Movie: Predestination

Richard09 wrote:

Incidentally, for complex time travel, I would recommend the movie Predestination. It's based on a Robert Heinlein short story, and has the paradoxical twists that Bodies was working on, but it's one movie and two lead actors that are a lot easier to follow than Bodies.

Okay, the movie is certainly a mind-fuck. "Easier to follow"? I'm not sure I followed it at all... but here's what I thought it was:

1. Jane Doe is left at an orphanage, and grows up as a tomboy outcast
   
2. Jane applies to Space Corp but is rejected
   
3. Jane meets her future self, John Doe, gets pregnant by him and has a baby by Caesarean
   
4. During the C-section, doctors transition Jane to John against her will
   
5. Jane's baby is stolen from the hospital by Ethan and given to the orphanage, completing loop 1
   
6. John goes back to Space Corp and becomes a temporal agent
   
7. At some point, for some reason (I don't quite remember this part) John goes into this abandoned factory and begins fooling with the time machine
   
8. Ethan Hawke has a gunfight with John, who ends up getting horribly burned when something(?) explodes
   
9. John is given a new face, and becomes Ethan, completing loop 2
   
10. Ethan goes back in time to have the gunfight with John -- thinking he was the Fizzle Bomber?
    
11. I guess he didn't recognize John's burned face as his own? And didn't remember the fight?
    
12. Ethan goes back in time another time to meet John in the bar, hears his story, and takes John to the basement
    
13. They jump back to the empty apartment, and Ethan gives John a gun, telling him to kill Jane's runaway lover
    
14. Which turns out to be John himself, completing loop 3
    
15. But John visits Ethan on the park bench, telling him that he loves Jane and doesn't want to leave her
    
16. Ethan tells John he has to kill the Fizzle Bomber (I can't remember why or who)
    
17. Ethan then jumps forward to steal Jane's baby, completing loop 4
    
18. At some point Ethan gets identity on a bomb part, and goes back to kill the Fizzle Bomber in the laudromat
    
19. Which turns out to be a future Ethan, telling him his NYC blast actually saved lives overall
    
20. Ethan kills his future self, preventing the Fizzle Bomb finally
    
21. Wait, there was a fight with Ethan and Jane in there somewhere, I'm forgetting another loop or something
    

I may have to watch it again 2-3 times.

Criticisms:

1. If Jane Doe was biologically both male and female, wouldn't her testis have been external? (Actually, during the development of a fetus the same tissue that becomes testis also becomes ovaries--and the same for all other sexual structures--so having both would require duplicate structures. Not impossible I guess, but exceedingly odd)
   
2. Having different actors play Ethan and Jane/John was I suppose necessary to avoid giving away the secret twist, but the actors weren't even the same height or build. It could've been more believable
   
3. Ethan takes a bottle of Old Underwear forward to 1975 with him. At one point he says you have to be within 3 feet of the violin case to be included in the jump. Yet his feet make it every time. And the car seat he was sitting on did not.
   
4. When John impregnated Jane, did he have no memory of being in this loop before as Jane?
   
5. The idea of being your own mother, and father, is not unique to Heinlein but is a fun plot to play around with

I'm too tired to straighten out the knots in my loops. Maybe I can watch it again tomorrow.

I've ordered a book of Heinlein short stories. I may have read "All You Zombies" before, probably did, but I don't remember it.

Yes, easier to follow might have been an overbid.

I think All You Zombies contented itself with the main loop about the one character being his own father and mother, and the movie added in the extra business about the "Fizzle Bomber" and the guy getting burned and getting a new face. Which was probably a mistake.

But I may be wrong. It's a very long time since I read that story.

Two more small criticisms, after sleeping on it.

• The Caeserean scar is vertical, and above the stomach. My wife's is horizontal, and just above the pubic bone. Maybe they vary, I dunno.
  
• When John bumps into Jane, he immediately realizes he's the missing boyfriend she hated. He talks to her, aware they're the same person. So why does he allow himself to impregnate her a 2nd time? He could've broken the loop right there by not having sex, instead of having to kill somebody after they're already born.

The Blu-ray has more than an hour of bonus material, including make-up tests, special effects explanations, minutiae of the editing process, how the script different from the short story, etc.  I love this kind of background on a movie.  Makes the experience so much richer.

After I finished, I went to file "Predestination" in my DVD rack only to discover I already had a copy!  I'd never watched it.  Wonder when/why I bought it?  I obviously have too many movies.

I used to have a database of my DVDs but the software company went out of business or began charging a monthly membership, so it no longer worked.

NoCoPilot wrote:

After I finished, I went to file "Predestination" in my DVD rack only to discover I already had a copy!  I'd never watched it.  Wonder when/why I bought it?.

Obviously, someone you know is a covert time-traveler who knew that you would want to see this movie round about now, so they came back from the future and bought it for you. It's probably you.

These days, every time I see a time-travel movie I'm reminded of remarks I read once (by whom? Don't remember) that time travelers would have to be space farers too.  You see, going back in time even a small amount, or forward in time, the Earth would have rotated since you left, and the Earth would not be in the same place in its orbit around the Sun, and the Sun would not be in the same place in its orbit around the center of the Milky Way, and the Milky Way would not be in the same place...

Maybe time travel has existed for decades -- travelers just just end up gasping for breath in the vacuum of empty space.

Quote :

Earth is wider at the Equator, so to make a rotation in one 24-hour period, equatorial regions race nearly 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) per hour.  Earth travels [around the sun] about 1.6 million miles (2.6 million km) a day, or 66,627 mph (107,226 km/h). As well as moving around the Sun, the Sun and Earth are orbiting around the dense center of our galaxy at some 447,000 miles per hour (200 km/s). 

Heh-heh.  I just googled "what's the next structure beyond the Milky Way" and Google came back "Google would like to use your current location, accept / deny."

Okay, the "All You Zombies" short story (VERY short) is certainly a mind-fuck, a lot denser than "Predestination." If I hadn't already seen the movie first it wouldn't have made much sense. But I did and it did and now it's time for bed.