Movie Club Relaunch: Back To The Future

The stupidity of the time travel concept is difficult enough just on earth but when you factor in time travel in space that just makes it even more absurd.

 

Why should being in space make a concept any better or any worse?

 

Because as stupid as the concept is, if time travel only affected one certain planet and its inhabitants and events would be one thing. But when you start doing it in space then that galaxy...or even the whole universe also goes back in time etc.
Time travel stories like BTTF, Terminator (and maybe Star Trek) can be enjoyable enough but it's just silly stories with flawed conepts that just create bigger plot holes the more you think about them.
Time travel is impossible and stories of time travel never interested me.

 

That's still just you struggling to get your head round the scale of something.

Time travel is no crazier than "the force".

 

The force from the original trilogy is no real stretch of the imagination and is found on similar abilities. When you get into mideclorians and force projections etc that's another matter LOL.
But the idea of someone being able to go back in time is just crazy as time travel is impossible.
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Liam you are just too accepting of lazy writing. Whenever a movie or TV show struggles with a way to solve a problem or try and make a different story with no real consequences to the rest of the series etc they go the time travel story route. No different than the Lazy writing in Thundercats when using the Sword of Omens solved everything.
In fact I am actually quite surprised Peter Lawrence never added time travel abilities to the Sword of Omens' list of powers.

 

No real stretch of the imagination? Ever met anyone in real life with the force? Telekinesis or anything like that?

Time travel is a plot device like anything else. And it's far from lazy writing when factoring in how history could change as a result of a simple action in the past. It takes a lot of working out.

 

I have actually met, seen and experienced some things that I personally can't explain. I don't know if you would count that as a force like ability.

Please don't keep mentioning the force. After those awful Disney abominations and prequels I have little to no interest in Star Wars anymore. I will always like the originals but that's about it.

Time travel is is all theory. People wasting time (ironically) working out how going backwards or forwards could affect things or solve their problem.
They should be working out how to change things in the present.
Case in point Star Trek The Voyage Home.
Instead of messing around using a very dodgy method of going back in time to bring whales from the past to the future why didn't they work out some way like Jurassic Park to use DNA and clone some whales. Does cloning even exist in the Star Trek universe? When they can travel through time they are bound to know how to make a clone.
Or even make some mechanical droid whales that can communicate with the probe. If they can build Data then they should be able to build a robot whale.

 

My point is that most if not all sci-fi/fantasy/superhero stories are based on one hard-to-swallow concept or other.

If you're going to complain about time travel, then hold the non-existence of ghosts against Ghostbusters, the non-existence of telekinesis against Star Wars, and as for all those superhero origins, well, they are just ridiculous aren't they! If a radioactive spider bites you, at best nothing will happen, at worst you'll become very ill and die of radiation poisoning.

All I am doing is using your own reasoning to deconstruct other stories.

 

Actually most superhero origins are quite clever and not that odd. Iron Man built a suit, Incredible Hulk was an experiment gone wrong, Captain America a military experiment in genetic modification to create a super soldier, Batman just wanted to fight crime etc. Although I will admit the Spider-Man origin is a bit odd.
I also have no problem with believing in ghosts or people having psychic abilities etc.

I am just saying I find the concept of time travel far to hard to swallow compared to most other concepts.​

 

It's actually been predicted just last year that time travel will in fact be possible by the 1980s

 

LOL!

 

Just saw Back to the Future I, for the first time since the '80's (the last time I saw this was on VHS tape). Great movie - funny & also poignant. Though this was obviously science-fiction, I saw this as an illustration of how the type of person we are when we're young can in many cases dictate the type of person we become as we get older.

Re: the discussion on time travel: Though I do believe (somewhat) in the existence of extraterrestrial life - something I consider possible....I don't believe that time travel is possible or plausible. I just can't see how someone could go back to a time that's already happened, or forward to a time that hasn't happened yet. That being said, this doesn't affect my enjoyment of this film - I just suspend my disbelief here, as with many other films with implausible plots.

Here's one of my favorite quotes from the film:

Dr. Brown: Tell me, Future Boy, who's President of the United States in 1985?
Marty McFly: Ronald Reagan.
Dr. Emmett Brown: Ronald Reagan? The actor? Then who's vice-president, Jerry Lewis?

Hilarious!

Note that Christopher Lloyd (Dr. Brown in the film) also played a hilarious character on the iconic US sit-com Taxi (1978-1983); he was Jim Ignatowski, the burned-out ex hippie. The series is worth checking out if you haven't already.

Haven't seen BTTF II or III yet, but plan on doing that in the near future.

 

Christopher Lloyd has been in so many things in so many different roles, and always looking completely different every time - he's the closest American equivalent to Ronnie Barker. He's Uncle Fester in the Addams Family movies, Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit,, Merlock in DuckTales: Treasure Of The Lost Lamp, Kruge in Star Trek III, and Doc Brown here, and every time he's unrecognisable from the other roles. The one constant in all that is his voice. You hear that voice and you know it's him. He appeared in a couple of episodes of Cheers once, a 2-parter at the end of season 2. And when he first appeared, his face meant absolutely nothing to me. But then he opened his mouth, and a shiver went down my spine, because suddenly I knew who it was!

 

Actually here's one. Some people like to fervently insist that while time travel is impossible, ghosts are real. Well for you I say, the apparition of a 15th century manifesting itself in the 21st century, that's time travel!

 

An apparition is in no way time travel.

 

It's in a time it doesn't belong in so it is.

 

What time would it belong in? When the person was still alive? That would make no sense.
A ghost/apparition/spirit appearing to someone or being seen on multiple occasions means that it is in the present.
That has nothing at all to do with time travel.

 

Ghosts are just as ridiculous. They haven't been proven either. Either both ghost and time travel are ridiculous or neither of them are. How do we know that time travel isn't invented in the future and that what we perceive as ghosts could be people who have been extracted from their own time? Or time travellers going back to olden days and materialising in the spot in a few later periods en route?

Remember too this quote from the late great Arthur C. Clarke: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

 

Ghosts and the paranormal are not ridiculous. Time travel is completely ridiculous.
There are countless documented accounts throughout history of people having experienced some type of paranormal occurrence. Wether or not you class that as proven evidence is another matter.
There is nothing in any documented paranormal case to link it to time travel being involved.
There has never been any documented accounts of people encountering time travellers. Granted a few months back I seen some people dressed like nu-metal fans from 2002 but I think that was just more case of bad music and fashion taste than time travel.

 

LOL! This really made me laugh!