Butterfly Effect - Page 2

caught this today. Some ok ideas, but the acting was all over the place. And LOTS of unintentional hilarity (favorite would be reference to the big book of prison cliches)

I liked that it had a happy ending but not the happiest possible ending.

Retroactive was good b-movie fun. A sci-fi crime genre take on the Groundhog Day idea. (That reminds me... the TV movie "12:01" is a sci-fi movie whose script predated Groundhog Day. Even better than Retroactive.)

I get pissed off about the Ashton Kutcher backlash. Just because someone is best known for playing idiotic characters, it doesn't mean they can't act or shouldn't try something different. I would also argue that it takes some skill to pull of the hilarious Kelso character on That 70s Show.

I could be wrong here, still haven't seen it, but doesn't the movie involve The Butterfly Effect as defined by Chaos Theory and time travel both?

Bradbury's 1952 story was about a guy who goes back in time, inadvertently kills a butterfly, and makes significant changes to the future (that is, the guy's present) as a result.

Chaos theory deals with similar concepts -- the sensitivity of events over time to the initial set of conditions. However, Bradbury's dead-butterfly-altering-time story, which is basically the plotline of the movie, predates chaos theory (at least it certainly predates the "Butterfly" analogy now used in Chaos theory). Morever, Chaos theory doesn't really deal with time travel, which would be considered pseudo-science to most people. It deals with finding patterns in complex systems and crap like that. Also, the "Butterfly" analogy in Chaos theory has to do with time moving forward, not altering the present by going back in time, which makes Bradbury's story even more applicable to the movie. Now, I am not certain if Lorenz got the idea for his "Butterfly" analogy for Chaos theory from Bradbury, but it would certainly stand to reason -- particularly given that Bradbury is a pretty popular science fiction writer.

dmeister

*SPOILERS*

I also wanted to mention that it occurred to me, quite sometime after seeing the movie...

Initially, I assumed (as the movie would have you) that his "black outs" were simply instances of his mind coping with the stress by repressing his memory of the event, which isn't entirely uncommon. Later, however, it occurred to me that these periods weren't necessarily periods of repressed memory, but rather periods where he actually lost control of his consciousness as his "future-self" took over his body using his time travel abilities. That is, he "blacked out" as a child at instances when his adult-self "warped" (for lack of a better word) back in time into his child-self.

I actually realized that this might have been the case when I remembered that he was drawing a picture of stabbing a couple of Aryans as a child and, of course, he does just that as an adult in one of his futures -- suggesting that he was privy to that memory as a child. Of course, this might have been obvious from the start for other people, but it didn't dawn on me for a day or two.

While this notion is still not without its logistical flaws (but, hey, it's a time travel movie), it added another dimension of intrigue to the movie for me. And, assuming that this is indeed what the screenwriters had in mind, it also demonstrated greater foresight on behalf of the writers.

dmeister

gruber why make fun of the "fat-ass bully" from boy meets world, damn that guy is great in any movie he's in like he was fucking awsome in American History X...and he was damn funny in Remember the titans, hehehe white boy trying to be black he was so ahead of his time!

We just got back from seeing it. We really enjoyed it and I thought that Aston Kutcher(sp?) did a really good job.

I went with my wife. Why would ask that?