7 Stupid Movie Time Travel Mistakes
Temporal anomalies and other tosh…
BY Jul 10th 2009 8:08AMFILED UNDER: Features
User Comments (3)
The Movie: Idiocracy (2006)
The Time Travel Scenario: Private Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson), categorised by his army superiors as the “ultimate average American” is selected to test a cryogenics program.
But while he’s only supposed to be frozen for a year, events conspire to leave him trapped for 500 years. When he awakens, he’s the smartest man alive, thanks to years of dwindling intelligence among the American population.
To get back, he discovers there’s a time machine at the local Costco, thanks to his lawyer, Frito (Dax Shepherd), who agrees to help find it when Joe promises to open an account in the past for him, and make him a billionaire.
Because, as Frito says, “I like money.”
The Problem: It’s an amusement ride. Charlie Chaplin is depicted as the leader of the Nazi party, dinosaurs battle man and the UN is shown as UN-Nazi-ing the world.
We told you it was stupid – the whole world is stupid at this point!
Albert Einstein Says: “Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.”
In Other Words: One day, a movie called Ass, a single shot of a backside, occasionally farting, will win Best Screenplay at the Oscars.
Best work on that time machine now, to make sure this never happens…
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Print Comments (3)
1: Desperation says
" (we’d like to credit them with the iPod and blame them for Johnny 5), "
I'm sorry, you appear to have got these the wrong way round.
Posted: Jul 10th 2009 // 10:21AMAlert a moderator
2: sowasred2012 says
I always refer back to the parallel outcome idea in time travel movies these days - it's the only way to stay sane. Kudos to Terminator Salvation for running with the idea that they could be in an alternate timeline now, but I have a big problem with some of it's internal logic - (SPOILERS, kinda) as the movie opens Connor is freaking out cos he's discovered Skynet has started R&D on the T-800 model, yet Marcus, a guy who signed his body over to Cyberdyne upon his execution FIFTEEN YEARS ago, displays way more advanced tech then we've seen in previous terminators. Why put R&D into a model that can be beat by a unit you created 15 years ago?
I was almost expecting this to be addressed, or at least hinted at, in the movie with some sort of time travel explanation - but I saw nada. Unless you count the stunt casting of Helena Bonham Carter, and the extra notice she makes you pay to that opening scene might suggest that story will be told in a sequel, but I'm not confident that's the case.
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