So how did they actually MEET? - The Time Traveler's Wife (2009) Discussion

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] bradknopf 12 years ago

There was no actual "first" meeting. Each meeting was the first for either Clare or Henry.

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[–] Sleight_of_Mind 12 years ago

the first time that clare met henry was in the meadow.
the first time that henry met clare was in the library.
the library was their first meeting that wasn't during his time traveling.

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[–] eskimo_blaz 12 years ago

NO!

It doesn't make sens! When was the first time they met AS STRANGERS!! This is the definition of meeting someone for the FIRST time! They must have been strangers to each other before their first encounter!

When they meet each other (in the field or in the library), one of them already knows the other!

There MUST be a time and place where they BOTH didn't know each other!

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[–] Jelly21 12 years ago

There MUST be a time and place where they BOTH didn't know each other!

Why must there be ? As has been stated Claire's first encounter with Henry was in the meadow. She had never met him before in her personal timeline. Henry's first encounter with Claire was in the library. He had never met her before in his personal timeline.

You are correct that they do not actually have a "their first meeting". It's "Claire's first meeting with Henry" and "Henry's first meeting with Claire" which are two entirely separate meetings.

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[–] Rubes23 12 years ago

The book explains it better then I ever can.

Henry tends to get drawn to moments or people he has strong attachments to.

In the present/future, he has strong ties to Claire, so ends up drawn to time periods in her life.

Therefore, Henry's first meeting with Claire is in the library, although she already knew they would meet and get married, Henry did not, because Henry from THEIR future got drawn (time travelled) to her childhood (like an involentary reflex).

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[–] Steamboy 12 years ago

They meet for the first time as strangers in the library. But this is not shown in the movie (I don't know if it is in the book, I haven't read it), because the past has already been altered by him. This is quite complicated and requires an effort of understanding but it does make sense.

If there was a timeline, it would go like this maybe (with SPOILERS):

- Young Henry has an accident, his mom dies.
Time travel begins, we don't know where he goes, it doesn't matter at that point.
- One day, when he's an adult, he meets Clare at the library.
Neither of them know each other (so this is NOT what you see in the movie), they gradually fall in love.
Because of that he starts travelling back in time to her.
- He meets her when she's a young child, a little older, then a teen.
Every time they talk, it changes their future chance meeting at the library, because she knows more and more about him.
- Eventually comes the day they meet at the library. It still happens out of luck, because he's never told her about that it seems, but now she knows him well.

That said, I think he could have prevented what happened to him. I don't buy the "I tried to change things but they keep happening."

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[–] Jelly21 12 years ago

They meet for the first time as strangers in the library. But this is not shown in the movie (I don't know if it is in the book, I haven't read it), because the past has already been altered by him. This is quite complicated and requires an effort of understanding but it does make sense.

If there was a timeline, it would go like this maybe (with SPOILERS):

- Young Henry has an accident, his mom dies.
Time travel begins, we don't know where he goes, it doesn't matter at that point.
- One day, when he's an adult, he meets Clare at the library.
Neither of them know each other (so this is NOT what you see in the movie), they gradually fall in love.
Because of that he starts travelling back in time to her.
- He meets her when she's a young child, a little older, then a teen.
Every time they talk, it changes their future chance meeting at the library, because she knows more and more about him.
- Eventually comes the day they meet at the library. It still happens out of luck, because he's never told her about that it seems, but now she knows him well.

That said, I think he could have prevented what happened to him. I don't buy the "I tried to change things but they keep happening."

Where do you get all that from ? That is not what is shown in the movie and it is not what is written in the book. Some time-travel fiction does use the concept that trips to the past alter the present but this story is not one of them.

The premise in this time-travel story seems to be that any trip to the past or future that a time-traveller makes is already written right into the universal time-line.

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[–] JW-7 12 years ago

Anybody see or read Slaughterhouse 5? A time traveler gets killed by a maniac that he has met time and again through his time travels. Why? Because it has always happened this way and will always happen this way. Same answer here. Why do they meet how and when and where they do? Because they always have and always will.

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[–] 12 years ago

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[–] gcronau 9 years ago

Only if you accept the myth of pre-destination. That the universe/god/nature/whatever has a "plan", and that said plan can't altered.

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[–] wdllofzepia 11 years ago

You forgot the lotto win? When He was in the future and got the numbers, it wasn't his then wife who won the numbers. He changed the timeline by playing the lotto with the winning numbers.

This means that there is only one timeline that matters (since her memories of him remain while she gets older and he never goes back to a timeline where they have never met).
Basically their meeting history goes like this.
Her timeline is the basic, the one everything is based on, the only one that matters.
At first they don't know each other, they meet as adults for the first time, he starts traveling back in time near her. He meets her in his time travels for the first time when she is a kid. Her timeline changes so when he is in the future (her timeline), her timeline has changed so that she now knows him and she introduces herself to him again.
It's basically time travel Star Trek 101.
:)

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[–] bradknopf 11 years ago

"He changed the timeline by playing the lotto with the winning numbers. "

You can only say he changed the timeline if you know for a fact in the future he did not win the lotto, and then he did something to make himself win. Of course, that is not shown, so you can't claim he changed anything.

Just because he cheated by using the numbers, it doesn't mean he changed something. His cheating and winning were part of the time line. He couldn't NOT have cheated, because the timeline says that on that certain day he used his knowledge of the future to win.

Every single one of us makes decisions that affect the future, but we are destined to make those particular choices, just as Henry is. The only difference is that Henry gets advance looks at how those choices turn out, and we don't. We feel we are making the future, but Henry knows that is an illusion because he does get the opportunity to see the future, and knows it can't be changed. The past, present and future have always existed just the way they are.

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[–] wdllofzepia 11 years ago

You are assuming too much and have zero proof for any.

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[–] bradknopf 11 years ago

The movie has pretty much no answers. Everything is in the book. This movie is a horrible adaptation- taking a great story and barfing out a low-grade chick flick.

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[–] dldhistory 10 years ago

sadly I totally agree..I felt the movie was poorly put together..(of course from my male perspective) at points in the movie.. I almost felt like his time travel was in the plot just to irate his wife..since very little ever happened in his trips..other than stealing clothes and then running..

another part that made me shake my head was Clare knew he was a time traveler her whole life.. then as his wife she gets mad at him for time traveling and leaving her all alone..

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[–] hw5050 9 years ago

Life is a hunt.

The entire situation revolves around the meadow. Cause that's where he dies. He keeps returning to the meadow as coming full circle.

The twist:
He dies there because he met Clare who's father ends up killing him. If he hasn't met Clare he would never have been in the meadow and never would have been killed by her father whom he never would have met.

Life is hunt.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] slemmet 11 years ago

No, that would be you. Instead of accepting how time travel works in the movie you make up your own version of it.

When he gave his wife the numbers, that means he got the numbers from the future. That's all we know. He could have just walked past a newsstand or whatever during the time travel to the future, made a note of the numbers, and then he was returned to his normal time. If anyone won the lottery or not, he probably had no clue, but if he had been there at the right time, he would have seen his wife win the lottery, because that is in fact what she did. He could have been there watching himself give the ticket to his wife, just like he watched himself lying dying. His wife won the lottery, period, there is no "if he didn't give the numbers". He did give the numbers, so she won. If you can't grasp that, then you are not getting how time travel is portrayed in the movie. The whole movie must be very confusing for you, when in fact it is perfectly clear how things work.

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[–] bradknopf 11 years ago

I guess it's clear how it works, but it does require some heavy brain lifting to discard our life-long perception of time for the way it works in this story.

People are hung up on the idea that if Henry is traveling in time and DOES SOMETHING, then whatever he does is changing events. That is not necessarily true.

Everyone, Henry and normal people, can affect their future, though they can't CHANGE it. What ever they end up doing is CORRECT. Henry is the only person who can get a look at the future, then return to his own time and find that when that future time comes up that NOTHING can happen other than what he saw before.

Most films about time travel involve people traveling to the future, then changing some event. This is completely different.

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[–] Insomniatic102 9 years ago

He said in the movie that he can't change things. Therefore they were always going to cheat and win the lottery.

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[–] sallyjrw 11 years ago

For all we know he traveled to the future and saw in the newspaper that they won with such and such numbers. He memorized the numbers and went back to buy the ticket where he gave it to his wife. Considering that the whole premise of the movie was that he can't change the future even though he knows the future, I'd say that makes more sense.

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[–] rattusprat 11 years ago

This movie is consistent with time travel type 3 on http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TimeTravel - stable time loop. This follows Terminator rules (the first movie, the others are not stable time loops). You cannot ask what happened in the "original" timeline before the terminator was sent from the future, because then John Conner would never have been born, and why would Skynet ever feel the need to send the Governator back to Governate his mom, so why would Kyle Reece be sent back to protect her? There is only one timeline.

You are trying to apply Back To The Future rules, where changing the timeline is possible, to a movie where a stable time loop is the best fit.

At least you were not trying to apply Timerider rules, which are just plain silly.

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[–] StrayCat1000 11 years ago

... Some time-travel fiction does use the concept that trips to the past alter the present but this story is not one of them. ...

You claim that "this story is not one" in which "trips to the past alter the present"???

In Henry's visits to the past he repeatedly entices an innocent & young girl, barely in her teens, to fall in love with him, and convinces her to look out for him in the future!!! This has a profound effect which encompasses Clare's entire life!

How can you possibly claim Henry's time travel has no influence on the future???

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[–] Insomniatic102 9 years ago

Because that already happened. He isn't changing anything. The Claire he met before going back to the little girl had already met him when she was a little girl.

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[–] brian-cartwright2 7 years ago

There wasn't, and that's the paradox. Claire met Henry before he met her.

With time travel, there's both a global and a local perspective - where the global is the linear progression of time that everyone else sees, while the local is the personal memory of the person who jumps around in time.

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[–] IMDB_Vits 11 years ago

It's like with the chicken and the egg. The movie uses the time travel rules that everything is always meant to be just one way.

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[–] 11 years ago

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[–] 11 years ago

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[–] dperth-33500 7 years ago

How they met is open to interpretation. But to me they met because Henry involuntarily time traveled back to Clare's childhood. The movie is called Time Traveler's Wife because it's about her point of view. And it was her experiences as a child that caused her to fall in love with him and anticipate their future together. If that had never happened, none of it would have ever happened. Chronologically this was also their first meeting.

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[–] CaraMSchec 7 years ago

okay, so I'm really late to this discussion (and on seeing this movie)

First: to reiterate what some others said to answer the Original Question: There is no "first meeting" were both of them are strangers to each other. It's time travel, that can happen. Claire first meets Henry as a stranger (to her) when she's a child in the meadow and he is time traveling back in time. Henry first meets Claire as a stranger (to him) in the library. Again, time travel, enough said.

Second: people started discussing whether or not Henry could change the future. The answer is we don't know. We only know he CAN'T CHANGE THE PAST. As in he can't stop his mother's death. We don't know if he can change the future because we never see him try to change it. However we do know that nothing he does changes certain things he sees in his future (his daughter, the fact he dies when his daughter is 5). To be fair it's not like he knows how he's going to die though, which would make it hard for him to try and stop it.

Which brings me to my Third Part: Is this a stable time loop? Or is he changing the past each time he sees Claire in the meadow. Well from what they show us it appears to be a stable time loop, as when he comes back nothing seems to have changed for Claire. Also the fact that Claire seems to remember all the meetings before they have happened to Henry does make it seem that they are inevitable and thus a stable time loop.

However, this does not mean that nothing we do changes things. This does not prove (or disprove) the idea of Destiny vs Free Will. It just means that the time lines Henry sees are the ones we creates. But it's possible that time isn't as liner as most people think so it's possible that free will is still a thing even if a time traveler only sees one possible future.

Finally, no Henry does not try to seduce Claire when she's a child. The most we see him do is talk to a girl who is playing alone in the meadow. He doesn't tell her things about the future. He doesn't tell her they will be married (even after the little girl says she wishes it was so). He in no way breeds Claire to be his wife. All I see is a guy who is nice to a lonely child, that doesn't have to be twisted into something it's not.

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