Clemmie Judges

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

MOVIE INFO

Title: The Butterfly Effect

Director(s) and writer(s): Eric Bress and J Mackye Gruber

Runtime: 1 hour 53 minutes

Release date: January 23rd 2004

Description: Evan Treborn suffers blackouts during significant events of his life. As he grows up, he finds a way to remember these lost memories and a supernatural way to alter his life by reading his journal.

Note: Yes, yes. I am reviewing a movie. Oh no. What has become of me? To be fair, it's not even a review. It's me doing another analysing stuff to better understand why I like what I like. In other words, I am yet again gushing and fangirling in the most formal way ever.

THE PROTAGONIST'S GOAL

What I find endearing about this movie is how simple the protagonist's goal is, and how relatable it is. He just wants everyone to be happy. That's all. A noble goal, right? Yet somehow he keeps fucking things up to the point where it drives him to insanity.

This, I think, is what separates a good sci-fi film with a bad one. The good ones—like the first two Terminator movies, for instance—have simple conflicts. Yes, sure. There are high stakes stuff, but it's put in the backseat. Are the sci-fi stuff important? Yes. Of course. But they only influence the movie. They're not the core of the movie itself.

In these sorts of fiction, the protagonist needs to have a goal that's only simple, but relatable. Otherwise we won't be able to sympathise with them. And that's never a good thing, especially in stories where everything's so bizarre, and we have a hard time clinging to any real thing.

The protagonist's goal in this movie is to save everyone, no matter what. He wants the girl he loves to stop being in pain. He wants everyone to get along. I'm pretty sure we can all relate to that.

THE SHIFT IN THE MIDDLE

Midpoints are what makes or breaks a fiction. Whether it's a book, or a movie, or a TV show, the best way to judge whether they're any good or not is to pay attention to the middle. Does the stake heighten? Is an important information revealed—one that'll change the trajectory of the fiction itself? Then if so, you got yourself a good movie.

Of course, this might not work with all fiction mediums, but still. It's one of the better ways to tell.

This movie has that shift too. And the shift is so sudden, so mind-blowing, that it feels like you're watching two different movies.

THE FIRST HALF of the movie is less sci-fi and more mystery/horror/drama stuff. It excellently builds up tension with a surprisingly fast pace. One moment jumps to the next without any breathing room. There are mysteries upon mysteries within the first half of the movie. It's not just about the protagonist's memory loss. It's about his friends. His family. The way he deals with everything.

It's got some drama in it, too. And serious drama. Good drama. I'm surprised by how well this movie tackles its dark themes. It does not hold back.

Despite everything being a build-up, everything's still relevant. Like I said before, this half of the movie could work all by itself. With some changes, of course. 

Having half of the movie teasing its audience makes the reveal even better. And the way it reveals the big mystery makes it better.

Everything builds and builds and builds and then bam! We're transferred into THE SECOND HALF of the movie. Now, I'm not 100% sure if this is, in fact, true, but I am quite certain that the protagonist discovering that he's successfully overwritten the past. It's such a strange tonal shift that it must be in the middle of the movie.

At first, this half of the movie disguises itself in a false college life BS. Then, bam! Another tonal shift! And bam again! It's chaotic, it's a whirlwind, and it's the opposite of its other half. Everything goes crazy. There, the big secret's out! Time to toy with its possibilities, and boy does this movie toy with it good. 

The more I think about it, the more this contradicts the Save the Cat! story structure, where the first half is about fulfilling the promise of the premise, and the second is where things get serious. Then again, that depends on how you see the movie. If you see this as a mystery story, then yes, this story follows the structure. If you see it as a time-travel story, then... 

IN SUMMARY, this movie is separated into two parts. The first is a build-up mystery type of stuff, and the second is where the time travel stuff is revealed, and we get to toy around with the sci-fi stuff.

KEEPING THINGS REAL

As I've said before, stories with big concepts like time-travel needs its characters to stay grounded to reality. Otherwise the story will feel too fake for us to care about it. In other words: movies with unreal plots need to keep things real.

This movie does a fantastic job of creating a realistic environment. Fine, so maybe not everything's realistic. I wouldn't know, since I wasn't even born in the 1990s to the early 2000s. Nor do I live in the US. But still. 

Its characters feel real too. And so do the issues they go through. This movie doesn't glaze over them. They take a moment to inspect every problem the characters are facing, and convey these problems out to the audience. 

OVERALL

I like this movie. It's one of my favorite time-travel movies, and it also is a big influence on one of my all-time favorite game; Life is Strange. Rewatching it now, it surprises me to see how many similarities these two things have.

I'm doing this because I'm also (maybe) planning on writing a novel/novella similar to this, but in reverse. I can't tell you much about it yet (and I doubt you'd care anyway), but analysing this movie has certainly helped put things into perspective. It makes me understand how I should approach my potential novel/novella. 

Basically; I... don't know, actually.