I guess it figures. I watched Butterfly Effect last week in preparation for analyzing its temporal anomalies for The Examiner, and then I ran off to Ubercon, and when I returned I could not find the disk and no one knows anything about it. One of the suspe–er, family members–did not even know we had a copy of it. Fortunately, I took copious notes, from which I was able to draft a long series of articles attempting to untangle all the timelines and incidental problems along the way. Unfortunately, I really should do some fact checking to make certain I’m not making mistakes in the details. Fortunately I found a copy of the final script on line. Unfortunately, I am pretty certain that the last stage direction in the script does not match the last action in the movie (it says Evan follows Kayleigh, but I thought I particularly noticed that he did not), and I don’t know what else might be mistaken. Fortunately, one of my sons has a copy of it which I can borrow. Unfortunately it is on his portable hard drive which I can’t easily connect to my television. Fortunately we think we can burn a backup copy of it for my use, so that will help. Meanwhile, last night and this afternoon I burned up a few hours drafting fifteen installments on the movie, covering everything from the blackouts to the interaction of multiple trips to the same time to the inconsistency of the supposed miracle to the final timeline. I have also started a last article which will summarize what does and does not work in the film, but that’s going to require me carefully to review all of the others.
Meanwhile, in other news, there has been recent attention turned to the draft of the Multiverser collectible card game (CCG). I note that this has never been mentioned in this blogless lepolt before, but then I have in the past avoided commenting on projects before they have reached a point of maturation where they’re probably not going to be stillborn. Kyler, who is co-author of the game, suddenly got some ideas for running it online and integrating the online game with cards in the real world–but I don’t want to say too much about that.
There are several sticking points with CCGs. One of them is that in order to playtest them you need to print cards, and although a lot of the bigger problems are solved by using card protector sleeves you still have to design functional cards to print to put in the sleeves. There is also the artwork problem, because there will be hundreds of unique cards even in the early releases of the game, and most of them will require unique images. Finally, if the project ultimately goes to press, it has to go to press–that is, there is no print on demand option for decks of cards, and no easy online distribution system for them. Getting cards to players is an expensive proposition that requires paying for thousands of cards up front, sorting them into prepackaged starter decks and supplement packs, and putting them where people can buy them. So we are a long way from answers to these questions, but we like some of the ideas so far.
In any event, I’ll be posting again tomorrow when I publish the next Examiner article. I’m musing about it all now–wondering whether I ought to stall Butterfly Effect and try to do a few posts on Christmas movies. Every version of A Christmas Carol including Scrooged has elements of time travel, and It’s a Wonderful Life is obviously a time travel movie as history is undone. But perhaps I should just stick to doing a list of such movies. Unfortunately it would be a short list–I’ve only seen a few of the many versions of the Dickens’ classic, and of those the best was the Mr. Magoo rendering and the worst the Mickey Mouse one (although I honestly can’t remember the Muppets version well enough to say where it falls, other than that Gonzo is very funny as Charles Dickens). I know that there are three live action versions out there, and that there is a Jim Carey version coming out this year which looks a bit slapstick (which should not surprise), but I cannot recall even whether I have seen one of them all the way through. Well, it’s one more thing to consider.
And speaking of time, I’ve spent too much of it here and had better move forward.
–M. J. Young
