Film: The Butterfly Effect

[CuriousCub]

this movie was similar to any else, it would be Jacob's Ladder, especially how both main characters meet the palmist and she says they have no soul, they aren't alive. The director's version is way better than the theater release. i don't know why/how people are comparing this to Donnie Darko when the subject matter is entirely different.

 

[alasdairm]

film: the butterfly effect

rate this movie while you can!

alasdair

 

[CuriousCub]

ratings fucking suck.

 

[onetwothreefour]

^^^ any particular reason for that point of view? actually, feel free to email a mod about it, or bring it up in the ratings thread

 

[CuriousCub]

i think ratings suck (and swallow and choke hehe) because there are too many parts of a movie to rate it as a whole. movies aren't made as a whole. the actors are carrying one part, the crew is dealing another...their vision and focus is usually entirely different. sometimes it doesn't seem like the production crew even care about the movie material. they just want something to do, just to be part of the creation of something.

this movie had a lot of mistakes--like when evan told the creep dad to not harm his daughter anymore, and the daughter said don't ever touch me AGAIN. later on when they're older, she said her dad never touched her at all.

 

[kryalkastleE]

i REALLY liked this movie. the ending let it down a bit though. i think it should have ended with him in the institute....

and good pick up about the again/never with the dad thing.....hmmmm

 

[CuriousCub]

in the director's version, i'd like to know how evan not being born prevented the twins, kayleigh and tommy, from being stuck with the creep dad.
my guess: since the mom saw her kids had no playmates in the area with the dad, she didn't find the area suitable. if that is the real reason, that's a shitty reason regardless.

 

[lovehatekill1]

that movie was kinda weird.
i might have to watch again

 

[*=Regulator=*]

in the director's version, i'd like to know how evan not being born prevented the twins, kayleigh and tommy, from being stuck with the creep dad.
my guess: since the mom saw her kids had no playmates in the area with the dad, she didn't find the area suitable. if that is the real reason, that's a shitty reason regardless.

^^

The girl chose to stay with her mum not her dad after the divorce because she didn't have Evan influencing her decision. I think the 'kiddy porn' bit happened just after the divorce.

So what happened in the cinema version's ending? - I've only seen the DVD ending.....

 

[Pasilda Nacera]

this movie had a lot of mistakes--like when evan told the creep dad to not harm his daughter anymore, and the daughter said don't ever touch me AGAIN. later on when they're older, she said her dad never touched her at all.

How is that a mistake?

She told her dad not to touch her and of course he didn't.

 

[alasdairm]

Originally posted by CuriousCub
this movie had a lot of mistakes--like when evan told the creep dad to not harm his daughter anymore, and the daughter said don't ever touch me AGAIN. later on when they're older, she said her dad never touched her at all.

right on! and what about that whole time travel thing? i mean come on! people can't actually travel in time...



alasdair

 

[CuriousCub]

footnotes

How is that a mistake?

She told her dad not to touch her and of course he didn't.

LISTEN DUDE, she told him to NEVER TOUCH HER AGAIN, so he had touched her and he then agreed to stop doing it by saying "ok."....and then later on, during the same time phase, she was older and told Evan her dad never touched her at all. How can that be, if as a child, she said don't ever do it AGAIN?

That scene by the way was way too idealistic and unrealistic. The dad's a total fucking freak, you think he's going to actually take a command from a toddler and stop doing something he already knows is bad for her but doesn't give a fuck about anyway? to make it worse, they act like him saying "ok" is going to change something. it doesn't matter if he molesterd her once or a million times, he should be jailed at that point, not free to make bullshit promises to pacify a damaged child.

I wonder why Evan, during the time travel flashbacks to stop the dad from hurting the kids, and now being confident and aware enough to know what to do, never called the police on the dad.


as for the time traveling...i don't consider this the time traveling of science that was featured in shows like Contact, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures, Star Trek, or Carl Sagan and Einstein philosophy. The latter's philosophy on time travel doesn't seem to deal with changing the past or even say that doing that is possible, it's more like observing it to learn from it and see what really happened, or to see what is going on in a parrallel universe.

i think this has to do with his psychology of exploring his "shoulda, coulda, woulda's." Similar to Jacob's Ladder.

he's traveling back in his memories seeing what options he should've taken, SPECIFICALLY to counteract the trauma he experienced. he has a major guilt complex. Instead of denying that the trauma happened and trying to forget about it, or trying to accept all that shit and forgive the people that made you endure it--the only 2 options available to those traumatized, you know-- and living with all that guilt and pain, why not just change the events mentally so that they fit the way you would have hoped they could've.
When i watched the way he would time travel, i just think of a PTSD flashback, where it can get so intense that you experience seizure-like episodes, which is what he was going through to everybody looking at him when he was traveling back in his mind.

i wish this film would've talked at greater length about how PTSD affects one's life, and how the guilt over feeling like all the bad that happened is somehow your fault, because it certainly showed enough PTSD suffering from every character's angle. The audience this caters to, the Ashton kutcher crowd, most likely doesn't even know what PTSD is let alone what it stands for.

 

[alasdairm]

Re: footnotes

Originally posted by CuriousCub
LISTEN DUDE, she told him to NEVER TOUCH HER AGAIN, so he had touched her and he then agreed to stop doing it by saying "ok."....and then later on, during the same time phase, she was older and told Evan her dad never touched her at all. How can that be, if as a child, she said don't ever do it AGAIN?

in that case, it sounds like a simple error. movies are made by humans and humans occasionally make mistakes.

there's an imdb goofs page for this movie. perhaps you could submit this as a goof if it's important to you?

alasdair

 

[frostyangel]

I loved this movie, I can't wait to buy it... (aka soon as not poor)

But, i didn't find aston to be so comedic in this move but it was a pretty different approach in movies and I liked it alot.

 

[Riot Grrrl]

Sorry if this has been mentioned, but fuck it anyway...

A friend pointed this out to me, so here goes.
In the scene where Kutcher is in jail and wants to convince the other inmate he can travel "in time", Kutcher goes back to the school and burns/cuts the palms of his hands, and he comes back to the jail to show the inmate. How is it that he doesn't "change time", or go back to an alternate universe, but ends up in the same place? Isn't it a "butterfly effect" of him even being back at the school.

Cheers.

 

[CuriousCub]

^^that hand/pseudo-stigmata scene was really confusing. It was almost as confusing as watching the gay inmate skinheads, otherwise known as the "sisters" reading Hustler porn mag, before Kutcher is about to give them oral sex. If they're so gay why are they viewing hustler.

 

[Riot Grrrl]

^^ I guess if theres no chicks around you might as well take second best.

 

[junksick]

Have you ever watched the shawshank redemption? Being used as a sex object in prison has nothing to do with being gay or straight. It's about power.

"Would it help if I explained to them that i'm not a homo-sexual"

"Well neither are they, you have to be human first"

I wondered about the discontinuity in prison too though... if he travels back in time and stabs himself why didn't the other prisoner just see it like he always had that wound? Why did he act like it just appeared. Only Ashtons character can travel out of time not those around him.

 

[Riot Grrrl]

^ I guess he had to prove to the inmate that he could travel in time, so he had to have unscared hands, then make them wounded after he came back from the past, hence proving he was back in time.

Though it still puzzles me that he didn't change time and he was back in the jail cell.

 

[Mean Girl]

I don't agree with all the Ashton haters in this thread, and your preconcieved notions of his "abysmal" acting, being so closeminded as to judge before you see the movie is pretty poor form.

I don't give a crap about kutcher either way, but the premise of the story is good, the execution is great, and it plays upon the brain, in that it effectively insinuates what's going on and doesn't explicitly show it, so it's only as bad as your brain makes it.

the ending is a little predictable, but if you think about it, it's fairly obvious even if you don't watch the movie in terms of coming up with a semi-plausible ending with closure.

I liked it, even though I walked out of it with some pretty obscure thoughts about mortality.

[edit : your point is valid 1234, but that's more of a blanket attitude to all actors, not just kutcher, it's unfair to assume their acting will be horrible before you see the movie, one movie does not always prove final ability)