credit: About Time
There are a lot of movies out there that deal with time travel, and a lot of them have their own rules when it comes to traipsing through one timeline or another. For a long time, it felt as though the Back to the Future movies might have written the rules that really mattered, but the fallacy behind this line of thinking has been pointed out quite a few times since the movies were released so long ago.
Since then, time travel has been looked at in a lot of different ways in the movies, as Avengers: Endgame took on another point of authority that might have changed things around. But About Time, the story of a father and son who each have to come to terms with what time travel means to them and to their family is something that feels criminally underrated when it comes to stories concerning time travel, but there are likely reasons for this, no matter how well received it might have been back in 2013.
It could have been that Domnhall Gleeson and Bill Nighy weren’t quite as well known or revered in America, or it could have been something else, but the point is that as a romantic comedy and as a movie about time travel, it doesn’t feel like it was given enough attention for what it tried to do.
credit: About Time
This idea is simple and hard to explain, but it feels easier to accept than many other confusing theories
Considering how many different theories there have been when it comes to time travel, this is without a doubt one of the simplest to deal with since it’s not something that requires machinery or risky components that might end up destroying everything on earth if it’s mishandled. But at the same time, there’s enough mystery to it that it’s fair to think that a lot of people might want to figure out what’s going on and why it would work in the manner that it does.
The fact that this time travel has rules as well kind of keeps it balanced, though, even if there’s so much more room left for error. The fact that one can’t time travel to a point before their kids’ birth means that a person could inevitably screw everything up and make life even worse. But the fact that Tim has his father there to explain things and caution him against certain actions is a nice balance that other movies don’t always have.
The implications of Tim’s power feel like they might be able to develop into another movie
Seriously, what would you do if you had the power to step back in time, at least far enough to fix a few mistakes that might change your life for the better? A lot of people would no doubt cite the mistakes that have been made in other movies and wonder what the effect would be on the world if Tim is simply changing his life but therefore changing the lives of others by getting what he wants and disregarding others.
It’s seen in the movie that the woman he wants ends up rejecting him first and then wanting him later, while the woman he meets ends up with a boyfriend due to his hesitation but becomes his girlfriend when he goes back in time to change things around. The idea of being able to go back in time to fix one’s own issues is nice and all, but there’s still the idea that one might change things in a way that could be disastrous for others.
credit: About Time
This is essentially a love/family story
Tim is, for all intents and purposes, a hopeful romantic that becomes a bit hopeless when the girl of his dreams rejects him. When his father makes him aware of his time-traveling abilities, he starts to flit back and forth between the present and the past, making his life better even as his father cautions him about what to do and what to avoid. When it comes to changing things that occur before the birth of his children, though, he finds out the hard way that changing things in this manner makes it less likely that things will be the way he remembers them when he returns to the present.
This is a strange rule to enact any kind of tragedy since it means that at one point, he can’t help his sister, and he can’t save his father since doing so would mean negating his and his sister’s existence, possibly. As much as this movie is about romance and love, it’s also about learning how to deal with loss and allowing the world to follow its natural course, no matter what happens.
If this movie ever were rebooted, it should be updated and allowed to keep the core story
As a love story, this movie is solid and might even make a lot of people laugh in certain spots since it could remind them of moments in their own lives that they might wish to return to and fix. But when all is said and done, it’s a pleasing tale that reminds people that things do happen for a reason, and trying to subvert that reason isn’t always the best idea. But yes, it would be nice to go back and see if a few things in our lives might be switched around just a bit to make them better.
the woman he wants
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