Time travel in media (books and movies)

Time travel is one of the ultimate dream and an ultimate fantasy for a lot of people. Who haven't dreamed of going back in the past to correct some personal mistakes? On even on a bigger scale, to go back to correct history by preventing some major events to happen? Time travel, for now is still a fantasy but it a inspired a lot of stories on different types of medium. In this post, we will talk about time travel in medium such as books and movies.

Time travel has been used for different purposes in media. Some have written about time travel to explore the paradoxes that could arise from modifying the past. Others use it as a plot device, a way to create more dramatic feature to the story. For others time travel is a talent for only one person or it's controlled by some sort of control organization. Time travel maybe the consequence of technology development or being due to a mutation. In this latter case, it only affect the mutant and possibly his/her offspring. For some authors, time travel is only possible in the past and it will affect only the timeline of the traveler. For others, every event which happened during time travel will create a new timeline different from the one of the traveler. And finally, there some who presented time travel like and enhanced movie experience, you could watch the past but you can't modify any aspect of it. In this post, I'll try to present one work on each of those approaches for time travel.

The man who murdered Mohammed, by Alfred Bester (first published in 1958). In this short story, a man came at home in the evening and find his wife cheating on him. He went to his lab and create a time machine in order to go back in time to kill his wife grand-parents. When he came back to his present, his wife was still in the midst of aldutary. He traveled back in time several and killed historical figures in other to modify his present. But he failed every time. He finally realised after killing Mohammed that his actions in the past didn't alter his present by only modify his own existence (he was slowly fading after each murder). His last murder completely anhilate him and let the present unchanged. This text is an example of how actions of a time traveler don't alter his current timeline, but may only alter his own existence as a human being.

Alfred Bester

The time traveler's wife, by Audrey Niffenegger (published in 2003). In this story, time travel is more a plot device. It's only affect the story of the two main protagonists. The male one is able to travel in time due to a genetical mutation but he has no control over it. He can't control when he will travel, how long he will stay in the period. It is very random. But this feature gives a new light to his lovestory with his wife. This story is a statement to the idea of some people are meant to be together no matter what is happeneing in their lifes. The focus is more on the development of the relationship then on time travel itself. But time traveling serves the purpose of the story very well in my humble opinion.

The Time Traveler's Wife movie poster

Back to the future saga (1985,1989,1990) written and directed by Robert Zemeckis. This saga was very interesting in various poinst. The choice of a car as a time travel machine opens up the possibilities for mobility. And the Delorean is just amazing. They tried to consider a lot of possibilities about consequences of actions made in the past on the present. In this saga, Marty McFly travel in the past and the future. Events modified, if not corrected in the past, have a certain influence on the present and the future of Marty.

Back to the Future Trilogy

Predestination, film by the Spierig Brother and based on the short story All you Zombies by Robert A. Heinlein. The movie starred Ethan Hawke, Sarah Snook and Noah Taylor. It was relased on 2014. Yhis move is a very special one on some aspects. It's telling the story of two people discussing in a bar around a few beers and a pool game. One of them is the bartender and the other is a random customer. The customer is telling is life story to the bartender. During the telling, he begins to share a bound with the bartender. After this meeting, the main protagonist will discover that their lives are very bounded together. Can say more without spoiling the movie. But this movie is the best and most weird way to talk about time travel paradoxes. It also arise a kind of philosophical question : are we bounded to live a life written in advance? And also what came first the egg or the chicken? It must be seen if you want to have an opinion about it.

Predestination Australian movie poster

Time cop starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and released in 1994. The movie is based on a comics of the same name published by Dark Horse comics. In this movie, there's a organization which main purpose is to control time travel. Time Enforcement Commission track down people who use time travel for their own personal profits. In this movie, actions in the past also affect the timeline of the main protagonists.

Time Cop movie poster

Looper starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt and Bruce Willis. It has been released in 2012. It this movie, time travel is fordiden. The main use of time travel is for sending back people to be excecuted by people called Loopers. They are sent head in an bag with silver bars. If the person arrived with a sack filled with gold bars, that is used for closing the loop (the older self of the Looper in sent to be execute by his younger self).

Looper main male cast

Hope you enjoyed the reading. Have a great holiday season. Feel free to leave a comment.

Top 3 underrated games (Shiro choice)

Some of the best game , with good hype and great marketing, stay in mainstream history forever ,while others only a few know of their greatness, welcome back to VGBM and today we will look at my top 3 underrated action games. For this list I’ll be talking about games I played that I feel that not a lot of people (or no one ) know of their existence and that I personally spent hours enjoying these games.

1 - Psi-Ops The Mindgate Conspiracy

Game cover

First on our list is a game I played at end of the PS2 era. Developed by Midway Games , the studio responsible for the Mortal Kombat series before it shutdown, the game was a third person shooter that also use psychic powers like telekinesis , pyrokinesis, mind control and remote view. The story was relatively good but what I liked about the game is the fact that for me it was the first action game that used super powers very well. For example I remember when I was out of ammo I used to toss enemies around like rag-dolls with telekinesis , another used of telekinesis was using a metal board to get from one ledge to another ( Felt a bit like Magneto) .Unfortunately with Midway closing it doors its sad that this franchise is practically lost forever.

Telekinesis

2 - True Crimes : Streets of New York

Game cover

If you ask me in my PS2 days to name my top 5 games, this one would have been in it.Published by Activision this was one of the first sandbox games I played outside of the gran theft auto series. As in all sandbox games you had a third person view but this game equaled the GTA series on a lot of levels. You played a policeman trying to redeem yourself after the death of your partner in a street accurate recreation of New York. Like in the GTA series you’re a gangster making his way up in True Crimes you’re a policeman working through the rankings. A part of the great story where you’re taking out the different gangs of New York, you also can respond to random disturbances for example some rockstar trashing a hotel room or my personal favorite you need to separate a marital dispute. You can also enter a lot of buildings in the city non-related to the story. You can also learn different fighting techniques from the different dojo’s in the city may it be Wing chun dojo , muay tai dojo or just a plain boxing gym. Now you’re gonna ask me why I think this game didn’t really showed up in mainstream radar well I got 2 theories , it was a released about 6 months after GTA San Andreas , and about a month after the San Andreas hot coffee mod was discovered.

View of in-game New York

I admit it was by pure luck I ran into that game but it will always stay in my gaming memories.

Arresting a felon

3 - Sleeping Dogs

Sleeping Dogs

As I mentioned earlier I fell in love with True Crimes :Strets of New York , so imagined how hyped I was when its spiritual successor , Sleeping Dogs, was coming out , and I was happy I wasn’t disappointed. Developed by the new Square-Enix joint studio continued to put you in the role of a policeman only this time you play the role of an undercover officer in Hong Kong infiltrating the triads gang. This game is one of my favorites in PS3 and has one of the best stories you will find in gaming. It is boosted by incredible voice acting by a lot of asian actors including Will Yun Lee who portrays main character Wei Shen with appearance from Byron Mann , Edison Chen , Emma Stone and Tom Wilkinson. In addition to shooting and fighting there are parkour (Free running) abilities added to the gameplay. There also possibilities for street racing and fight clubs .There are many unlockables like vehicles , gadgets and attires . Game is very well paced and as I said a very compelling story. A sequel is planned but not yet confirmed so we wait.

Will Yun Lee as Wei Shen

Parkour in Sleeping Dogs

Thank you again for reading and tell us which is your underrated action games. Have a good day.

Shiro favorite comic book writer

In any kind of media, be it movies, video games and books, it needs a good story to succeed. Welcome back to VGBM and today I’m going to talk about my favorite comic book writer, Scottish born Mark Millar.

Mark Millar

I first came into contact with Mark Millar work at my second coming of comic books. As you all know growing up in Haiti, most of the marvel comics came through translation from an French company called Semic. So when it stopped we didn't receive any new comics. But thanks to the internet and digital comics, I started to read comic books again. At the time there was the new marvel Ultimate universe where I first been exposed to Mark Millar especially ultimate X-Men.

Ultimate X-Men

The Ultimates

There was something about his vision about the marvel universe that seemed a bit more believable then the 616 universe. His characters seemed more flawed so in another words more believable for example how wolverine was sent to murder the X-men so he infiltrated the team by sleeping with Jean or the way Hawkeye killed Black Widow for being responsible for his family’s death or the way everybody tought Thor was mentally ill for thinking he was a norse god not to mention a fan favorite X-man being homosexual in the ultimate universe. You know its those little things , the ambiguous and the morally grey area of the Ultimate version of the characters that makes us come back not to mention all of the brutal fight scenes involving his different characters. But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself its true his run on The Ultimates and Ultimate X-Men put him on the map but his run on the main universe and his own personal projects really exploded his popularity in the comic world.

Civil War

If you ask anybody why Wolverine is one of my top 2 comic book characters and Mark Millar was a big reason for that with the Wolverine:Enemy of the state and Wolverine :Agent of SHIELD arcs those can be hands down one of my favorite stories of all time . So much I remember telling a friend “Mark Millar is the ****” after reading that arc. It had everything you needed in a great story, a fallen hero , many casualties and one of the most bad-ass villains ever who gave Wolverine , Electra, Nick Fury and the whole SHIELD organization a run for there money. Another great arc he did was the Marvel Civil War arc that pitted Iron Man pro-registration act against Captain America’s resistance and to prove how good that story was , I’m only gonna say that the Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 video game and the next Captain America movie will be based on that Arc.

The Gorgon : main protagonist of  Wolverine Agent of SHIELD arc.

Although Mark Millar has been writing for Marvel Comics, it should also be noted that he was the mind behind 2 great comics, Wanted and Kick-Ass and his sequels. I know most of you were disappointed with the Wanted movie starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy but I promise you that the Wanted comic is way way better and with the success of the Kick-Ass movies you can imagine how good the comics were. I have to note that the Kingsman : Secret Service movie is inspired by his comic of the same way ( But I haven’t read it yet).

Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl

Wanted poster

I know in comics there’s a long list of great writers Franck Miller, Alan Moore, Brian Michael Bendis,  Jhoss Whedon, everyone who has a certain style that attracts me to them but my admiration for Mark Millar is so strong I wanted to share it with you guys.

Feel free to leave a comment and tell us who is your favorite comic book writer.