Exploring Time Travel Rules in Time Travel Films

Abstract

Throughout film history, time travel has been an intriguing concept revisited time and again by film productions, creating a universe of time travel principles and becoming a discipline of scientific import. With some of the greatest minds and thinkers of our time contributing to the living discourse, time travel has gained global significance and has developed several rules films attempt to follow. Time travel theory postulates several theories concerning the effect of an individual traveling through time and coming into contact with themselves; some benign, some many catastrophic. This study reviews time travel films to determine the cinematic consistency of three of these rules; the grandfather paradox, time-traveling for self-benefit, and meeting oneself in an alternate time.