Final Countdown

Rating: 60%


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Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

1980

Country:

Predominant Genre:

Science-Fiction

Director:

Outstanding Performance:

Premiss:

Modern aircraft carrier is thrown back in time, just hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Themes:

Courage | Destiny | Family | God | Identity | Personal change | Science | Sexism | Stereotyping | White culture

Similar to:

Review Format:

DVD

Stitch in Time

Summary: Ridiculous, but fun.

One of the few time-travel movies that actually makes any kind of sense. By carefully-avoiding the contradictions inherent in travelling backwards in time - in trying to ensure nothing changes to alter the future - the time travel is shown as having already happened so that nothing could change (until a partial volte-face at the very end of the movie).

Moreover, the fallacy of pretending that such time travel is possible is emphasized in suggesting that any such travel would have no effect precisely because it must already have happened. We know that travelling back in time is never achieved at any time in the future precisely because we never meet travelers from that future to attest to its ever having been achieved. (In the same way that there are no physical artifacts of alien spacecraft ever having visited the Earth.)

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Most time travel stories (with the notable exception of Jetée) claim the need to travel back in time on the principle that crying over spilt milk is rational and going backwards to prevent something bad from happening would be a very good reason for such a trip.

The only fly-in-the-ointment here is in the character played by the excellent James FARENTINO. He exists in the present, but is then stranded in the past when his compatriots return to the now. No explanation is offered as to how he manages to live two lives - unless it is possible to change past events and/or because doppelgängers really do exist - a contradiction of the carefully-constructed theory-of-time presented here.

Dramatically, the love story between FARENTINO and Katherine ROSS is poorly-explored - to the movie’s detriment. There is an interesting, untold story here of a woman who loves a man from the future and a man who must accept the loss of the technological advantages of living now. Although, maybe he becomes rich because of that very (advanced) knowledge? But nowhere is this clearly stated.

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