[…] with minimum amount of executive meddling. Hell, I even wrote positive reviews for movies like The Butterfly Effect and […]

[…] to ponder. For the lack of better name I decided to call it the time traveler problem. Recently I reviewed The Butterfly Effect which sort of touched upon this […]

@Tino: Yeah, you might be right.

Re: pirate party thing, that is awesome. See, this is the nice thing about having a multi-party system. People can actually create a party and win an EU seat and perhaps even make a change to the national policy. I’m pretty sure that the big Pirate Bay media circus helped them a lot.

I doubt that our pirate party is ever going to amount to anything.

@Luke Maciak: “Still, if we are really trying to illustrate Butterfly Effect the effects were a bit too tame.”

The fact that you first complained that the effects were too extreme, and now when you think of them as examples of the butterfly effect, you think that they were too tame, makes me think that they probably got them exactly right… :)

I’m not sure how you concluded that bigger changes didn’t occur. It is just that if you want the audience to *feel* the butterfly effect, rather than just dryly understand it, it makes sense to focus on the extreme changes in his immediate life.

I was also surprised of him returning to the molestation scene. As you say, it would have made much more sense if he could only re-live his memory blanks once.

On a completely unrelated note: yarrr :)

@Matt`: Yup, that’s correct. What really bothered me is that he has not tried to correct the mailbox incident better. First time around he stands to close to the box so he gets crippled. Fine. Next time he goes back, he goes further to the past to destroy the dynamite and kills Keileigh in the process.

Why couldn’t he just go back to the mailbox scene and this time around keep the fucking distance from the thing. This way his chubby friend survives, he is not a cripple and the angry kid finds Jesus and his mom doesn’t pick up smoking. Everyone wins, no?

I mean, he pretty much could pick any one of these scenes and keep going back tweaking it until it was perfect. But that would be less dramatic I guess.

@Garrick: I heard about that ending but I haven’t seen it. It does seem a bit extreme and I guess that’s why they took it out of the movie. After all if he can just burn his journals and childhood pictures to prevents himself from tampering with time, then suicide in the womb does not make much sense. Still kinda intriguing. Wasn’t there also a bit about his mother having a miscarriage several times before (suggesting that these children also had this power and came to the same conclusion as Kutcher and decided to prevent their own birth).

@copperfish: Hmm… I didn’t see that parallel. It didn’t seem like they were really trying to copy it – they sort of went in a completely different direction. Donnie Darko was a very different movie – and a much better one. At least IMHO. But maybe you are right – maybe they tried to make a similar picture in theme/mood.

@dawn: No worries. I’m staying clear from the sequel. For that matter, I heard they made a sequel to Donnie Darko as well (since we are talking about that movie) – and I’m also definitely not watching that.

I have yet to see a sequel which is as good or better than the original.

@Tino: I guess you are right. Still, if we are really trying to illustrate Butterfly Effect the effects were a bit too tame. Note that his alterations only affected the 3-4 people he knew. We really didn’t get to see a big picture here. There were probably dozens of people these characters could have nudged in different directions during their life – so I wouldn’t be surprised if his alterations wouldn’t for example change who is the president of United States or something like that.

Also, for half of the movie I assumed he just can’t go back to the same scene twice – and that’s why he always tries to correct different parts of the time line. Then he goes back to the molestation scene again. Which made me wonder why he couldn’t do that to begin with. Re-live the mailbox scene until it was perfect. Or go back to the molestation scene and tell the father to be nice to his son as well to prevent him from becoming a dangerous delinquent.

I was going to comment about the alternate ending, but Garrick beat me too it.

I had the same experience: Who would expect a good serious Kutcher movie? But it really was good. Dawn is also right about the sequel: it is one of these absolutely horrible sequels that is just a remake with smaller budget, worse actors, and a deteriorated script that adds absolutely nothing for people who have seen the original. It is like if someone would take a famous panting, re-paint it with crayons, and then piss all over the result. And then try to display it for money to the same people who liked the original. And [i]even that[/i] would far surpass the cultural contribution of these crappy remake sequels.

However, there is even a third movie out now, and if one like “mild horror” as a genre it has some value. One can see it without the second, there are no connections.

[quote]Most of the alterations the hero makes could lead to much lest drastic alternate futures which would still not be satisfactory and prompt him to do some more time meddling.[/quote]

I think you are missing a point here. The title of the movie is “Butterfly effect”, and I have never seen a movie that better illustrates the idea of that concept. The whole point is that the smallest changes in a single event would make a major difference for your life.

*spoiler about alternative ending*
@Garrick: I also found the alternate ending interesting. For once an “alternate ending” that really is different. Also, did you notice how it tied in with his mother talking about all her prior miscarriages? One extreme interpretation is that his prior brothers/sisters went through the same horrible experiences with the same outcome…
*end spoiler*

I have to warn you, Luke: don’t watch the sequel! (Unless you want to write a review for yet another really bad film…)

By the way, European films don’t mess your brain as much as, say, Primer or Fight Club, but there are a few rather good French and German films which don’t leave you at rest until you’ve discussed them with cinephile friends for a few days. I have to think about what exactly to recommend, though…

As for being what I call a “movie snob”, I think that people are missing something when they aren’t watching movies with a critical eye. Come on, it’s half of the fun.

It always struck me as a very commercial Donnie Darko, similar time twists and angsty main character but it just seemed like a poor copy.

Spoiler Alert
The alternate ending had a interesting twist if I remember right (it has been a couple years since I saw it). Ashtons character jumps back into himself as a fetus and strangles himself with his umbilical cord to prevent all these horrible things from happening.
/Spoiler Alert

It was a pretty twisted movie that snowballed almost as bad as “Requiem for a Dream” (which I highly recommend if you haven’t seen it).