Top Ten Stupidest Reason to Time Travel In Film History
by
Brian VanHooker
Turtle With Lemonade Productions
www.turtlewithlemonade.com
There are plenty of good reason to time travel: you want to save humanity or kill baby Hitler or you want a pet Velociraptor, but on film we've also gotten a lot of lousy excuses to travel through time, and here's the ten dumbest.
10. You’re Born That Way
In the sappy love story The Time Traveler’s Wife, Eric Bana is a man born with a genetic disorder which causes him to time travel inadvertently to random time periods. That’s right, he was just born that way. No Flux Capacitor, no wormholes, no gamma rays, he just inherited the old time-travel-gene. While some kids are born with freckles, Eric Bana is born with the ability to rip apart the space/time continuum. And, as if that weren’t ridiculous enough, he also passes on this gene to his children, who start time traveling before they are born. So his wife keeps miscarrying because all of her fetuses teleport away and get eaten by dinosaurs.
9. You Want To Save The Whales
In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the crew of the USS Enterprise returns to earth to find that an evil probe is attacking the planet, and only one thing can stop it’s reign of terror: a humpback whale. But, in 2286, humpback whales are extinct, so the crew must travel back to 1986 to kidnap a whale and bring it to the future. When they arrive in 1986, Kirk and Spock discover two whales who are about to be released into the wild. They quickly snatch up the creatures and bring them to 2286 where they’ll be the only two of their kind (this may somewhat contradict the film’s environmentalist message). So George and Gracie (the whales) are brought to the future and they ask the evil probe please stop. It complies and goes to the other end of the galaxy, restoring peace and order to Earth. Then, the whales are released into the seas of 2286, where they’re left with the hefty task of trying to repopulate their species.
8. You’re Afraid You’ll Turn Into A Selfish Jerk
Bruce Willis and time travel usually go together like peanut butter and jelly. He was awesome in 12 Monkeys, Looper, and Die Hard IV (did he time travel in Die Hard IV? He surfed a fighter jet, and if that's possible in the Die Hard universe, time travel must be too). But, in Disney's The Kid, a young, fat little version of Bruce Willis travels to the future to tell his older self what a jerk he is, and the older Bruce Willis gets a new lease on life by meeting his former, fatter self. That's it. There's no genetic virus plaguing mankind and no one is trying to kill Hitler or anything, it's just young Bruce Willis telling old Bruce Willis to lighten up. You'd think if the kid was AWARE of his eventual fate as an asshole he'd just donate to charities and do some yoga or something, but apparently it's just easier to let himself become a jerk and then travel 40 years in the future to fix it.
7. You Have To Save April
In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, April foes antiquing and buys random junk for all the turtles and buys Splinter a ancient Japanese artifact. Before she gives it to him, the artifact lights up and zaps April back to to feudal Japan. Without hesitating, they all decide to follow her there and save her. Once they arrive, they immediately lose the time machine and now they have to find both April and the artifact. During one particularly stupid moment of the film, the turtles try to get an angry, retarded blacksmith to build them a new time machine. Everyone is shocked when the new time machine, made of leftover silverware welded together, doesn't work (I would at least expect more from Donatello). Why the turtles are still friends with April is a mystery. Clearly her friendship is more trouble than its worth. She's always getting kidnapped and talking about the TMNT (who are ninjas who live in secret) on the news. At least ONE of the turtles should have floated the idea of leaving her there.
6. You Fall In Love With A Dead Lady
In the film Somewhere In Time, Christopher Reeve falls in love with a picture of a woman from 1912. He becomes so obsessed with this photograph he either must go back in time and meet her, or commit some very serious necrophilia. Thankfully, he chooses the first option and flies around the world, reversing the Earth's orbit and goes back to 1912 to meet the love of his life. In this film, Reeve has no consideration for paradoxes or the fate of the rest of the universe. Just imagine if the space/time continuum was ripped open by every guy who wanted to have sex with Marilyn Monroe or Cleopatra or that sexy lady with the bananas on her head. Our whole universe would collapse!
5. You're Afraid Your Kids Are Going To Turn Into Assholes
Sure, the first time Marty McFly traveled through time was a mistake, and it was excusable. He was driving as fast as he could to get away from Libyan terrorists, and everyone (except Barack Obama) knows how dangerous they can be. But, at the end of Back To The Future, Doc Brown once again decides to risk tearing a hole in time. Why? Because MArty McFly is a lousy dad. Sure, Doc Brown could have just sent him some parenting books via Wester Union to 1985, but instead he risks all of existence just to give Marty a few parenting tips.
4. You Want To Pass History Class
In Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, two slackers travel through time to learn about history rather than do any homework. It's really hard to make fun of this movie, as it's already meant to be a joke, but it couldn't NOT be included in a list of the dumbest reasons to time travel.
3. You're A Dirty Socialist
In the film Time Chasers, pilot Nick Miller finds a way to convert his personal airplane into a time machine. So he decides then to cash in on it and sells the technology to a company called GenCorp. When he travels to the future, Nick is shocked to find out that GenCorp bought his invention to make more money (GASP!). He is angry that time travel isn't used to humanitarian purposes (like when he took his girlfriend to a date to the 1950's, really). So he does every thing he can to sully the name of the evil, job-creating corporation. To stop them from even getting the technology in the first place.
2. You've Run Out Of Things To Hunt
In the incoherent film A Sound Of Thunder, time travel has been invented and is used for commercial means. In this future, Ben Kingsley runs a tourist attraction known as a "Time Safari" where people pay him to bring them to the mesozoic era and hunt dinosaurs. To absolutely no one's surprise, something goes wrong. During an expedition, the hunters are shocked to find out that allosaurus' don't like being shot at and the pissed off dinosaur attacks the hunters. During the struggle, one of the hunters steps on a butterfly which was apparently the key to all existence because when the return to the future, everything is different. Plants are bigger and meaner, DinoApes roam the streets and Ben Kingsley has a full head of hair! Now it's up to the stupid hunters to go back and save the butterfly from its terrible fate.
1. Your Girlfriend Is In A Coma
In Forever Young, Mel Gibson is a pilot whose girlfriend goes into a coma and may die. Now, rather than stay by her bedside or scour the world for a cure, Mel decides he'd much rather cryogenically freeze himself and wake up after she's already dead. Luckily, his alcoholic friend Norm from Cheers has built a cryogenic freezing machine (which he likely built to escape his sizable bar tab) and he lets Mel use it to freeze himself for one year to spare himself the pain. Not surprisingly, Norm forgets about him and he wakes up 53 years later. He soon finds out that his old girlfriend is still alive and he goes to seek her out. Mel finds her, and even though she's not as hot as she used to be, he asks her to marry him. Clearly senile and out of her mind, and they live happily ever after.