Bibliography
Burton, T. (Director). (2016). Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children [DVD]. United States: Twentieth Century Fox.
Eagleman, D. M. (2008). Human time perception and its illusions. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 18(2), 131-136. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2008.06.002
Folch, C. (2013, June 13). Why the West Loves Sci-Fi and Fantasy: A Cultural Explanation. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/06/why-the-west-loves-sci-fi-and-fantasy-a-cultural-explanation/276816/
Franzen, J. (2011, May 28). Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts. Retrieved from https://nyti.ms/2kgrWxZ
Gleick, J. (2011, May). What Defines a Meme?. Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/what-defines-a-meme-1904778/
Gunn, A. (Director). (2010, April 17). Victory of the Daleks [Television series episode]. In Doctor Who. United Kingdom: BBC.
Harrison, J. K. (Director). (2003). A Wrinkle in Time [DVD]. United States: Wrinkle Productions, Ltd.
Johnson, R. (Director). (2012). Looper [DVD]. United States: Endgame Entertainment.
Jones, D. (Director). (2011). Source Code [DVD]. United States: Summit Entertainment.
Kleiser, R. (Director). (1986). Flight of the Navigator [Motion picture]. United States: Walt Disney Pictures.
Macdonald, H. (Director). (2007, June 9). Blink [Television series episode]. In Doctor Who. United Kingdom: BBC.
Newell, M. (Director). (2010). Prince of Persia: Sands of Time [DVD]. United States: Walt Disney Pictures.
Nolan, C. (Director). (2014). Interstellar [DVD]. United States: Paramount Pictures.
Schaffner, F. J. (Director). (1968). Planet of the Apes [DVD]. United States: APJAC Productions.
Smith, A. (Director). (2010, April 17). The Eleventh Hour [Television series episode]. In Doctor Who. United Kingdom: BBC.
Sonnenfeld, B. (Director). (2012). Men in Black 3 [DVD]. United States: Columbia Pictures.
Suddendorf, T., Addis, D.R., & Corballis, M.C. (2009) Mental time travel and the shaping of the human mind. Predictions in the Brain, 364(1521), 344-354. Doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395518.003.0121
Zemeckis, R. (Director). (1985). Back to the Future [DVD]. USA: Universal Pictures.
In Conclusion
Now accepting the idea that we are time travelers and that each of our minds is a time-traveling vessel, how does this impact your life? Are you inspired and encouraged by the fact that time is, in fact, non-linear and all our pasts, presents, and futures are happening simultaneously? As Dr. Brand reminds us in INTERSTELLAR, “Love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving that transcends time and space.” (Nolan, 2014) “…the fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for awhile but will die before long. This fact is the real root cause of all our anger and pain and despair. And you can either run from this fact or, by way of love, you can embrace it.” (Franzen, 2011) What would you do if you had less than a minute to live? Would you do anything different? We have seen what the characters in these analyzed films have done; although we may never get the opportunity to take a time-travel mission to save someone’s life, we must take advantage of the time and space allotted to us. We may not ever change our pasts, but we can plan our todays to change our futures.
The Human Perception of Time
As far as how much access to physical time travel we have, it simply hasn’t been invented yet. We do have one way to time travel, and it doesn't necessitate the T.A.R.D.I.S. (“The Eleventh Hour,” 2008), the Looper machine (Johnson, 2012), or the Phaelon. (Kleiser, 1986) We are the only beings that we know of that are capable of mental time travel; the mind can “simulate possible future events, based on episodic memory, enhanced fitness by enabling action in preparation of different possible scenarios that increased present or future survival and reproduction fitness.” (Suddendorf, Addis, & Corballis, 2009, p. 344-354) It sounds like Mrs. Whatsit from A WRINKLE IN TIME was right, doesn’t it? “Spaceships are sparkly toys for infant civilization. The ultimate starship is here (she points to the brain).” (Harrison, 2003) We are also the only known beings that perceive time to be “stopped” in certain moments and see things happen in “slow motion” in a moment of crisis, among other time-lapses. As David Eagleman observed in his “Human time perception and its illusions” study in 2008, “Time perception is surprisingly prone to measurable distortions and illusions.”(Eagleman, 2008, p. 131-136) Humans are all time travelers, and time has much to offer us. What we need to do is become re-enchanted with time and the gifts it brings. Though we are capable of mental time travel, we cannot change the past.
Our past will always be something we must reckon with.
A sharp reminder of this reality comes to us from SOURCE CODE’s hero, Captain Colter:
Colter: “Christina, what would you do if you knew you had less than one minute to live?”
Christina: “I’d make those seconds count.” (Jones, 2011)
Mrs. Whatsit, A Wrinkle in Time
“Spaceships are sparkly toys for infant civilization. The ultimate starship is here (she points to the brain).”
Interviews
Attempting to further investigate the human perspective of time, I asked one question to a handful of individuals: What would you change if you could go backward or forward in time?
“I would go back in time to change my major from economics to music education! As far as society, I would change the way people suffered so much under Hitler in the Holocaust.” – Rowena, mother
“I’d go backward. I’d make better decisions and choices. I’d save my money more. I’d avoid getting my heart broken repeated on people whom I know aren’t interested in me. I’d spend more time with people I care about who are gone and try to save relationships that are lost or strained.”—Josh, YouTuber
“Wow. I’ve actually been thinking a lot about this. I know it’s a bit dark, but I would have reported my dad’s abuse to CPS if I had known how.”—Katie, author
“I would go back and live by being more involved and not be so scared of trying new things.”—Jordan, student
“I wouldn’t really go back if given the chance because I think everything happens for a reason and going back would impact the future even if it wasn’t intentional. But I guess if I had the ability to travel back and just be an observer with no capability to change anything I’d do that.”—Kristin, student
“I probably would change a lot of things I’ve said or regret doing. Things where I can see how it affected me or other and how it could’ve been used to glorify God and wasn’t. Choices I made that could have had a broad and good affect and I instead chose the other path.”—Aubrie, highschool student
“If it can be multiple things, I would just go back and change all the times I procrastinated on homework and I would tell people what I really felt about them. Cause everything that has happened to me has happened for a reason and I can see why—wouldn’t want to change those at all.”—Ashley, STEM student
As the responses reveal, humanity wishes we could alter our past to make our future better. We are left with an internal longing, thanks to our imaginations and these popular films. How do we amend our constant longing? We change our perception of time. According to The Atlantic, “Hollywood continues to make science fiction and fantasy movies because disenchantment creates a demand for these stories, but disenchantment predates Hollywood. We were journeying ten thousand leagues under the sea or scarcely surviving a war of the worlds before the film industry began. If the uptick of Hunger Games-inspired archery lessons and the CDC's humorous-but-practical Zombie Preparedness Guide are any indication, this is not going away anytime soon. Re-enchantment delivers something more important than escapism or entertainment. Through its promise of a world of mystery and wonder, it offers the hope that we haven't seen all that there is.” (Folch, 2013) We must begin to see time as our protagonists do, as a non-linear experience that we are merely passing through while simultaneously attempting to make a large-scale impact on ourselves, those around us, and those of the future.
General Analysis
In this report, I have evaluated quite a few movies that portray time and time travel. Each one is unique; however, there is one key element found in each that I believe directly reveals and impacts our perception of time. In the past, we only equivalated time to our watches, the rising and setting of the sun, as well as seasonal changes. With the introduction of time travel in literature, thanks to H.G. Well’s Victorian novel The Time Machine, time-travel has continued to vary in presentation, but humanity’s view of a non-linear perspective remains to studied. Just as the Doctor told us, time is just “a ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.” (“Blink,” 2007) Our heroes and heroines use time travel to save lives and inevitably change the world, revealing humanity’s inner desire to change the past and reverse the consequences of bygone negative actions. Whether it’s Marty McFly saving Doc Brown’s life (Zemekis, 1986), Agent J going back 40 years to save Agent K’s life (Sonnenfeld, 2012), or Captain Stephens trying to save train passenger's lives (Jones, 2011)—we are obsessed with wanting to change our destiny. Many of us feel hopeless and helpless in today’s world; it would only make sense that we would desire to achieve time-travel when we see the capabilities that it could have for good as portrayed in these analyzed films. Films are created to reflect humanity’s most profound desires; we desire to save ourselves, our families, and the world from ourselves. Like we learn in INTERSTELLAR, time ultimately controls us, no matter how much we fight against it. Since our perceptions of time are linear—day after day, year after year—we yearn for a reality where time travel is possible,
an opportunity to “fix” the past to control the future.
Interstellar
Director Christopher Nolan’s INTERSTELLAR replicated a four-dimensional model of time for the first time in film history. (Nolan, 2014) We arrive in the future to the farm of Mr. Cooper, former NASA astronaut turned farmer, in the middle of a dust bowl on Earth. Cooper’s daughter Murph seems to always find books on the floor, pushed off her bedroom bookshelf. While the rest of the family shrugs it off, Cooper and Murph investigate it together. The two find that dust seems to be falling horizontally from the ceiling into binary code which they decipher to be map coordinates. The coordinates take them to the underground home of NASA where Cooper meets his former boss, Dr. Brand, and his daughter, the female Dr. Brand. He is recruited to re-enter space, having been informed that extraterrestrial beings are reaching out to earth (the same beings who left the coordinates to NASA for Cooper) for some reason. Dr. Brand, the father, believes that the beings have created a wormhole for the team to discover and that he has both a Plan A and a Plan B in place to save the doomed world. Plan A includes Cooper, the female Dr. Brand, and two other men flying through the hole to reconnect with scientists who recently landed on other potentially habitable, realistically reachable planets intended as a new home base for evacuated humans. If Plan A goes south, the team will “grow” the currently frozen, fertilized human eggs to establish a new colony on one of the habitable planets. The team travels into deep space which alters their time reality. After waking up from a two-year cryo-sleep, the team arrives at the Endurance, a satellite base between the three intended planets. Leaving one crew member behind, three members travel to the first world. Cooper encourages the team to keep moving, realizing that space-time progresses differently the deeper in space you go—one hour on the water planet equivalates to seven on earth. Finding that the scientist’s ship was destroyed only minutes ago (Earth time vs. space-time phenomenon) by intense, voluminous waves created by that planet’s gravity, the team rushes to evacuate. Unfortunately, the ship experiences engine failure, a team member does not reach the ship, and a great deal of time is spent trying to escape the planet’s destructive waves. In an attempt to regain the years they have lost investigating the watery world, Cooper and Brand argue.
Cooper: “Is there any possibility, I don’t know, maybe some way we could jump in a black hole and gain back the years?”
Cooper: “Don’t shake your head at me.”
Brand: “Time is relative, okay? It can stretch and it can squeeze, but, it can’t run backwards. Just can't. The only thing that can move across dimensions, like time, is gravity.” (Nolan, 2014)
When Brand and Cooper reach the Endurance to reconnect with the team member they left behind, he informs them that they have been gone a total of 23 years, 4 months, and 8 days even though by their perception the trip only took a few months. The team chooses one of the other two planets to investigate since their time is now limited. Meanwhile on Earth, the senior Dr. Brand reveals through a deathbed confession that there is no real Plan A. Humanity’s only hope is in the 5000 cryo-frozen fertilized eggs. More unlucky events take place, forcing Brand and Cooper to return to the Endurance. Attempting to create a slingshot effect to catapult the base to the last potentially habitable planet, Cooper detaches the lander from the main ship Brand is on—sacrificing himself for the hope of the planet. In the process of disconnecting from the Endurance, Cooper falls into the black hole the extra-terrestrial beings created. He realizes that the hole has placed him in his daughter Murph’s room—he is the mystery force pushing things off her bookshelf. By communicating with her in Morse Code through her watch ticks, Cooper transmits the data to solve the gravity equations of how to break through the time barriers to establish a human-compatible world. When the data is sent, the four-dimensional expression of spacetime falls apart, throwing Cooper to Saturn. He wakes up in a space station orbiting Saturn, a healthy and thriving community of transferred humans; it is there that Cooper finally reconnects with his daughter, now in her 80s. In the conclusion of the film, he leaves the station to hook back up with Dr. Brand who has found a habitable world
upon which to establish her colony of fertilized eggs.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN introduces us to Jake, a teen boy who has grown up listening to his grandfather’s stories and pictures of children with unique gifts called the Peculiars. All the children live in a home directed by a woman named Miss Peregrine. (Burton, 2016) One day, Jake is called by his grandfather to come quickly because something ominous has arrived behind his house. Upon Jake's arrival at his grandfather’s home, he finds him lying behind the house, nearly dead. His grandfather asks Jake in his last moments of life to save the Peculiars. Upon reaching the address of the Peculiars’ home in Wales, Jake learns that the Germans bombed it on September 3rd, 1943. He enters the abandoned house, only to be greeted by the Peculiars; the children walk Jake through a cave portal into a time loop where they all live together on the same day every day in 1943. He then meets Miss Peregrine who turns out to be a Ymbryne—a shape-shifting, time-manipulating woman. She has chosen to loop September 3rd, 1943, so that each day she and the children can save themselves from the bomb which, to the outside world, destroyed the school. This way, no one dies, and no one can leave the loop. At the end of the day, Jake and the children watch as Miss Peregrine takes out her pocket watch, observing the bomb’s decension. In the nick of time, she twists time backward with her watch, resetting the time loop. Jake learns from Emma, a floating peculiar, that he has the same gift as his grandfather—the peculiarity of seeing the Hollows. Hollows were once Peculiars who, under the direction of Mr. Barron (a peculiar with the gift of shape-shifting), killed a Ymbryne to take her powers. The experiment accidentally turned them into hideous monsters who crave and eat the eyes of other Peculiars, allowing them to temporarily become human. Emma tells Jake that his grandfather left the loop, knowing he could never return so that he could protect the children from the Hollows. Jake continues to travel through various time loops with the help of Miss Peregrine, trying to stop the Hollows from killing more Peculiars. The infamous Mr. Barron soon discovers our hero and captures Miss Peregrine, intending to use her in a grand experiment. With Miss Peregrine kidnapped, the bomb wipes out the loop, forcing the children to seek shelter in the sunken RMS Augusta. Emma raises the ship from the sea with her gifts and along with the children, she enters a 2016 loop—successfully rescuing Miss Peregrine from both Mr. Barron and the Hollows. Miss Peregrine creates a time loop which returns everyone to 1943; however, defeating the Hollows in the modern day does not prevent them from ever being created, and Jake is terrified to leave the children since he is the only one who can see the monsters. Emma reminds him, “We don’t need you to make us feel safe, Jake. You made us feel brave, and that’s even better.” (Burton, 2016) Once he says his goodbyes, Jake rushes home to see if, in the process of jumping the time loop
and defeating the modern-day Hollows, he managed to save his grandfather.
Jake’s hope is realized; his grandfather’s life was spared all because of Miss Peregrine and the Peculiars.
Looper
In LOOPER, we are escorted to Kansas in 2044 and introduced to a world full of specialized assassins. (Johnson, 2012) According to the main character Joe, time travel has not yet been invented in his time; however, in 30 years it will be. It will instantly be outlawed and used by elite criminals to eliminate their victims. These criminals send their victims back to 2044, strapped with silver bars as payment to the assassins. Joe tells us that the job of these assassins called Loopers is simple; they are trained to “take out the future’s garbage.” (Johnson, 2012) Sometimes the Loopers end up killing their future selves (closing their loop); after which, he is released from his responsibilities to enjoy the next 30 years before his inevitable demise. Seth, Joe’s friend, doesn’t close his loop and now has the Rainmaker—the head Looper with deadly telekinetic powers—after him. Joe harbors Seth for a while but eventually gives him up. We watch as older Seth, still wandering around in the city, begins to slowly disintegrate as his current self is being dismembered at Looper headquarters—essentially wiping Seth from history altogether. The next day, Joe prepares to take out his next loop, only to be surprised by his future self who knocks him out. Upon waking up, he returns to town and fights Kid Blue, Seth’s killer, only to fall backward out of a fire escape. Suddenly, we see young Joe kill his older self, move to Shanghai, and fall in love. One day, criminals arrive at his house to kill him, only to kill his wife instead. Now 30 years older, Joe escapes, jumping into the time machine the criminals use to send their victims to earth. In doing this, Joe alters the course of history, saving his younger self’s life before he dies by falling out of the window. The two Joes meet, and old Joe informs his younger self that he plans to kill the child Rainmaker before he has the chance to create the Loopers, thus saving his wife’s life. He shows young Joe a map of 3 different houses where the Rainmaker could be living; however, in a scuffle, young Joe rips a corner of the map and follows it to one of the houses. Old Joe continues with his plan to take out the child Rainmaker while young Joe follows the map corner to a farmhouse where he meets a young mom named Sarah and her son Cid. In time, young Joe realizes that Cid has deadly telekinetic powers—clearly the future Rainmaker. In the last scene of the film, young Joe attempts to save Sarah and Cid from his old future self, still bent on killing the young boy. Just before Old Joe can kill Cid, Sarah steps in the way to take the bullet. Realizing that if Cid sees his mother die, it will seal his fate as the Rainmaker, so Joe kills himself—closing his loop and erasing himself from history.
In doing so, he saves Sarah’s life and prevents any of this from ever happening.
A Wrinkle in Time
The children’s movie A WRINKLE IN TIME introduces us to a group of gifted children who are chosen to travel into a darkness called IT on the planet Camazotz to save their missing father. (Harrison, 2003) To reach the IT, the children must go through the tesseract, a warp-speed process that bends distance, time, and length. One of the children’s guides, Mrs. Whatsit, tells them, “Parts of the universe are connected in ways that humans have never imaged—tesseract acts as a gateway to those universes—like a wrinkle.” (Harrison, 2003) By listening to the wisdom of various mentors, utilizing their gifts, and allowing love to save the day, the children find their father and return to earth to be reunited as a family. Although the children believe they were gone for months, they were only gone on Earth a few minutes, thanks to the tesseract.
The wisdom of Mrs. Whatsit, “Spaceships are sparkly toys for infant civilizations.
The ultimate starship is here (she points to the brain),” (Harrison, 2003) is imprinted into each of the children’s minds as she returns home to her planet.
Men in Black 3
In MEN IN BLACK 3, we meet the one-armed Boris the Animal who plans to use a time device to kill the man who took off his arm. (Sonnenfeld, 2012) That man is Agent K, mentor to Agent J, both of whom are Men in Black who work to end interspecies violence. The two agents have a spat; however, K attempts to make it up over the phone. Just as the phone call ends, time slips backward, and J awakens feeling very strange. He bangs on the door of K’s apartment to find that not only is K not there, but the family living there has never even heard of him. When J gets to work, he finds out that K has been dead for 40 years, having been killed by Boris. Wanting to save his mentor’s life, J gets his hands on a time device and is instructed by his friend Jeffrey Price on how to use it.
Jefferey Price: “All you gotta do is jump.”
Agent J: “You want me to jump?”
Jefferey Price: “Time-Jump.” (Sonnenfeld, 2012)
He is told to adjust the time setting back 40 years, jump off the Chrysler building, and once he is 2 feet from the ground, he must slide his finger across the laser line on the front of the device. As soon as J touches the ground 40 years earlier, he realizes that K was also in charge of establishing an earth-protecting space-shield called the ArcNet which prevents a lethal alien attack in the future. If J is not fruitful in saving his fellow agent and in making sure K places the ArcNet on the tip of the Apollo 11 rocket, the whole earth will cease to exist as J knows it. While the two agents work together with a very hesitant US army officer, the three have a showdown against two different Borises (working together due to the time travel continuum) at Cape Canaveral just before the Apollo 11 rocket lifts off, taking the ArcNet with it. Now happy knowing that the Earth is protected from future invasion, J succeeds in bringing down one Boris while K attempts to take down the other. In the heat of the battle, the officer takes the death blow in place of K, allowing K to kill Boris. The officer’s young son arrives on the scene, asking K where his father is. As J looks on, he sees K wipe the boy’s memory telling him that he will watch over him now.
J realizes that his father was the officer who gave his life while
protecting K and now K sees him as an adopted son.
J jumps back to the present day to meet K for lunch, only J knowing what has all taken place.
Source Code
SOURCE CODE begins with a man who does not know who he is on a train, fumbling over words with his (assumed) girlfriend distractedly watching his surroundings. (Jones, 2011) Suddenly, he fakes illness to escape into the restroom to figure out what’s going on. Looking in the mirror, he sees a reflection that’s not his own, confusing him further. He leaves the restroom, opening his wallet to examine his ID for clues. While doing so, another train passes by, and suddenly the scene is engulfed in flames. We learn that our protagonist is Captain Colter Stephens, he is working with a woman named Goodwin at a place called Beleaguered Castle, and that his task is to stop a train bomber in 8 minutes before he moves on to bomb the city of Chicago. Goodwin’s director, Doctor Rutledge, tells the Captain that he is not in a military simulation program but is instead in Source Code—"Source Code is not time travel. Rather, Source Code is time re-assignment. It gives us access to a parallel reality.” (Jones, 2011) He goes on to explain that just after death, the brain has about 8 minutes of short-term memory where it can recall what has just taken place. Deducing that since he is in Source Code, he must be dead, Captain Stephens balks. He asks if he has a chance of saving the lives of those lost on the train; however, both Goodwin and Rutledge emphasize that his only task is to figure out the identity of the bomber. Stephens then bargains with Rutledge, asking that in return for discovering the bomber (completing his mission), he can die in peace. Rutledge consents but tells Goodwin aside that he has no intention of granting the Captain’s wish. Stephens is then consistently sent back into the same 8-minute parallel reality until he finally stops the bomber. Once he completes the mission, he begs Goodwin to send him back just one more time to try to save the passengers. Although Goodwin tries to remind him, “The program wasn't designed to alter the past. It was designed to affect the future,” (Jones, 2011) Stephens convinces her to let him try. Goodwin makes good on Rutledge’s promise, admiring Stephen’s heart of service, stopping Source Code immediately after the 8-minute time cut. As she stops his heart, we watch Stephens save the whole train in his now alternate reality and send a text to Goodwin telling her what has taken place and what is yet to come in her reality.
The Flight of the Navigator
The day is July 4th, 1978 when we meet David in Disney’s FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR. (Kleiser, 1986) While trying to find his brother, he accidentally falls into a deep ditch overgrown with vines and blacks out. Coming to seemingly moments later, David heads back home only to find that when he bangs on the door, it is not his mother who opens it but an older woman he has never met. We learn alongside David that he has been gone for eight years—his parents filed a missing child report back in 1978! David's sudden reappearance is a phenomenon worth studying, and he is absconded to NASA for study purposes. While researchers scan David’s brain and ask him questions about what happened on that fateful day, they begin to receive messages in binary code, spaceship designs, and deep space charts. David has no clue how the messages entered his brain; in a panic, he telepathically shuts down NASA’s computers. Since his arrival eight years into the future, David has felt drawn to something he cannot see. Escaping NASA to follow the call, he discovers the spacecraft Phaelon and its AI called Max. Max explains to David that because the Phaelon crashed into power lines, it lost all star charts; only David has the star charts Max needs to get the craft home. David is introduced to the various specimens around the galaxies Max has gathered into the ship for study purposes, explaining that once he is done observing them, he travels back in time to put them back on their home planet. Max tells David that he was one of his subjects and that although the two of them traveled together for a mere 4.4 hours, the time consequences on earth resulted in David’s disappearance lasting eight years. In a risky move, David begs Max to take him back home to 1978, knowing there is a chance he could be vaporized. Max is successful, and David makes it back home just in time for the fireworks.
Planet of the Apes
PLANET OF THE APES introduces us to a spaceship crew about to return home to Earth from deep space 700 years after their departure date. (Schaffner, 1968) Before entering cryosleep, Captain George Taylor tearfully voice records on the ship’s database, “Time bends, space is boundless, it squashes a man’s ego, I feel lonely.” (Schaffner, 1968) He and his crew return to find Earth overrun by intelligent apes who have enslaved the human species. Captain Taylor and his crew are soon taken captive by the apes and used as experiments. Zira, a scientist ape, nicknames Taylor “Bright Eyes” and attempts communication with him. The two work together with Zira's companion Cornelius attempting to figure out whether Taylor has truly landed on Earth or if he ended up on another planet. Throughout the film, it becomes clear that he has landed on Earth, and that while he and his crew were gone, humans ruined the planet in a huge war. In the wake of the destruction, a new species took over—the apes. The film ends with Taylor having reached the end of himself as he screams out to reprimand the past generations of humans, “Oh my God. I'm back. I'm home. All the time, it was...We finally really did it….you maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!” (Schaffner, 1968)
Disney's Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
In Disney’s historical time-traveling masterpiece entitled PRINCE OF PERSIA: SANDS OF TIME, Dastan is the adopted son of a king who decides to steal the Princess Tamina and her time-altering crystal dagger in a battle between their countries of Persia and Alamut. (Newell, 2010) The two are forced by fate to work together while trying to stop Dastan’s wicked uncle Nizam from piercing the Sandglass, the holding place of the Sands of Time, to make himself King of Persia. As Nizam pierces the Sandglass, Tamina sacrifices herself to the Sands so Dastan can stop him. As Dastan yanks the dagger from the Sandglass, he reverses time to pre-battle. Because of this, Tamina nor anyone else remembers what has taken place, allowing Dastan to reveal Nizam’s traitorous plan and win Tamina’s heart instead of capturing her as he did in the “past.” In Princess Tamina’s own words, “Everything changes with time. We should know this best of all.” (Newell, 2010)
BBC's Doctor Who
DOCTOR WHO has been around since the early 1960s, recreating the ever-changing modern-day world while including the presence of a quirky Doctor whose name the audience never discovers. He travels in a time machine called the T.A.R.D.I.S., meaning time and relative dimension in space. (“Eleventh Hour,” 2010) Each episode in the 36 seasons (and counting) follows the travels of the Doctor as he defeats invaders of earth, saves his friends' lives, and learns about the various creatures that he encounters in his travels. (“Victory of the Daleks,” 2008) Since the Doctor is around 900 years old (regenerating every three seasons or so), he has a unique view of time. His most famous time-related quote is as follows, “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause and effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.” (“Blink,” 2007)
Universal Picture’s BACK TO THE FUTURE took the world by storm when it was released in 1985, introducing the world to Marty McFly who is an assistant to Dr. Emmet Brown, the first man to ever create a successful time machine. (Zemekis, 1985) Unfortunately, the time machine (the Delorean) runs on the inaccessible substance plutonium. In the middle of the Delorean’s first trial, gang members from Libya try to steal the plutonium. In their attempt, they kill Dr. Brown; Marty takes the wheel and finds himself on November 5th, 1955, the day the Doctor invented time travel. Marty informs the younger Doctor of what takes place in the future, making sure he wears a bulletproof vest to the Delorean’s first test drive. Marty also must pull himself out of multiple accidental mishaps along the way (i.e., his mother crushing on him, forcing Marty to get his dad to ask his mom out on a date so he can save his family’s timeline!). Marty does save the day and returns successfully to the present, only to discover that because of his “past” actions, he made life better for more than just Doctor Brown. Marty managed to change his entire family’s dynamics for the better. Finally, Marty reminds us, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.” (Zemekis, 1985)
We're all Time Travelers!
Doctor Who. The Delorean. You and I. We are all time travelers, and whether we realize it or not, we are slowly but surely pressing into the future along with 8 billion other beings. According to Einstein, space and time work together to form a four-dimensional progression that is made up of each moment of our existence. To him, time is happening simultaneously and continuously in both the past, present, and future. Our perception of time has been heavily influenced by the films that portray it; time and time-travel are both memes—elements of our culture that are frequently imitated in various media forms based off a central theme. (Gleick, 2011) In today’s analysis, I will be examining the meme element of time and time travel as portrayed by some of the world’s most famous time travel films. The question I encourage you to ask in analyzing each film is the same question I used to approach my research with:
How have each of these films impacted humanity’s view on time & how can they help us live in today’s world?
Time Travel &
Human Perception
This multimedia presentation analyzes eleven films and their portrayal of time travel. There is a main thread in each film which reflects humanity’s desire to save lives and inevitably change the world by changing the past. I further investigated the human perception of time by asking this question to a handful of individuals: “What would you change if you could go backward or forward in time?” We are all gifted with a personal time-traveling machine—the mind, and humans are the only beings to experience time-perception phenomenon. What would you do if you had less than a minute to live? Would you do anything different?