The Time Machine is one of the few sci-fi films to venture into the future, not the past (Rex Features)
Posted on 02/17/2015 6:11:33 AM PST by BenLurkin
One of the fundamentals that underpins not just physics but every aspect of existence is the law of cause and effect, always in that order. Changing the past would violate that: your actions would affect what caused you to go back in the first place – so if you did manage to kill Hitler he wouldn’t have done what led you to go back and kill him.
That doesn’t stop filmmakers exploring the consequences if you could somehow drop in on history. For Hollywood, applause and special effects are more important than cause and effect, and time travel offers unlimited opportunities to push both imagination and CGI to their limits. Hence screen time machines have included a police box (Dr Who), a phone booth (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure), a DeLorean sports car (Back to the Future) and a big nudes-only energy ball (Terminator).
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
The book “The Time Machine” also mentioned killer satellites long before space exploration was a technical possibility.
Forget cause-and-effect. What about unintended consequences? Perhaps instead of Hitler a more competent strategic and military thinker would’ve been in charge. You would change history alright, but certainly not for the better.
Edge of Tomorrow was a pretty good recent time travel flick.
Knock out Hitler (or Hitler doesn’t invade Eastern Europe) and Stalin/Stalin-Hitler run over Western Europe...
Maybe not in the 1930s, but it happens.
Take out Karl Marx and save the 20th century much misery.
just ask Dave Lister about time travel, particularly to 22-nov-1963
It’s no paradox. It’s an impossibility that some desperately want to believe. The inherent contradictions are called a “paradox”.
Well, okay...but I still love Doc Brown.
The future hasn’t happened and the past is gone. We’re the future as it’s happening.
In the early 90s, there was a TV movie called “Running Against Time” starring Robert Hayes. He has a brother who was killed in Viet Nam. Hays is a history professor who meets a man who has invented a time machine. He decides to go back to Nov 22, 1963 to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy, thinking that, if Kennedy lived, he would have kept the U.S. out of Viet Nam, and his brother would not have been killed. Hays’ character not only fails to prevent the assassination, but ends up being accused of Kennedy’s murder. Lee Harvey Oswald convinces authorities that he tried to stop the assassination, and ends up becoming a national hero. Hays manages to return to the present day, and makes a second attempt to change history by going back in time with the intention of convincing LBJ to pull us out of Viet Nam. The plan backfires, and LBJ instead becomes convinced to escalate the war.
Take out mohammad and save the world centuries of misery.
It would seem to me that one would have to alter the entire cosmos one way or the other. Not just one’s place in it.
He never did find a curry house in Dallas.
Don’t forget his b- buddy Fredrick Engels.
there were future trips in the time tunnel. one involved a trip to mars via the moon.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.