Oh dear god, I saw Looper last night... (oh, spoliers!)

and again, SPOLIERS!!!"best sci-fi since Moon" "best time-travel flic since 12 Monkeys" 93% fresh on TomatoesThis was going to be a treat. A great way to spend 2 hours before settling down with Radiohead for the evening at the O2.OMG was that the biggest load of bollocks I have seen in a very long time. It makes Back to the Future look like it was scripted by Kip Thorne. It has to be the worst screw-up of time-travel concepts I have ever seen in fiction.But even allowing for the sheer CF of the time-travel, how the hell does it get these reviews??? Old Joe's motivation is ridiculous (I have been calmed from my violent ways by my beautiful wife, so I will now kill in cold blood three 4-yr olds, in the hope that one of them is responsible for her death.) Cid the kid's 4-yr old dialogue is awful. Bruce's matrix-like assault on Abe's place is laugh-out-loud comic, and is not helped by the truly appalling editing in these action scenes.So...1) anyone want to defend this POS?
2) anyone want to chat about time-travel in fiction? (hasn't been done in a while)
3) anyone want a thread on time-travel in physics? (again seems to have been a while)

Full disclosure: haven't seen the flick.I dunno. Having been lured from my violent ways by a beautiful wife, I can truthfully report that I would sacrifice an entire clade of rug rats for the smallest improvement in her odds of surviving another day.Sorry.As to time travel in fiction...once you've read a niche in time saves Stein, where can you go?

I never saw the 'epic' appeal of Inception either. Even the positive reviews say things like:
"...not dwell on the fiction in the science."
"The best time travel films play on emotion rather than logic..."
"The reasoning behind all this may not reward prolonged inspection..."It appears that they do actually realise that the fiction overwhelms the science.

Hi Omnivorous I see you read Asimov. Have you read 'The End of Eternity' which is an interesting novel of his around the time travel concept?Cavediver - would love to lurk in a time travel thread - either fiction or (especially) the physics - always has fascinated me - though I guess like most folk the physics can be bewildering........

I thought the love scene between Old Joe and Young Joe was handled quite well, not something I thought Bruce Willis would agree to.

I really liked it. Ever since the Matrix movies there hasn't been much in the way of cyberpunk filmmaking; Inception was a kind of biological cyberpunk.But, I mean, it's a heist movie, right? I'm not sure I would describe it as "epic".Actually, here's a good contrast - Inception followed through on its own premise. Looper played fast and loose with it - if stuff doesn't happen until you go back and make it happen, then how does Old Joe live in a future with the Rainmaker, if he's the reason there is one? And so on.Oh, well. I thought it was alright, it hit the right notes with me and JGL was appropriately scowly, but there was a lot about it that doesn't hold together on inspection. Cave is right, for as much as it was hyped you'd come out thinking it was bollocks, but I try to ignore the hype about movies I want to see.That said, moviegoers who like pared-down, laser-precise pacing, characterization, and plot should go see Dredd. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. But seriously it's the new Die Hard - action movie filmmaking at the pinnacle of technique.

I do intent to watch it - I hope I enjoy it as much as you seem to have.Despite all the CGI/effects that are now possible; finding a decent action+sci-fi movie seems a difficult task these days.

I have always thought for fictional time travel to work as a conciet it would have to essentially be an almost one way trip.That is to say Bill goes back to 2012 from 2045 to visit is younger self. But old Bill has no recollection of the meeting. So if Bill returned to 2045 he would meet young Bill (now all grown up) and there would be two Bills.So once you travel in time and re enter time there will be two of you.For fictional symmetry you could say that the energy your body is comprised of is equal to the energy required to send you through time. Then the extra you wouldn't add energy to the universe.It's that's bollocks in real life but that's the fictional conceit it would use. Edited by Larni, : No reason given.

Yes, can't wait to see this. And Cersei is in it! Hopefully will make me forget all about that travesty.

Well, that's a huge assumpton right there. Time-travel from the perspective of Relativity is entirely self-consistent. He cannot not have recollection of the meeting (assuming no amnesia, memory-wipe, etc) as the meeting occured.You can have a many-worlds inspired branching effect (popularised by David Deutsch) although this does not sit on any real firm foundation of physics (many-worlds, yes. Time-travel taking you different branches, no.) Well, there always was one of you until your older self appears from the future at which point there is two, up until the point that the younger self enters the time machine and travels back. Of course, there's nothing to stop the older self deciding to return as well, so now there's three, then four, then five selfs (and here-in lies a clue to why time-travel is unstable and unlikely to be practically realisable) No need. Remember how I have said numerous times that there is no such thing as (global) conservation of energy? Here's a great example of that in practise.

Any possibility of explaining that in layman terms?