reapersaurus

Neat.
Let's try this again.

(BTW: Donnie Darko is SUCH a hard movie to even formulate questions about, since the story is such an amazingly befuddling mess (in a good way!).)

1) In the end, all that Donnie does differently to "set time right" is stay in his bed and get crushed.
Which is exactly what he would have done, if not for Frank.
So I don't see why you think that Frank didn't alter the normal sequence of events.

2) Speaking oif the nornal sequence of events, the only time-altering events were :
a) Donnie getting (or not getting) crushed, and
b) The plane being in the air, and it's engine conveniently getting ripped off by a stray WORMHOLE that appeared in the sky (in its flightpath).
In the end, the plane should still fly at that time - Donnie going back and sacrificing himself should not affect that.
In fact, the ending kind of contradicts the movie, since IF he had "Set time right", the wormhole shouldn't have happened, and he wouldn't have been killed at all.
But since he's dead, by a completely mysterious timetravelling airplane engine, it seems like time is seriously f-ed up still.

3) What did Donnie actually DO to set things right?
They didn't show what he did, after SO much build up.
- Was it him using his powers to send the airplane engine back? (No, since then he wouldn't have been crushed by it)
- Was it simply him staying in bed that night? (If so, Frank caused it, since HE woke up Donnie)

4) Speaking of Frank, Why the hell did they have him be the cause of Donnie's sleep-walking, since Donnie was already established as a sleepwalker?
This fact, more than any, supports the interpretation that Donnie dreams it all and is insane.

5) What the heck was with Frank and Frank's father before him "being doomed"?

I'd love to hear some discussion about these points.
And I appreciate any response, though I strongly suspect that your love of the movie has caused you to accept its flaws and not notice or think about them.

Imaginary Boy

Here's the quick explanation which I mostly agree with:

http://www.tonystuff.co.uk/darko-spoilers.htm

Also, if you watch deleted scenes on DVD with director's commentary, it is mentioned that pills that Donnie is taking are actually placebo pills, so the theory that he is insane is unlikely.

Frank never says he's doomed, as far as I remember he just says that Frank was his fathers and grandfathers name.

I don't deny the movie has flaws, but they're not as big as you say. I think it has lots of original ideas compared to that mainstream crap Hollywood puts out year after year.

reapersaurus

Good web site.
It didn't show up in DD sites when I searched.

However, it fails to adequately explain any of the issues I've brought up.

It thinks it ties things up, but it doesn't think hard enough about the flow of events.
Simply put: the engine, and Donnie getting out of bed, is a REAL problem.

Donnies mom being on the plane has absolutely NO bearing on the flight - the plane is going to be in the exact same place at the exact same time, whether Donnie dies or not.

So Donnie didn't set ANYTHING right.
The engine still was torn off. It still travelled back in time and squashed him. And if Frank hadn't gotten him out of bed in the first place, the movie wouldn't have happened.

Face it - the movie is fatally flawed from a cause and effect standpoint.

That does NOT make it a bad movie.
I would hope I don't have to say this, but just because a movie's story isn't perfect doesn't mean it isn't a good film. Donnie Darko has WAY more interesting stuff than most of what's out there - I agree with you.

P.S. I know about the placebos.
And check out the scene in the motel room - Donnie's dad and mom talk about Frank, and how Frank's father before him "was doomed."

Imaginary Boy

Donnie's mother and sister being on that plane serves ONLY as an "insurance trap" for Donnie, to make sure he does send the engine back to save his family.

I think you and I differ when it comes to when the actual rip in the time space continum started - you say it started when Frank gets Donnie out of the bed, in my view it starts when the engine passes through the hole.

The rip would've happened even if Donnie stayed in bed, but then there'd no one to send the engine back to the future...

The whole movie is basically Frank's trying to convince Donnie, to make him realize Donnie's destiny in life, Frank's masterplan.

I don't think we'll ever agree on anything about the movie, but
that's great, that's the idea behind the forum, right?
Cheers, mate.

P.S. Did you like the soundtrack? I don't know many films where music fits the movie so perfectly...

beefjerky

This movie works better when you think of time not as being linear, but just all over the place. A timehole occured in the future. Why? Who knows. In the movie universe, time is a messed up phenomena with hiccups here and there. Because of the timehole, a tangent universe is created, and the coming of the plane engine, or the artifact, is a sign of the tangent universe starting. Donnie is the Living Receiver chosen to close the timehole and set things back on track.

From what I gathered from the time travel book, the only way to close the tangent universe is to send the artifact back through the timehole a second time. The reason that the tangent universe is unstable is because the engine must go back through the timehole a second time. If it doesn't, the events leading up the end of the tangent universe couldn't have possibly happened, creating a devastating paradox. Donnie couldn't have been standing where he was, manipulating the plane engine towards the timehole if the engine hadn't fallen in the past in the first place.

So the reason why the tangent universe was created was because a timehole happened at the end of the tangent universe, even though that future hadn't happened yet in the regular universe (again, don't think of time as being linear). Once the engine is sent back a second time, the reason for the instability of the tangent universe is fixed, and the primary universe continues. The engine is just a leftover artifact from the tanget universe.

I think once everything is fixed, the Living Receiver has to die. The book says,

"Ancient myth tells us of the Mayan Warrior killed by an Arrowhead that had fallen from a cliff, where there was no Army, no enemy to be found.

We are told of the Medievel Knight mysteriously impaled by the sword he had not yet built.

We are told that these things occur for a reason."

This indicates that the living receivers in those situations also died once the tangent universe was closed.

reapersaurus

hmm.. good point about those other dudes dying.

Maybe the Living Receiver has to die because he has to "call the artifact to himself" to make things right again?

Since the Living Tranceiver has superpowers, HE could have caused the engine to fall off the airplane.
With time being non-linear, as you astutely point out, he could be the reason. It's as plausible idea as any other.

And Imaginary Boy -
Yes, I loved the soundtrack, as did my wife.
But that's the superficial reason why we liked the movie - cause it was set in the 80's, with kick-ass music, and we're a couple of 80's people.

rushmore223

Unless you look at it as the flow of time is an illusion, that everything exists at the same time, just in different states.

Once read a scientists theory on this, but it was honestly a bit above my head.

I just look at it as though Donnie goes through those 28 days as a way for him to accept his own death.

lethal

just bought donnie darko dvd.wow what a wicked film although very strange.i will have to watch again to fully appreciate how each character is used in the way that they were. the only disapointment was the fact that the rabbit was being played by the gimp from "independence day"by the way can anyone tell us how the rabbit goes from being a imaginery character to gimp in a hallowean costume??????

drjay

Check out the official website. It's a whole other experience. You learn more about what goes on and how things happen. Pretty interesting and loads of extra info not included in the movie (about characters and the theories). If you're like me and ran upstairs to get your copy of A Brief History of Time when the credits started rolling, you'll want to check out the website to clear things up .

Rypro 525

i own the movie, and somehow managed to doze off for a few minutes and woke up right as Donnie kills Frank the bunny (i thought he was apart of his imagination), lets just say, i was lost from there, but i really enjoyed the movie, and plan on getting the new DC. ?, does the DC leave things "less open ended" then the theatrical cut.

glassdragon

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=193421

almost the exact same thread as this one


and as for the DC. Can't say anything about hte movie itself but

Commentary by Richard Kelly AND Kevin Smith.. nuff said

Slow Hands

Donnie is dead.

glassdragon

Bravo, Mr. Complete Obvious j/k

Jackskeleton

He went back in time, got killed so none of the bad ever happened. He should have died that night but didn't and it created a time ripple were everything going wrong was ment to push donnie back to die when he should have.

chess

Donnie Darko in two sentences.

Rypro 525

thanks jack, does the DC explain the ending a bit better as well. (i am defenetly going to watch this one very soon and see if jack's explamation makes sense)

DarkLycan13

Okay, I think all of you are making the end seem much more complicated than it may be in reality. Here is a simple way to view the ending and movie overall. This is how I gathered the ending to mean. When Frank comes to tell Donnie that the 'world' was ending in 28 days and so many hours and minutes, I gathered the meaning of the 'world' to represent the character Gretchin, not the actual world of civilization. If you think about it. and watch throughout the movie, each chapter of the book they talk about represents a character in the plot. Donnie happens to be the one that has to save the world and in doing so saves it. When the world ends (Gretchin gets killed) he goes back in time through a portal in order to save it. He sacrifices his life to save hers or in other words, saves the world. In killing himself, she never would have met him and gotten killed, nor would have Frank and the teacher wouldnt have been fired nor a lot of other things caused by him. That is how I pictured the movie which may explain things.

Baron Of Hell

Just saw the movie and this is my take.

Frank was sent by God to save Donnie. Save his soul to be exact. Donnie was a good kid up until he killed Frank for something that wasn't his fault.

Frank tells Donnie the world is ending because it is ending. Or Donnie's world is ending, the world that could have been.

I see two worlds. 1. a world that a engine kills Donnie. 2. a world that the engine doesn't kill donnie amd Frank dies and gretchin dies also

I think Donnie went back to save Gretchin but Frank was there to save Donnie's soul. Donnie death didn't make the world a better place but it saved two people and maybe his mom and sister also though planes can still fly minus one engine. Something bad will still happen to Gretchin's mom, Lady death will still be nuts, The child molester will go on until he kills himself. The fat girl might not come out of her shell now that boy she loved is dead.

I see it as more of a personal salvation.

story

This thread reads like the report on the Roswell incident - blacked out, blacked out, blacked out. But I like it!

KurtR

Yep, or as Kelly says on the DCD commentary track, "some kind of future intelligence".

rennervision

I wanted to resurrect this thread, because I just finished this movie for the first time and wanted to share my two cents since I've not yet read this theory anywhere else...

First, I think if you actually have to know the teachings of Roberta Sparrow's time travel book from the Donnie Darko website to understand this, that's a pretty significant flaw in the movie. Besides, all the internet discussions about "Living Receiver" this, and "Living Transceiver" that are giving me a headache.

So here's my fresh perspective having just seen the movie and having not studied Roberta Sparrow's teachings on time travel:

Some questions have been raised as to how this movie ever takes place, since it's obviously a paradox. If Donnie is supposed to die in bed at the beginning of the movie, why does Frank wake him out of bed to create the paradox in the first place which Donnie must now fix?

Well I say, just imagine what happened before the wormhole ever sent that jet engine back in time in the first place. Maybe everything would have pretty much happened exactly like we saw in the movie. Which means Donnie would have ended up killing Frank in 28 days.

So Frank (who I guess we'll just have to accept can reappear in the past now that he's dead) goes back in time 28 days to speak to Donnie and begin changing certain events. This creates an anomaly, producing a wormhole, which rips off the jet engine, that falls onto Donnie's bed and kills him. So with Donnie gone, Frank cheats death (and, as a result, also saves Gretchen - which is ironic since she suggested the name "Donnie Darko" sounded like a superhero).

I seriously doubt there's any true answer to this. I say anyone can write a bunch of confusing crap, then sit back while all the critics praise it as "brilliant" because everyone is too afraid to admit they don't understand one freakin' thing they just saw.

One thing I still don't get is once the wormhole appeared, how did Donnie teleport himself back 28 days to his bed? (And doesn't that mean the "other" Donnie who was out sleepwalking still comes back home later that morning, alive and well??? )

Parcher

My friend asked me to watch Donnie Darko, which I reluctantly did just now - but sleeping through half of it. HE just wrote to me after I wrote i thought it was a good movie, asking me what the point of the movie was (so basically quizzing me!!!). Now I don't want to seem like a fool.

Can someone please, just very very briefly but fully summarize the whole "point" or "meaning" of the movie??

Numanoid

Make up anything, and you'll be right.

Parcher

Well I thought the movie was terribly boring, which is why I fell asleep. And I can't STAND looking at Jake Gyllenhaal. He looks so stupid, like he is some weird Toby Maguire thing.

What a boring movie. Boring, boring, boring."Donnie Darko" "Donnie Darko"....BAAAH

Big Boy Laroux

just tell him this exact same thing. no way you'll look like a fool!