “Midichlorians” that’s fine, I won’t stop you. I won’t enjoy it, and i’ll think it an awful idea, but I won’t argue against it as being stupid. But unavoidable futures are so easily fallacious that it can’t help but be argued against.

If you are trying to suggest that fate is anything other than pure magic, than your logic is flawed. Or should I say, it is flawed in a world in which time travel exists.  You can’t use science to explain it, because that would suggest that science sets significance on humans above all else.

If you can’t change the past then you simply can’t go into the past. BECAUSE THAT IN AND OF ITSELF IS CHANGING THE PAST!

Why would science care only about death. Specifically only about human death? We have millions of bacteria on us at all times that are being created and dieing. Where death unavoidable, than a person traveling back in time and interacting with ANYTHING would cause countless microscopic births and deaths.

Why would death care about a time frame? If 5 minutes longer is okay, why not 20 years?
Why would the apocalypse be unavoidable, and yet moveable through time?

You can’t mathematically explain why a human event is more important than an infinitesimally small shift in air molecules, even if your movie science creates a “quantum driven calculator” that can tabulate such things. It suggests that nature applies importance to one thing over another. If time is the same no matter where you are in the universe, than why would we, being such a miniscule part of it,  be an unwaivering pivot point.  

Considering how unimportant we are to the universe, why is it that time requires us to not change, but is okay with other things both larger and smaller changing.

And believe me, we are very very very inconsiquential in our universe.

So now that we’ve ruled out science lets take a look at magic.  When I say magic I refer to any element that can’t be defined by science.

The only way that “the future is unavoidable”  could work, in a world where you can actually know future events, is if there were a conscious effort by some being controlling things.  Call it Fate, Death, God, or whoever, you would have to have something(one) that specifically is controlling things to a certain unavoidable outcome on a very personal level.  Let us define some of the characteristics of this being in order to explain the necessary attributes for creating this condition.

1. The creature must be all knowing.  How else can it keep track of these events.
2. The creature must be ever existing. By this I mean it must exist in all places and at all times.
3. The creature is all powerful.  Powerful enough to ensure that make the necessary changes to guide the universe on its proper course, based on the actions of humans.
4. The creature only seems to care about humans. -- The creature doesn’t care if the ship sinks, it just cares that everyone on it dies.
5. The creature is infallible.  The declaritive statement that “the future is inevitable” demands this. 
6. The creature is fallible.  Here is where the problems start to occur.  If you exist in all times, are aware of everything, and have the power to control anything, than how did you slip up and let humans travel back in time, or see the future to begin with.
7. The creature is a dick. Were the contradiction of 5 and 6 not a good enough reason to think this logic stupid, then condition 6 should be considered. In the cases where a human lives when he shouldn’t, or a war is prevented, this creature demands that the deaths must occur.  It may settle for the deaths being tomorrow, or next week, but rarely as these films suggest is it of old age.  If the creature sees a war avoided, rather than letting all combatants of that war die well into old age, it wants them to die in another war 3 years down the line.  

So there it is folks.  The next time some piece of entertainment tries to tell you that the future is set in stone, you just pop your collar, and tell them make like a tree and get outta here.

4 Comments »

1. One thing about unavoidable futures – the idea works best if there’s not much known about the key figures and event(s) you’re trying to change. But, most of the time, the idea works only once within the same piece (novel, story, movie, play, etc). Take 12 Monkeys, for example. Ok, Willis and Stowe fail, the virus gets released, future gets messed up etc. That’s because they didn’t know the exact way things happened. Here’s where it gets interesting. The future people, the ones responsible for sending Bruce (and others) to the past, must’ve realized that Bruce had failed. If that is so, why don’t they just gather all the newly acquirred info, get back to the drawing table and send someone back to kill or in any other way stop the guy played by David Morse? And, just to be on the safe side, all of his assistants.

   Now, I’ve said that the idea of inevitability works best if you don’t know much about key events and figures that have influenced the future you’re trying to change. The best example for this (not a movie example, but still) I can think of at the moment, would be Michael Moorcock’s BEHOLD THE MAN. Long story short, a man from the 20th century builds a timemachine (IIRC, on his own and unbeknownst to anyone else) goes back to 28 AD in order to meet Jesus, only to take his place and influence the creation of Christianity which sparked his interest in going back in time in the first place. A closed loop, nice and tidy.

   Comment by Joe_Chip — February 1, 2009 @ 4:08 am

2. I agree that inflexible time lines are quite often done rather poorly, but I find that I must object to the use of the Terminator series in your list. One of the major themes in Terminator one and Terminator two is that ‘the future is not set, there is no fate but that which we make for ourselves.’ Naturally this was thrown out the window with the train wreck that is Terminator three. but that has now been erased from the series time line shortly afterwords, invalidating it’s ‘inevitability’ theme as it does so.

   Comment by Wyvern — April 24, 2009 @ 11:30 pm

3. I’ve never been able to buy into time travel stories, because as you alluded to, there are just so many minuscule variations and changes that can take place, that everything in the future could be completely thrown off.

   The Back to the Future films always bothered me the most, in which Marty changes things so that he’s, at one point, never born. If that change took place, he should have just vanished, instantly! No slow fade silliness.

   I believe that time is a construct of the Creator and that it’s linear. You can slow it possibly by traveling at the speed of light, but you can’t reverse it. That just doesn’t make any sense.

   Also, when I write stories, there is no time travel, because I think time travel is an overused cop out device to just implausibly change things around (hurry, Captain, let’s head back and pick up a whale!)

   Comment by Rob — December 22, 2009 @ 5:50 am

4. Finally, someone who understands the concept of time travel. Kudos to you, sir.

   Comment by culwin — March 21, 2010 @ 1:23 am

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