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2055: Time travel has been invented. But who owns the only working time
machine ? Charles Hatton (Ben Kingsley), a rich and ruthless businessman
of course, who offers rich people travels back to 65 million years ago to
kill a dinosaur. The theory behind it is that if you kill the dinosaur
only minutes before it dies anyway, like in a volcano eruption, that
wouldn't alter history, and if noone leaves anything behind in the past or
brings anything back then everything's fine - an arguable theory at best,
but it makes Hatton lots of money, and to quiet his conscience, he has
hired a top scientist, Travis Ryer (Edward Burns), to be on his team. Only
Sonia Rand (Catherine McCormack), the original inventor of the time
machine, is shocked about what her invention is used for and predicts
desaster to strike ... and despite security protocols, desaster of course
strikes when one of Hatton's clients steps onto and kills a butterfly back
in prehistory ... and suddenly the present is starting to change.
Of course, now Ryer and Sonia have to team up to find out what actually
happened and how to set it right, while time changes in waves (waves that
actually hurl people though the air and stuff), first only simple
creatures are concerned, but since the death of this butterfly actually
fucked up evolution, it's only a matter of time until higher animals -
like humans - are concerned as well.
Soon enough, the city has turned into a jungle thanks to the timewaves,
and a bunch of weird monsters have come out of seemingly nowhere ... and
now Ryer, Sonia and company have to chase through town to figure out what
has actually happened and how to set it right, and once they have figured
everything out, they still have to cross town to get to a timemachine, and
in the process, all of their friends are killed, and they are, among other
things, attacked by a giant seasnake in the subway tunnels (really). Of
course, they finally make it, and Ryer is sent back to the past just in
time, only seconds before the last of the timewaves transforms Sonia into
a grotesque ape-like being (interestingly enough, the timewave though
leaves all the buildings standing, even though the humans who built them
were wiped out). Ryer does what he has to do, he keeps the guy from
stepping on the butterfly, has just enough time to tell his assistant
(Jemima Rooper) there is a glitch in the system, then he disappears for
good ... because now that time has changed back, the Ryer who saved time
from being changed can no longer exist ...
However, Ryer's assistant gives Ryer's message to the other Ryer, and
he prepares to shut down Hatton's shop with the help of Sonia - whom this
Ryer hardly knows at all ...
Silly, silly, silly. The premise of this film - if you change only the
tiniest bit in earth's prehistory past, you might destroy the whole
evolution and man might never come into being - is intelligent and
interesting from a science fiction point of view. The film built on that
premise though is anything but intelligent and interesting, it's a
mindless desaster movie that borrows freely from similar sci-fi desasters
as well as the equally silly Jurassic Park, and urges everyone only
remotely interested in time travel theory to leave his brains at the door.
The idea of timewaves that cange history just one piece at a time is
simply ridiculous, and when they start throwing around people and things
it just gets stupid. And when all the buildings are left standing after
humankind has been wiped out, you just get the feeling that someone hasn't
done his homework. Plus, why do all the creatures turn into monsters once
evolution is altered ? Besides the story shortcomings, the film also
suffers from rather terrible CGI-effects, ranging from unconvincing
dinosaurs to unimpressive futuristic cars travelling the streets and wide
range shots of a futuristic city - here less would definitely have been
more.
That all said, I have to admit A Sound of Thunder is not the
worst of Hollywood's current crop of sci-fi-B-pictures with an A-budget,
especially director Roland Emnmerich has made - with more or less similar
themed films like Independence Day (1996) or The Day After
Tomorrow (2004) - movies that are far more or an insult to the
thinking man and sci-fi-fan alike. A Sound of Thunder at least
lacks the embarassing pathos of Emmerich's films, it's just a so-so sci-fi
no-brainer with a few dinos and monsters and a few ok action scenes,
nothing less, but certainly nothing more.
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