Monday, February 1, 2010

another scientifically over looked movie

My last entry in this series was about Ghostbusters; this time I am going to talk about Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.  This is very informal; it should have citations and references, but I'm going to skip that stuff and keep this pretty short.  This could be a really good dissertation for either a film, history, or theoretical physics class.  It's too bad I used the space in the papers on traditional and well respected sources.  I am scienetificizing pop culture.

  The movie is a wonderful study in time travel, and more importantly the idea of temporal paradox.  Throughout the movie Bill and Ted survive by messages and reminders from future versions of themselves.   Their survival leads to the reality in which Rufus and that radical Black Dude sitting on a crystal throne with sunglasses on and everyone dresses like lady gaga at the grammys.  One thing couldn't have happened without the other happening. The definition of a temporal paradox.
  One thing that is commonly missed in stories that incorporate time travel miss is that while the person is time traveling they are living, therefore aging.  If they leave san demas 1988 at 12:30 and come back a few hours later their friends had only lived for those few hours.  Bill and Ted on the other side could have spent as long as they wanted going around time collecting historical figures.  In this instance Bill and Ted would have aged one day.  If they made a habit of traveling time then going back to the moment they left those hours would add up.  In the words of Matthew McCaughnihy (sic), I keep getting older, but they stay the same age. Someone should tell Hiro Nakamura.
   I'm not going to go any deeper into this right now, this could turn into a long one; I'll think instead of writing this now I will just bother my friends as I share these ideas.

1 comment:

  1. What is the better time travelling device? The phone booth or the delorean?

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