Episode 166 - Timecop: LIVE!

[tomspanks 9039]

I had this exact same thought. But let’s assume that the Confederacy minted crappy gold bullion loaded with carbon impurities. Obviously carbon dating operates on the principle of radioactive decay. You can therefore estimate the age of something based on the relative abundance of carbon isotopes. If that bullion was transported through a time machine, it will only appear as old as the time it took to travel through the time machine. So what are they verifying with the radiocarbon dating? That the gold is actually ~130 years old or that it appears suspiciously new? The former is basically impossible since the gold is not actually that old, while the latter would need further validation. Any idiot could mint his own fake Confederate bullion, right?

 

Right? Then I thought even if the wooden crate housing the gold bullion was transported and tested, it wouldn't be "old enough" because it hasn't aged the 130 years.

[joel_rosenbaum 1269]

Related to the robbery that started the movie, are we supposed to feel bad about it? I mean, it sucks that people were killed, but the Confederacy existed for the purpose of continuing the practice of slavery. Stealing their gold, thus shortening the duration of the Civil War and hastening the end of slavery in the United States, sounds like a pretty good thing to do!

[Cameron H. 23786]

 

Do you also own From Justin to Kelly? He did that one too.

 

And Tango and Cash

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

So, we see that events incurred by past selves are immediately consequential to the time traveler, when '94 McComb gets kicked in the face and a scar appears on '04 McComb's face.

 

What should happen to JCVD as a result of getting thrown off of the roof and knocked unconscious twice during the fight at the end? Knowing what we know now about brain injury, concussions, CTE, etc, shouldn't '04 JCVD have suddenly gotten a slur or a headache or something, or wouldn't a fall from a roof at least given him a sudden limp? There's no way you just walk away from that kind of thing unharmed, especially if movie logic means a kick to the face leaves a huge, disfiguring scar.

[grudlian. 4725]

Speaking of money and the election - I have a question

 

Why is it that as soon as he ran out of money he would have to pull out of the race? I don't understand why having no money means he can't even run anymore. I understand his campaigning will probably have to halt because he can no longer travel to all the states and he would lose campaign ads and shit, but he could still actually be on the ticket right? I would even think being the "poor" candidate would make him more popular among the 99%. He could say he's now one of them and he's really trying to bring it up for the little guys. I mean not to tell Actor/Activist Ron Silva how to run for president but that seems like a much better plan than going back in time to put money into stocks.

Why can't he just raise campaign funds from the general public anyway? If he can't get people to donate money, isn't this a really good indicator that he won't win? I guess that's speaking to his ego who believes he will win if he just gets the television spot(s) but I don't know.

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

Anyone else read this movie as a possible allegory for nuclear weapons and the arms race? The US gov't has developed a technology that we know other countries and terrorists have been trying to develop, too, and so now, because we have invented time travel, we have to use time travel to regulate and police the use of time travel. And we need ALL the money to do it.

[grudlian. 4725]

I agree, but the Ron Silvas were literally not touching those things.

I watched the scene again

 

 

Ron Silver sticks his arm through the chest of the other Ron Silver before their faces melt into each other. This means 2004 Ron Silver's hand and 1994 Ron Silver's coat are the same matter. Timecop's idea of same matter occupying the same space is very, very loose.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Oh my goooodddddd you can hear me yell "YES!" when June finally mentions the Internal Affairs Detective.

 

(Hint: That's what my Week in Feminism is about.)

[Elektra Boogaloo 3371]

So the guy in the audience who suggests Trump saw this movie and "Time Cop" is real. Does that mean if JCVD does a sequel in which he defeats Trump (because fiction is now real), then Hillary will have won the election in the past? I don't want to get political, but I think we should try it. What's the worst that could happen? MORE SPLITS.

 

I was also just about to mention "Tango and Cash" but Cameron beat me to it. (How are you today, Cameron?)

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

had to happen

 

[tomspanks 9039]

My favorite screenshots from TImecop:

 

 

^ The subtitler went above and beyond on that one.

 

 

^ This one - what kind of a mall has a wall of Ruffles potato chips on display?

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

when JCVD comes back to 2004 at the end he walks through the lab with a concerned look on his face. i think this was to convey that he was looking to see if anything had drastically changed but everything seemed to be normal. then his boss (who got riddled with bullets the last time JCVD saw him) comes out of his office and JCVD gets a really puzzled look on his face and this is their conversation :

 

 

Boss: "Hey where are you going?"

JCVD: "What happened to you?"

Boss: "What are you talking about?"

JCVD: "You're walking around ... ???"

Boss: "Yeah, I've been doing that since I was about 2 ..... "

etc etc

 

I can understand why the boss is confused. The timeline was changed so he's not the one who got shot. But JCVD was there. He lived through that, went back, changed events and came back to the present ... Surely he should have just seen his boss and said "Oh thank God!!! You're not dead!!" or something similar. He seemed genuinely perplexed at how this man is now alive.

 

This interaction really made me question if JCVD's character had any understanding of the consequences of time travel (or maybe more accurately, the consequences of changing the past when time traveling)

[Yorgs 0]

How has HDTGM done this many Jean-Claude Van Damme movies and still not have done Double Impact?! Street Fighter or Bloodsport or even the Quest being first can be understood if not condoned but to have done now four JVCD movies and still not Double Impact is unacceptable. It's got splits, buns, black silk underwear, loads of bizarre accents, "huge surprises", the bad guy from Bloodsport... the list goes on and on. Maybe this is one of those "too good of a movie for HDTGM" movies but I think it's time ladies and Jason.

[pscudese 701]

Did anyone else catch the major film fuck up during the computer chip scene?

 

When actor/activist Ron Silvia arrives from the future, he tells his old self, "I'm gonna have to get this fixed." all the while rubbing the right side of his face. He's obviously referring to the scar he receives at the hands of future JCVD. Well that hasn't happened yet.that takes place 8mins later. So what is he even referring to?!

 

Jesus that's sloppy on the director, writer and script supervisor. Hell, that's on actor/activist Ron Silvia.

 

[JammerLea 2070]

I haven't listened to the episode yet, but I mean... I was there, SO-

 

I just wanted to share one of my earliest notes from watching this movie, when the Confederate soldiers were attacked.

 

"Horses seem okay against machine guns. Good breed."

 

 

I totally also had notes on how the gold carbon dating doesn't work for both reasons listed previously.

 

 

Also I kinda mentioned this to Taylor and Fister after the show, but this movie is not the first bit of time travel entertainment that I've seen touch upon the theory that the same matter cannot occupy the same space. My first introduction to the concept was from a 2001 Playstation 2 game called "Shadow of Destiny", in which two of its multiple endings involved a character coming into contact with themselves from a different time and then ceasing to exist.

 

So I thought, oh maybe there's some scientific theory that goes into why this could be a thing, but after a quick google search, it seems that Timecop is most probably the originator of that time "law", and somehow that concept made it into this 2001 Japanese video game.

 

The closest scientific principle seems to be the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which the basic concept seems to be a general rule that an object cannot occupy the same space and time as another object. This means time travel would be very difficult to accomplish, because if you travel back in time to a street corner to the exact spot where someone or something else already exists... there's going to be a problem. I didn't delve too much into this, as it's too complicated for my understanding, but if this is the principle that Timecop's law is based on, they got a few details wrong.

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

and talking about not understanding the consequences of changing the past when time traveling, maybe one of you time nerds can help me out here cause i think i've confused myself ... i'm not sure this is going to make any sense but i'll give it a go ...

 

2004 JCVD went back to 1994, saved his wife and left her lying outside the house with the 1994 JCVD. then he travels back to 2004 and meets his 10 year old son who knows him as his father. So even though JCVD has no memory of the kid, the kid clearly knows him. So this kid must have been raised by the 1994 JCVD. But then our 2004 JCVD turns up and ....

 

i guess what i'm trying to ask is .. are there now 2 JCVD's in 2004? The one doing all the time travel in this movie and the one who raised the kid for 10 years? because there was 2 JCVD's when he travels back to save his wife. and they both survived ...

 

and if there's only one JCVD at the end of the movie (the guy we've been watching) where does the one who raised the kid go? he just disappears? he just went to work one day with 10 years of beautiful memories and then ... what?? just because our JCVD hops back into this timeline 1994 JCVD disappears???

 

have i got this all wrong? ... my head hurts.

[tomspanks 9039]

The closest scientific principle seems to be the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which the basic concept seems to be a general rule that an object cannot occupy the same space and time as another object. This means time travel would be very difficult to accomplish, because if you travel back in time to a street corner to the exact spot where someone or something else already exists... there's going to be a problem. I didn't delve too much into this, as it's too complicated for my understanding, but if this is the principle that Timecop's law is based on, they got a few details wrong.

 

In addition, even if you manage to travel back in time to an empty space, that air contains gas molecules, water vapor, and various particulates.

[JammerLea 2070]

and talking about not understanding the consequences of changing the past when time traveling, maybe one of you time nerds can help me out here cause i think i've confused myself ... i'm not sure this is going to make any sense but i'll give it a go ...

 

2004 JCVD went back to 1994, saved his wife and left her lying outside the house with the 1994 JCVD. then he travels back to 2004 and meets his 10 year old son who knows him as his father. So even though JCVD has no memory of the kid, the kid clearly knows him. So this kid must have been raised by the 1994 JCVD. But then our 2004 JCVD turns up and ....

 

i guess what i'm trying to ask is .. are there now 2 JCVD's in 2004? The one doing all the time travel in this movie and the one who raised the kid for 10 years? because there was 2 JCVD's when he travels back to save his wife. and they both survived ...

 

and if there's only one JCVD at the end of the movie (the guy we've been watching) where does the one who raised the kid go? he just disappears? he just went to work one day with 10 years of beautiful memories and then ... what?? just because our JCVD hops back into this timeline 1994 JCVD disappears???

 

have i got this all wrong? ... my head hurts.

I hate to say it, but this is where I feel that Time Chasers did it better.

 

You really want your head to hurt, let's start discussing all the time loop issues.

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

I hate to say it, but this is where I feel that Time Chasers did it better.

 

You really want your head to hurt, let's start discussing all the time loop issues.

 

I've never heard of time chasers but just based on the opening sentences of the plot description on Wikipedia I want to!!!

 

"Physics teacher and amateur pilot Nick Miller (Matthew Bruch) has finally completed his quest of enabling time travel, via a Commodore 64 and his small airplane"

[grudlian. 4725]

So long as we don't start discussing the timeline details of Primer because, woof, my head will explode like Scanners.

[Timbosteron 73]

I just want to try to give a bit of sense about time travelling, because the movie does so much wrong.

And, because time travel is only a theory, there is no truth my thoughts are based on.

So, the biggest problem of time travel is a probable paradox: you go back in time and keep your younger you from traveling back in time. This is only possible in a multiverse. So, if every decision creates a new timeline, this might all work.

Just pretend time and the universes are a tree and its branches. A lot of branches. Every decision made a new branch. It you ever toss a coin at least there are two branches: one where you got head and one where you got tails.

Your timeline starts somewhere in this tree: from your birth to your actual now (in this case you really can’t travel into the future, only back into YOUR present).

Now you travel back in your timeline to a point, where you tossed that coin from before. You somehow manage it to disturb this coin throwing and it falls into the gutter. In that moment, a new branch is created. And this timeline is now unwritten and you travel with it. You will not be able to go into this new future and you can’t go back onto your branch to go into your old future. You have created a new timeline where you and your younger you exist.

But if you go back to that coin toss and keep your previously time traveled yourself from disturbing the toss, then you are back on your first branch. The future hasn’t changed and you can travel to your old life, but you successfully created another future, where your coin toss went another way.

[SeanMatthewLeary 37]

 

i guess what i'm trying to ask is .. are there now 2 JCVD's in 2004? The one doing all the time travel in this movie and the one who raised the kid for 10 years? because there was 2 JCVD's when he travels back to save his wife. and they both survived ...

 

I came here to say this, yes there would be two JCVD's. Crude visualization for you.

 

[tomspanks 9039]

I came here to say this, yes there would be two JCVD's. Crude visualization for you.

 

Ok, but wouldn't that last JCVD head to back to the past, 1994, and then the original one from 2004 be the one who came back?

 

I really hate time travel movies.

[AbeFroman 70]

The second thing is related to the rules of time travel in this movie. Bobo Obama also told us that you can only travel BACK in time, because the future hasn't happened yet. So how do the time travel cars come back to their present time, if at the time of departure, the car's arrival back to present time hasn't happened yet? For example, if the time car leaves at 12 pm, presumably it can only come back to a time point before 12 pm, before departure, right? Well, that would create some problems, as both the past car and future car would be on the same track and you know what they say about the same matter existing in the same space...

 

 

 

Roger Ebert brought this up in his original review as well. In the film's logic, when old Max Walker is in 1994 and returns to 2004, he is not going into the future, he is simply returning to the present. In the film, 2004 is the present and 1994 is the past. Therefore, old Max Walker could not have traveled into say, 2014 because that would be the future. Do not think about for more than 10 seconds, otherwise it collapses on itself.

[SeanMatthewLeary 37]

So, outside of the 2 JCVD the thing that firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr brought up that I wanted to talk about, there's also the exploding house logic.

 

The house that blew up with the wife at the start of the movie is obviously the same house that is blown up the second time in the movie when she is saved.

 

But at the end of the movie when he returns to 2004 and asks his car to take him home, where does it go? The UNBLOWN UP same exact house with his saved wife and his child he has no memory of because he's jumped into an alternate universe/timeline.