Time Travel in the Movies

I am a science fiction fan. I have been one for as long as I can remember. I have read tons of science fiction books from famous authors such as Ray Bradbury and George Orwell to authors whose names I will likely never recall. Science fiction movies and television shows have dominated my viewing habits since childhood. To say that I consider myself somewhat of an aficionado of sorts would be an understatement.

I am writing a series of articles dealing with some of my favorite sci-fi topics. The first is something that bugs me to no end: why can't the movie-makers ever get time-travel and temporal anomalies right in their movies? When you think of any movie that deals with the space-time continuum, you will inevitably find something in the movie that makes you say "huh, no wait...how". There is a reason for this.

Let's pretend for the balance of this article that we have been able to crack the time-travel puzzle (backward time travel) and we have found a way to travel forward or backward in time to any point that we like. This has been the source of many sci-fi books and movies, but to my great disappointment, none of them ever get it quite right. Let me start with a really simple example. I watched with some great amusement the movie Meet the Robinsons (Disney, 2007). I really enjoyed this movie for its entertainment value for my kids. Once it was over, though, I felt it necessary to point out a couple of things to my daughter (age 12). It went something like this:

Me: "Hon, you know that this movie had a lot of flaws to it don't you?"

Her: "No, Daddy. Like what?"

Me: "Well, if the little kid was actually the dad in the future and he had traveled to the future with his future son, then why would he be surprised when he came home to find the garage door open?"

Her: "Yeah, wait, huh?"

Me: "If he, the little kid, was the dad, wouldn't he know that on this date, his son would take the space car that he, the little kid, invented back to the past and that when he did so, he would leave the garage door open?"

Her: "Uh, yeah, I guess..."

Me: "Then, why would he be surprised to find the door open and the time machine gone?"

Her: "Uh, yeah, that's right."