Time travel..Pro or Con ?

[W8IN4KAL-EL]

I was just wondering how you all feel about the subject of 'time travel'.I personally can not stand it because it takes all the fun out of things.Superman did it in the movie when Lois dies and the flash has done it countless of times. I think it 'cheapens' the stories because, no matter what happens, they can always go back and change it . It's the equivalent of at the end of a stories or movie one is told it was only a 'dream'..Just my two cents.

[Carabas]

It's like any other plot device or trope: it depends on how it is used.

Most of the time, time travel is not used in the way you describe.

[Outside_85]

I think timetravel can lead to some fun and interesting stories if handled properly. Like showcasing that it is actually very hard to actually do and the ramifications could be enormous if something goes wrong, like the following:

-Flashpoint, Zoom goes back and trips time in certain places to make sure the world as we knew it turned out very differently.
-Titans Tomorrow and the followup, the trip to the 31st century was fine, but the really interesting part is TT meeting their future selves, try to prevent them happening when they get home, only the future follows them back trying to make itself happen.

The alternative is ofcourse to tell something like Marvel is currently doing with the lines of Civil War 2... as in asking the question: is the future mallable? can it be changed? or is it set in stone and nothing can actually change it?

A poor time travel story however is, as you say when its just used to quickly undo certain events... like Superman reversing time.

[W8IN4KAL-EL]

https://comicnewbies.com/2016/06/28/...gods-among-us/

I like what the Flash in 'Injustice gods among us' said about not changing time.

[Outside_85]

https://comicnewbies.com/2016/06/28/...gods-among-us/

I like what the Flash in 'Injustice gods among us' said about not changing time.

I think he is right to a degree, and it is a question of morals in this case.

Yes the injustice-verse is terrible, but Barry is weighting up the other end of the problem; if he went back through time and changed something, it could actually turn out much worse than how it is now... like what if the dictatorial brute Superman wasn't around to hammer Kalibak down, or what if the GLC came calling again? (It's taking the devil you know)

[W8IN4KAL-EL]

Just thought of something..When whom ever goes back and changes the current reality (i.e when Superman changed time to save Lois) does that reality cease to exist or does it become some sort of parallel reality? I think of a dvd that you can erase and record over many times..The items that are 'erased' are not really. They are just dubbed over.

[Outside_85]

Just thought of something..When whom ever goes back and changes the current reality (i.e when Superman changed time to save Lois) does that reality cease to exist or does it become some sort of parallel reality? I think of a dvd that you can erase and record over many times..The items that are 'erased' are not really. They are just dubbed over.

In the movie, no, Superman just arrived on time to save her instead of being late.
The the comics, technically there is a billion alternate timelines out there where things had been done differently. They are all 'proper' timelines in their own right, and only alternate to the one we readers are normally following, so yes you could consider them to be parrallel dimensions.

[Lightning Rider]

I prefer it used to revisit or even cause the past as known by the traveler.

It's silly but I subscribe to the belief that you can't change the past, because the past influenced your decision to go back in the first place. So it should loop. Though I can't say it bothers me too much when things are changed here and there. It shouldn't be easy and convenient, and almost never is for the characters.

It should be used sparingly, but I can say some of my favorite moments in comics have come out of time travel. One in particular is a favorite:

[dancj]

I love a good time travel story. Very few good time travel stories make it possible to just go back and fix everything.

What they did at the end of Superman The Movie was a terrible cop-out ending.

[Jim Kelly]

So are we supposed to judge time travel fiction with the yardstick of SUPERMAN THE MOVIE? That seems an unfair measure.

To me, STM isn't a time travel story. It has one deus ex machina scene where Superman does something confusing and somehow changes his reality. But it happens late in the movie, it's never referred to again and it's not the point of the movie. This is not a movie about time travel. Donner didn't even want to use the reversing the Earth device at that point in the story. You could plug any other deus ex machina device in there--let's say Jor-El big head tells Kal-El there's a crystal in the Fortress he can only use once to save someone he loves--that would have done the same trick.

A time travel movie uses time travel as its foundation. So that's something like BACK TO THE FUTURE. Time travel stories are some of my favourite stories, but they need internal consistency. I don't believe that time travel actually exists (not the way it's shown in fiction) but as a fictional device it has to have its own logic. This is why the deus ex machina in SUPERMAN THE MOVIE is relatively inoffensive, because it's only used once--so consistency of use never enters into the equation. But time travel stories use the device over and over--and they get themselves into trouble when they use it differently every time.

[Trey Strain]

It's created some great stories but it's quite problematic.

[The Darknight Detective]

Time travel is fine as long as 1) you can't change the established past, 2) you can change the established past, but not without some other unintended changes occurring, or 3) you can change the established past without any unintended consequences, but it's a different timeline that you're existing in and your original timeline would not be affected.

[Anthony Shaw]

I like the "fixed point in time" concept in Doctor Who. Some events should not be changed in order to maintain the integrity of the time stream.

Also, I loved Superboy traveling into the future to have adventures with the Legion.

[Zero Hunter]

Time travel is fine when it is used the right way. The Booster Gold series showed how to use it right. They even took the "fixed point" thing from Doctor Who making it so some events just could not be changed no matter how hard you tired which I like. Even when Superboy would go to the future with the Legion they latter said that Saturn Girl took away any memories that might affect his future before sending him home.

If you want an example of a writer not having any clue how to use Time Travel just look at the Age of Ultron event over at Marvel. Wolverine goes back and kills Hank Pym and yet none of the effects of taking such a major character out are even hinted at. That is the pinacle of how NOT to use time travel. On the other hand Marvel had one of the best when Legion accidentaly killed his father Charles Xavier in the past which set of the Age of Apocoylypse story. It showed the massive effects taking out a major character can have on the universe.

[DevilBat66]

I hate time travel stories. They just suck.