Time machines are cool, right? Who wouldn't want a flux capacitor and a giant clock attached to a chair and an electrical orb that encircles your body taking you back and forth through time and space like your own personal time chauffeur?
Me. I wouldn't. How come? Because time machines, no matter how cool they seem, don't make sense.
In 1895, Jules Verne completely screwed over all of fiction by inventing the concept of the "time machine," forever destroying common sense.
Right now, you might be asking yourself, "But Phil, Back to the Future was so awesome!" I know, I know. It was awesome, but let's think about it for a second.
The premise of the film is thus: Marty McFly, procurer of orange vests, accidentally travels back in time, where he is stuck without help from his mentor, Doc Brown.
So far, so good.
However, at the end of the film, Marty decides to plan his arrival back to the future at exactly five minutes before the death of Doc Brown, so that Marty may prevent said death.
Again, so far, so good, right?
No! Marty has a freakin' time machine! He can place himself anywhere within time, and he chooses to do it only a mere five minutes before the death of this friend and mentor? Why only five minutes?
See where I'm going with this?
Just in case you don't, let me give you another example.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is not only a story of magic, but also time travel. Hermione Granger, forever straight-A student, borrows a time machine simply for the use of taking several classes at the same time.
Putting aside the fact that this must be the most insipid use of a time machine to date, Hermione, Harry, and the entire wizarding community completely miss the fact that this time machine could be used for the most banal mission ever: to kill Voldemort as a child and completely skip the torturous series of events that puts this entire story into motion.
Simply, why don't we see Harry jump into the past, find baby Tom Riddle (a.k.a. Lord Voldemort) in his basinet, fast asleep, and melt his face off with his wand?
Or, why doesn't Harry go back in time, find said baby, and deliver him to a set of adoptive parents who treat little Tom Riddle like the bestest child in the whole world, perhaps leading Tom Riddle to become the next Dumbledore instead of the Merlin equivalent of Hitler?
As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, time machines are fully capable of solving their own problems. Perhaps Terminator is the only film to ever get it right, by using a time machine to prevent something from happening, rather than something happening because of a time machine.
However, Terminator presents a-whole-nother problem with time machines - how can something happen because someone went back into the past and told you it happened? Example - John Connor is born because his father traveled back in time to impregnate his mother, yet the father only went back in time because John Connor told him to.
Huh?
Exactly. Time machines suck.
