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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Common Sense Applied To Movies: Fill in the plot hole with dumb logic
 
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Shrecknet
Jan 2, 2005

ImpAtom posted:

Did Marty McFly murder his entire family and replace them with 'superior' duplicates?

Discuss! Or not! Who knows!
BttF is one of the 'big three' of time-travel movie theories/systems (the other two being Terminator and Bill & Ted), and the idea that Marty obliterated his 1985 family by going to 1955 feels absurd. The timestream is ever-adjusting (his photos don't have binary 'marty exists/is annihilated' settings, they fade) and as such, we can infer that what Marty did was simply put his hand in the timestream to divert the water a bit; the fact that there is no Butterfly Effect-style 'Marty went back in time and now Nazi Dinosaurs rule the moon!' is proof enough of this. Since he only adjusted the eddies of the timestream, it's safe to say life proceeded mostly the same, and therefore the family in 1985 is his own.

* # ¿ May 14, 2019 18:53
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# ¿ May 16, 2024 23:27
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Shrecknet
Jan 2, 2005

Waffles Inc. posted:

They’re absolutely different people; they lived different lives
Genetically, they are identical. They may have different experiences, but their meat-and-bone composition is identical to what it would have been had Marty not intervened. If we are to assume that any change to one's knowledge or experience completely annihilates your former self, then I am not the same person I was when I started typing this comment.

The trouble with philosophy is, at a certain depth, you just have to assert that reality exists and is real, or else we're just solipsists and nothing matters.

* # ¿ May 15, 2019 17:57
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Shrecknet
Jan 2, 2005

Waffles Inc. posted:

Marty’s end-of-movie family are different people who have radically different experiences, thoughts, personalities and memories from his beginning-of-movie family.
This is literally true for every family in every movie. Sarah Connor is a different person at the end of Terminator; Chief Brody is a different person at the end of JAWS. Hell, I would argue the defining element of a good movie is that the characters change by the end.

* # ¿ May 15, 2019 19:23
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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Common Sense Applied To Movies: Fill in the plot hole with dumb logic