30
votes
Time loop stories aren't all 'Groundhog Day' rip-offs. Time loop stories aren't all 'Groundhog Day' rip-offs. Time loop stories aren't all...
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Authors
- Linda Holmes
- Published
- Feb 2 2024
- Word count
- 1000 words
I'm a huge sucker for time loop movies. Groundhog Day, Palm Springs, Happy Death Day, all movies I have rewatched multiple times.
edit: and Edge of Tomorrow!
Everyone keeps forgetting about Edge of Tomorrow smh
Idk if it's that everyone forgot as much as a lot of people haven't seen it. I pretty sure that's why they changed the title
It actually performed better in theatres than 2/3 of the movies listed above.
Reddit really liked that movie though.
oh yeah! also a goodie :D
No love for 12 Monkeys? Its time loop is admittedly not terribly vital to the overall plot though.
p.s. IMO, the TV show was decent too, BTW.
I thought the tv show got cancelled. It has a decent ending?
It got "canceled" before season 3 aired, but it wasn't an immediate cancellation. They still ordered a 4th season with 11 episodes, so the writers had time to wrap everything up nicely. And yeah, the ending was good, IMO.
It did but kept going in the time loop.
Edge of Tomorrow is insanely good/underated.
Same I'm a huge sucker for time loops. But I haven't watched many of them so I can steal recommendations from your comment mwahahaha
Boss Level is not bad too. Triangle is sort of a time loop, but not quite. Map of Tiny Perfect Things is apparently a time loop movie but it's pretty bad imo, too low key and nothing happened. I love time travel movies in general, but when they do something clever it's the best.
My favorite time loop episode will always be *Window of Opportunity from Stargate SG-1.
Spoilers for an episode from a quarter century ago.
In this episode, two of the characters are stuck in a time loop. We eventually learn it's caused by an alien artifact on a distant planet the team had recently visited. The plot has a lot of comedy elements. The characters caught in the loop first try to stay focused and on task, trying to break the loop. But after awhile they do give in and indulge in all sorts of hijinks. So there's a real light-hearted center to the film.But the end...what a tearjerker. It turns out the cause is this ancient alien artifact, on another planet, that's been discovered by this archaeologist. When it's activated, it causes its planet, as well as every other star within dozens of light years, to be caught repeating the same day over and over. But, as noted in the episode itself, "who builds a time loop machine?" Why would anyone deliberately construct a machine that just loops time? Eventually the story reveals that it was actually meant to be a time machine, but it just never worked. The ancients who created it were facing some unspecified cataclysm. They built it to change their own past and save themselves. But, when they activated it, all it did was repeat the same day over and over. In the end, they had no choice but to simply turn it off and wait for the end to come.
Back in the present, the reason for the current time loop wasn't the grand machinations of ancient aliens trying to save themselves from a cataclysm. Rather, it was due to just one individual. The archaeologist who found the device was the one who activated it. But he didn't want to live in a time loop; he spent his time in the loop fruitlessly trying to make the time machine work. He wanted to use it to travel through time, but for the most human reason imaginable. He didn't want to save a people, reverse the results of a war, or change the grand scope of history to his whims. He just wanted to see his wife again. Dozens of worlds all repeating the same day over and over, just so one person could have a chance of seeing their loved one again. He wasn't even trying to prevent her death; she died of something genetic and unpreventable. He just wanted to see her one more time.
I saw this episode long ago, near when it came out. And as a kid, I connected with the humor a lot more. But years later, having actually lost people close to me, I feel more for Malikai, the archaeologist, more than I ever did as a kid. There have been times when in grief where I would pause a hundred Suns in their tracks to see someone again just one more time.
This is why this will always be my favorite time loop episode or movie. The core is the classic time loop shenanigans, but it ends in a tearjerker that really tugs on the heart strings.
This is my all time favourite episode of SG-1. The writing is brilliant throughout. The jokes are hilarious, the pacing is perfect, and the underlying story is poignant. I think it largely ignited my love of time loop movies as a genre.
If you're looking for something similar, Travelers is by the same creator, features many of the same actors as SG-1, and also plays with time as a core concept. It was also cancelled prematurely, as is the fate of all good scifi, but is still worth checking out.
I'll just say that the first episode is meant to be a little confusing. Give it... time.
Thanks. I have seen Travelers as well, and I wish it hadn't been cancelled. Looking back, I think it could have used a structure that was a bit more planned out from the beginning. It seems they had a really cool central premise, but didn't quite know what they wanted to do with it at times. (Again, a pretty common issues among sci fi.)
I really enjoyed Travelers and, for anyone considering whether or not to watch it given a premature cancellation, I felt like the show writers ended the story fairly gracefully and in a way I found amusing. So, I wouldn't consider that fact as a reason not to start.
For some reason, the various permutations of “that just happens to be how I feel about it.” has become a running joke in my household.
COLONEL O'NEILL WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING??!!! (spoiler warning)
Steins;Gate is a whole show built around a time loop, and it's easily my favorite time travel story in any medium.
I'm pretty sure Star Trek TNG had a couple too.
For ST:TNG, "Cause and Effect" comes to mind.
I think younger generations will stop linking time loops to Groundhog Day - the movie is 30 years old at this point...and not high up in the list of classics to watch.
Side note - I'd highly recommend Mother of Learning for anyone interested in a great time-loop fantasy story. It also is one of the stories that lead to the modern "Progression Fantasy" subgenre.
This article is just a rip off of "The Simpsons already did it" episode of South Park./s
But seriously, I'm guilty of seeing elements of genre and tropes as rip-offs, but I do think it's for a valid reason. I'm sure plenty of people are jaded by seeing near instant market saturation of popular concepts. Any sort of novel exploration or interpretation is instantly drowned out by derivative works that it's like digging for a needle in a pile of needles.
Like the truckload of fiction inspired by Hunger Games, Fifty Shades and Twilight. Or the explosion in Vampire Survivor clones in the last year, coming right after the Battle Royal craze. Or just the mention of connected multiverses. Or the Mr Beast thumbnail and subtitles.
It's gotten to the point that I'll instinctively lump a lot of media as 'disingenuous cash grabs'. But like with Groundhog day, as time goes on, transformative works will come up but there'll always be people still in that sceptical mindset.
On a slight tangent on trends that I've had on my mind: I currently work for a clothing retailer and it's interesting talking with the guys who need to develop the lines and ranges. Clothing is tied to the limitations of production and logistics so you need to prep well in advance.
The big fashion shows and showcases hint at what styles, materials and colors will catch on in the year. But you never know when some random aesthetic or celebrity look is going to gain traction and the fast fashion houses can have an entire wardrobe online in hours. Same thing when there's a production, shipping or even pricing issues. Customers don't like what they see, they'll be on Shein or Cider before they leave the store.
Slightly off topic but speaking of Groundhog Day - I recently read and really enjoyed this short story in Clarkesworld that is an homage to that movie, but with some original interesting changes. In a way, the story is a good example of the point of the article.
I mean, of course?
In essence there probably never actually was a truly original story.
The first ones were likely inspired by natural events and social interactions and life experiences.
The next ones were likely inspired by this and also the first ones and also the societal, cultural, technological developments.
The point is that good stories still bring something new to the table no matter what basic building blocks they were inspired to use from other stories that did the same thing.
Some variation on a "Good artists copy, great artists steal."(my interpretation is that copy means imitate and steal interpret, change and use the parts in the authors own work) is a quote said by several people in history.