Big errors in this movie
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avortac — 11 years ago(April 16, 2014 11:13 PM)
"As far as time travel to the future being impossible. That is true. But they were going into the past. Since they're from the future, they can get back."
Exactly.
Because it's ALREADY HAPPENED to them, it's THEIR PRESENT that they are returning to, they are -not- returning to future. Future has not happened yet, but the present has.
Though this still raises the question, why couldn't some other people from the past return to the present (which is their future), now that it has happened (though how do you 'wait' in the 'present' for the 'future' to happen, so that you can travel to the 'present' (that used to be the 'future') anyway?)..
In other words, this movie really doesn't deserve the time and effort required to wrap one's head around how it's supposed to work, especially because the writers clearly never accomplished such a feat - wrapping their heads around the whole premise, that is.
It's easy to make time travel movies, when you don't think.. -
cmlegend — 15 years ago(May 18, 2010 06:24 PM)
Another one is when at the end Walker comes back to the future and doesn't understand what changed. I mean when young McComb gets a kick in the face, the future McComb gets a scar so when young Walker finally defeats McComb at the end, future Walker should know exactly what happened in the future right?
"Thats a pickle no doubt about it" -
sagerbj — 15 years ago(June 30, 2010 08:07 AM)
that has always bothered me. the problem is, the old walker should have died in that explosion too, because when he returns there will be 2 versions of him. the old him, which experienced the timeline of the movie, and the new him which experienced the new timeline. now there's 2 walkers walking around in 2004.
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hutsman — 15 years ago(July 18, 2010 09:24 PM)
I don't know if it's ever been mentioned before, but something that occurred to me had to do with 2004 McComb killing his former business partner in 1994. Wouldn't 1994 McComb be a prime suspect in Jack Parker's death? There were probably witnesses who could place him at the plant around the time of the murder, plus they were arguing and some people most likely knew they were having disagreements about the future of the company.
It would have been a kick in the pants for 2004 McComb to return to his time and find himself in prison for Jack Parker's murder! -
frankduxvandamme — 15 years ago(August 01, 2010 01:08 PM)
another big error is why TEC agents go back in time wearing their futuristic outfits that say TEC on them and yet traveling back in time with intent to alter the future is punishable by death. so shouldn't they try to hide their presence in the past so as not to alter the future by letting people know such an organization exists?
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jconn426 — 15 years ago(October 06, 2010 07:52 PM)
I agree, they should have had clothing from different eras available for TEC agents to wear. (If only to show Jean-Claude attempting to balance a 1920's fedora on his mullet.)
It reminds me of the circa 1970 TV show "UFO". They had an organization named "SHADO" secretly protecting Earth from alien invaders. For no possible real-world reason, everyone at SHADO's underground headquarters wore distinctive uniforms with the SHADO logo on them, including the security teams who ventured outside where anyone could see them. -
jconn426 — 15 years ago(October 06, 2010 08:24 PM)
Nopers. Like most time travel stories, TIME COP keeps things coherent for the audience by allowing Jean-Claude to remember only one version of events, presumably the first version, and then having him (and us) learn what has changed from the gang back in the control room. This plays merry hell with the plot, though, since the only one who can remember the original timeline is the TEC agent at the center of the change.
Since TEC's job is to track illegal time travel activity and then send someone back to arrest and retrieve the criminal, let's explore the following possibility:
1.) I go back in time to 1994 and tell my young self to stop contributing to my 401k and buy gold instead.
2.) In 2004 the energy signature of my time machine is detected. Fair enough.
3.) In 1994 my 2004 self is caught and taken back to 2004.
Now, what happens if that goes a little differently?
3.) The TEC agent kicks my 1994 self in the face when he attempts to grab and use the TEC agent's gun.
4.) I go blind.
5.) I never time travel back to 1994 to tell myself to buy gold.
There, the whole reason for Jean-Claude to be in 1994 has disappeared. How does he explain his arrival back in 2004 when he had no reason to go back to 1994?????? -
jconn426 — 15 years ago(January 07, 2011 09:31 AM)
As I believe someone else already pointed out, the movie should have immediately shifted back to 2004 once McComb was destroyed. He was the one who initiated this whole chain of events starting in the year 2004. If he mysteriously disappeared in 1994 (as Van Damme's boss points out), then no one would have hired or blackmailed anyone to go back in time from 2004 to steal money or kill Van Damme '94, and therefore Van Damme 2004, the hired guns, and the bomb shouldn't be there after McComb goes "poof".
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horrorgasm — 15 years ago(February 14, 2011 01:26 AM)
there's also the fun paradoxes like if his wife hadn't been killed by time altering designed to stop Walker from interfering, Walker probably never would never have interfered in the first place and really McComb should have just won immediately without anyone ever knowing, because angry wifeless interfering Walker should never have existed to begin with.
or if McComb only dies in 1994 because of the influence and "space sharing" of his 2004 selfthen how can he live until 2004 to influence and kill himself in 1994? (in fact if everything was erased who called 1994 McComb and told him to come over to Walker's house?) so then wouldn't he either just suddenly be alive again? or would reality just explode because of the sheer lack of sense? who knows -
solitaire40 — 12 years ago(September 09, 2013 03:06 AM)
Yes I was thinking the same thing. When McComb goes poof I kept waiting for the bomb to just disappear along with the bad guys. His wife should also not have a bullet wound. But the house explodes anyway and then reappears with the same crappy paint job in 2004 at the end.
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sanddragon939 — 11 years ago(April 19, 2014 10:33 PM)
There are clearly inconsistencies in how time travel is supposed to work in this movie. Apparently, changing the past doesn't affect the time-traveler from the future(which is why Max always remembers the original history), and yet, when younger McComb gets hit, the older McComb instantly gets a scar.
Its also unclear if altering history such that the time-traveler never went back undoes all his changes to the past or not.
For instance, consider the ending. So, because Aaron McComb 'disappeared' ten years ago, no one heard of him as a Presidential candidate. But we also see that name 'Parker Datalink' when Max returns. But technically, McComb killed Parker BEFORE the events in the house when Max killed him and his younger self. So shouldn't Parker have still been dead? Unless preventing McComb from time-traveling erases all his incursions into the pastin which case, why does Max remember what happened?
In any case, here's a nice series of articles analyzing the time-travel issues with this movie. Its still a work in progress-
http://www.mjyoung.net/time/examiner.html#timecop -
crockett_john — 11 years ago(August 14, 2014 09:55 PM)
I remember that thing about the same matter existing in two times being an issue in the Dean Koontz book, "Lightning." In that book, people could ony travel to the future and could never visit the same time twice. When you write a book or a movie about time travel, you get to make up the rules and rewrite the laws of physics, but it helps if they make them understandable to the audience.
My bio isn't blank.
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viking-fjord_90 — 10 years ago(September 11, 2015 07:01 PM)
They can go back to the future since the future they come from is their past/presentit's only the future for the 1994-versions of the same peoplei.e. van Damme wouldn't be able to bring back his 1994-self to his own present.
However, what I do find silly is the fact that they could go back in time to an era where the time machine didn't exist. Any change in the timeline before the time machine was invented would be impossible, because the changes could prevent the creation of the time machine itself. If the time machine is never created, the person would never go back in time in order to make the changes to eliminate the time machinethis paradox is better known as "The Grandfather Paradox".
So, if they really could go back in time they would be like ghosts. They wouldn't be able to interact with any people or surroundings that would change the course of history. Where does this leave us? Well, from the day timetravel was made possible, they would have to wait 10 years in order to go back 10 years (the same date as the machine was created)or they could actually just use the machine and skip those 10 years instantly, though it wouldn't be smart when you don't know what you're going to (imagine skipping 10 years and the entire planet is a wasteland from nuclear war and you succumb to radiation, heat, cold or whatever before being able to escape back in time.
To summarize: It would be more logical being able to travel to the future able to contain the consequences of the time machine already invented, rather than going back to the past before the machine was invented. Though the safest thing would be to just live normally in the present, into the future, and then travel back to whatever time after the invention was made. -
FlyingPie — 10 years ago(September 11, 2015 07:33 PM)
However, what I do find silly is the fact that they could go back in time to an era where the time machine didn't exist. Any change in the timeline before the time machine was invented would be impossible, because the changes could prevent the creation of the time machine itself.
Not necessarily - I think it depends on what they do in the past. Not everything they do in the past would necessarily interfere with the creation of the time machine. For instance, they could travel into the past and go on vacation in Jamaica.. That (and many other things they could potentially do) should have no bearing on the creation of the time machine.We have clearance, Clarence.
Roger, Roger. What's our vector, Victor?