Postwood Rambles About Time Travel Movies
9/7/1

Time travel movies are so stupid. They are always going into the past to screw things up.

Depending on what model of time travel causality you use, this may or may not mean something. Back to the Future is always good to explain this stuff.

In Back to the Future, little dude goes back in time and changes the future. When he returns, he replaces the �self� that grew up in that world and he has a full memory of the previous world. Wait, I don�t want to explain this stuff. I�ve done that over 23 pages with my high school [actually since first grade] friend Matt.

Ok, let�s say I, Mr. Postwood, am given a time machine. What do I do?

�Oh, you could go into the past and make bets on things you know are going to happen in the future.�

Yeah, if I�m a moron.

Postwood�s Rule #1 for the Time Machine: Do NOT go back in time.

Why would I want to mess up my present? Besides, how much money are you going to make by betting on the World Series. You won�t turn into a Bill Gates. You�ll probably get your legs broken by some mob thugsters.

But Bill Gates name, that should start getting our little brains on the right track. How did Billy get his dough? Yes, it was a stable operating system which could adapt to many different computer configurations. But to be more simple, it was technology.

Now, this is sci-fi movie type stuff. If I really had a time machine, I�d probably think about it for a while, then destroy it. No good could come of that thing. But if I were some moron in a sci-fi action type movie...I�d go to the future and steal technology. Whoo hoo!

Oh, it would be wonderful cloak and dagger stuff; Spies with superior technology coming from the past into the future to get technology and then releasing that technology earlier.

The motivations could either be a government agency that originally started the time travel to the future to stop a plague, or some individual. The government idea strikes me as more interesting since, as a government drone, I know that much of what we do is not because it is good, but because the pattern was started.

A movie based on this could also have some romantic tragedy. See, if Agent Fred goes to the future and meets Ms. Right, well, when he goes back and hands the technology over to his handlers, it changes the future and she possibly doesn�t exist.

We also can get the moral questionableness of whether the agents can kill the future people since we know that future will not exist.

Sequels to the movie could be the time machine falling into the wrong hands, though this should be done as a III or IV rather than a II since it smacks of jumping the shark.

I just learned that phrase this week. �Jumping the shark.�

In any case, enough stuffo. I got to thinking about my movie ideas since I read an interview with Joss Whedon. The time travelers stealing from the future idea actually spawned from the Bullfrog Studios computer game �Syndicate�.

I tell you, there�s nothing cooler than four cybernetically altered people in trenchcoats running down the middle of the street taking out everything.

Except maybe four cybernetically altered people in trenchcoats standing on an overpass with long-range rifles keeping the police at bay over a mile away.