Rewind Button

Time travel.....we all wish we could do it. I think it would be fun anyway. But nobody wants to see it on film and tv when it is just used as a cop-out. Take the movie Superman from 1977 for instance. You watch the whole thing and an earthquake happens, and Lois dies......and Superman spins the world backwards to back the truck up and make it so none of it ever happened. Now, this is all kinds of messed up on multiple levels, but let's just stick to the cop-out portion. So, everything that we just watched for the past half hour or more didn't happen? (Yes, I realize it's a movie and none of it happened regardless). Anyway, if time travelling is going to be used as a cop-out, then why make the movie? It doesn't make sense. I'll stop with the Superman bashing now though cause I'm actually still a huge fan of the movie.

On to the show that brought on this blog.....Heroes. Yes, more superpowered people. My wife and I are watching the third season of Heroes right now. I love it still, but my biggest complaint is that they NEVER should have introduced time travel. Characters come from the future and change stuff, so it's like the first two seasons made no difference. Not only is there this problem, but also the problem of being just plain confusing in general. The thing is, it doesn't actually have to be confusing. If you think about it, you can never go back in time to change the way things turn out.....even if time travel WAS possible. I've tried to explain this to people before, but nobody ever seems to get the logic of it. Maybe someone out there can. Here goes:

Say you don't like the way your life has turned out. You hop in your little Delorean, set the timer for 10 years in the past (say from 2008 to 1998), and cruise down the road at 88 MPH. While in the past, you try and set things in motion that make things happen differently than the way they did. NOT gonna happen. Everything your future self does in the past has already been accounted for throughout the years of '98 through '08. How is this so hard to understand. If something happens, it's because it was meant to be....or you tried to come back in time, and it was your future self who caused it to happen. Any way you look at it, when you get back in your Delorean and head back to 2008, everything will be just as it always was.

I say, stop using time travel in movies and tv unless you use them the right way: i.e. showing someone going back in time only to end up just being the cause of the thing he was trying to prevent. (Even that gets a little complicated) Well, I guess I also still approve of time travel if it is used light-heartedly in comedies like Back to the Future and Timecop. :)

So, until next time....do it right the first time.

K