The Ars Guide to Time Travel in the Movies
Freeman writes:
https://arstechnica.com/features/2023/11/the-ars-guide-to-time-travel-in-the-movies/
Since antiquity, humans have envisioned various means of time travel into the future or the past. The concept has since become a staple of modern science fiction. In particular, the number of films that make use of time travel has increased significantly over the decades, while the real-world science has evolved right alongside them, moving from simple Newtonian mechanics and general relativity to quantum mechanics and the notion of a multiverse or more exotic alternatives like string theory.
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This is not meant to be an exhaustive list; rather, we selected films that represented many diverse approaches to time travel across multiple subgenres and decades. We then evaluated each one-grading on a curve-with regard to its overall entertainment value and scientific logic, with the final combined score determining a film's spot on the overall ranking. For the "science" part of our scoring system, we specifically took three factors into account. First and foremost, does the time travel make logical sense? Second, is the physical mechanism of time travel somewhat realistic? And third, does the film use time travel in narratively interesting ways? So a movie like Looper, which makes absolutely no sense if you think about it too hard, gets points for weaving time paradoxes thoroughly into the fabric of the story.
[Sampling: More Entertaining and Less Scientific (Back to the Future), Less Entertaining and More Scientific (The Time Machine), Less Entertaining and Less Scientific (Timecop), More Entertaining and More Scientific (12 Monkeys)]
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