MovieChat Forums > Time After Time (1979) Discussion > so....he's got a damn time machine right...

so....he's got a damn time machine right?


why the hell doesn't he just take the time machine back to the first day he got there, go to the bank, catch jack the ripper and be done with it? if he fails all he has to do is keep going back over and over until he succeeds. he literally has all the time he needs.

and its not like he can't use the machine easily, he used it to show mary steenburgen that he's telling the truth.

this movie has absolutely no stakes whatsoever. every murder can be prevented, as a matter of fact, he can just go back to ten minutes before the cops show up, and clock the rippper on the head right before he tries to steal the machine.


fun movie though.

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Except that he'd have to break into the museum every single time he wanted to use the machine...
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seems a pretty wimpy excuse for not stopping a jack the ripper killing spree.

i just think they could've found some way to make it so that the machine didn't work again until the end, say like the same thing in well's did to the protagonist in his novel, a missing part or whatever. knowing that well's couldn't use his machine to stop the ripper would've given the film a real sense of urgency and high stakes.

knowing the machine is working and just sitting in a museum seems like a total waste of the most valuable resource at well's disposal. instead he wanders from bank to bank, bangs mary steenburgen and lets a string of murders happen.

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Yeah, he's a lousy detective.
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Well, I don't know if any of us can assume how time travel would work. I mean, maybe he has to catch the specific Ripper that left his house back in 1893 or whatever. I mean, myabe if he goes back in time he'd only catch the past Ripper and not the one that is still in the future killing people. I just don't know..and neither do you...and neither does anybody until we event a time machine.

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You guys need to research more time travel stories...

1.) H.G. Wells can not use his time machine to travel "Back" into past events to capture Jack The Ripper, because the time line would change and create a paradox.

Future H.G. Wells travels "Back" into past events to capture Jack The Ripper. Jack The Ripper is now in custody. New Timeline. Past H.G. Wells does not need to travel "Back" into past events to capture Jack The Ripper, because Future H.G. Wells already has him in custody. Since Past H.G. Wells does not travel "Back" into past events to capture Jack The Ripper. Where does Future H.G. Wells come from? Does Future H.G. Wells still exist? If Future H.G. Wells no longer exists, then how can Jack The Ripper be taken into custody? Original Timeline Is Restored. Future H.G. Wells travels "Back" into past events to capture Jack The Ripper.

Unresolvable Time Loop. AKA Paradox


2A.) Time Doubles...

To Paraphrase Quotes From Doc Brown in Back To The Future Part II: "You must be careful not to run into your past self, since there are now two of you here... The lightning bolt event at the clock tower, that sends you and the DeLorean back to 1985, does not happen until tonight. YOU MUST NOT INTERFERE WITH THAT EVENT. Your past self must get back to 1985!"

2B.) Compounding Time Doubles?

So, if H.G. Wells, fails to capture Jack the Ripper by traveling into the past... He should just do it again, and again?

First there were two H.G. Wells, Then Three, Then Four... all trying to avoid each other, to make sure they all do what they originally did, so there are no time paradoxes.

"keep going back over and over until he succeeds"?

NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN IN A MOVIE OR REALITY. NEXT!


3.) Traveling To Get A Future Newspaper...

Could still cause some time issues.

First... the trip into the future, was intentional. "Let's see what happens?". The newspaper shows what the future would be from the moment they decided to take the journey. In any case, AMY was not killed, but her friend, who was misidentified as AMY. It did not matter if AMY went to the future or not.

Second, a paradox could still occur by trying to save Amy's friend. If Amy's friend had been saved, the the newspaper would not claim that Amy was killed. When Amy originally travelled into the future, the newspaper should have been different, and they would not have known about "Amy" being killed.... I could go on here, but another time loop or paradox mess would happen. As I recall in the film, H.G. and Amy, were not able to change anything, so there was not any time loop or paradox mess anyway. They got lucky.


4.) Time Machines, can't change KNOWN events!

If a loved one is killed accidentally. And you build a Time Machine to go back in to time to save that love from being killed accidentally, which you do... Then your loved one is still alive. For what reason do you have now, to build a Time Machine? If you don't build a Time Machine, then how could you go back to save that love from being killed accidentally?

Again...

Unresolvable Time Loop. AKA Paradox



Plus, we are all who we are, because of events in our history. If we change them, we change ourselves.

So, If you read it in a "history book", you can't change it.



Sorry to burst your bubble of thought...

But he can't "use the machine easily", and he doesn't "have all the time in the world"...



Some Bonus Time Travel Options Along With Do's & Don'ts...
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However, At the end of the movie, H.G. Wells has no knowledge of what is supposed to happen to "Future" Amy, so he can take her back into the past to live with him.

In the movie: Millennium, time travel is used to take people off known airliner crashes, and are replaced with non living "Clones", and the originals are taken into the future to save the world.

You can go back in time several million years, and perhaps take a grain of sand off a beach, and bring it with you into the present.

- Don't take any rocks out of any streams or rivers that may change the direction of flowing water. The Mississippi River may then run West to East from California to North Carolina,

- Don't step on any "butterflies", as they may not have any descendants that affect the course of life on earth, and prevents humans from existing. OOPs, no more IMDb Message Boards...

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