Let me start of by saying that even though the acting is surprisingly inept at times throughout the entire movie - excluding the mindblowing work by all the children - I consider this to be in the Top 10 favorite movies. In terms of cinematography, narration and the element of being thought-provoking, I actually do prefer the DC version - however the theatrical version provides more internal consistency with the movie's logic.
First of all, it's a bit of a puzzle with the actual 'timeline' of the movie. It is essential to be cracked, since the entire story from Evan's perspective is constructed on few prerequisites that are a bit confusing. Given that (at least in terms of narration) Evan grew up in Reality Zero (which is the first depiction of Evan's adulthood: Denny traumatized and Kayleigh ultimately committing suicide), his childhood blackouts are the 'checkpoints' which he can use for time travel. What I found most confusing was, that by straightforward logic he could only use them in a chronologically reverse fashion. Because if he travelled to, say, the point where he is being held naked in the cellar with Kayleigh and chose to alter the course of events from there, wouldn't the following timeline of that reality become entirely different (most likely obliterating the possibility of the junkyard and mailbox events to occur) and hence no memories of that would be written down in the diaries of those events?
Unless the original diaries were able to be transported to alternate realities (which is never stated or implied), Evan wouldn't have the triggering factors to enable time travel to the events that, in Reality Zero, happened after that. Despite this, he still travels from the already-altered reality (where he has told Kayleigh's and Tommy's father to stop being a degenerate pedophile and Evan ultimately becomes a frat boy, let's call this a Reality One) to another reality (R2) by changing the events that happened in the junkyard. In R1, it is stated by Kayleigh that their father never spared Tommy from violent upbringing and stern discipline, so it would become unlikely that in R2, Tommy the Teenager would still be _exactly_ the same person as in R0 and R1 in their respective timelines, having experienced the exact same personal journey in life during those six years that followed the altered cellar scene. Considering, that the movie is called The Butterfly Effect and what that particular part of the chaos theory entails by default, it's a given that the writers should've been aware of this small detail. This is the first and the only relatively important flaw of the storyline, however there are smaller glitches to the narrative as well.
Like I said in the first paragraph of my post, the DC has less internal consistency value even by the movie's own standards, since it is unknown to humanity that a fetus can have consciousness or personal sense of self or being. That being said, it doesn't matter if Evan is able to transport to the time he was just noodling around in his mother's womb and change the course of events from there, because a fetus is unable to have those checkpoints, let alone Evan be aware of their existence.
Well, this rant has exceeded all definitions of getting overboard and being entangled with petty details that have no contribution to the film's emotional themes and sorry for explaining my point confusingly. Nothing can still change the key fact that it still is an amazing movie with insanely strong thoughts and emotional takes about love and relinquishing regardless of which ending it was viewed with. With - of course - the exceptions of "The Happy Ending" (where Evan & Kayleigh meet on the street later on and start working from there) and "Open Ending" (where Evan starts following Kayleigh on the street upon confrontation). Both of those are just atrocious.
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enekaith
11 years ago
Might I say you are the first person to actually dissect and understand this movie like i did in great detail. I thank you for this. You even brought my attention to all the checkpoint/reality detail corrections that should have been made.
Your take on the:
"Like I said in the first paragraph of my post, the DC has less internal consistency value even by the movie's own standards, since it is unknown to humanity that a fetus can have consciousness or personal sense of self or being. That being said, it doesn't matter if Evan is able to transport to the time he was just noodling around in his mother's womb and change the course of events from there, because a fetus is unable to have those checkpoints, let alone Evan be aware of their existence."
I'm not sure i get what you meant but:
There was a reason why he hunted the video of when he was born, down to watch. His doctor said he had never had any journals nor his dad a photo album. But the fact that he could travel back to his first ever 'blackout' i.e. before he was born, was in fact a possibility which he tried out and it worked. The psychic he met said he didn't have a lifeline, and if they could put that into the movie so early on, it already means he shouldn't even exist. As soon as I watched that scene, I knew he was going to die, period.(I got the shivers by the way). That's why his 'psycho' dad wanted to kill him too.
If you notice, whenever he went back in time, he sounded like an adult in his childish body, with the subtle changes in his behaviour, attitude and even his gait. What seven-year old speaks with such big words ultimately capturing a potentially dangerous pedophile of an adult's attention in the basement scene? It meant he was more knowledgeable in his young body. You could say it was similar to having an adults brain in a child's head, that's why whenever he went back to the new reality, he had a neural reconstruction.
With my crazy breakdown in the previous paragraph, we can see that his adult brain was in the foetus, so his brain and him knew exactly what they were doing when he strangled himself. It's technically not even suicide since he wasn't meant to exist in the first place.
This movie made me cry with mixed emotions. It makes one think of the unknown sacrifices people must have made to make us what we are.
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jouni-koskela
11 years ago
"With my crazy breakdown in the previous paragraph, we can see that his adult brain was in the foetus, so his brain and him knew exactly what they were doing when he strangled himself. It's technically not even suicide since he wasn't meant to exist in the first place."
Yes, I agree fully with this and I've understood that Evan's full grown consciousness travels to situations where his body is not equal to his consciousness in terms of age. My point was that it was a bit of a long shot for Evan to even attempt to time travel back to the days of him being merely a foetus. Because we as humans are unable to develop lasting memory imprints from our infancy and the first one or two years of our childhood, it is impossible for Evan to be aware of those times. Regardless of whatever material (diaries, pictures, movies) he had to travel back in time, it would've been mandatory for him to have a similar blackout-related checkpoint while being a foetus in order for the successful time travel event to take place, so it's a hit-or-miss effort. While hastily writing that letter under the desk before the suicide takes place in Evan's timeline, he states that he is about to try something that either works or doesn't, so it is reasoned well enough that this attempt is going to be something that even Evan doesn't know whether it will work or not (the time travel, that is). It might also be, that Evan doesn't need to have the checkpoints in order to enable time travel, but this was never implied in the story as every time travel event prior to the DC cut ending involved with the blackouts. Now come to think of it, this is the case with the theatrical ending as well - but it was better hidden, because the scenario itself didn't appear so far-fetched and out-of-this-world as in the DC ending.
Plot holes, flawed logic, poor acting, Ashton Kutcher or whatever, this is still an exceptionally good movie with one of the best ideas and themes I've ever witnessed captured on film.
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enekaith
11 years ago
Hmm... I see what you mean. That puts a lot into perspective.
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emvan
10 years ago
I think it's made pretty clear that time travel to his past causes the blackouts, rather than the blackouts providing a portal of sorts. And this makes perfect sense neurologically -- the blackouts happen because his adult consciousness has effortlessly displaced or supplanted his child consciousness, and the latter fails to automatically come back online when the adult consciousness leaves. Leaving no consciousness at all. (Note that if the blackouts provided a portal for his adult consciousness to enter, they would have happened at the start of the episodes where the timelines diverged, rather than at the climax.)
Hence, each blackout is in his past because, in at least one timeline, he chose that point to travel back to. This is made clear when he goes back to try to destroy the firework, explaining the blackout with the knife.
So, in a sense, he can travel back to any point in his past, provided he has an external trigger to create a sufficiently vivid memory of that moment. But via time-paradox logic, he will remember all such instances as having been blackout episodes, long before he chooses to travel back there.
The theatrical cut has a big plot hole, in that he has no memory of there having been a blackout at the party where he first meets Kayleigh, and he ought to have. The original, director's cut ending, beautifully dodges that plot hole because he he would have had no memory of having had a blackout just before he was born. But he clearly must have.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.
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WarmSemenCannon
10 years ago
I watched the Director's Cut first without knowing it. Just saw the original ending today! Gosh, I was so depressed from this movie for years when really it's supposed to have that cheesy ending... Or you could say it's actually meant to have the darker ending.
I think the dark ending makes so much more sense though. His mother mentioning his siblings dying in the womb, and the blackouts always relating to his time travel.
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