Paradoxes everywhere!
Phillip Palmer · Follow
· 10 min read · Aug 17, 2024
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This movie has a positive message and a cheerful-looking future. The time travel, though, makes absolutely no sense.
Let’s see how far we get before it all breaks.
Michael is initially presented as two separate people in the movie: his child self, and his adult “Bowler Hat Guy” self. To make it clear who I’m talking about, I’ll refer to the child as “Goob” and the adult as “Bowler”.
1995
Lewis Robinson’s mother leaves him at the 6th Street Orphanage. As she leaves him at the doorsteps, she hears feet pattering behind her and leaves. Mildred opens the door and brings Lewis inside; she looks around, but doesn’t see anyone.
2007
Lewis grows up in the orphanage. He apparently attempts to invent various things, including a PB&J dispenser. Having failed 124 adoption interviews, he comes up with the idea of finding his biological mother, so she’ll adopt him.
Over a period of time, he works on his memory scanner, with at least one prototype exploding in his classroom. He also enrols in the Inventco Science Fair, with his memory scanner as his exhibit. Along the way, though, he keeps his orphanage roommate Michael ‘Goob’ Yagoobian awake at night.
On the day of the Science Fair, Lewis presents his memory scanner to the judges. It works, and he wins first place: a year’s apprenticeship with Inventco. He also impresses the Inventco representative at the fair, Dr Lucille Krunklehorn. She, along with her husband Bud, are so impressed with his achievement that they adopt him and rename him to Cornelius. The family also changes their family name from Krunklehorn to match Lewis’ Robinson surname.
Unfortunately, because he’d been kept up all night by Lewis building his memory scanner, Goob falls asleep during his big baseball game and fails the team, losing the game.
The Krunklehorns purchase Anderson Observatory and renovate it into a home. When they move in, the main observatory dome becomes Cornelius’ laboratory. Around this time, they also change their family name to Robinson.
2009
Cornelius graduates from college and gets to work. After winning a Nobel Prize, he becomes rich and influential enough to buy and rebuild Inventco, changing it into Robinson Industries: the “world’s leading scientific research and design factory” according to Wilbur.
Goob, however, is not having a good life. Something unpleasant happens, leading to ‘CAUTION KEEP OUT’ and “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS’ tape covering the building’s door, and the orphanage is closed down. Goob, however, breaks back in and creates a home for himself there, becoming Bowler Hat Guy.
The Robinson family expands. First, close relatives move in — Bud’s brothers and their wives, all of whom have children. At some point Cornelius marries Franny, who he had gone to school with. Her brothers move in as well.
2024
Cornelius and Franny have a son, Wilbur.
Probably around this time, Cornelius invents DOR-15, aka “Doris”, as a helping hat. She rebels, though, and escapes.
2032
Cornelius begins working on the time machine, creating hundreds upon hundreds of prototypes in an effort to get it working.
WILBUR: Five years ago, Dad wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. He wants to build a time machine, so he starts working. We’re talking plans. We’re talking scale models. We’re talking prototypes.
He eventually creates two functioning prototypes — one red, and one blue. Based on their overall shapes, I’ll call them Red-1 and Blue-2, based on the order they were built.
2037
Doris finds Bowler Hat Guy and shares her hatred for Cornelius. Doris knows about the time machine and together they break into the Robinson’s garage and steal Blue-2, heading back to 2007.
The speed of time is slow in this case, though, and Wilbur is able to observe Blue-2’s departure. He evidently can trace Blue-2’s destination, though (perhaps it transmits telemetry to a computer in the garage?) and pursues in Red-1, fearful of his parents’ reaction to his laziness making the theft possible.
Due to the presence of Bowler, Doris, and Wilbur in the past, the timeline now branches.
2007
Bowler arrives first and sneaks into the science fair. Crucially, nothing he does at this point branches the timeline. He hasn’t taken any action against Lewis yet, nor sabotaged the memory scanner.
Because the timeline hasn’t branched yet, Wilbur is able to arrive in this timeline. He also sneaks in, as Doris sabotages the memory scanner.
Lewis tries to present the memory scanner, and it is at this point Timeline B becomes active — he fails the presentation instead of succeeding. Lewis does not win the apprenticeship, nor does he get adopted by Lucille and Bud. Crushed by his failure, he decides to give up on inventing altogether. Then he meets Wilbur, who reveals that he’s from the future. Lewis doesn’t believe him, so Wilbur throws him into Red-1 and takes him to the 2037.
At this point, the timelines break.
According to my Outside Continuum Principle, in this timeline between 2007 and 2037, Lewis does not exist. Hence, this is how the timeline would have proceeded.
Bowler and Doris take the (now repaired) memory scanner and attempt to use it to impress Inventco, taking credit for its creation. Bowler, though, does not know how to operate it and fails in his plan.
He tries to find Lewis at the orphanage, to show him how to work the machine. He first tries his old room but runs into his younger self. He takes a moment to try and encourage Goob to embrace hatred before departing for the rooftop.
GOOB: Coach took me aside and told me to let it go. He’s probably right.
BOWLER HAT GUY: No! Everyone will tell you to let it go and move on, but don’t. Instead, let it fester and boil inside of you. Take these feelings and lock them away. Let them fuel your actions. Let hate be your ally, and you will be capable of wonderfully horrid things. Heed my words, Goob. Don’t let it go.
GOOB: … What?
Bowler and Doris detect traces of time travel on the roof, so they depart in Blue-2 for 2037.
After being seen fleeing the science fair, and a brief appearance at the orphanage, Lewis would never have been seen or heard from again. The general consensus would probably be that he ran away, and for years he would be considered “missing” by the authorities.
2037
Lewis and Wilbur arrive in 2037, but this is not the cheerful future Wilbur had grown up in. They’d be arriving in a future where Anderson Observatory was never purchased by Bud and Lucille, Inventco was still in force, and nobody has heard of Robinson Industries. If the authorities become involved, Lewis might be identified by his fingerprints, but they wouldn’t believe the identification due to the obvious age discrepancy.
When Bowler and Doris arrive in this 2037, their reactions would be mixed. Doris would never have been invented, but Lewis would never have gained success so she’s succeeded in ruining Lewis. Bowler has as well, but with a complication — there’s now two of him.
The Goob in this timeline had grown up having lost the baseball game, but hadn’t observed Cornelius’ success after success. He wouldn’t have formed a resentment against Lewis, and therefore it’s a question as to whether he was still residing at the closed orphanage.
The timeline has now been completely contaminated. Lewis is a native to this timeline, but Wilbur, Bowler, and Doris are temporal remnants.
Obviously, this is not what happened in the movie, but let’s continue and see if the timeline can be repaired.
Wilbur takes Lewis out of 2037, having proved he is from the future. Perhaps he lies to Lewis and says that he can’t take him to see his future family in order to protect the timeline. They don’t have the memory scanner, though, so they stay in 2037 long enough for Lewis to rebuild it. The two of them return to 2007, and returning Lewis to his place in 2007 branches the timeline.
This also means that Bowler and Doris would be left behind in this timeline, but as they had recently travelled through time, they would be shielded against the changes and carried along into Timeline C’s version of 2037.
2007
Lewis and Wilbur arrive, and Lewis is dropped off at the science fair with his rebuilt memory scanner (stopping by Goob’s baseball game to wake him up so Goob’s team wins). Lewis convinces the judges to give him another shot. It works, and much of the timeline then proceeds as per the Prime Timeline. He still doesn’t win the science fair, as it had been abruptly shut down and giving Lewis the apprenticeship wouldn’t be fair to the students who had been evacuated. He does, however, get adopted by Bud and Lucille.
Satisfied that the timeline has been fixed, Wilbur returns to 2037.
Lewis, now Cornelius, proceeds to live much of his life as he had in the Prime Timeline. He marries Franny, becomes father to Wilbur in 2024, and founds Robinson Industries.
2037
Two things would happen here of note.
- Wilbur arrives from 2007 in Red-1.
- Doris, Bowler, and Red-2 are carried along into this Timeline due to the temporal shielding from Blue-2.
The problem is, they exist in this timeline as well. This timeline’s Wilbur is essentially the same, as is Doris. Grown-up Goob, however, has become successful in his life, perhaps even working at Robinson Industries.
Without Adult Goob’s support, it is unlikely that Doris would have been able to steal the time machines (had she been able to do so on her own, she would not have had to tolerate Bowler’s incompetence). As a consequence, there is also a Red-1 and a Blue-2 in the Robinson’s garage as well.
That means that there are two humans, a sentient bowler hat robot, and two timelines that are temporal remnants in this timeline.
I would not have liked to have the job of sorting that out.
The critical mistake this movie makes is relying on a causal loop, when there’s no initial basis for the creation of that causal loop. Wilbur brings Lewis into the future, but the timeline they’re on proceeds as if Lewis had never left.
Even though it’s never stated or indicated on screen, perhaps the time machines return to the timeline from which they departed?
Unfortunately, that doesn’t work either. Much of the movie would have happened as we see on screen:
- Wilbur would bring Lewis to 2037, where he’d meet his future family.
- Bowler would trick Lewis into repairing the memory scanner.
- Bowler would return to 2007 and present the memory scanner as his own.
- Doris would betray Bowler and take over the world.
With this sequence, the timeline would branch soon after Bowler and Doris depart for 2007 with the repaired memory scanner. Lewis is shielded from changes to the timeline, but Wilbur is erased. Even at this point, I can attribute this to Lewis taking a ride in Blue-2; perhaps the time machines constantly release temporal radiation, and not just during jumps through time.
This would also explain why Red-1 is still around, even though it should also have been erased. Lewis fixes it and flies it around before jumping back to 2007. He then convinces Bowler to give up on his plan, at which point Doris attacks him, and Lewis tells her: “I am never going to invent you.”
Here, the timeline logic breaks again.
The movie presents this as if, with that conviction, Lewis would never invent Doris. Thus, Doris never existed, and therefore vanishes before him. But if Doris had never existed, then she would never have been able to present her plan to Bowler — the plan that involved stealing a time machine in the first place.
It’s a paradox that cannot be reconciled. What would have happened is Lewis would have been slaughtered right there and then (which, ironically, would also have resulted in Doris never being invented according to the film’s own logic).
Even allowing that, the movie is filled with bootstrap and predestination paradoxes.
- Why did Lewis rename himself Cornelius? Because it was called Cornelius in the future.
BUD: That was some show you put on. You’re a real special kid, but um, you don’t look like a Lewis. You look more like a… um…
LEWIS: Cornelius. I get that a lot.
- Did Lewis actually fall in love with Franny on her own merits, or was he influenced with the knowledge that he’ll marry her one day?
FRANNY: You know that frogs have more musical ability than people? But nobody believes me. They all think I’m crazy. You think I’m crazy, too!
LEWIS: No. No, I think you’re right.
- Did Lewis invent everything he did because he’d already seen that he’ll invent them? Did he invent the time machines for the sole reason that he needed Wilbur to go back in time and meet him? Where did their designs originally come from?
LEWIS: If I go back now, then this will be my future.
CORNELIUS: Well, that depends on you. Nothing is set in stone.
No, the movie’s timeline logic is completely and utterly broken, so I give this movie a ranking of:
Accuracy: Reasonable efforts have been taken to maintain the accuracy of any information presented, mainly by relying primarily on the source material. However, for the sake of brevity and fair use, quotations from the movie that I have included have been edited to only include the relevant sections of dialogue. Also, I’ve added dithering to screenshots to both reduce bandwidth and for visual effect, so don’t conclude that the episode itself has a dithered image.
Basis: I base this timelines review on my “Principles of Time”, updated as of 10 August 2024.
Copyright Disclaimer: This article and any attached images are claimed as acceptable uses of the copyrighted source content. I consider this as permissible, without requiring prior authorisation, under the following laws: the United States Copyright Act, Section 107, for purposes of criticism or comment; and the Australian Copyright Act of 1968, Section 41, for purposes of criticism or review.
