MovieChat Forums > Project Almanac (2015) Discussion > Self defeating paradox (ending spoilers)

Self defeating paradox (ending spoilers)

posted 10 years ago by Strazdamonas
25 replies | jump to latest

Warning, there are spoilers of the ending here. if you are one of those people that throw a hissy fit about spoilers go away.

now that we got rid of the whiners, we can begin. The ending of the movie creates a self defeating paradox. Main character comes back in time to destroy the blueprints and mechanism of the time machine so it could never be created. However that is impossible, because if he destroys the blueprints, the time machine cannot be built, and thus he cannot go back in time to destroy it. but if he does not go back in time to destroy it, the machine gets built and he does go back in time for that.

This creates a paradox with no solution.

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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] taz420nj 10 years ago

ALL time travel movies are paradoxical. It is the nature of the beast. That's why time travel can not exist. You can not change the past, you can only try to shape the future.

[–] Strazdamonas 10 years ago

Take a look at Primer, that one dealt with Time Travel and paradoxes quite well.

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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.

[–] jawsfan007 10 years ago

If i remember in Primer,

They said that each time they went back, that became a new time line and would erase THE PREVIOUS ONE.

Cause at the end they were strying to stop the guy at the party that brought a gun and it's mentioned it took about 23 times to get it right.

[–] taz420nj 10 years ago

I never saw Primer, but if that's true, then that doesn't work either. Erasing a timeline creates its own paradox, because if the original timeline no longer existed, then you never existed - hence you couldn't go back to create the new timeline and erase the old one.

It's just an inherent defect in time travel plots - there will ALWAYS be a paradox created somewhere.

[–] carl_johnson-1 10 years ago

Primer never really addressed what happens to the original timeline. They do wonder what their original selves did, without the diversion created by the time travel.

Clearly the original history happened, but, in theory, it could be erased and replaced. Erasing the old timeline would have no impact on the new timeline. There's no magical force that would delete the time traveler in the new timeline. He's safe from the erasure.

[–] BigRich 10 years ago

Erasing a timeline creates its own paradox, because if the original timeline no longer existed, then you never existed - hence you couldn't go back to create the new timeline and erase the old one.

Ah, but that's where String Theory comes into play. I personally believe if time travel was to happen, you couldn't change the past, or travel to the past of your own time line. It's not possible. However, you could travel to the past of an adjacent parallel universe, where the "past" resembles your time line's past but technically, it's not "your past". This is how you get around the Grandfather Paradox, because you won't be killing your grandfather. You'll be killing someone else in a totally separate dimension that has no relation to you or your past time line.

The conundrum is that in doing so, that alternate universe is now merged with your time line - because your time line can only move to the future. By travelling to the past via an alternate parallel universe, you have now merged the two, and that alternate universe's past is now your future. Hope this makes sense.

I personally believe every person on this planet has their own time line. That explains why for some people "time is moving so slow" and for others, "there isn't enough time in the day to get everything done!"

BTW, I think Primer is one the most over-rated time travel movies ever.

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Every person that served can be called a veteran, but not every veteran can be called a Marine.

[–] ou_sucks 10 years ago

He didn't destroy the original device. He destroyed the one that he time traveled with. Had he destroyed the original device then there wouldn't be two digital video cameras in the attic scene at the end.

[–] sanddragon939 10 years ago

Nope...the whole purpose of his last trip was destroying the original device. Its what caused him to be erased and the timeline to be reset.

The camera surviving intact in the past...is another one of those weird time travel loopholes this movie revels in.

[–] JackDnCoke 10 years ago

No, you're wrong actually. He didn't destroy the device. He left the camera with everything they had filmed originally kind of like instructions on what not to do so they wouldn't make the same mistakes again. Thats why he knew what she was going to say when returning the bag and then tells her they're about to change the world. Everything gets a do over from the point of finding the time machine and now they have a better idea of what not to do.

[–] drtagnjr 10 years ago

I think you are close but the movie does a disservice if that was the aim. He clearly does not have knowledge of the events in that final scene (not first hand at least) so he didn't return from the past. If the camera survives then he would have as well. They needed some closure/comment on him and what happened to him I think in that new timeline.

[–] desertrose0601-690-503760 10 years ago

Yeah I agree. If he disappeared, so should've the camera b/c he wouldn't have time traveled back there to leave it.

[–] bing-57 10 years ago

> Main character comes back in time to destroy the blueprints and mechanism of the time machine so it could never be created.

There is no problem with that. That's actually the basis for my theory that backwards time travel can never be invented. Anytime someone does invent backwards time travel, some idiot goes back and stops it from being invented and -- poof -- it was never invented. It make take one day or one year or a thousand years or more, but someone will eventually go back and wipe out the invention.

So, I appreciate a movie that uses this theory. The biggest flaw is that the boy somehow remembers it all after that time pocket winks out.

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What Would Jesus Do For A Klondike Bar (WWJDFAKB)?

[–] Strazdamonas 10 years ago

but if it is never invented how can someone go back in time to stop it?

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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.

[–] bing-57 10 years ago

Because it did happen inside a little pocket of time that sealed itself up.

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What Would Jesus Do For A Klondike Bar (WWJDFAKB)?

[–] Strazdamonas 10 years ago

but if it sealed itself off it cannot affect current timeline.

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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.

[–] bing-57 10 years ago

> but if it sealed itself off it cannot affect current timeline.

Maybe, maybe not. Time is a funny thing and since we can never step outside of time to observe it, we don't really know completely how it works.

Try, someday, explaining the third dimension to a being that lives in two dimensions, like an ant.

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What Would Jesus Do For A Klondike Bar (WWJDFAKB)?

[–] Strazdamonas 10 years ago

If the ant would understand math, you could.

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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.

[–] Insomniatic102 9 years ago

Time travel into the past is impossible regardless. Time is essentially just movement. You can speed things up or slow things down, relative to yourself, but making everything go back? No.

[–] bing-57 9 years ago

> Time travel into the past is impossible regardless.

You seem to be stating that as a fact, just as people before stated as a fact that the Earth was flat and the center of the universe.

Science to the rescue. Add enough science and any problem can be solved.

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What Would Jesus Do For A Klondike Bar (WWJDFAKB)?

[–] howard_w13 9 years ago

You seem to be stating that as a fact, just as people before stated as a fact that the Earth was flat and the center of the universe.

Science to the rescue. Add enough science and any problem can be solved.

Given what little we understand about time (at the moment); it will be quite some time before we'd have the skill and means to create a time-travel device.

But I dare say that if humanity ever does develop time-travel; it may well result in us eradicating ourselves from existance. Timecop clearly showed the potential of such technology falling into the wrong hands.

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The movie has a plot hole?!?
EVERY FRIGGIN' MOVIE HAS A FRIGGIN' PLOT HOLE!!!!!

[–] krypter99 10 years ago

The movie make's no sense in general and was full of paradoxes.

[–] brain21 10 years ago

There are no timeline alterations. If you think about it like string theory and alternate universes. Example:

For the sake of illustration, lets assums that the starting point for this Journey is Lollapalooza, otherwise this post will be even long. Just go with me on this.

Universe A: Lollapalooza, no kiss. David from Universe A - lets call him David(A).
David(A) wants to kiss jess, so he goes back to lollapalooza, but it is not the Universe A Lollapalooza, but rather Lollapalooza in Universe B (unbeknownst to him).

So now Universe A has no David. He is missing.

Universe B has David(A) and David(B) in it.

When David then travels "back to the current time" he is actually in Universe C.

So in Universe A, David is missing.

In Universe B, David (B) is still there.

In Universe C, we have David (C) (who we don't see) and David(A). In this universe we have plane crashes.
This explains why David(A) doesn't know about the plane crashes. David(C) actually does, but we don't see him.

Then he wants to fix this, and Jess catches him, so now we have David(A) and Jess(C) "time travel" to Universe D.

So in Universe C, Jess is missing. Jess(C) and David(A) are in Universe D.

Then Jess(C) and Jess(D) run into each other. Because of the old story that the same person can never occupy the same space, both Jess's disappear. That's the silly part. Jess(C) and Jess(D) technically are NOT the same person, so they could interact with each other as much as they wanted, but I digress.

Now we have Universe A with a missing David(A)
Universe C with presumably a missing Jess(C)
Universe D with a missing Jess(D), and with a present David(D) (again who we don't see), and a David(A).

Then David runs to the school for more hydrogen and "time travels" to Universe E (2004). The weird thing is that the camera changes. In Universe D it was a cell phone, when he wakes up in E, it's a DV camera. That doesn't really fit, but I guess cell phone (A) is in Universe D, and now in Universe E he has Camera(E)

In 2004 we have David(A). We have David(E) who is having his 7th birthday party.

Before I go on, it is worth noting that David(C) continues on in his own timeline, and possibly moves to another parallel universe. Could be Universe D. It could be Universe ZZ, but we aren't following that David, so we don't know. Anyway...

At close to the end we have David(A) in Universe E. He destroys the original time machine - Time Machine(E), but he still has TimeMachine(A) so he can "get back home". He also seems to leave camera(E) in Universe E, even though his father already has a camera(E), so lets call that one camera(E2)

But unbeknownst to him, when he "gets back home" he is not in Universe A. He is in Universe F. This explains why he remembers stuff but others don't. Its not that their memory of them has been erased, but rather that there is no memory of those events in Universe F because they haven't happened yet.

Apparently in this Universe F, there was a previous visit by another David. Lets say it was David(C)? It was long ago, and he left his camera, which explains the 2 cameras.

The flaw here is that this universe has a david as well, so in this Universe we have David(A) and David(F), but we never see David(F) because it's not convenient for the film. I mean we know that people don't get "replaced" when we time travel, or Quinn would have never seen himself and Jess would have never seen herself. So if David(A) is now in Universe F, where the hell is David(F)? That's the flaw right there. The other stuff (2 cameras, David knowing whats going to happen, etc.) can be explained by the above theory.

Or, of course, it could simply be that the writers didn't think all of this stuff through as much as we are, and so there are "issues" in the end.

[–] desertrose0601-690-503760 10 years ago

Whoa...

You just blew my mind...

That was so crazy that it actually made sense. Lol.

That was the major flaw to me that David, in the end, both seemed to remember and not remember stuff. Also the cameras were different, which didn't make sense to me. Your theory actually explains both of those!

The flaw here is that this universe has a David as well, so in this Universe we have David(A) and David(F), but we never see David(F) because it's not convenient for the film.

It seems whenever they teleport back to the "present" there is only one of them, so that could possibly explain how David (A) and David (F) aren't going to run into each other. David (A) essentially becomes David (F) when he gets to the "present" in Universe (F).

[–] DeusExKatrina 9 years ago

Each jump is creating a new timeline, with our traveller(s) moving from one timeline to the next. The cast from our original timeline lived in a world where a traveller from a previous timeline had done all of the things we're about to see them do in the film, but hadn't filmed any of it and hadn't destroyed the time machine. Our cast films everything and then destroys the time machine, but leaves the camera, and the next timeline can "see the future" without even using the machine.

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Pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the antidote to shame.