MovieChat Forums > A Sound of Thunder (2005) Discussion > Some questions about plot problems not b...

Some questions about plot problems not brought up and an acting question

posted 16 years ago by billmcvay1
7 replies | jump to latest

I don't think I've seen Ed Burns in any other movie but does he always sound like that? I would guess he had one vocal cord or something because it was really grating and annoying like he was sick or something.

Plot Problems:

When they say that they came back from the problematic hunt weighing 1.3 grams more than when they started, did they account for the ammunition they used or are ice crystals magically weightless? They could have accounted for it afterward if they wanted but it seems sketchy to me.

And how does Ms. Hero know so much about time waves if nobody has ever seen one or acknowledge their existence? I know its year 2055 so who knows what is going on but nobody else knows anything about them and they have their own government agency.

Why the hell did they wait so long to watch the halo-disk of the failed hunt? They waited like 2 or 3 time waves which took at least 24 hours, probably closer to 48. Wouldn't that be the first thing you looked at especially after you knew something went wrong and especially after you changed something, but no they try other recourses first before anybody watches it, brilliant.

When they take the Asians back on the first hunt after the butterfly, why would killing a butterfly make a volcano erupt 5 minutes earlier than it should? I suppose theoretically something getting changed could result in big changes 65 million years later if it somehow flew far enough away from the volcano (if it could fly that far), but I doubt the volcano is like oh snap that butterfly died, now I'm so pissed I'm gonna blow.

If you can't travel back in time because of the rings but can make a wormhole back before the time waves then slingshot to the desired time, why didn't they just wormhole to right before the travel team came? Must have to do something with the energy of worm-holing right?

Has an action hero every given such a wooden performance as Ed Burns did here? I don't think he looked agitated or really raised his voice through the whole middle part of the movie when they are being chased by vines and baboon thingys and bats and sea creatures. Ben Kingsley gave an Oscar performance compared to Burns in this one.

So they have the temporal whatever governmental agency created just for TimeSafari and there appears to be about 1 employee of except that when they shut it down they are swarmed by other agents. What do these other people do in their spare time? Obviously not inspect bio-filters thats for sure. I'm also glad the government didn't have any plan in place in case something went wrong on a hunt except to shut it down and do nothing, that might be the only realistic part of the movie.

And speaking of the bio-filter, what good would it have done? They find the butterfly before they go back to the present and then what, its still dead, too late now. Or they travel back and the butterfly is disintegrated in the bio-filter, so even if it shows up or whatever the bio-filter does, the butterfly is still dead. So I'm not sure what good it would do unless a live creature was on your clothes and you went back and put it exactly where it belonged or something like that.

I also enjoyed the person who after they went to Ebbets apartment and promised them food who said "But we promised them food," I just went WOW who the hell would be concerned about that when you are trying to save the world and being chased by baboons with dinosaur tales? Especially when you have no food.

Seriously I kind of enjoyed this movie because I watched it knowing that it would be bad and have terrible CGI and that was mostly correct. The acting was better than I thought from Kingsley and much worse than anticipated from Burns, the CGI was about what I though except the water, wow did every water CGI scene look really really awful. The storyline really was kind of neat even though every time travel movie has potential plot holes but unless somebody does time travel I guess we will never know for sure. It would be cool if somebody did a real remake of this in the future. The problem is that it is a movie based on CGI so it is really expensive to make and apparently a $50 whatever million dollar budget (which I saw was $80 mil somewhere is either not enough to get it done or they just butchered it, possibly with the help of the production company going bankrupt and whatnot.

[–] SciFiSteve 16 years ago

I will answer 1 of your points, The Volcano didn't erupt early, the machine sent them back to the wrong time due to the advancing time waves.

[–] dollartheater 16 years ago

Regarding the biofilter and the butterfly, I find it strange that they would have only relied on a biofilter considering the dangers associated with something "being brought back". Sure, the 1 agent turned off the filter, so the crew relying on it thought everything was going smoothly. But considering the danger, wouldn't they have had someone inspecting the suits after each time trip? I mean the butterfly covered the entire bottom of the guy's boot, and nobody noticed? Instead, they let the customers take home the suits without them even being inspected?

I'd think there would have been some redundant precautionary steps taken since they were well aware in advance of how bad they could mess things up if they changed anything on a trip.

Trying is the first step towards failure

[–] Kasmuch1913 15 years ago

I just caught the last half of this movie today and other than the things mentioned above I thought of one more that might count as a plot hole.

I didn't see the first half so I'm assuming the city they are in is New York City or Los Angeles. How are there so many baboon/dinosaurs? I'm assuming that one baboon would make one baboon/dinosaur, so how could 50 plus be roaming this city.

What I mean is: all the zoos I've ever been to only have a troop of baboons/monkeys of maybe 20, so unless this city was located in Africa(? sorry don't know where the baboons homeland is) there shouldn't be so many for one city.

This of course is assuming they didn't splice themselves or duplicate or something.

Sorry if this sounds really stupid. It sounded more logical in my head.

[–] wormholeboy 15 years ago

The city they're in is Chicago and the origin of the baboon creatures is a complete mystery because, during Ed Burns' conversation with Catherine McCormack in his lab with the holographic lion, he alludes to all large animals other than humans having died off due to hunting and disease.

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] billmcvay1 10 years ago

There most certainly would need to be a lot of precautionary steps. Especially if a government agency was created just for it.

[–] mouserider 14 years ago

i assume the biggest flaw is how come they let the clients take their suits back home? aren't those suits supposed to be the property of the agency?

other than that, and some other lacks of safety precautions the movie was not THAT bad, i mean at least they were ambitious about it...we gotta give them credit for that....