But remember his mom said he was so damned smart. Just like his father. They never had to pick up a book. They could just ace the tests.

Just watched this. It occured to me that this movie is the antithesis of "It's A Wonderful Life"; everyone would have been a lot better off if the main character had never been born. Stirring message.

Did anyone ever explain that picture Evan drew? There's no way that any six year old could draw a picture even remotely like that, and as far as I know that picture had no relationship to anything else in the story. Was something cut out (or did I drop off to sleep for a minute)?

And since I'm a doctor, I just wanted to chime this in:
1) You don't have to wait a few days for CT results to come back; the doctor was looking at them when he was talking to the mother.

2) Ultrasounds today are hard to read, when Evan was still in utero (at least 20 years ago), they looked like weather maps. Guess that wouldn't have looked good for the scene, though.

He had just been sodomized in prison by the Nazis(this part was only in the DC) before he went back so the picture he drew was of him killing some Nazis.

I liked the movie, but I did have some problems with it and that picture is one of them. Why did he draw that picture at the beginning when he wouldn't have had the memories of being in prison yet?

Thanks for explaining the picture. Doesn't make sense, but that 's more illuminating than in the movie.

Oh, another medical problem I had with the ending:
Setting aside the fact that even if a fetus were endowed with adult intelligence, it would not have the physiology, the muscle fibers, hence the strength, to strangle itself -- let's put that aside for now. Simple embryology here : fetuses don't breathe. You can wrap the cord as tight as you like around the fetus' neck and it won't cause asphyxiation because the airway is not required to supply oxygenated blood to the brain; the ubilical cord does that. Lots of babys have tight cords around their necks at birth, it's called a tight nuchal cord and it's only a potential problem after the child is born. If fetal Evan really wanted to kill himself, crimping the cord or yanking it frrom it's attachment in the placenta should have worked a lot better. But I guess in the scope of things, that's probably nitpicking...

Just saw this and enjoyed it quite a bit. Unfortuantely I don't have the DC, but reading this thread has been quite illuminating. Its funny b/c about half way through this movie I looked at my significant other and said that "the only conclusion to this movie that would satisfy me would be for him to go back in time and kill himself". Now after learning what the DC has as the alt. ending I am quite relieved that I wasn't too far off.

I also saw a lot of plot holes in this movie, but I think the pure creativity of the main ideas put forth in this movie helped me to not fixate on them. I have to admit that part of me was a little bitter (like another poster mentioned) that such a good idea was wasted on a movie with quite a few flaws and holes. However, the enjoyment I received from watching this and the ingenuity of the plot compensated for these thoughts. My final analysis was that this was very very good and enjoyable movie, but it had the potential to be so much more (as I am sure all movies do).

One last point that has been talked about, the lack of him being a brain damaged invalid at the end, bothers me. In spite of how his 'changes' may have erased events in the past, he always received more brain damage. I think the idea that the last 'jump' (ohhh sam becket where are thee now?) some how erases the damage was a little difficult to swallow.

Once again, in the end it was quite enjoyable and thought provoking.


EDIT TO ADD: Yeeeeea I am finally a senior member!!! Ater 2 an a half years or posting (or not) and many months of lurking I made it....can I have my pie now please?

I may have seen it weirdly, but I always thought that he kinked the umbilical cord or something to cut off the air supply (like you would to a garden hose), not wrap it around his neck.

Well, he was trying to get out of prison as quickly as possible, and only had access to a couple of his journals. Not only that, but as we saw in the movie, he could only go back to a time when he blacked out, and since he was completely aware of what he was doing the whole time he attacked Tommy, he couldn't change that particular situation.

As far as his sentence goes, sure it could have been called self defense (and his mother said that the lawyer was most likely going to be able to get him sprung on that soon enough), but I imagine that the wounds Tommy suffered were pretty nasty looking, and it could have been interpreted that Evan did more than was necessary to defend himself.


Not really. We saw Thumper react strongly to the group of Frat guys in the bar (hitting the cue ball at their table), and I imagine that he had been bothered by those types of people his whole childhood. Given that, having one of them casually ask him the time would likely precipitate such a response. Not only that, but it's entirely possible that Evan had made fun of Thumper in the past, given that he was one of the popular people in that reality.

Right, but it doesn't mean that it's impossible. Remember, once her brother was gone, that would have put her in the house with her father all alone, meaning that any abuse would have gone straight to her, instead of being divided between the two kids. That would make it much more likely for her to go down that road later on.

I just saw this the other night and was really impressed. Maybe I wasn't expecting much but I really liked it. I thought the acting was good, even Ashton. Is the director's cut on the infinfilm dvd? I'm thinking of picking it up and if there's a director's cut out there, I'd like to get that one.

Watched it tonight..entertaining film, but the whole idea of this thread - that the movie was too realistic is just bogus?

The guy wouldn't have gone to prison because he beat up some guy that was attacking him. Its just that simple.

I too saw this one the other night. The movie was actually pretty decent, IMO. I felt the ending was a bit heavy-handed, but didn't negate the film.

The movie was reasonably entertaining. Stupid, but occasionally entertainingly so.

The internal logic is non-existent, the acting is all over the place, and a few of the characters were just annoying (especially the little kid thats supposed to be "bad", it was just annoying). Plus a lot of the plot points seemed really inconsistent, but that fits under internal logic.

Wouldn't recommended it, but not a total loss.

Just saw this tonight and boy did it suck. Kutcher is a train wreck of an actor.

Not true at all. If someone attacks you, you are allowed to defend yourself, but not allowed to continue your attack more than necessary until the assailant is dead. If you are no longer in danger or have a chance to flee, it goes from self-defense to manslaughter.

Another medical inconsistency (or maybe I just missed something). Why was he in a wheelchair seven years after getting his arms blown off?! Were his legs damaged? Or just dramatic effect? They needed to take a couple more runs at this script.

Yes they were, eagle eyes.

Wow, that's amazing. An explosion that blows off your arms and damages your legs enough to put you in a wheelchair but doesn't put a mark on your face! Now that's good scriptwriting.

It's not that farfetched at all. Blown off arms, broken back. What is wrong?

I have to agree. I thought he was amusing in Dude Where's my Car but he did the same weird reaction eye movement acting he did in that and it may have worked in a comedy but when you are in a movie like this, it just doesnt. In my opinion it took the film down a notch. He the actors who played him younger were better than he was but from what I have read he helped get the film made.
That's Hollywood.

Interesting premise...but then it took a nose dive.

Any reasoning behind that opinion?

I personally was surprised by how WELL Kutcher acted in the film.

I was surprised too. He wasn't great in it, but he was better than I thought he would be. Still didn't help me like this movie one bit though.

butterfly effect was an amazing flick

Finally watched this over the weekend. Picked it up on the cheap($5). I am quite late to the party. I loved it. I initially avoided it for all the reasons posted in this thread. The trailer made it out to look like a teenage flick with heartthrob Ashton as the star. I hope that marketing team was fired.

I watched the DC and definitely prefer it over the TC. The TC is a cop-out if you ask me. A happy ending for the movie going masses. Everybody lives happily ever after type bullshit. I followed and got everything, even caught the discrepencies in stillbirths. That was quite some forshadowing on the palm read that didn't even register until the end. Almost a Sixth Sense moment, where Haley Joel Osment is staring at Bruce Willis when he says Right there the whole time and I never caught on.

This is how my wife and I saw it. He killed himself as three and became number four, which would make him a few years younger than his friends. This would make it unlikely that he would ever interact with Kaylee and the others. Thus still preventing all the bad things from happening. Still almost a "happily ever after." Just needs a bit more thought to see it. It isn't layed out clear as day for the uninitiated viewer like the TC.

I have to disagree here. He appeared to be a fetus, nowhere near c-section feasibilty. Probably only 2-3 months along. There is no way he could have survived ouside the womb.

All the performances were adequate. Save for Mrs. Treborn. Horrid acting there. I was pleasantly surprised by Kutcher. He actually pulled it off.

Enjoyable movie for the most part, but the girl's brother as a "troublemaking" little kid was just flat out annoying and numerous illogical scenes (even for movie logic) annoyed the hell out of me. ie - going "back" and slamming his hands on a couple of nails and he's able to wake up exactly where he was? Sure, something small can change a lot, but doing something completely psychotic as a little kid doesn't do anything, so little in fact you're at the exact same place in 20 years.

But aside from that, the regular cut isn't too bad and the DC isn't a bad rehtread of Darko. Just nothing special.

Oh and to note the topic, the movie has pretty much no realism, in either it's own movie world or in ours. It defies it's own logic, which is never a good thing.

So, with his wife suffering a relatively early pregnancy crisis, the father goes to get his video camera and tapes the event?

It seemed clear to me that the mother was in labor and the tape was originally of his birth rather than a first trimester miscarriage.

He also made himself a girl since there is mention of the mother's first non-stillborn child being a daughter. It seems like wishful thinking to me to assume that he was able to become the 4th child (and given that there were two stillbirths prior to Evan, assuming Evan became the 4th child would also seem to imply that he was the first two, as well, which would also mean that simply not meeting Kayleigh wasn't enough to keep from offing himself in the womb on prior occasions. And given that he apparently only has memories from this 3rd life, it would imply that the 4th child has no memories of being Evan... so, it takes a bit of a leap to think of that 4th child as the character we've seen throughout the movie).