LogFAQs > #956703036

like anything else, it depends on how it's handled. If your story treats time travel as a tool or setpiece without a lot of rule-based preamble, then the finer points of the rules can be ignored. Back to the Future 1 and 3 work so well because despite being "time travel movies," the time travel itself isn't important. It doesn't feel the need to explain why 88 mph is important, how the Flux capacitor works, or any of that. Change something in the past, change something in the present. Effects are unpredictable, and the science is a McGuffin of the highest order. The meat of the story is the characters, not the tools.

In fact, BttF2 is the ONLY one that gets raked over the coals for its time travel, precisely BECAUSE it adds so many extra elements and rules and spends so much time talking about them that it practically BEGS the audience to hyper-analyze it. The plot is almost entirely dedicated to the rules of time travel, while the first and third are allowed to be mostly character pieces.

Endgame, despite only SORT OF being a time travel movie, has multiple characters giving weighty explanations of how their time travel works, why it works, what precise elements need to happen, with added explanations from mystic sages about potential pitfalls, and then deliberately breaks its own rules at multiple points. And then Marvel doubles down on it by requiring entire series dedicated to explaining shit away. It's not audiences demanding explanations ruining the experience; it's the script INVITING those questions.

Audiences don't need explanation so long as your script doesn't demand explanation. It's not just true of time travel, but any plot. It's the same thing that plagued the first two star wars sequel trilogy movies. in 1977-1983, star wars was a simple universe. We didn't need explanations of who the emperor was, or how exactly the Republic fell. Bad guy took over, now there's lots of bad guys, fight the bad guys. It was enough.

in 2015, after an entire prequel trilogy, decades of expanded content, and a movie pretty definitively showing all the evil force users getting taken out, suddenly star wars isn't as simple anymore. A faction as powerful as the First Order and Snoke don't get the same pass as the Empire, because the audience was given decades worth of context. Some explanation of who these people are is now required for people to buy into it. Of course, we all know how this all ended up when they DID bother to explain, but that's neither here nor there.

People only demand as much complexity as they are offered. Audiences don't NEED their time travel meticulously spelled out for them; the problem is that writers can't freaking help themselves but to wax eloquent on pseudo-scientific drivel, which in turn opens up all the questions people otherwise wouldn't bother with.

tl:Dr- less can sometimes be more, especially where time travel is concerned. Audiences mostly just want what's offered, and lots of writers write checks their script can't cash.

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