There are a lot of movies and television shows that feature time travel. Pretty much all of them have bizarre quirks. Part of this is because time travel is pretty much certain to create paradoxes.
A lot of problems occur with how the past can change the future. If you have to travel through time to fix the past, then you would effectively eliminate the need to fix the past. This would eliminate the fix, resulting in the time travel all over again.
In many ways, Bill and Ted did a good job of establishing a consistent timeline. Even the premise where they had to go back in time for the future to exist rather than to create a new future or change the past helped prevent the circular scenario that I mentioned above. Of course, this brings up another problem.
How did the future of Bill and Ted begin in the first place? Without the intervention of Rufus, Wyld Stallyns would not have been able to stay together. That's why he went back in the first place. The future is built off of them. Rufus could not intervene unless Rufus had already intervened.
The only way to make sense out of this scenario is if there are parallel universes. In one, you have the future without intervention. In the other, Rufus would have intervened before Rufus even existed.
Peabody and Sherman is a similar situation. Their time travels always involved intervening to make their encounters match history. In order for an option to exist where history changes and another to exist based off of Peabody and Sherman's intervention from the beginning, it seems like you would need some form of parallel universes.
I hope I'm not coming off as a nitpicking individual. Ultimately, I am talking about entertainment. In that regard, I have praise for both the examples I just provided. In fact, there is something more important here than the problems with these scenarios. They made me think. I feel that comedies that make you think deserve some credit.
No comments:
Post a Comment