Paradox: Where Did It Come From?

Next up in my Netflix time-travel end-of-the-year marathon: Paradox (2016).   I've always said and thought that the best part of time travel is paradox - more specifically, how time travel can take place, notwithstanding the paradoxes that it (especially time travel to the past) inevitably engenders.

Paradox does a very good job with one of them - what I like to call the where did it come from paradox.  In its plain, vanilla form - that is, without any murders or such like - someone knocks on my door, which I (an engineer of some sort) open.  He's older than I am, and looks very familiar.  He tells me he's me, from the future, with explicit information about how to construct a time machine.  I (of course) don't believe him. In particular, he describes things - alloys, media, whatever - that don't exist, as far as I know.   He leaves.  As the years go by, I keep thinking about this conversation.  And I begin to see some of the things he described come to be.  Eventually, I build the time machine, and travel back to the past to tell myself how to build it.  Neat loop.  But ... where did it (the knowledge with which to build a time machine) come from in the first place?

Paradox the movie starts with someone traveling not to the past but just an hour into the future.  He's part of a team.  He sees just about everyone else on his team dead or wounded in that elapsed hour.  He returns to when he started - back an hour into the past - to warn everyone and stop the bloody mayhem.  Of course, he doesn't succeed.

The reasons that he doesn't succeed are laced with the where did it come from paradox.   Everything is logically spun out and connected across this brief piece of time, with plausible explanations for everything that happens.   The movie received some criticism for its sophomoric dialogue and humor, but I had no problem with it, likely because of my low-brow tastes.  Nah, I think I have very sophisticated tastes, and people who are put off by low-brow humor just have sticks up their rear-ends.

Ok, you tell me.  I liked this line from the movie.  One of the characters says, "Hey Jim, remember it's [the time travel process] a black hole.  If anything goes wrong, you will literally disappear up your own ass."  At least a little funny, right?

If you agree, you'll likely like Paradox (written and directed by Michael Hurst).  If not, go watch something like Wormwood.

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