Sometimes
time travel stories have the smell and taste of the genre without any machines
traveling through wormholes or historic fishes out of their historic waters.
Characters learn knowledge of the future and are faced with similar questions
as the time traveler. Can we change the
events that we see, or is this our destiny?
The trouble is, most of these stories fall flat. Either the decisions made are dubious, or the
premise runs out of steam halfway through the movie. On television, where the waiting time is much
longer, the effects are, well, shittier.
Minority Report and Paycheck were two movies based on Philip
K. Dick stories. I consider Dick to be
one of the classic American sci-fi creators, although I don’t know if
everything he wrote was meant to be a full length movie (Okay, Blade Runner...) Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, was a mostly satisfying
futuristic action film, complete with fancy gadgets. Paycheck
was a cool concept that turned into a frightful mess, with lots of help from
director John Woo. I won’t break down
the critiques of the films, there is plenty of that out there anyway. It is the
simple plot point of the ability to see the future, often reserved for time
travel films, is just too problematic to ignore.
In,
Minority Report, There are “precogs”
enlisted by the future police bureau who are humans with special abilities to
see murders before they happen. They are
so efficient that all premeditated murder is eradicated and only crimes of
passion are now detected. Cops, with knowledge
of the impending future, storm in and interrupt murders before they happen. The would-be murderer is put in jail. The thrust of the movie is Cruise’s character
wrongfully accused of a future crime.
Okay, but that is not where the story is most interesting. Cops prevent crimes, so there are no
crimes. If there are no crimes, there
should be no criminals. The movie spends
a minute on this discussion and moves on.
Take seeing the future out of it, is this constitutional? Why would a future society allow people who almost commit crime go to prison? If we truly had the ability to alter future
events in the present, why would anyone pay for crimes that occurred in an
alternate reality? The thrust of the
movie is a an extended chase seen with cool effects, but missed an opportunity.
The movie ignored the most interesting wrinkle.
The
premise of Paycheck is kind of
fun. Ben Affleck is a computer dude in
the near future. He works on top secret
projects and then has his memory erased.
These projects can last months or even years. He wakes up from one and something has gone wrong,
he doesn’t remember the past three years, and all he has is an envelope of junk
he left for himself. But, as his day progresses, the junk comes in particularly
useful. The project he just left was
some sort of telescope into the future.
He left himself the materials he would need to survive. Okay, fine.
It’s a nice little idea that is more loop time travel. But, now
what? Right. That is pretty much it. This is a sweet little short story premise
with a chance to be expanded into something special that goes nowhere. John Woo
turns the last thirty minutes into a kung fu fight between goons and scientists;
complete a bunch of explosions and bullshit.
Speaking
of bullshit, remember FlashForward?
This was a show that lasted one season and rightfully so. It was just not good. FlashForward
was the first post-Lost show that
tried to drag the die-hard fans kicking and screaming into a new sci-fi based
drama. There were even actors from Lost that filled out the cast. The problem was that the premise was really
dumb. Everyone in the world blacked out
for 137 seconds and saw what the future would be in six months. This caused a lot of personal trauma as well
as a lot of bus crashes, apparently.
There could be a pulse in that premise, but it is hard to find. Keeping the total amount of seers to a
minimum instead of the entire world might have helped. I don’t know.
Everyone sees the future and tries to reconcile why they saw a murder or
someone different in bed next to them. I’m
guessing most people saw themselves eating lunch or taking a leak. Truly, the
premise could have been saved but the writers obviously suffered the fate of
what so many people thought the problem was with Lost. They had no idea where the story was going,
because the premise had no steam. Lost had a writer’s bible, with touchstones
and major events that kept things moving.
FlashForward made it up as
they went along and never hooked anyone.
Then,
there’s Heroes.
There
were 10,000 problems with Heroes but
my eye will focus on one and only one:
The comic book that revealed the future.
If it was so important to see what was going to happen, events that
would somehow destroy the world, and someone has already meticulously plotted
it out in a comic book, and you needed to know what to do to change the
inevitable future, SKIP TO THE LAST FUCKING PAGE!
I
have to stop. Boy that show sucked.
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