Ok but ultimately lazy film. Asks questions but doesn't bother answering

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I agree that it is fairly lazy. But i do not think that it is intended to be a serious look at time travel and potential paradox. Many movies handle that better. If you were alive and paying attention in 1980, think back about what was going on. If you weren't, go do some research.

We (the United States of America) had been under the leadership of a bland, I would say a milquetoast President for four years. The movie began production as early as 1979. The F-14, the most dramatic if not necessarily the best air-to-air fighter in the world at the time is six years old. The Nimitz class aircraft carrier is five years old. The United States wins the Gold Medal for Hockey in the 1980 Winter Olympics in February. We boycott the Summer Olympics in August because they are in Moscow and President Carter is made at the Soviet Union over Afghanistan. Iran has had a revolution, thrown out the Shaw, and is holding forty Americans hostage in the former US Embassy.

This movie is intended as a showcase for the capabilities of the US Navy. As a feel good heart pumper for the good 'ol USA. I love the country, so I love the movie, but I don't need it to love the country and the military more. In 1980 I was stationed at Clark Air Base in the Republic of the Philippines and happily kicking commie butt.

So, the storm is hokey and the time paradoxes are barely explored. The movie is more about how powerful we had become.

It might be more interesting to go back and look at how powerful we were in 1940 to 1945. In those years we produced 80 percent of the world's petroleum products, between a quarter and a third of all the steel, half of all the airplanes, and so on.

It's fair to criticize the movie for not being what you would like to have seen. But if you are going to enjoy it try to see what it is rather than what you wanted it to be.

The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.

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Thanks for starting a discussion on this, comedyfish. When I was a wee lad and saw this in the theater, I thought it was a heaping helping of cool. Seeing it now as an adult, I too found it thematically lacking. At first I thought the movie was going to go in a very interesting direction. I envisioned a fundamental conflict between Cdr. Owens and Capt. Yelland: Owens wants to do everything in his power to prevent the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yelland, however, looks at the bigger picture. He understands that it was the attack that mobilized the hearts and minds of Americans to go to war, and that preventing the attack might have delayed America's entry into the war, possibly allowing the Axis powers to gain the upper hand. The movie tap-danced around this idea, but it dropped the ball. Maybe the filmmakers had a failure of nerve?

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I'm not sure what else the ending could have realistically been. If they did change history like that, they'd have to invent a whole new future likely 40 or so years ahead of where we are aside from the changes to WWII. It's very hard to do that when the movie (at least the beginning and end) takes place in the present time. People relate to their world. A whole new future much more radical than even Back to the Future would be harder to swallow

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I was going to rewatch this but now I remember how lame this stupid movie was, so I'll pass.

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Martin sheen's character was all over the place. One minute we can't change history then suddenly we have the ability to change everything that went wrong in the last 40 years. Again no discussion.

You're mistaken. He said almost from the beginning that "It opens up some amazing possibilities." He was the one that was open-minded and first to accept that it really could be time travel. It was Owen that argued "I have a suspicion that history will be a little more difficult to beat than you imagine."

Then the storm comes at the right time. Quite poor story telling but still I enjoyed this film as a Sunday afternoon type flick.

The "right time" is the time it had always happened. Even before they went back from 1980, the Nimitz had appeared and disappeared in 1941. Just nobody knew about it except Owen/Tideman. If anybody knew where to look, they would have found wreckage of the helicopter even before the movie began. You might as well argue that the storytelling in The Terminator was bad because Sarah Connor just happened to figure out at the last moment how to destroy the terminator sent to kill her. She did it because it was all history before the terminator was ever sent back.

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First off I have relatively low interest in the air force of Navy (especially US) but this film really looks good in terms of behind the scenes workings of an aircraft carrier.

Naval Aviation. No one says "Air Force of Navy" (except you)

But the plot of the film. Interesting question is asked but a cop out ending means it never has to be answered.

Not a cop out. This film adheres to a school of thought on time travel not regularly explored in time travel films and is one you are not accustomed to.

I guess by heading away from the storm it implies the captain was ready to change history. But there was no real discussion about it.

there does not need to be a discussion about it. the Captain made a decision and gave orders.

Martin sheen's character was all over the place. One minute we can't change history then suddenly we have the ability to change everything that went wrong in the last 40 years. Again no discussion.

Actually you are wrong. Sheen's Character, Laskey, was all about "think of the possibilities". It was Owens, who was against interfering with History.
It was discussed. They argued about it.
YOU missed it, or didn't get it.

Then the storm comes at the right time. Quite poor story telling but still I enjoyed this film as a Sunday afternoon type flick.

the storm showing up is not poor story telling. It is your lack of an ability to grasp and make a conjecture as to a logical possibility as to why it showed up the second time.

In this case, whatever caused the time storm in the first place created an imbalance in the timeline that, like a rubber band stretched to it's limit, suddenly springs back into equilibrium. the second storm was Time trying to restore balance, by pulling objects out of time back to the time they belong in. Obviously only larger amounts triggered this spring back pull to the present. a single person by himself was not enough to trigger a second storm in a second location. Which would be why Owens was not pulled back but the Carrier, and the airborne formation of planes were.

I watch a lot if sci-fi and time travel stuff so maybe I was expecting too much.

No, you're just too indoctrinated into a single school of though on time travel as that is the only one ever shown by Hollywood because it makes for more exciting stories. So you expect this film to be the same. It's not.

what is it? Basically a nice behind the scene look at the US Navy

For the most part. Yeah. A Showcase of not only the Navy Carrier's capabilities, but also how far we have comer in technology since WW2.

Some of the scenes even seen rather forced and out of place. Deliberate in order to showcase some capability.

Captain Yelland's rather overly dramatic and overacted:

"I need to get a clearer picture of all this"
{Pause...}
"LET'S GO TO CIC!"

..Is a perfect example.



I joined the Navy to see the world, only to discover the world is 2/3 water!

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I just recently saw it for the first time in years.

It's a good movie, but it's no Back To The Future. Not all time travel movies are the same, people!

It has some weird things in it, like the old age make up for Owens and his wife that looks just stupid  (but what movie ever gets old age make up right?) or the first time travel scene (what the hell is Kirk Douglas doing with his hands ?!?). And if they just cut/trimmed some of the 'a-day-on-the-Nimitz-scenes', it would be better I think.

But in the end, it's a good movie. It's a cult movie for lovers of time travel and/or the United States Navy.

And in the end, it makes you think. Even though there was no way the Nimitz could have stayed in the past (with the fixed timeline and all that), just imagine the second storm never came, and think of the firepower of such a ship/F14's in the 1940's (just like Lasky says). WW2 would have been very different.

Conclusion:
I give it 7 Kirk-Douglas-catching-flies out of 10.

I'm just on my way up to Clavius.

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