It's a paradox to me how a thread about paradoxes became a thread about plot holes and unanswered questions.

Here's one: How did Seth Rogen's loser stoner end up fucking Katherine Heigl's career woman? Not buying that for a minute.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox

A paradox is an argument that produces an inconsistency, typically within logic or common sense. Most logical paradoxes are known to be invalid arguments but are still valuable in promoting critical thinking. However, some have revealed errors in definitions assumed to be rigorous, and have caused axioms of mathematics and logic to be re-examined (e.g., Russell's paradox). Still others, such as Curry's paradox, are not yet resolved. In common usage, the word "paradox" often refers to irony or contradiction. Examples outside logic include the Grandfather paradox from physics, and the Ship of Theseus from philosophy. Paradoxes can also take the form of images or other media. For example, M.C. Escher featured perspective-based paradoxes in many of his drawings.

Look, I love the first two Superman movies, but this always bugged me : A team of screenwriters are tasked two write a story about a superhero whose powers include Invincibility, Immortality, Super Strength, Flight, Supersonic Flight, X-Ray Vision, Super-Vision, Super-Hearing, Laser-Heat Vision, Ice Breath, maybe some more. And yet to resolve their two movies satisfactorily, they end up inventing two new super-powers for him that he's never had before : The ability to reverse time and some sort of amnesia kiss. Lame.

Besides if he really reversed the rotation of the earth, wouldn't that cause many terrible, terrible things to happen like building collapsing, glaciers crumbling and stuff? And even if he were able to reverse time, all he does is save Lois. Wouldn't California still have explosions on the fault line, disasters and fall into the sea without Superman there to fix everything? As far as I remember, he just grabs Lois and takes off. Am I forgetting something?

Superman has been able to travel back in time in various comics, and that's what I see him doing there. The spinning the earth backwards thing is just a visual representation of going back in time.

I also read something recently that said Superman did have an amnesia kiss at one point in the comics. That doesn't stop it from being lame, though.

Edit, here's that kiss:

http://comiccoverage.typepad.com/.a/...3661970c-popup

The Silver-Age Superman had the ability to travel back in time, but was unable to changed the course of history. Else, why not save Krypton from destruction? Usually when Supes traveled back in time, he would become a mysterious particapant that history already recorded. So his time traveling adventure in the past would mainly result in him full-filling his role in pre-detrimined destiny.

So he should not have been able to go back and saved Lois.

Well hey, I guess he did have Super-Kiss power. Ugh.

Still, if you're going to go to all the trouble of turning back time, you might as well rewind to before Lex launches two ICBM missiles at the two coasts of the US.

Hey, his dad told him not too. That's almost the same thing, right?

My favorite time travel paradox is in 1980s SOMEWHERE IN TIME.

At the beginning of the movie (1980), "old" Elise McKenna gives Richard Collier a pocket watch, which he takes back to 1912 and leaves there (when he travels back to 1980 at the movie's end). So young Elise takes the watch in 1912 and waits until she is old to give it to Richard in 1980. And the cycle keeps repeating.

Where did the watch come from...it cannot possibly exist, yet it does.

I don't consider it a movie flaw as much as a neat little idea by the screenwriter (it wasn't part of Matheson's original novel).

Even if Superman could travel back in time by turning Earth's rotation backwards without tearing the crust off of the planet, then there would be two Supermen, wouldn't there? Then Superman and Clark Kent could do some kind of freaky Alfred Borden/Fallon thing and take turns fucking Lois Lane.

But even then, having Superman go back in time to "fix" things is just shitty storytelling. It completely ruins the end of Superman II to have him do it again.

The thing that bugs me most about the Toy Story movies is that the toys always want a kid to own them and are bummed when one doesn't own them or doesn't ever play with them. Yet each movie shows all the fun the toys have together when people aren't around and they don't have to rigidly be still until the people are gone. So wouldn't being abandoned together in the attic be the best thing to happen to them so the toys can have fun all the time and not worry about people? Wouldn't being neglected by kids be their ultimate goal?

The next thing that bugs me is in the movie Toy Story 2 where it's shown that Woody is an antique toy from decades earlier. Yet Woody is completely unaware of this and only thinks of Andy as his owner and no one else. Wouldn't Woody remember his previous owner or owners (which presumably includes Andy's father) as well as being abandoned in the attic or a box for a number of years until Andy was born and started playing with him as his new owner? Basically, why is Woody so unaware of his past in Toy Story 2?

Although I don't like the time travel endings, it's important to remember that it was intended by Richard Donner to just be the ending in Superman II when they were original shooting both movies at the same time. That way it could explain why Lois forgets that Clark Kent is Superman. Then when the production decided to shift to just finished the 1st movie, the time travel ending was moved to that 1st movie and Donner planned to re-write the ending of Superman II and film something else. But he was fired before that happened, so when he was given the chance to put together the "Richard Donner Cut" of the 2nd movie many years later, he had only the choice of either the time travel ending that he had original shot or retaining the Richard Lester ending.

Donner mentioned (on the commentary track, I think) that he would have shot a new ending so as to not have the same ending twice. As to why he didn't just retain the Richard Lester ending in his new cut instead - given that he had to retain some Lester footage for other scenes he never shot - I'm not sure why he decided against this. (Maybe he just liked having the opening scene when the time travel started and the toothpaste went back into the tube - he does laugh about that visual gag in the commentary track).

I know the era dictates that it is mainly a male centric toy but but it doesn't outright mean that a girl couldn't be an owner. I've never really cared as to who owned Woody before but yeah. Woody not really presenting a past before Andy is a flaw in the story.

I get your point, but this doesn't bug me. The toys are created for a purpose: to be a plaything for a child. So they don't find satisfaction unless that is their main function. It goes against human logic (I'd much rather be free to do what I want than be a mannequin for someone else), but it makes sense within the context of that universe.

This is an excellent question and one that hadn't really occurred to me before. I think the mom verifies that the toy is basically a family keepsake when Newman tries to buy him at a yard sale. So yeah... who was his owner before Andy?

some old copypasta:

I took it as she knew Woody was Andy's favorite toy so she didn't want to sell him, not as he has been passed down through the generations.

to be fair, 2009 wasn't just time travel, it also involved getting sucked through an artificially created black hole, so getting spit out back in time and in an alternate universe isn't a stretch

or Kyle never was the father and instead John's father is some guy Sarah banged 9 days before Kyle showed up but he had a condom (which unknown to her broke or had some holes in it or something) so she always thought Kyle was the father

maybe if they're without human interaction for too long they lose all their self awareness abilities and then when contact is reestablished they start fresh

???

I would have never imagined that in a million years, but thanks for the imagery that I hope will vanish before I try to watch any of these movies again.

You guys smell like feet.

You don't have kids do you? I love playing games or hanging out with my buddies, but playing with my kids has a totally different and rewarding experience.

Who said he was a hand-me-down? Even as an antique he could have remained in the package until his mom bought him at a flea market for Andy. Sure his mom said he was a "family heirloom" or something similar but she could have simply meant that it was important to Andy and their immediate family to keep from selling it.

People back then didn't keep toys in their packages. They actually played with them. Esp. if there were kids in the family. The whole idea of toys as collectibles didn't begin in earnest until the narcissistic Baby Boomers created a market for virgin dolls and action figures so they could hold onto their childhood memories. Previous generations didn't want to hold on to anything from their childhoods, whether they were happy or not. (My father certainly didn't have a happy childhood. He ran away from home at an early age. My mother lived through the dust bowl and wound up picking fruit in California a la "The Grapes of Wrath." She was the baby of the family and had fun brothers and a sister and lots of cousins to hang out with, so she had some pleasant memories. But it was still a hard life. And no toys survived.)