Kátia Martins Pereira
"When you enjoy something, you must never let logic get too much
in the way.
Like the villains in all the James Bond movies. Whenever Bond breaks into
the complex:
'Ah, Mr. Bond, welcome, come in. Let me show you my entire evil plan and
then
put you in a death machine that doesn't work'."
Jerry Seinfeld, "Sein Language"
Time travel is a device that brings
to the movies the possibility of creating good stories and funny scenes.
The word time brings to our minds three other words: past, present and
future. To analyze TT purposes and results we could separate them: TT to
the future and TT to the past. Both travels would bring advantages and
disadvantages, which writers and moviemakers have shown, in their films.
Why should we go to the future? Maybe to anticipate events, to advise
people of what could happen; to take advantage of the knowledge acquired?
But, on the other hand, if there is no future or it is a really bad one,
how would the time traveler come back? How would he live from then on?
In
the Fifties, American film makers – reflecting the mood of the American
public – created a variety of pictures dealing with atomic annihilation;
one of them is The Day the Earth Stood Still. Although in the Sixties the
fear of nuclear holocaust had decreased, George Pal produced in 1960 H. G.
Wells’ great science fantasy classic of 1895, The Time Machine. The
story begins in Victorian England on December 31, 1899 – the end of one
era, the eve of another – as George (Rod Taylor), a young scientist,
completes his new invention – a time traveling device.
Bringing
the fears left from the Fifties, Pal put his time traveler in the middle
of the then-expected atomic war. George watches our society be destroyed
in a mushroom cloud, and then goes 800 millennia into the future to
discover whether mankind could possibly have survived. It has and the
people are divided into 2 tribes. The Eloi, gentle blond creatures who
have been reduced to human “vegetables” and the Morlocks, a monstrous
tribe of mutants who live in caverns under the earth’s surface, preying
on the surface dwellers like farmers butchering animals for their tables.
To do this, the Morlocks sound the ancient raid sirens, left over from the
great atomic holocaust; whenever they do, the Elois unquestioningly walk
into the shelters, where they are at the mercy of the Morlocks. George
changes from a casual observer of the future to a participant in it, when
he falls in love with Weena (Yvette Mimieux), a pretty Eloi girl, and
fights to save her and her people.
H. G. Wells described a time
machine for the first time and provided, with this device a quite
rationale mechanical time travel, describing time as a fourth dimension in
which people can travel, describing time as a fourth dimension in which
people can travel as they do in the other three. Wells, in this book, had
found a terrible possibility for the future, but Pal’s tone is
“lighter” – (the sense that the treat of an atomic holocaust did not
necessarily imply the total annihilation of mankind) – and broke clearly
with the Fifties thinking.
Using
the “same” machine Nicholas Meyer wrote and directed the interesting
Time after Time (1979). London, 1893, Jack the Ripper, the mysterious
slayer of prostitutes, murders his sixty victims on a dark street corner.
Several blocks away, H. G. Wells (Malcolm MacDowell), the young writer,
inventor and philosopher, entertains a group of colleagues in his
Victorian house. He gathered his friends that evening to show them his
latest invention, and promises to do so the moment his friend, Dr.
Stevenson (David Warner) appears. When the doctor arrives, Wells leads
them to the basement, where he shows his extraordinary creation – a time
machine, capable to transport a man to any era of the past or future.
Returning to the dinning room, Wells and his guests are shocked when the
police suddenly arrive and inform them that Stevenson is Jack the Ripper.
Suddenly, Wells realizes that Stevenson used the machine to escape to the
future time – 1979. An optimistic believer that the future society will
be a “utopian” paradise, Wells is worried by the thought of such
monster at large in the world of tomorrow, and he determines to bring the
Ripper to justice. Instead of the utopian world of his dreams, however,
Wells soon discovers that the society of the future is cold, materialistic
and violent. After many confronts, Wells manages to coerce the killer into
the time machine. After sending Stevenson to infinity, Wells persuades Amy
(Mary Steenburgen), with whom he has fallen in love, to return to
nineteenth-century England with him.
Filmmakers
have used their time travel
films to criticize the government’s official policies by putting them in
different time period. In Planet of the Apes (1968) one of the most
admirable sci-fi of the Sixties, under the futuristic fantasy, there was a
cold commentary on America in the sixties.
Planet of the Apes begins with
Taylor (Charlton Hesston) and three companions crashing land on some
apparently distant planet, where the oxygen, vegetation, and even animal
life are not very different from Earth’s. One by one the members of
Taylor’s company die off until he encounters
a tribe of human beings living in a primitive
state. Then he and the other people are surrounded by mounted riders who
capture and carry them to a large city. What astonishes everybody is that
his captors are apes; on this planet, the evolutionary trend has been
reversed. Where is time travel here? We do not know until the end of the
film. In the picture’s shocking final moment, Taylor and his beautiful
companion Nova (Linda Harrison) ride out onto a desert beach and discover
a half destroyed Statue of Liberty in ruins. At this point, Taylor
realizes he had been traveling through time rather than space, as the
forceful image says more than any dialog ever could.
A classical device of time travel
into the future is to be frozen and restored to life later. In the
sentimental Late
for dinner (1991), two friends participate involuntarily
of an experiment with cryonics, being frozen by a doctor in 1962. When
they are awakened, they notice that 29 years had passed. They are
physically the same while everybody is older. They try and succeed in
restoring their family lives.
Time traveling into the past could
be even more interesting. Who wouldn’t like to see the past, reconstruct it
or even change it completely? Changing the past involves so many
paradoxes and contradictions that sometimes they must be 'forgotten' by the
fun the film brings. The classic argument against time travel to the past
is that it would allow a man to go back into the past and to kill one of
his direct ancestors, thus making himself – and probably a considerable
fraction of the human race – non-existent.
In Trancers (1985), a kind of “imitation”
of Blade Runner, we can observe how this problem of paradox in time travel
may happen. A cop from the future (Tim Thomerson) is sent back in time 300
years to 1985 L. A. to change history preventing a totalitarian state from
coming into power. The device used is kind of weird – they give the cop
an injection and his “soul” travels back inhabitating the body of one
of his ancestors; also the cop’s body is kept in the future. What
happens to this ancestor’s “soul”? No answer in the film. Another
paradox with the result in the story itself happens because the cop
can’t avoid an ancestor of a person from dying, thus the person
disappears from the future, where he couldn’t exist, though the corpse
remains in the future.
The idea that the past can’t be
changed is the core of Timescape
(1991). Ben Wilson (Jeff Daniels) is a widower who lives with his daughter
(Adriana Richards) in a town in Ohio, where he is building a small hotel.
Before the place is finished, the first guests arrive: tourists that
introduce themselves as being a group of actors traveling around the
country. Actually they are visitors from the future and using a
sophisticated time machine - a kind of card that opens 'an entrance'
through time - travel as mere spectators of the most horrible disasters
and accidents in all ages of the humanity history. They had seen the big
earthquake that destroyed San Francisco in 1906, the explosion of
Hindenburg in 1937, and many other disasters. They say the can never
change history, only observe it. They were there to watch a dramatic fire
that would transform that small town into ashes. Ben Wilson realizes what
is to happen and he interferes in history avoiding many deaths in the city
and also saving his daughter's life by using their time machine.
Science fiction writers try to
overcome the problem of paradox in a variety of different ways, usually by
imagining that each meaningful action the time traveler takes, creates a
new universe. This is the idea that different historical eras could exist.
In
the gentle love story Somewhere in Time (1980), Bid Time Return, by
Richard Matheson, Richard Collier, a play-writer (Christopher Reeve),
receives from a 70-year-old lady an old watch and apparently, since then
he is a discontent person. While traveling he stays in a hotel where he
finds a picture of a beautiful actress called Elise McKenna (Jane
Seymour). He falls in love with the girl of the picture and he realizes
that it had been taken in 1912 and furthermore, that the old lady who gave
him the watch was Elise. Richard looks for her but she is dead; therefore
he decides to go back in time to meet her. He talks to Dr Gerald Finney
(George Voskovec), his former college teacher, whose theory is that a
person could imagine "think" himself backward in time, actually
convincing his physical body to travel through eras; a kind of hypnosis.
Surrounded by objects of the period, Richard tries the experiment and
succeeds, arriving in the year 1912. Although McKeena's theatrical
manager, W.F.Robinson (Christopher Plummer) tries to prevent the liaison,
'true love' conquers all - except by any hint from the present. A coin he
put by mistake in one of his pockets makes him go back to his own time,
never succeeding again. But love wins at the end too - Collier and McKenna
are reunited in death "somewhere".
Hypnosis
is the device used in this film and from all the objects Richard has
contact to make his travel (watch, clothes, money) the picture is
the most important one for his achievement. He comes back to the
historical room to look at it as many times as necessary because 'no other
artifact created by the brain or hand is so evocative as a photograph. It
alone can take us back into the past, can make us feel - in joy or
sadness- this is how it really was, in such a place and such a
time.'
Another psychological travel to the past
appears in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986). Kathlen Turner plays Peggy Sue, a
40-year-old woman separated from the husband, Charlie (Nicholas Cage). In
a 25th graduation anniversary party Peggy Sue faints and 'magically'
travels back to 1960 to her own house 25 years back, being seen as a
17-year- old girl by everybody. This device, the 'faint', is not the
center of the story, although it is used again to come back to the
present, like in some fairy tales. The core here is the opportunity one
can have of coming back to decide if any change would be made in one's
past. Living again with her own family knowing what's going to happen next
can be very exciting - not leaving behind the psychological tension that
can be created between problems not solved in the past and their effect in
the present. Peggy comes back to her family in 1985 conscious that she has
taken her choice.
In the same line, with heroes
trying to correct the past, we do have many movies. Although too fantastic
and illogical, in Superman - The Movie (1978), the main character
(Christopher Reeve) saves lives but is unable to rescue Lois Lane (Margot
Ridder) from death as her car is crushed in an earthquake fissure.
Superman reverses the Earth's orbit by flying round it on the contrary
direction of its rotation, turning time back so that Lois is restored to
life.
In Star
Trek IV - The Voyage Home
(1986), one of the best of the series, when Kirk and company approach
Earth in 8390, they are aware of an imminent danger that may destroy the
planet. A space probe is sending out signals to a species, which the
probe's computers believe to exist on Earth. But the species - the
humpback whale - has been extinct for nearly 200 years. The ceaseless
attempts to communicate are throwing the Earth's systems into chaos. Spock
devises a possible solution: travel back in time, pick up several humpback
whales, and deposit them in the ocean of the future, so the probes will
make contact, be satisfied and leave. The device used by them is called
"time warp" - they go around the Sun and come back to Earth in a
very high speed and the computer put them in the wanted time. The crew
wanders like aliens around America of 1986, coming in contact with all
manner of contemporary problems, from punks with loud boom boxes to
medical malpractice.
One reason that science fiction
writers invented alternate universes, which might be a consequence of some
hypothetical alteration of history and parallel universes, which somehow
exist alongside our own, but in some other dimension, was that this way
they could avoid trapping themselves in time paradoxes when they wrote
time travel stories. That is the only explanation to accept as possible
The Terminator (1984). The saga begins a quarter century form now, when
human beings and their cyborg creations have entered into a struggle for
dominance, which the cyborgs seem likely to win. However, one man rallies
the human race and led them in a counterassault. Unable to locate him, the
cyborgs create a plan: they project one of their own, an android assassin
(Schwarzenegger), back through time to 1984, where this “terminator”
is to kill the young woman, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), who otherwise
will give birth to humankind’s last great hope. Luckily, the endangered
future beings learn of this and send an agent, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn),
back in time, they hope prevent the murder and he does. The plot seems to
be simple but it develops in an illogical and contradictory way. John
Connor can’t exist unless Kyle Reese travels from the year 2029 to 1984
and, with Sarah Connor, conceives the future resistance leader. Without
the existence of John Connor, Sky Net would not send a Terminator back to
1984 to kill Sarah Connor; and, therefore, Reese would not be sent to
protect her. Hence, the two will never meet, and John Connor can never be
born. As a result, there can be no John Connor in 2029 to even send Reese
back to father him.
Equally
confusing is Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). A bit humanized cyborg
from the future, T-800 (Schwarzenegger) returns, this time to protect the
son-to-be savior of humanity (Edward Furlong) from the destruction by a
rival terminator, T-1000 (Robert Patrick). Though special effects are
great, especially the “liquid metal”, the writers make the same
“mistake” again. Miles Dyson, the man responsible for the invention on
the neural net processor (which causes the nuclear war in 1997 and the
creation of SkyNet) is introduced. It is revealed that his research is
based on a cybernetic arm and computer chip recovered from the destroyed
Terminator in the first film. Without these objects from the future, he
would not be able to create the neural net processor, thereby eliminating
the nuclear war in 1997 and SkyNet. Without the war and without the
SkyNet, there can be no Terminator to send back to 1984, and therefore, no
arm or computer chip for Dyson to learn from. Nevertheless, if we accept
the theory of parallel worlds, after the destruction of the Cyberdyne lab
we could have a future where World War III still occurs, SkyNet prevails,
and two terminators are sent back to end John Connor’s life. In
contrast, there could be other future – world peace, glistening cities,
a hopeful outlook for mankind.
Similar problems arise with the
zigzag trilogy Back to the Future (1985). A teenager, Marty McFly (Michael
J. Fox), and an eccentric inventor, “Doctor” Brown (Christopher
Lloyd), travel to the past. Marty finds himself for a week, back in 1955,
almost creating a situation, which would be a big paradox. His mother (Lea
Thompson) falls in love with him at first sight. This intrusion into the
natural order of events causes Lorraine to miss her fateful meeting with
George (Crispin Glover). Before long, the time traveler senses that unless
he can repair the damage his presence has done to the past, his parents
will never marry, and he will cease to be – in fact, never be born. More
confusing is Back to the Future II (1989). The heroes and Jennifer
(Claudia Wells) go to 2015 to avoid Marty’s son from going to jail. They
succeed though when they come back it’s not the same 1985; it’s an
alternate future. Actually Doc gives us a class about it; he explains that
Biff (Thomas F. Wilson) had come back to a point in the past (1955) giving
to himself younger an almanac with the results of all the sports.
This
changed Biff’s and a lot of people’s lives, creating an alternate
time. Therefore the heroes come back (again) to 1955 to catch the almanac
and destroy it. But as they were already there in the first movie, there
are two Marties and two Docs. If the spectator didn’t see the first, he
wouldn’t probably understand the second. They burn the almanac and the
alternate world disappears too. But when they are come back to 1985, a
lightening takes Doc and the car to 1885 Old West. This leads us to Back
to the Future III (1990) – a kind of funny western with nice special
effects. But let’s remember there is another Doc in 1955 that can Help
Marty to rescue the other Doc (that’s crazy!). Marty receives a letter
Doc wrote in 1885 and the post office had been waiting 70 years to
deliver. Doc wrote where he had put the car for them to fix it in 1955.
Marty goes to the Old West, knowing his ancestors and becoming a hero.
Again, although this third “episode” is easier to understand, it’s
better if the viewer has seen the two previous. Doc changes history by
protecting Clara (Mary Steenburgen), whom Doc falls in love with, from
dying in a ravine. The delightful movie concludes with Marty coming back
to 1985 alone and being visited by Doc, Clara and their two children in a
locomotive through space.
There is no doubt that science
fiction enriches our concept of 'time', sharpening our sensitivity
relating to it. Time would be as a trip by train in which many detours
appear, making the conductor choose the way quickly. Each of these choices
would protect us in a universe and separate us from the others; we could
know what would happen with another choice only with a 'time machine'. In
addition, if paradoxes make time travel hard to accept, in contrast, they
bring more possibilities and freedom to create interesting stories.
My special thanks to professor Lorant Lukacs, my sci-fi teacher!
Bibliography
BRODE, Douglas. The Films of the Eighties , New York, Citadel,
1990.
BRODE, Douglas. The Films of the Sixties , New York, Citadel,
1980.
CLARK, Arthur C. Profiles of the Future, 1962.
MEYERS, Richard. The Great Science Fiction Films , New York,
Citadel, 1984.
NICHOLLS, Peter. The Science in Science Fiction , New York,
Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
STARLOG Magazine - The Science Fiction Universe , Number 174,
New York, Starlog International Inc., 1992.
More about Time Travel
Stephen's TIME TRAVEL PAGE
- Great!!!!
