Plot holes that bug no one but you.

[lovejuice]

Logic is a curious thing. It's supposed to be universal, but more often than not, people have their own personal logic. Take plot holes for example; you can easily lose your sleep over small details that no one seems to notice or mentions. And vice versa.

So, what're some of those plot holes that appear to bug only you? Or the other way around, famous plot holes that you just barely notice when you watch the movie.

I have discussed Pan's Labyrinth and my dislike for the movie many times, so I will mention something new here. In 2012, among its many plot holes the one that really bug me is, with all the talk about spaceship, those things are just big boats. If a big boat is all you need to survive the apocolypse, shouldn't world governments be less conspiratorial? Instead of making the whole plan a big hush-hush, a market-based grass root approach to build individual lifeboat might be more applicable.

[Grouchy]

As bad as 2012 is, I don't agree with your plot hole. I thought the implication was those things soared into some part of the atmosphere for months until the havoc cooled down and then land again. Since a device like that is still sci-fi, the cover-up makes sense.

I dunno if this counts, but I have a huge problem with the time-travelling device in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It's not exactly a plot hole, but it renders most other events (specially deaths) in the Potter universe irrelevant.

[StanleyK]

Signs; aliens; water.

Used to bother me. Now I just go with it.

[lovejuice]

Signs; aliens; water.

Used to bother me. Now I just go with it.
that's an example of a famous plot hole that never seems to bother me. except for the fact that H2O is quite common in earth atmosphere.

(i just notice that by nature, this thread is spoilery.)


As bad as 2012 is, I don't agree with your plot hole. I thought the implication was those things soared into some part of the atmosphere for months until the havoc cooled down and then land again.
if that's the case, i do agree, but it's kinda weird we aren't shown the soaring scene. besides that a big chunk of metal can soar from water surface is stretching.

[Mysterious Dude]

This isn't really a plot hole, but I've always wondered if those animals left in cages at McLeach's house in The Rescuers Down Under eventually starved to death after the end of the movie.

[Qrazy]

This isn't really a plot hole, but I've always wondered if those animals left in cages at McLeach's house in The Rescuers Down Under eventually starved to death after the end of the movie.

Yeah that's not a plot hole because the answer is... they did. They're all dead Antoine. All dead.

[lovejuice]

This isn't really a plot hole, but I've always wondered if those animals left in cages at McLeach's house in The Rescuers Down Under eventually starved to death after the end of the movie.
which reminds me of golden eye. it slightly bothers me when Brosnan's bond kills those russian soldiers. he's being accused of assassinating their leader, so of course, they are in the right to shoot first, talk later.

[Grouchy]

which reminds me of golden eye. it slightly bothers me when Brosnan's bond kills those russian soldiers. he's being accused of assassinating their leader, so of course, they are in the right to shoot first, talk later.
Huh, so he basically shoots them in self-defence.

Also, a spy doesn't really have a reason to kill enemies in an honorable fashion.

[Winston*]

I dunno if this counts, but I have a huge problem with the time-travelling device in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It's not exactly a plot hole, but it renders most other events (specially deaths) in the Potter universe irrelevant.
Yeah, time travel shouldn't be used as a plot point in things unless time travel is the subject of the thing.

[megladon8]

Not really a plot hole, but the talk of time travel reminded me of something that bugged me in Timecrimes...

...what was the initial incident that started this whole chain of events?

I feel like I can guarantee you can't answer. Because it makes no sense. Nothing actually starts this cycle going, it just happens.

[Gizmo]

Terminator. All of them.

[Adam]

One of my favorites is in Star Wars when the Death Star just parks next to that planet and waits forever for the moon they wanna blow up to orbit itself into view. First off, Grand Moff Tarkin, why didn't you just speed of light yourself over to the other side of the planet in the first place? Even more obviously, though, why don't you use your planet-blowing-up-gun to simply destroy the planet, thus knocking out of orbit and obliterating its moon and the rebel base?

That's just bad Grand Moffing

[number8]

Mystique feeding the security guard iron in X2.

[Dead & Messed Up]

What provoked the original precog vision in Minority Report?

[lovejuice]

Mystique feeding the security guard iron in X2.
um...why? from what i remember, she drugs him and injects small pieces of iron into his body. kinda make sense to me.

[Spun Lepton]

Complaining about plotholes and paradoxes in movies involving time travel is like complaining about raisins in Raisin Bran.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Memento.

Oh, and Somewhere in Time. This has spoilers, for what it's worth, but the movie is shit so no one should care. I hate to harp on time travel, but this film is just brainless. The entire cycle starts with this old woman giving a necklace or something to a guy and saying "Come back to me!". So the guy finds out that she was some really hot chick a long time ago, and uses the necklace to travel back in time. They have a romantic relationship before the time travel thing is broken (something to do with the necklace) and he can't travel back to her. My question: how did this all start. The guy doesn't travel back in time without the old lady approaching and giving him the necklace (the key to time travel), but she doesn't give him the necklace unless they had a romantic relationship after he traveled in time and found her.

[Mysterious Dude]

A lot of time travel stories, if they are of the 'you can't change the past' variety, have the same plot hole, and I'm inclined to say it's not a plot hole. You could ask "how did it all start?" of The Terminator or Twelve Monkeys, but there is no starting point: it's an endless loop.

I do think TimeCrimes is a pretty egregious offender, though, because the protagonist makes such a concerted effort to make events play out exactly as they did the first time, whereas the terminator was actively trying to prevent things from playing out the way they had originally and ended up causing them to turn out exactly the same.

[Melville]

it's not a plot hole...it's an endless loop.
Yeah, this. I don't see any contradiction in the story KF described.

EDIT: here's a spacetime diagram I just drew to illustrate the situation:
http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff317/FaulknerFan/timetravel.png
The blue curve is the woman's path through spacetime, the red curve is the man's. At time 1, the young woman meets the man for the first time (his second time). At time 2, the man's time-travel device breaks, and he dies, or something. At time 3 the old woman meets the guy for the second time (his first time), and she then dies. At time 4, the guy uses the necklace to travel back in time to time 1.

I think the confusion in KF's description comes in when he says "she doesn't give him the necklace unless they had a romantic relationship after he traveled in time and found her"—the romantic relationship occurs at a later time as the man experiences it, but it occurs at an earlier time as the woman experienced it. Unless I'm missing something about the story, there's no contradiction.

[Raiders]

How the hell does Andy Dufresne crawl in head-first and put that poster back on the wall?

[lovejuice]

Yeah, this. I don't see any contradiction in the story KF described.

then again, you study general relativity. nothing is contradictory in your eyes.

that curve you just draws supports this statement.

[Melville]

then again, you study general relativity. nothing is contradictory in your eyes.

that curve you just draws supports this statement.
Haha. True. But lots of things are contradictory in my eyes, like "the number 1 is not equal to the number 1". And that thing that Raiders just pointed out. How could that guy put that poster up behind himself after crawling into that tunnel? Now there's a violation of the laws of physics!

[lovejuice]

How the hell does Andy Dufresne crawl in head-first and put that poster back on the wall?
believe it or not, that bugs me too. i think, you can build some sort of mechanism to make that work though.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Yeah, this. I don't see any contradiction in the story KF described.

EDIT: here's a spacetime diagram I just drew to illustrate the situation:
http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff317/FaulknerFan/timetravel.png
The blue curve is the woman's path through spacetime, the red curve is the man's. At time 1, the young woman meets the man for the first time (his second time). At time 2, the man's time-travel device breaks, and he dies, or something. At time 3 the old woman meets the guy for the second time (his first time), and she then dies. At time 4, the guy uses the necklace to travel back in time to time 1.

I think the confusion in KF's description comes in when he says "she doesn't give him the necklace unless they had a romantic relationship after he traveled in time and found her"—the romantic relationship occurs at a later time as the man experiences it, but it occurs at an earlier time as the woman experienced it. Unless I'm missing something about the story, there's no contradiction.

But she's ancient when he's young. They never had a relationship. The relationship happened after he traveled in time, but he couldn't travel in time without the necklace. So where does that loop start?

[megladon8]

believe it or not, that bugs me too. i think, you can build some sort of mechanism to make that work though.


I haven't seen the movie in several years so I may be totally wrong on this, but was the tunnel even possibly big enough that he could have turned around and re-attached the poster before continuing on through?

[Melville]

But she's ancient when he's young. They never had a relationship. The relationship happened after he traveled in time, but he couldn't travel in time without the necklace. So where does that loop start?
God damn it! I just wrote a response to this, and then I pressed some weird sequence of keys that made it all disappear. Gah. Okay, let me try again.

The relationship happened "after" for him; but it happened "before" for her. You can't talk about some other "after": there's only one spacetime, and it just so happens that the guy travels through some wormhole in it in reverse, in order to get from event 4 to event 1 ("time 4" and "time 1" on the diagram). In some movies there are multiple spacetimes, or "timelines", that get created every time something is "changed", but in this movie's plot there seems to be only one. So just follow the two curves in the spacetime diagram to see the order of events for the two people. (Since the guy was presumably born at a later time than when he had a relationship with the woman, the red curve should start higher up on the diagram. I wasn't thinking the age difference was so great.) From the woman's perspective, she meets a guy, has a relationship with him, grows old, meets the same guy again (looking to be the same age as when she met him years earlier), and gives him a magic necklace. From the guy's perspective, he meets an old woman, gets a magic necklace, travels back in time, has a relationship with the woman when she was young, and then disappears or something when his magic necklace stops working. According to the classical laws of physics that we know, this is actually how time travel would work in reality...I mean, given the existence of a magic necklace that sends a person backwards through time...and also given a lot of other technical things that I'm ignoring. But the point is that the basic idea makes perfect sense.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Okay, I'm not nearly as smart as you, but I'll just add one addendum, because despite your well-worded response and your chart, my feeble mind isn't quite grasping what you're laying down. She sought him out to give him the necklace. She didn't just run into a guy that she realized she had a relationship 50 years prior. She sought him out. Now, in order for him to join that loop you're talking about, the loop in which she already exists, he needs the necklace. It's the only way for him to travel back in time. So... how was he back in time in her go-round without her giving him the necklace. There has to be a starting point, no? I mean, life has a beginning and an end, and even if you put a person's life on a loop, there is always a beginning. There has to be the creation of life. So these events need a starting point. I just can't wrap my brain around that process starting. Without him traveling back in time the first time, she never seeks him out to give him the necklace so they can try to make the relationship last longer and not break the "spell". Without the necklace, he can't travel back in time. I see your chart, and I think I understand the point you're trying to get across, but even if time-travel creates a loop, a person's life is still a linear thing, and all events need a starting point, and this one doesn't have one.

Or maybe I'm dim.

[Melville]

Okay, I'm not nearly as smart as you, but I'll just add one addendum, because despite your well-worded response and your chart, my feeble mind isn't quite grasping what you're laying down. She sought him out to give him the necklace. She didn't just run into a guy that she realized she had a relationship 50 years prior. She sought him out.
But she knew that the necklace was magic, and that the guy was from the future, right?


Now, in order for him to join that loop you're talking about, the loop in which she already exists, he needs the necklace. It's the only way for him to travel back in time. So... how was he back in time in her go-round without her giving him the necklace.
There's only one go-round, one spacetime. He's always at event 1 when it occurs.


There has to be a starting point, no? I mean, life has a beginning and an end, and even if you put a person's life on a loop, there is always a beginning. There has to be the creation of life. So these events need a starting point. I just can't wrap my brain around that process starting. Without him traveling back in time the first time,
But he did travel back in time that first time.


she never seeks him out to give him the necklace so they can try to make the relationship last longer and not break the "spell". Without the necklace, he can't travel back in time. I see your chart, and I think I understand the point you're trying to get across, but even if time-travel creates a loop, a person's life is still a linear thing, and all events need a starting point, and this one doesn't have one.
The person's lives are linear things: you can follow each curve along the direction pointed by the arrows. The only screwy part is that the guy's curve is embedded into spacetime in such a way that a portion of it goes in the wrong direction.

I think maybe you're getting confused about causality here. You want causality to follow the direction of time; that is, you want an event to only influence a future event, not a past event. But once you've got a time machine involved, that's no longer the case.


Or maybe I'm dim.
It's possible that everything I'm saying would make no sense to anybody who hasn't studied general relativity to some extent (understanding the actual theory definitely wouldn't be necessary, but maybe understanding it at a popular-science level would be). Does anybody understand what I'm saying?

[Melville]

What provoked the original precog vision in Minority Report?
I forget the details of that. Does she get a vision of a death that never actually occurs? I remember the vision she gets being correct, so it makes sense for her to get it. But the reason the plot doesn't make sense is that the villain has absolutely no reason to believe that his scheme will work. All he does is hire some guy to show up in a room with some photos; how can he possibly expect that to cause the chain of events that retroactively cause the precog's vision? Or, wait, does he start planning his scheme only after the precog has a vision and Anderton goes on the run? Depending on how much he knows at that point, it might all make sense.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I forget the details of that. Does she get a vision of a death that never actually occurs? I remember the vision she gets being correct, so it makes sense for her to get it. But the reason the plot doesn't make sense is that the villain has absolutely no reason to believe that his scheme will work. All he does is hire some guy to show up in a room with some photos; how can he possibly expect that to cause the chain of events that retroactively cause the precog's vision? Or, wait, does he start planning his scheme only after the precog has a vision and Anderton goes on the run? Depending on how much he knows at that point, it might all make sense.

If he starts planning his scheme after she makes the prediction, how was it she was able to make the prediction? The entire idea hinges on something that is bound to happen, not something that is provoked only by one's prophetic powers.

I can't decide if the paradox makes the movie better or worse, but I lean toward better. I kinda love these things.

[Qrazy]

But she knew that the necklace was magic, and that the guy was from the future, right?

It's possible that everything I'm saying would make no sense to anybody who hasn't studied general relativity to some extent (understanding the actual theory definitely wouldn't be necessary, but maybe understanding it at a popular-science level would be). Does anybody understand what I'm saying?

I haven't seen the film but it doesn't make sense to me either. The loop makes sense, but how does the closed loop begin? She has no reason to give the necklace to anyone the first time because she didn't have a relationship that first time. I don't understand why he was simply always in her initial timeline. If he had found the necklace and gone back each time that would make sense.



I think maybe you're getting confused about causality here. You want causality to follow the direction of time; that is, you want an event to only influence a future event, not a past event. But once you've got a time machine involved, that's no longer the case.

This only makes sense to me if the initial timeline was changed such that perhaps the first time he found the necklace, went back and had the relationship, and then every time after that she gave him the necklace.

[Ezee E]

How the hell does Andy Dufresne crawl in head-first and put that poster back on the wall?
Ha This made me laugh for some reason.

But, didn't he just tape it up at the top? So he could lift it up, crawl inside, and it simply falls into place? Seems logical to me.

[Melville]

If he starts planning his scheme after she makes the prediction, how was it she was able to make the prediction? The entire idea hinges on something that is bound to happen, not something that is provoked only by one's prophetic powers.

I can't decide if the paradox makes the movie better or worse, but I lean toward better. I kinda love these things.
But it's not a paradox (though I agree that it is the best part of the film). The precog makes the prediction because she can correctly see into the future. Because she can see into the future, the future affects its own past.


I haven't seen the film but it doesn't make sense to me either. The loop makes sense, but how does the closed loop begin? She has no reason to give the necklace to anyone the first time because she didn't have a relationship that first time. I don't understand why he was simply always in her initial timeline. If he had found the necklace and gone back each time that would make sense.
You're thinking about it wrong. There is no "initial timeline" or "each time". There's only one timeline. The man is at event 1 because he uses a time machine at event 4.


This only makes sense to me if the initial timeline was changed such that perhaps the first time he found the necklace, went back and had the relationship, and then every time after that she gave him the necklace.
No, that wouldn't work. It would require the time machine to transport the guy not into the past, but into a different spacetime that is identical in every way except for this one relationship. If you want it to be simply a time machine, traveling into the past, then using it cannot "change" anything; the spacetime is a single, fixed thing, and each of the two people has a single, fixed path in it. The woman doesn't get multiple lives, one influenced by the time machine and one not: if the man travels back in time from event 4 through that tube in the diagram, then there could never have been an event 1 that he wasn't at.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Okay, one last time. After that I give up and bow to your supreme knowledge.

He's an ordinary schlub that doesn't do anything with time travel. He never would have traveled in time had she not presented him with the necklace. And to be honest, I'm not sure the necklace is magic. She wouldn't consider the necklace to be magical without him telling her that that was how he got back to her. Basically, he needs something that means a lot to her (or something like that) and then sits in his hotel room and basically meditates until he travels back in time. So it's not that the necklace is magic, it's that it has a deep connection to her. The only reason she gives it to him after seeking him out is that when he traveled back in time, he tells her that happened and the necklace was the key to him travelling back in time. So... without the necklace, he can't travel back in time. However, the necklace isn't magical and she wouldn't know that anyone could travel in time with it without him telling her that after he travels back in time. HOWEVER, he can't get the necklace to travel back in time without HER telling giving it to him when she's an old maid and asking him to use it to come back to her. HOWEVER, she wouldn't know to do that unless he had been the one who initially traveled back in time and told her. HOWEVER, he can't do that without the necklace. I could keep going, but you get the idea. So where is the entry point for this cycle? If she isn't aware that the necklace is magic (because it really isn't), she doesn't give him said necklace. Without said necklace, he can't travel in time back to her.

This is truly exhausting.

[Raiders]

Okay, one last time. After that I give up and bow to your supreme knowledge.

He's an ordinary schlub that doesn't do anything with time travel. He never would have traveled in time had she not presented him with the necklace. And to be honest, I'm not sure the necklace is magic. She wouldn't consider the necklace to be magical without him telling her that that was how he got back to her. Basically, he needs something that means a lot to her (or something like that) and then sits in his hotel room and basically meditates until he travels back in time. So it's not that the necklace is magic, it's that it has a deep connection to her. The only reason she gives it to him after seeking him out is that when he traveled back in time, he tells her that happened and the necklace was the key to him travelling back in time. So... without the necklace, he can't travel back in time. However, the necklace isn't magical and she wouldn't know that anyone could travel in time with it without him telling her that after he travels back in time. HOWEVER, he can't get the necklace to travel back in time without HER telling giving it to him when she's an old maid and asking him to use it to come back to her. HOWEVER, she wouldn't know to do that unless he had been the one who initially traveled back in time and told her. HOWEVER, he can't do that without the necklace. I could keep going, but you get the idea. So where is the entry point for this cycle? If she isn't aware that the necklace is magic (because it really isn't), she doesn't give him said necklace. Without said necklace, he can't travel in time back to her.

This is truly exhausting.

The entry point, so to speak, is his arriving in 1912. The girl never lives a life where he doesn't appear because 60 years from then, he will travel back. You seem to be assuming the future time can't already exist 60 years down the road and that the lady has to, at least once, make it to 1972 before meeting the man. But, he will always exist in 1912 because there is never a future where he doesn't travel back.

[Skitch]

Old Biff from the future could not have returned the DeLorean to Doc and Marty.

[Melville]

Okay, one last time. After that I give up and bow to your supreme knowledge.
:lol: I think that might be the best option at this point. Just trust me on this: the basic story makes perfect sense.


If she isn't aware that the necklace is magic (because it really isn't), she doesn't give him said necklace. Without said necklace, he can't travel in time back to her.
She gives him the necklace because sometime between events 1 and 2, he told her to. With the necklace, he travels back in time and tells her to give it to him when she is old. The key thing in the story is that there's a magic necklace (and/or mystical connection or something...it doesn't matter which) that sends the guy from one point in the spacetime (event 4) to an earlier point (event 1). That means that event 4 "causes" event 1, and hence event 4 "causes" itself. (It's really better to forget about cause and effect though. Just look at the total set of events and the spatiotemporal relationships between them.) Given the existence of the magic necklace and a single spacetime, it couldn't happen any other way. You and Qrazy are attempting to impose some kind of meta-time, a normal ordering of cause and effect, on top of the spacetime, but there is no such time; there's only the one spacetime. All the events in the universe are laid out in that single spacetime. You can't have contradictory things (guy meeting and not meeting the girl) occurring at the same point (event 1).

EDIT: Raiders said this much more succinctly.

[Melville]

This talk of paradoxes reminds me of the mind-bending stuff in math. For example, there are exactly the same number of numbers between 0 and 1 as there are between negative infinity and positive infinity. And if you take all the numbers in the interval between 0 and 1, then remove the middle third (the numbers between 1/3 and 2/3), then remove the middle thirds of the remaining two intervals, then remove the middle thirds of the remaining intervals, and so on forever, then the final set of numbers that you approach has exactly the same number of numbers in it as the original set of numbers between 0 and 1. You can also take a solid sphere, break it into a finite number of pieces, and then move those pieces around to make two solid spheres that are each exactly the same size as the original one. If that's not awesome, I don't know what is.

[Raiders]

This talk of paradoxes reminds me of the mind-bending stuff in math. For example, there are exactly the same number of numbers between 0 and 1 as there are between negative infinity and positive infinity. And if you take all the numbers in the interval between 0 and 1, then remove the middle third (the numbers between 1/3 and 2/3), then remove the middle thirds of the remaining two intervals, then remove the middle thirds of the remaining intervals, and so on forever, then the final set of numbers that you approach has exactly the same number of numbers in it as the original set of numbers between 0 and 1.

You're talking all real numbers, I assume.

[Melville]

You're talking all real numbers, I assume.
Yes.

[Spaceman Spiff]

You can also take a solid sphere, break it into a finite number of pieces, and then move those pieces around to make two solid spheres that are each exactly the same size as the original one.

I don't understand this. The original sphere has a finite/quantifiable amount of mass, yes? How can you have 2 spheres of the same size if each are using 1/2 the original mass?

[Kurosawa Fan]

I read what you guys are saying, and I understand it, I just can't accept it. I'm seriously not trying to be purposely ignorant, I just can't see how 1912 is the starting point when he can't get to 1912 without her meeting him in 1972, and she can't get to him in 1972 without him finding her in 1912. I can't accept that he just exists in 1912.


She gives him the necklace sometime between events 1 and 2 because he told her to.

But he can't tell her to without her first giving him the necklace. This is where I get lost in your logic.

[Ezee E]

What movie are you guys even talking about?

[Kurosawa Fan]

What movie are you guys even talking about?

Somewhere in Time.

[Melville]

I don't understand this. The original sphere has a finite/quantifiable amount of mass, yes? How can you have 2 spheres of the same size if each are using 1/2 the original mass?
It's a set of points, not a physical object. You couldn't physically chop it up in the way it needs to be chopped up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox


I read what you guys are saying, and I understand it, I just can't accept it. I'm seriously not trying to be purposely ignorant, I just can't see how 1912 is the starting point when he can't get to 1912 without her meeting him in 1972, and she can't get to him in 1972 without him finding her in 1912. I can't accept that he just exists in 1912.
He doesn't just exist in 1912. He got there from 1972.


But he can't tell her to without her first giving him the necklace. This is where I get lost in your logic.
She did give him the necklace—in 1972. As far as I can tell, you're just insisting that a universe that is globally non-causal is simply unacceptable. Certainly in physics, we wouldn't accept it either; everybody likes global causality. But once you've got a magic necklace, it has to go out the window.

Somebody should make a spacetime diagram explaining the plot of Primer. Rep goes to whoever does.

[Kurosawa Fan]

See, now I understand, and am more willing to accept. The magic necklace throws logic out the window. So my reading of the situation is too realistic?

[Melville]

See, now I understand, and am more willing to accept. The magic necklace throws logic out the window.
Depends what you mean by logic. The magic necklace definitely throws out one of the fundamental tenets of physical science. Basically, these things can't coexist: causality, the magic necklace, and logic (i.e. the law of non-contradiction). So one of them has to go, and in a movie that begins with the idea of the magic necklace, causality is obviously going to take the hit.


So my reading of the situation is too realistic?
Yep. But we'll have to reassess what's realistic and what isn't once we get our hands on that magic necklace. ;)

[Kurosawa Fan]

Depends what you mean by logic. The magic necklace definitely throws out one of the fundamental tenets of physical science. Basically, these things can't coexist: causality, the magic necklace, and logic (i.e. the law of non-contradiction).


Yep. But we'll have to reassess what's realistic and what isn't once we get our hands on that magic necklace. ;)

Okay. Whew. I feel much better about all of this. For such a shitty movie, it sure did get me worked up. :lol:

[Melville]

Okay. Whew. I feel much better about all of this. For such a shitty movie, it sure did get me worked up. :lol:
:) Shitty movies are definitely the worst kind to get worked up over.

[Qrazy]

You're thinking about it wrong. There is no "initial timeline" or "each time". There's only one timeline. The man is at event 1 because he uses a time machine at event 4.

I reject a world where he would always come back because if violates the universal law of integrity. This law states that the majority of the time a young man will not fall for an old woman and thus the universe has enough integrity to stop sufficiently retarded plotlines from ever genuinely occurring.


No, that wouldn't work. It would require the time machine to transport the guy not into the past, but into a different spacetime that is identical in every way except for this one relationship. If you want it to be simply a time machine, traveling into the past, then using it cannot "change" anything; the spacetime is a single, fixed thing, and each of the two people has a single, fixed path in it. The woman doesn't get multiple lives, one influenced by the time machine and one not: if the man travels back in time from event 4 through that tube in the diagram, then there could never have been an event 1 that he wasn't at.

Yes I was suggesting a second timespace that would then become the closed loop.

[Gizmo]

Why couldn't Gandolf just have the big bird fly them to Mordor and drop the ring in right then?

Who heard Kane actually say "rosebud"? No one was in the room. (ok, this one doesn't [or didn't] bother me, but I read it somewhere).

[Melville]

In the process of unsuccessfully trying to find a spacetime diagram displaying the plot of Primer, I discovered that this time-travel stuff has actually been studied by general relativists. The demand for a single, self-consistent history actually has a name: Novikov's self-consistency principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle).

[Qrazy]

Why couldn't Gandolf just have the big bird fly them to Mordor and drop the ring in right then?


Because the Fellbeasts and Nazgul would have immediately taken them out.

[Qrazy]

In the process of unsuccessfully trying to find a spacetime diagram displaying the plot of Primer, I discovered that this time-travel stuff has actually been studied by general relativists. The demand for a single, self-consistent history actually has a name: Novikov's self-consistency principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle).

I don't know how accurate this is:

http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh78/crustaceanhate/primer_timeline.jpg

[Ezee E]

Who heard Kane actually say "rosebud"? No one was in the room. (ok, this one doesn't [or didn't] bother me, but I read it somewhere).

Ha. Good one!

[lovejuice]

Ha This made me laugh for some reason.

But, didn't he just tape it up at the top? So he could lift it up, crawl inside, and it simply falls into place? Seems logical to me.
brilliant, sir. he can even tape a small weight to its end to make the falling into place more effective.

[Mysterious Dude]

Who heard Kane actually say "rosebud"? No one was in the room. (ok, this one doesn't [or didn't] bother me, but I read it somewhere).

I don't buy this one. They never show the whole room, and it's very dark. Someone could easily have been in there.

[Sven]

I don't buy this one. They never show the whole room, and it's very dark. Someone could easily have been in there.

Isn't part of the whole point that he died alone?

[number8]

The reporter finding out what "Rosebud" is is not real. It's Kane's life flashing before his eyes in the moment of death.

I'm sticking to it.

[Raiders]

Isn't part of the whole point that he died alone?

You can have house staff and still be very lonely.

Nonetheless, the implication is that he is alone in the room given that the maid only comes in once he drops the snow globe.

[Gizmo]

Because the Fellbeasts and Nazgul would have immediately taken them out. I don't know, they did a pretty bad job of doing just that for 3 whole movies. Hell, they were just aimlessly searching based off "Shire" and "Baggins" in the beginning. They would have been halfway to Mordor before "Giant Eagles" also joined the equation, if it ever did.

[Pathétique]

Depends what you mean by logic. The magic necklace definitely throws out one of the fundamental tenets of physical science. Basically, these things can't coexist: causality, the magic necklace, and logic (i.e. the law of non-contradiction). So one of them has to go, and in a movie that begins with the idea of the magic necklace, causality is obviously going to take the hit.

So would any movie that involves time travel to the past imply a rejection of causality?

[Ezee E]

I always figured he continued saying, "Rosebud" even after the maid comes in.

[Gizmo]

I always figured he continued saying, "Rosebud" even after the maid comes in.

so he was a zombie! :pritch:

[[ETM]]

Why couldn't Gandolf just have the big bird fly them to Mordor and drop the ring in right then?

The Great Eagles are servants of Valinor, and they could not interfere directly with the matters of Middle-earth. Also - the whole problem with the quest to destroy the Ring is that it corrupts everyone, even the mighty Maiar like Gandalf. The last thing he'd ever expect is precisely what the Hobbits did. Taking it up on the back of an Eagle would not only give away its position, it would reveal the intention to destroy it.

[Melville]

I don't know how accurate this is:
Hm. The text is too small to read. Also, it doesn't look to be a spacetime diagram.


So would any movie that involves time travel to the past imply a rejection of causality?
Not necessarily. If you had multiple spacetimes, then causality could be preserved, like in the diagram that follows:
http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff317/FaulknerFan/timetravel2.png
In this version of the story, woman A in universe A passes through event 1a (1912 on earth in universe A) and 2a without meeting the time-traveling guy. At event 3a (1972 on earth in universe A), she gives the necklace to guy A, but since she hasn't met him before, she doesn't tell him about their relationship. At event 4a, the necklace transports guy A to event 1b (1912 on earth in universe B). Woman B and guy A have a relationship in this universe, and when the woman grows old, at event 3b she gives guy B the necklace and tells him to use it to travel through time. At event 4b, guy B travels to event 1c in another universe that is exactly identical to universe B (including the relationship between the woman and the guy). At event 4c, guy C travels to event 1d, and so on. This is the version of the story that Qrazy wanted. Frankly, I think it makes more sense to have a single universe and abandon causality.

It's also worth noting that even in the version of time travel with a single spacetime, physics is locally causal (i.e. each event is determined by the events immediately preceding it), but it's not globally causal (i.e. if you keep tracing the sequence of causes, you'll eventually end up in the future of the effect).

[Qrazy]

I don't know, they did a pretty bad job of doing just that for 3 whole movies. Hell, they were just aimlessly searching based off "Shire" and "Baggins" in the beginning. They would have been halfway to Mordor before "Giant Eagles" also joined the equation, if it ever did.

Some other reasons...

a) The eagles do what they want to do, Gandalf doesn't tell them what to do. He may have sent them a message and they decided to save his life but they're not at his beck and call.

b) They would have been corrupted by the ring on such a long flight.

c) You're wrong that Sauron wouldn't have had something up his sleeve. He would have expected a frontal assault of that nature. The reason the way they did it worked was because he wasn't expecting someone to sneak in his back door.

[Winston*]

Why don't they just give Sauron the ring back then chop of his finger so he explodes again? Rinse and repeat when neccessary.

[Qrazy]

I think it makes more sense to have a single universe and abandon causality.


Seems reasonable since if we're too account for any really genuine free will we have to abandon it anyway. Tangentially that info about the billiard balls in the article you linked was interesting.

[number8]

By the way, regarding Citizen Kane, the butler said he was in the room and heard "Rosebud" when Kane died.

Either he's just out of the shot or the scene was from his POV.

[Sven]

You can have house staff and still be very lonely.

I believe you did not understand what I was saying. What you say, of courses, I know.

[Raiders]

I believe you did not understand what I was saying. What you say, of courses, I know.

I see. Then I don't remember it being about his being physically alone. Though I also didn't remember the butler stating he was the one who heard it.

[Mysterious Dude]

"I heard him say it..." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1GbF3tOi6g) (3:40)

[lovejuice]

why would a scientist who succeeds in breeding super-intelligent dogs and equipping them with taking machines care if he catch an ostrich?