Paradox??
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Isnam777 — 13 years ago(December 29, 2012 10:51 PM)
I don't know if any of this makes a difference in the "paradox" so if it does someone please explain it for me. A couple things have changed even if the alternate timeline in the movie is erased: 1)Max and the aliens who built it still have the knowledge gathered by Max's expedition (even if the alternate timeline doesn't exist) and 2) Max still has memory of the alternate timeline so I'm guessing this makes both David and Max certified inter-dimensional travelers.
Also something to consider, the little alien creature David keeps from Max at the end of the movie is proof that that alternate timeline took place somewhere/sometime.
Lastly, whoever said David didn't travel into the future is correct, it's only stated at the end by Max that they will travel through time to return David to where he was supposed to have been returned to in the first place. Apparently time travel was the only real dangerous thing they did in the movie.
Peace is not the absence of affliction, but the presence of God. ~Author Unknown -
EightiesKid — 12 years ago(May 06, 2013 06:09 PM)
There's two basic kinds of time travel in movies - a single timeline that's always changing (i.e. Back To The Future), or as a single fixed timeline (i.e. Bill & Ted) where changes have always happened.
We can rule out the fixed timeline in this movie, considering that 12 year old 1978 David obviously shows up in 1986, and because he still has the creature with him at the end, along with his memories of Max and his adventure. It's just like Back to the Future's single changeable timeline, so my theory is that, once David is back in 1978 (more or less "in his own time", albeit a few days older), the 1986 version of his parents and his brother Jeff we saw in the movie, ceases to exist.
Put it this way, if a time traveler were in '86 at the very end of the movie, the timeline probably would've immediately changed around them to a universe where 20-year-old David had always existed (just with his memories of the trip years before).
It's like how Marty all throughout Back to the Future would remember his nerdy dad and alcoholic mom from the beginning of Part 1, and all his adventures throughout Part 2 and 3, despite those timelines no longer existing. -
chrisjdel — 9 years ago(August 24, 2016 02:37 AM)
Yes, this movie is aimed primarily at kids and young teens (and us nostalgic adults who first saw it at that age). They weren't going to get too deep into branching timelines and stuff like that. David made it back where he belonged. Whether it was exactly the same place he left or just indistinguishable from it hardly matters since there was no sequel. And the idea that the future family he met now lives in a world where he's gone and will never come back is kinda depressing, so they never brought it up.