Review of movie Project Almanac (2015)

I like science fiction movie, especially related to time travelling. Watched Project Almanac (2015), and there are quite a lot of interesting points.

[WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS]

Firstly, unlike Back to the Future (1985), time travellers going back will not meet the time travellers selves, this can be seen when the protagonist and the friends solve Quinn’s chemistry problem. Secondly, unlike Time Traveler’s Wife (2009), travelling to the past can change the future; yet in Time Traveler’s Wife the timeline is fixed, there is only one, single, timeline.

So, Project Almanac has a different time travelling concept. Let me list down the features:

  1. When the time travellers going to the past, they will change the future/present. And they can meet past self, which was not happened in the past of the time travellers. (like Back to the Future)
  2. When the time travellers going to the past again, they will not meet the time travellers selves. (unlike Back to the Future)
  3. But, if a time traveller goes to the past “again”, he will see other time travellers, but not meeting the time traveller self. (As in the case of David tries to change the conversation with Jessie.)
  4. After the time travellers make the changes at the past, when they are going back to the present, they have no memory for what is happened for the time from the back to present, yet there is “another self” doing something in between the past and present. And when they are coming back to the present, they are replacing this “another self”. (This can be seen after David makes the changes for the conversation with Jessie, and going back to his present.)

Interestingly, at the end of the movie, there are two identical cameras. This makes me immediately asked the first question, why? Because I never thought that David and the friends are using his father’s camera to record all the events. Therefore, the movie using the footage method is different from Cloverfield (2008), which is only one camera view. But, the footage at the end which shows that David and Christina found the two cameras must not be the same footage for all the time travelling events.

Okay. Now let me explain the movie in my own way so that it makes more sense, because there are somethings which do not really make sense. Firstly, let me name the David in the movie at the beginning until disappearing as David2. David2 discovered that himself appears in his 7-year-old birthday party. Let me name this “himself” as the David1. It is impossible that David1 and David2 are identical, just like the case past Quinn seeing present Quinn. David1 brings the key chain and wears the same cloth as David2 at going to the past at the end. And let me name David2’s past David at the end as David3. Hence, there are three Davids.

So, David1 go to David2’s time, to “fix something”. But it is impossible that David1 did the same thing as David2, else David2 will find the two cameras as David3. That means, David1 “fix[ed] something”, but different from David2, that is why no camera left. Consequently, David2 can find the time machine. Then, because of the time machine, David2 supposes have gone through everything similar to David1, that is why they dressed same and brought the key chain. But at the end, David2 destroyed the time machine, and left the camera to David3.

David3 at the end has a conversation with Jessie and he knows what Jessie wants to say. The only reason is that David3 already watched the video in the camera passed by David2.

So, this is an open ending. Whether David3 is going to do the same time travelling as David2 and left the camera to David4? I believe David3 will have a very different experience from David2 and David1, because he has the video that shows failure from David2. David2 failed because David1 doesn’t really “fix something”, unless David1 is purposely fixing the problem in order to produce David2. Then this will be more interesting.

Hence, the possible sequence is {1, 2, 3, …} or {1, 2, 1, 2, …}. Just enjoy the movie with your own imagination.