Double_Oh_7

It was exactly 12:00:00, otherwise on an analog clock the minute hand would have already been somewhere between 12:00 and 12:01.

Mabuse

Ahhh the internet. Where even when you're right you get insulted.

Brack

I thought it was 10:04 pm, not midnight.

TomOpus

It was 10:04. I was wondering where this midnight time came from.

RoyalTea

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AM5EYO5wWMA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

There are two types of minute hands.

1) minute hands that continuously move.
2) minute hands that are completely still and make one sudden move every minute.

If the clock was the first type, I could see if the picture on the flyer was clear enough, that it might be able to deduce the exact second of the lightning strike.

If the clock was the second type, the clock at 10:04:01 would look exactly the same as the clock at 10:04:59. If you watch the clip I posted, the clock is the second type. There is no way they could have known the exact instant of the lightning strike. They had a sixty second window. Marty could have been a second too late or 52 seconds too early.

Cardsfan111

I had to go back a ways in this thread to figure out what a clock, lightning and time travel had to do with Gone Girl.

Rival11

Back to the Future and Gone Girl - now there's a mashup I would love to see.

Also, the comment on Gone Girl being a psycho lifetime movie....I think that's why I honestly like it so much.

Mabuse

10:04 not midnight. My mistake. Doc and Marty don't have to figure out the exact time. People in 1985 already did the math and know that the clock was knocked out at precisely 10:04. Doc says this in 1955 when he reads the flyer.

RoyalTea

If you watch the clock on the video I provided, you'll noticed that the clock moves from 10:03 to 10:04. Maybe a second later, the lightning hits. So it's probably 10:04:01, maybe 10:04:02.

Why would the people in 1985 do the math to figure out the precise instant of the lightning strike? Why would they care if the lightning hit at 10:04:00 vs 10:04:01 vs 10:04:02 vs 10:04:59? And if 1985 mathematicians cared enough to pinpoint the exact second, why would 1985 Marty care enough about that precise second to remember that information before he went to 1955?

They see the flyer Marty brought back from the future, they see the clock is stuck at 10:04 in the picture and that's all the information they have.

Brack

I'm not sure if people in 1985 did the math, but isn't it possible that people from 1955 did the math?

And just because we see the lightning a second after the clock struck 10:04 doesn't mean it didn't hit at that time. That was done for dramatic effect, not a scientific basis. It is still a movie.

Solid Snake

wait...how the fuck did BTTF get in here?

Why So Blu?

Mouthbreathers.

RoyalTea

How the hell could the people from 1955 do the math from an event that hadn't happened yet?

If I showed you this image:


how would you tell if it's 9:32:01 or 9:32:02 or 9:32:03 or 9:32:48? Especially if you knew that the minute hand didn't make a slow, steady continuous motion, but it stayed completely still and made one sudden movement every 60 seconds?

And that's assuming that even a 1 second window is sufficient. Maybe 10:04:01.000001 is too soon and 10:04:01.000009 is too late.

Shazam

Watched this a few weeks ago. Didn't know it was a Fincher movie, while I was watching I was thinking "gee this director sure is channeling David Fincher".

Ben Affleck only Afflecked in one scene, that is about as good as you can get from him.

I've always liked Rosamund Pike, she is so damned hot.

Overall mostly stupid but still fun, mostly saved from its own imbecileness by Fincher's directing.

Rival11

Brack

Aren't there parts of clocks that are internal? I remember Doc going up to the clock with all the internal parts are moving. A clock expert would be able to figure it out AFTER the fact, no?

RoyalTea

Are you fucking with me? You can't possibly believe that 1955 Doc Brown could wait until the lightning strike hit, then went to figure out the precise second of the lightning strike AFTER the fact, then somehow figured out another way to time travel to give the pre-lighting strike version of 1955 Doc Brown the information he needs to get Marty to be able to time travel.

TomOpus

We love our tangents

rocket1312

How is that even possible? I guess I could buy that someone who is familiar enough with Fincher's work to recognize his style might not keep up with his current projects, but how did you miss his name at the beginning of the movie?

Brack

I'm not talking about Doc Brown. The lightning struck regardless if Doc Brown was there or not. I'm talking about the clock mechanisms that make the clock, you know, move. What does Doc have to do with anything I'm talking about? This isn't about traveling back in time, this is looking at the clock mechanisms and figuring out the second from there, thus how the exact time was calculated. Far fetched, yes, but smarter than just looking outside at just the clock hands and not at the whole clock.

RoyalTea

The only 2 sources of information 1955 Doc Brown had was:

a) The flyer from 1985 (which only had a photograph of the outside of the clock, there was nothing on the flyer about the internal clock mechanisms, just a picture of the face of the clock).
b) The knowledge in Marty's brain from stuff that he may have learned about the lightning strike

Are you making the argument that a detailed study of the clock to pinpoint the exact millisecond of the lightning strike was made after the lightning strike and that 1985 pre-time travel Marty made an effort to learn the results of that study and commit that information to memory before going to 1955?

Brack

What I'm saying is that there is more than just a face of a clock that you could go on, that's all. I thought that was pretty clear based on my posts, but obviously you are nitpicking and want to make some sort of thing out of there being no second hand. Even if there was was second hand, it wouldn't get down to the millisecond anyway, so your point of there being a second hand is moot. When the lightning does finally hit the clocktower, the bolt takes a few seconds anyway to come down to the DeLorean. And like I said, it's a movie, and including a factoid like the exact millisecond would have been just been boring storytelling.

Brack

That's a long flyer. Tell me you know for certainty there is not enough information for Doc, and you may have something. Until then it's no more farfetched than the flux capacitor being what makes time travel possible simply because the audience is told it is. Movie logic is a real thing, but that's not a plot hole, it's called convenience.

Shazam

His name was at the very start (I just rewatched the beginning), I was watching at home, was getting popcorn ready, I didn't start watching until Affleck started talking.

I also try to ignore credits because they can spoil casting (habit from TV show watching). I didn't even know NPH was in the film

RoyalTea

It's a long flier but it's a reproduction of the newspaper from the day after the lightning strike.

The only reason I brought this up is to illustrate the point that people will accept the impossible before they accept the improbable.

A glaring plot hole in a movie about time travel gets talked about more than the fact that time travel is a fantasy.