Current Events > Adults needing complete explanations in media ruined time travel stories

(+) Yeah! (+)

I am of the belief that Back to the Future was a fun time travel movie that didn't care too much about the idea of paradoxes and actually felt like time travel to its benefit. I hate how time travel is essentially just universe hopping at this point in many of the big movies. It's not just time travel, but I wish adults as a whole could just shut their brains off once in a while so we didn't have to make sure everything "made sense" (as typically time travel movies end up failing anyways in explanation since it's a hard concept to deal with). It's why we have to waste time hearing about useless explanations filled with jargon and pop-science fluff about x or y in order to satiate the adult crowds.

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If you're referring to the trash in marvel. It's simple. They took a dump on the most popular movies about fine travel while not actually explaining how they're different

Not even time travel stuff but for any sort of thing in a story that isn't flagrantly explained in intense detail in a script is dismissed as a "plot hole"

Modern media criticism is such that the consumer doesn't want to do any sort of "heavy lifting" in a story and needs every detail spoonfed to them

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Endgame spoilers I think people had a lot of problems with Marvel's timetravel because they specifically had a scene where Professor Hulk is calling everyone else an idiot for not understanding the weird rules about Marvel's timetravel, which may or may not be contradicted by the Old Man Steve stuff at the end of the same movie and may or may not be contradicted by Loki. And even if it's not necessarily contradicted it's extremely convoluted now.

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People simply need to understand that if things had to make sense then it wouldn't be as good.

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Time travel in media generally needs super tight rules or super loose explanations where you shouldn't think too much about it. Anything in between winds up being an absolute mess.

Mostly, I just want a Bill and Ted type of situation in a movie because you'll spend way too long on explanations otherwise for a 2ish hour time frame.

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This Cinema Sins hate has caused a weird take to become popular where caring about a story making sense is a bad thing

Your important plot elements should make sense. They don't need big plot / info dumps but this idea of "just go with it, bro." Is also stupid

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I think I get what you're saying. You don't like the increased usage of Novikov's self-consistency principle in more recent media.

In that, time travel is already factored in and nothing can be changed. Closed loop. You are the reason for the present. Whatever happened, happened.

Back in the day, it wasn't really a big thing and you just went back in time and overwrote everything because of the change.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger says hi.

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Captain_Qwark posted...

Blantant plot holes or paradoxes isn't the same as what you just described

And yet those terms get thrown around all the time

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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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DarkBuster22904 posted...

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.

Phenomenal post.

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I remember when the plot for Endgame leaked and everybody thought it was fake because a time travel plot was stupid or something.

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They do a shit job of establishing what is and isnt. Back to the future is old so i dont hold the same standards but it also didnt do anything too stupid with it.


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Honestly time travel is just an overdone trope TBH.

Back to the Future worked because it was 30+ years ago. We've had 30+ years of mainstream shitty movies and TV shows about time travel since

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Doom_Art posted...

Not even time travel stuff but for any sort of thing in a story that isn't flagrantly explained in intense detail in a script is dismissed as a "plot hole"

Modern media criticism is such that the consumer doesn't want to do any sort of "heavy lifting" in a story and needs every detail spoonfed to them

This isn't directly related, but my biggest pet peeve in discussions about movies is when people think a character behaving suboptimially given the whole story is a plot hole.

"Oh, that character could have just done x y and z at the beginning and there wouldn't have had to be a movie. Plot hole!"

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WeeWeiWiiWie posted...

This isn't directly related, but my biggest pet peeve in discussions about movies is when people think a character behaving suboptimially given the whole story is a plot hole.

"Oh, that character could have just done x y and z at the beginning and there wouldn't have had to be a movie. Plot hole!"

I agree the word plot hole is used in all the wrong contexts but characters behaving extremely stupid to move the plot the right way is lazy writing and can be criticized all the same.

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Dr. Strange knows fucking magic. He can do whatever because he knows magic. I cant really argue magic unless he ruins the plot by easily destroying the threat with magic.

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People want to prove they're smarter than everyone else so they feel the need to overanalyze everything instead of just enjoying it as originally intended.

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Kuuko posted...

I agree the word plot hole is used in all the wrong contexts but characters behaving extremely stupid to move the plot the right way is lazy writing and can be criticized all the same.

Most often that's not even the issue being pointed out! I'm also fine with the criticism where characters are written in a way that doesn't seem like plausible human behavior (for plot reasons). But most of the time it's like "because we know x y and z will happen in the future, we know that b was a bad choice, if they had only made good choices (before they could have possibly known what was a good or bad choice)".

A very very common recent one is that the commander lady in TLJ was acting irrationally because keeping information from the crew led to a mutiny, as if that should have been something she could have known was a consequence. Often referred to as one of the many "plot holes" in TLJ.

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DarkBuster22904 posted...

I seriously need to write this down for future arguments. Good shit.

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If there are zombies, I need to know WHY there are zombies.

"There are zombies," is garbage.

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Iron man, can you make time travel?

Iron Man: Hold my beer.

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Requiring consistency with in-universe rules is hardly a demanding thing. If basic logic can break down the story, then the story is either for toddlers or not a very good story in the first place.

If you want a good time travel movie, you have to watch Primer.

Best TT movie ever made. Very realistic.

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Oh, come on. Age has nothing to do with it. Back to the Future works because its a comedy. We didnt care if it made a lot of sense; it was just supposed to be fun.

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Robot2600 posted...

If you want a good time travel movie, you have to watch Primer.

Best TT movie ever made. Very realistic.

Lolololol.

I think that's the only movie I've watched where I had no idea what the fuck I had just watched.

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The best, most explained, and most consistent use of time travel is fucking Homestuck. It's extremely specific about its rules and always follows them. There is the true Alpha Timeline. You can deviate from it, but that branches you off into a doomed timeline which will eventually wither and everyone in it will die.

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DarkBuster22904 posted...

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.

I respect this response.

I've always been a proponent for less is more, so I agree there.

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archedsoul posted...

I think I get what you're saying. You don't like the increased usage of Novikov's self-consistency principle in more recent media.

In that, time travel is already factored in and nothing can be changed. Closed loop. You are the reason for the present. Whatever happened, happened.

Back in the day, it wasn't really a big thing and you just went back in time and overwrote everything because of the change.

I also meant to say yeah. For me, too many people will only accept this use of time travel.

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Tbh Avengers Endgame would make perfect sense if Steve was always living in the past or simply leaving it up to the audience to imagine it.

It was the directors bothering to give an explanation that made things a bit stupid. Just let the community debate it.

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Dark Buster knocked this out of the part with his or her post. However I would like to add a few things .

How weighty the story is matters two. Bill and Ted is a stupid movie. We know it is stupid and love it for it. So when something doesn't add up in that movie it is ok. It is just Bill and tell. However endgame in the culmination of a decade of the movies, TVs and the like. And your time travel seemingly has holes in it. People are going to question.

And the big thing that messes shit up is a Steve staying the past. This just messes so much shit up.

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Darmik posted...

Tbh Avengers Endgame would make perfect sense if Steve was always living in the past or simply leaving it up to the audience to imagine it.

It was the directors bothering to give an explanation that made things a bit stupid. Just let the community debate it.

This. Taken on its own, Endgame's time travel is fine. It follows all of its own rules. It's other shit that breaks it.

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cjsdowg posted...

Dark Buster knocked this out of the part with his or her post. However I would like to add a few things .

How weighty the story is matters two. Bill and Ted is a stupid movie. We know it is stupid and love it for it. So when something doesn't add up in that movie it is ok. It is just Bill and tell. However endgame in the culmination of a decade of the movies, TVs and the like. And your time travel seemingly has holes in it. People are going to question.

And the big thing that messes shit up is a Steve staying the past. This just messes so much shit up.

to be honest, I don't think it's that complex.

All endgame needed to do to get rid of this problem is say "we don't know what will happen if we do this. Its never been done before."

Like, have guesses, and theories, and TRY to correct everything for a clean closed-loop. But just admit that possible divergences are just thing you aren't equipped to speak on. No Bruce telling all these hard and fast rules, no Ancient One spelling out the path of the multiverse. Just admit you don't know the consequences, and say "fuck it, let's take the risk."

Boom. Suddenly any time travel fuckery doesn't matter anymore. and very few people will care, because their eyes are on Thanos and not your funky rules. Then you can have all KINDS of fun with the fallout.

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DarkBuster22904 posted...

to be honest, I don't think it's that complex.

All endgame needed to do to get rid of this problem is say "we don't know what will happen if we do this. Its never been done before."

Like, have guesses, and theories, and TRY to correct everything for a clean closed-loop. But just admit that possible divergences are just thing you aren't equipped to speak on. No Bruce telling all these hard and fast rules, no Ancient One spelling out the path of the multiverse. Just admit you don't know the consequences, and say "fuck it, let's take the risk."

Boom. Suddenly any time travel fuckery doesn't matter anymore. and very few people will care, because their eyes are on Thanos and not your funky rules. Then you can have all KINDS of fun with the fallout.

You got a good point. The idea you need to use pseudo-science to explain time travel is what leads to issues.

Still, I was fine with Endgame. I think post-release explanations were a bad idea, though.

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DarkBuster22904 posted...

to be honest, I don't think it's that complex.

All endgame needed to do to get rid of this problem is say "we don't know what will happen if we do this. Its never been done before."

Like, have guesses, and theories, and TRY to correct everything for a clean closed-loop. But just admit that possible divergences are just thing you aren't equipped to speak on. No Bruce telling all these hard and fast rules, no Ancient One spelling out the path of the multiverse. Just admit you don't know the consequences, and say "fuck it, let's take the risk."

Boom. Suddenly any time travel fuckery doesn't matter anymore. and very few people will care, because their eyes are on Thanos and not your funky rules. Then you can have all KINDS of fun with the fallout.

I think them wanting to avoid altering the existing timeline makes sense still since Tony doesn't want to risk losing his daughter and it avoids the whole "Why don't they kill Thanos as a baby" discussions but yeah stuff with The Ancient One probably was them overthinking it.

But people still got confused so I dunno. Wouldn't surprise me if it was there because Test Audiences needed a practical explanation.

But I think there is something to people overthinking this more than they used to. Terminator 2 and its ending doesn't really make sense but people just accepted it.

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Kuuko posted...

I agree the word plot hole is used in all the wrong contexts but characters behaving extremely stupid to move the plot the right way is lazy writing and can be criticized all the same.

It's bad when people are stupider than their characters are supposed to be, it just seems like a lot of people think it's a plot hole when someone makes a suboptimal decision that's reasonable for the character to make or when they don't act like they know they are in a movie.

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Anteaterking posted...

It's bad when people are stupider than their characters are supposed to be, it just seems like a lot of people think it's a plot hole when someone makes a suboptimal decision that's reasonable for the character to make or when they don't act like they know they are in a movie.

To me it is only bad when the dumb actions only exist to push the plot.

For example The Last Jedi. Holdo acts like a plan doesn't exist. She doesn't even have to tell Poe what the plan was. But people are literally dying and she tells people to just have hope. Because of that we get Rose's plot and Poe's. So this is like 2/3 of the movie existing because of something stupid .

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