If you Change the Past, it could Affect the Future

The concept of time travel—travelling backwards and forwards through time—has always been a popular staple of science fiction film and science fiction television series. Time travel usually involves the use of some type of advanced technology, such as H. G. Wells’ classic The Time Machine, the commercially successful 1980s-era Back to the Future trilogy, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the Terminator series, Déjà Vu (2006), Source Code (2011), and Edge of Tomorrow (2014). Other movies, such as the Planet of the Apes series, Timeline (2003) and The Last Mimzy (2007), explained their depictions of time travel by drawing on physics concepts such as the special relativity phenomenon of time dilation (which could occur if a spaceship was travelling near the speed of light) and wormholes. Some films show time travel not being attained from advanced technology, but rather from an inner source or personal power, such as the 2000s-era films Donnie Darko, Mr. Nobody and The Butterfly Effect.

More conventional time travel movies use technology to bring the past to life in the present, or in a present that lies in our future. The film Iceman (1984) told the story of the reanimation of a frozenNeanderthal. The film Freejack (1992) shows time travel used to pull victims of horrible deaths forward in time a split-second before their demise, and then use their bodies for spare parts.

A common theme in time travel film is the paradoxical nature of travelling through time. In the French New Wave film La jetée (1962), director Chris Marker depicts the self-fulfilling aspect of a person being able to see their future by showing a child who witnesses the death of his future self. La Jetée was the inspiration for 12 Monkeys, (1995) director Terry Gilliam’s film about time travel, memory and madness. The Back to the Future series and The Time Machine goes one step further and explores the result of altering the past, while in Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and Star Trek(2009) the crew must rescue the Earth from having its past altered by time-travelling cyborgs and alien races.