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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Introducing time travel into a story that's not explicitly about time travel tends to create logical hiccups. Even if how time travel works is entirely consistent within the story, unless it follows You Already Changed the Past rules, you're inevitably going to get people wondering, "Why don't they use this to solve every problem?"
A friend of mine described Primer as the inevitable result of a true time travel story: The entire story becomes about nothing but the rules themselves, and explaining those rules to the audience. Because time travel is just too complicated for anything else. Most of the time, you have to accept that your time travel is not going to make sense.
Endgame's time travel is relatively uncomplicated, and we're still arguing over it.
Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.To be honest, time travel isn't that complicated, it's just that it's easy to screw up if your not keeping it in mind.
Back to the Future (mostly - there are a few hitches here and there) has well developed time travel, and it's not particularly difficult to follow. Before Dragonball Super, Dragonball had very well defined time travel, and the only thing that makes that difficult to follow is the fact that the timelines criss cross in an interesting way (neither the protags' timeline nor - technically - the timeline the time traveller returns to are the original).
The only thing you need for a good time travel story is defined rules that are consistent, and a good idea of what the changing of time does to your setting. It's identical to writing magic into a story: you can't just have it do anything - it has to make sense, otherwise the flaws become obvious.
The thing is, people use time travel for drama. They don't tend to write drama around time travel the same way they do for magic unless they're going overboard, and there's a perception that it's something complicated as a result. That and people tend to assume time travel has to involve stuff that it actually doesn't.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 30th 2020 at 8:00:21 AM
I'd argue that you don't have to have consistent time travel rules if your story is good enough that people skate by the inconsistencies.
Chrono Trigger is pretty inconsistent on how the time travel works at various points but people don't really care.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersThe third Harry Potter book had easy to follow time travel, if barring the Fridge Logic of why it wasn't used anywhere else that led to the author destroying all the Time Turners as insurance.
And that's not getting into how Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has it's own version of time travel with the Monoliths.
The entire thing with Agents of Shield shows how little communication is going on between the show and the films now.
That being said, you could Hand Wave it as Monolith Time Travel functioning differently from Pym Particle/Quantum Zone time travel.
Kinda like different operating systems for a computer. Different paths to the same result.
One Strip! One Strip!Yeah one involved shrinking and one did not involve shrinking
This isn’t rocket surgery
Forever liveblogging the AvengersWell, yeah. You don't need good time travel to make a good story. What I'm saying is that it's not all that difficult to have both a good story and good time travel.
The simplest way to deal with Time Travel is the Stable Time Loop, as that handles most of the questions regarding Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory and why there are certain consistencies in an Alternate Timeline that was created (ie, Back to the Future has Marty live in the exact same home even though his parents had radically different lives and careers).
Primer is a movie that's internally consistent, but the trick played with in the story is not so much the rules themselves but the layers you can add to each cycle. This makes it different from other time travel stories which try to justify why they have to get it right the first time even though a time machine provides Save Scumming.
Endgame's time travel is somewhat unique in that it's not actually time travel and more about traveling the multiverse with exactly identical universes (Scott's experience was basic Time Dilation, a real world phenomenon, and how it developed into traveling to different periods in the quantum realm is handwaved). But this adds several additional layers of complexity that the movie is not prepared to go into, particularly the ripple effect their interference in the timeline of the quantum universe would play out, and then dropped altogether with what Steve decided to do.
Actually I thought time travel was not handled that badly in Endgame - right up until the end, of course. It was not so much travelling through time as travelling to identical alternate universes (that may or may not branch away from the traveller's depending on their actions), and returning to their point of origin. I think it is the most safe way to handle time travel in that it resolves any paradox or time loop issues, the drawback from a writing point of view is that it also excludes any plot about Setting Right What Once Went Wrong (or, more precisely, makes any attempt to do this simply travelling to a better alternate universe).
But then there is what Steve does at the end which puts all of this out of the window, unless one accepts that Steve will have lived 70 years hidden in Peggy's house without doing anything else.
Anyway, the fun thing about Endgame is that they now can bring back any character they want through time travel, without affecting the prime timeline in any way. I wonder if they will use that for some cameos.
Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.Old Steve only breaks the Endgame time travel rules is if one insists on interpreting him as having always existed in the MCU timeline we've been following.
Under Endgame rules, Old Steve can be two things:
Our Steve returning from his time travel adventure in the Married Peggy timeline (which can be anything one wants to imagine). This is what the Russos intended.
Another Steve from an alternate universe that has always lived under the radar in the MCU and only now he reveals himself.
This later scenario ISN'T what Markus and McFeely intended when they wrote the script.
In their vision, Our Steve has always lived as Old Steve in the same timeline, which never diverged because the only change he made was marry Peggy and let the time flow as normal otherwise.
Of course that interpretation absolutely destroys the rules established earlier in the movie.
And it creates a thousand troubles as far as Steve's characterization is concerned.
Which is why the Russo insist on the first scenario is what actually happened.
Edited by MrSeyker on Jan 31st 2020 at 2:19:55 AM

There's stories that have dealt with time travel in a very consistent way, but it's difficult. Several years ago I tried writing a story with very concrete rules about time travel, but the temptation to break those rules was always there and it was very hard to avoid once a new idea pops into your head.
note
The time travel in Endgame is really just a device for the film to have a series-concluding clip show, so it operates on what rules would make that more exciting instead of a Boring, but Practical story where the Avengers make several trips for Pym particles then make as many attempts as necessary to rush post-Snap Thanos in his sleep and steal the whole Gauntlet.