Contradicting Popular Opinion
Intro
In 2006, Sandra Bullock starred in The Lake House; in 2007, Sandra Bullock starred in Premonition. The former is a time-traveling rom-com in which Bullock attempts to save her “true love” from a death that has already happened yet hasn’t happened yet. The latter is a time-traveling thriller in which Bullock attempts to save her husband from a death that has already happened yet hasn’t happened yet. In the former, the lover is saved when the story’s logic indicates that he should die. In the later, the husband is killed when the story’s logic indicates that he should live.
Oh.
Uh.
That was a spoiler.
Whoops.
Obviously Sandra Bullock’s career has grown to the point where she is too big a celebrity to be the plucky comic relief (a la Demolition Man). Perhaps she feels that she has aged out of the slapstick-y stuff, and her “she’s ugly, no wait, she’s beautiful!” roles (e.g. Love Potion #9, Miss Congeniality). I don’t know about this time travel angle her career seems to be taking, though. Perhaps it was merely some sort of petition to make The Time Traveler’s Wife (Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana have already been cast).
So I’m not really sure if Sandra Bullock going to make a movie like this every year, but were she to attempt this thing, one of these flicks might eventually be good strictly due to chance.
“If I could turn back taaaaahhmm. . . “
Now I covered The Lake House over a year ago. Long story short, the time travel aspect makes little sense. There is neither reason nor consistency in its chronological jumping.
In Premonition things make a little less sense. The film proper starts on a Thursday. Sandra Bullock finds a message on her machine that makes no sense. She is then told that her husband died in a car accident on the previous day. The next time she wakes up, her husband is alive. Then she goes to bed, and her husband is dead again. It turns out Bullock is unstuck in time. Not in that cool Billy Pilgrim way, mind you, but rather she is living the days of this week out of order.
Immediately, I have to question, didn’t she think it odd when she woke up on Thursday when the previous day wasn’t Wednesday? In the beginning of the movie, she seems to understand what day it is and what is going on as though she has already lived through this week. Yet, when she jumps back in time, she seems to have no special knowledge of the events of that day. This leads me to the conclusion that Bullock’s character has done a lot of drugs. Either she has fried out her short term memory on pot, or going to bed on Saturday and waking up on Thursday is a normal occurrence.
The other question that forced its way into my brain is this: why didn’t she just stay awake? She seems to be bothered by all this jumping around in time. Pull a Nancy Thompson, take some NoDOZE and don’t go to bed.
Back to the film. Later in the week, as regular people live it, Bullock notices that her eldest daughter has cuts all over her face. Later in the movie, earlier in the week, we see her get these cuts by running into a sliding glass door.
That’s poor construction there. She should bounce off of that like a jobber bounces off Big Daddy V’s mancans.
The thing is, the daughter’s face is all f*cked up on prior to Thursday, and after Thursday, but not on Thursday itself. Were we not supposed to notice? Bad movie! Learn continuity!
Anyways, Sandra Bullock accidentally kills her husband by telling him to take a U-turn on the interstate. The husband foolishly complies and ironic justice in the form of a Mack truck decapitates him.
Bullock’s time hopping was centered around her husband’s death, with its final day being the day in which he actually dies. (Though, it remains unclear whether or not she relives the days subsequent to his death or merely jumps ahead to Sunday.) The movie sets it up such that outside force or deity is leaping her through time’s hoops to save his life. The movie implies that this is why she is compelled to live the week out of order. Her failure to save him runs counter to this notion, and affords us no alternative save some malevolent yet uncreative cosmic trickster.
The original script had the husband live, but that ending was deemed “too Hollywood.” I say, it would have been too Hollywood had Bullock saved her husband, memorized the upcoming lottery numbers, and used her winnings to buy genetically engineered dinosaurs. No wait, that’s not too Hollywood; that’s too awesome! We’ll call it Premonition Rex!
Brilliant.
The problem with most time travel movies, both of Bullock’s included, is a lack of continuity and defined rules. Now, I’m not calling for 10 minutes worth of exposition on time paradoxes and such. What I’m saying is that an intelligent person should be able to reverse engineer the laws by which the movie’s devices are governed.
Generally speaking there exist four options for time travel rules.
1. Back to the Future style: Person (or team) A goes back in time. They dick around a bit. Upon returning to his/her/their present, he/she/they will encounter changes to reality brought about by that visit. Existing outside of a shared timestream, person A retains memories of the old reality
2. The Superman/Lincoln method: Superman goes back in time to stop the Lincoln assassination. Upon returning to the present, he finds that history books still say that JWB has shot Lincoln. Superman is unable to affect his own timeline with his chronological journeys. His temporal meddling merely causes a branching off of an alternate timeline/reality. By this, the universe protects itself from paradox.
3. The “Quantum Leap” method: Two distinct timelines, generally years apart, coincide. Usually two people are connected by some outside force despite being temporally separated. Time passes at the same rate for Person A and Person B, allowing their actions to run parallel. Frequency mostly abides by this rule, allowing a son to speak with his dead father over a ham radio. The Lake House and Deja Vu follow these rules about half of the time. The person in the future (or present) can induce actions by the person in the past. The actions of this past person can be seen by the future (present) person as they happen. That is to say, Sandra Bullock tells Keanu to plant a tree. When Keanu finishes plating the tree in his timeline, Sandra Bullock starts seeing the tree in her corresponding timeline. She will not have seen the tree last week. When the father of Frequency writes a message in wood, the son sees the letters form.
4. The “It’s all been done” method: With this set of rules, time is more or less fixed. One can travel through time, but one cannot change it. That is to say, the time-meddling a character does has already affected his reality before his present persona actually travels through time. Thus, John Connor is able to send his own father back in time causing his own conception. Most of the time Premontion abides by these rules, having Sandra Bullock induce the deadly car accident she was trying to prevent. My wife informs me that The Time Traveler’s Wife follows these rules fairly strictly.
These four methods are mostly incompatible. Too many movies mix and match, and result in a product that makes no sense.
Enough of that, it is too much like learning.
Outro (Olga Levens hates me!)
A bit ago I reviewed a film called Haunted Boat for the DVD Lounge. Apparently, I offended the film’s director, and she decided to e-mail Lucard about it.
I knew that it would be the source of much amusement when the letter started “Dear Alexander!” with an exclamation point in lieu of a comma, colon, semi-colon, or other punctuation usd by sane folks.
The wife and I podcasted a little about this thing over on PodOmatic.
Special thanks goes to Danny Cox for filling in for me last week. That’s Iper Danny Cox, and not Danny Cox the popular keynote speaker, nor Danny Cox the former pitcher for the Cardinals, nor the Danny Cox that used to play for the Maple Leafs, nor Danny Cox the black folk singer of the early ’70s, nor Danny Cox the British television presenter. Nope, it’s this guy.
. . . I’m pretty sure it isn’t any of them at least.
