From Butterflies to Tornadoes

Ray Bradbury's fascinating short story, A Sound of Thunder, inspires this movie involving time travel and alternative realities.

One of chaos theory's premises is sensitivity to initial conditions; how one system can drastically change due to small changes. This concept is known in popular media as the butterfly effect and is the basis for this 2004's sci-fi drama starred by Ashton Kutcher.

As a sci-fi fan I liked the movie.

Many critics wrote it was a bad flick. I disagree, it's an entertaining one. Perhaps some reviews were affected because Kutcher was in the movie? He does a credible job as a stressed and confused young guy, quite different from That '70s Show Kelso.

The Butterfly Effect tells the story of Evan Treborn (Kutcher), who experiences a series of traumatic events during his childhood, events he can't remember at all as a twenty-something psychology student.

The only thing Evan knows is that he used to black out at peak stress times, this made his worried mother took him to a shrink who recommended Evan started writing a journal to keep his memories.

One day the apparently cured Evan discovers that reading his journal he can travel back in time to those moments he had forgot. Actually, his consciousness is the one that travels into his younger self. Is that why Evan as a boy wasn't there to remember in the first place?

This way he remembers about his old town friends: his almost-girlfriend Kayleigh (Amy Smart); her young psycho brother, Tommy (William Lee Scott); and the quiet Lenny (Elden Henson).

But these travels are something more that reliving past episodes. Evan's present mind can act and make different choices as younger Evan. The problem is that even the smallest change has a huge impact in the present, as the butterfly in the theory while flapping its wings, often making things worse .

Evan Treborn, the name is a wordplay of “event reborn”, will keep returning to his memories and trying to fix his life and those of his friends creating new realities. In one he's happily in love with Kayleigh until crazy Tommy appears; in another Kayleigh is a prostitute.

If anyone finds this, it means my plan didn't work and I'm already dead

The movie plays with the predestination paradox and is a very interesting thought exercise. James Cameron's Terminator is one famous example around the concept too.

There are some flaws, of course. It's almost impossible creating a story about time travel, which is currently just a theory in quantum physics, and being accurate.

For example, it seems changes only affect the present of Evan and his friends, the world as a whole is always the same. Or why does Evan always remember everything when supposedly once he changes something many things didn't happen. How can he remember something that never happened? Crazy, isn't it?

The Butterfly Effect is the debut as directors of Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, who wrote the screenplay of 2003's Final Destination 2. Yes, that one sucked big time.

When I saw the movie for the third time I noticed the "Bradbury University" pennant on the wall of Kayleigh's room; a clear reference to Ray Bradbury's story.

I think this is the first movie I watch involving a genetic disease related to time travel and its consequences (it seems Evan's father also had it), a concept also explored in the beautiful story of The Time Traveler's Wife.

The many outcomes of each change in the past are highly dramatic and many of them will find you screaming at the screen: “holy shit! Now he's really fucked everything!” If only for that, you should watch this movie.

Submitted by alexis on Sat, 2006-08-19 04:46. Find more films

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