MovieChat Forums > Millennium (1989) Discussion > What's the deal with the watches?

What's the deal with the watches?

posted 19 years ago by EvadRepus
6 replies | jump to latest

I just watched this movie for the first time since it was on HBO in the early 90's, and it reminded of something that bothered me when I first saw it (and there was no IMDB back then!). While looking thru the wreckage of the '89 crash, the investigators come across several digital watches running backwards. They mention the watches in passing a couple more times later in the movie, but the backwards thing is never explained. These future beings have mastered time travel; they have technology that can remotely control things like escalators and cars; they can immitate a past eras clothing and customs; they can even reproduce doomed people right down to their teeth and fingerprints, but can't they can't reproduce a $5.00 Casio watch correctly? That's always bugged me.

<INSERT HUMOROUS QUOTE HERE>

[–] khu 19 years ago

Maybe it's an irreversible side effect of the Gate travel on certain things. They had to send their $5 casios through the Gate, after all.

[–] gfedcba12345 19 years ago

It's better explained in the book. The Gate created all sorts of really strangs effects when it was in operation, and despite their best efforts, the controllers weren't always able to supress all of them. For instance, at one point the gate appears a full quarter mile away from where it's supposed to.
The watches counting back are caused by one of these side effects.
I don't remember if the movie covered it, but they also found a bunch of mechanical watches, all of which were 45 minutes fast due to the time spent in the future before being sent back through the gate onto the plane again.

P.S. The book, also titled Millennium, is far batter than the movie.

[–] 19 years ago

[deleted]

[–] erikriveros 12 years ago

i hope i never get the mouth poop

it is better to have a gun and not need it, than to need a gun and not have it

[–] DrWhen 12 years ago

I think of that every time this shows up on cable. My theory at one point was they weren't good any making antiquated devices in the future and just messed them up.

[–] MrCottonsParrot 11 years ago

It's possible these anomalies were influenced by the anomalies in the original space film 'Solaris' 1972. The alien planet tried to observe our world and reproduce it, but made glaring mistakes in the details that looked totally odd to us,

such as:

. The appearance of a baby that was 12 feet high.

. And a woman wearing a dress that had no zip or fastener, so there was no way she could have got the dress on.

(When I say "the original" space film Solaris, I mean as opposed to the remake of Solaris 2002 with George Clooney. Millennium was not a remake of Solaris).

"Champagne for my real friends, and real pain for my sham friends..."