MovieChat Forums > The Jacket (2005) Discussion > flaw?

flaw?

posted 15 years ago by x_trapper
15 replies | jump to latest

NOTICE How everything he went to the future to do already happened. like with the boy, in the future somebody tells the woman how to fix the boy. which was Jack, that how he knew to go back and tell the woman to use shock therapy. And like with scaring the docter, the docter told him when he went to the future he came out the little morgue box thing telling him those names that how he was able to go back and tell him the names. now why is it in the future the mother's mom is dead, she should be alive because at the end he tells her about smoking and burning down the house, and when he go back to the future shes alive, but before that she was dead in the future. Just a flaw I found

[–] ingve1974 15 years ago

That's not a flaw. He saved her. She would be dead unless he told her about the cigarette. He'd never done that the times before when he went to the future.

[–] michellekd_6 15 years ago

I totally agree. I was just thinking that while watching this for like the 3rd time. It is a flaw, because the future was already changed and knew what he was going to do. Her mom should have been alive originally.

[–] IAdoreYou 15 years ago

I thought it was a flaw the first time I saw the movie but i reckoned there are different futures depending on what things people choose to do in the past, like the multiple universes theory. When Jack had not yet written the letter to Jackie's mom, Jackie's life in the future was going to be messed up, but by the time Jack gave that letter to Jackie's mom, the whole future ahead was changed.

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] SBL84 15 years ago

There could be a number of explanations about why things happened the way they did depending on how you interpret the movie.

1.) The trip to the altered 2007 at the end wasn't real. This was just his wishful thinking as he died in the drawer. So in reality, her mother did die, and her life turned out the same way. But after seeing his success in helping people with his knowledge of the future, he imagines that he fixed her life as well.

2.) The future isn't certain, there may be different outcomes even with the same events leading up to them. Maybe in the original timeline, he did give her the letter but for some reason it didn't effect her the same way. You can try to steer it in the direction you want, but there's no way to make sure it happens.

3.) In a similar point as #2, those other two events you mentioned had direct results. Those two things were verifiable. He explained how to help the boy, and was still around to learn it worked. He told Becker the names as soon as he came out of the drawer. Those events happened during that lifetime. Since he died in the drawer, he had no way of making sure Jackie's mom would stop smoking, or be more careful, or do anything to prevent killing herself as he described. He also didn't know the exact date it would happen, so there are any number of events that could have resulted in her death that he could not intervene in after his death.

[–] ryan-1218 15 years ago

My two cents is that if the doctor really could let someone see the future, people would willingly take his drugs and let him throw them in a drawer with no lights.

[–] bigmovieman 14 years ago

Its called a paradox. There is a way around it though:

When Jack changes the future he creates a new timeline that runs along side the unaltered timeline.

[–] shrugs 14 years ago

But what the OP is talking about is not really a paradox at all. Him knowing the names is a paradox. Telling Jennifer Jason Leigh how to cure the kid is a paradox. But the letter was an original thought. No one in the future told him that he would write a letter and what it would say. The OP is saying that it is different, meaning that his knowledge of the future can change the future, whereas the other incidents, the paradoxical scenarios, suggest that the future and the present are effectively concurrent and can't be altered. Both can't be true. Having a new timeline pop into existence is a bit of a cheat. Let's face it, it's a flaw in the script.

Now let's go bury this dead hooker.

[–] 14 years ago

[deleted]

[–] quitecontrary-1 14 years ago

No the timeline diverges when he changes things. When Jack tells the Dr about the shock therapy she applies it immediately, before Jack goes back in the drawer. He has also delivered the names of the patients to Dr. Becker. So now we're traveling on the timeline where the kid is cured and the Dr is "haunted". Then he writes the letter and delivers it. So now we're on the timeline where the kid is cured, Becker is haunted and he saved Jackie's mom. It all happens at once.
There's lots of twisted thinking when dealing with time travel, but no one says the time traveler can't have an original thought. Actually time traveling stories usually involve the traveler doing all different things to try to change the future.

[–] shrugs 14 years ago

That doesn't make any sense. Jack could only tell The Dr about shock therapy because he had already seen it. It's a paradox. The future he is experiencing is already affected by his actions in the past which were informed from his visiting the future which he is only now experiencing. Any original thought he had and any action he had taken on account of it would already be evident in the future but in this one instant it isn't. There is no accounting for that.

What if a squirrel wants a sausage?

[–] paperpup 9 years ago

Maybe the doctor found the fix for the kid without Jack's help but much later in time. However, once Jack tells her the fix (shock treatment), she tries the fix earlier. That explanation avoids any paradox.

[–] robbo_cobblers 14 years ago

Maybe you should go back to the past and learn how to spell Doctor..

[–] TheFonzz 14 years ago

The boy was going to get the shock treatment eventually. Jack told her before she figured it out on her own just to further prove that he can go to 2007. no flaw or anything around that theory.

I'm going to open a cross dressing store and name it "Susan B. Anthony"

[–] chilone 14 years ago

I think if you look into any story involving time travel, flaws are pretty much unavoidable.

I feel more like I do now that when I first got here...