Why did Hector stab Hector?
I am so confused that in my question heading, I did not even attempt to label the Hectors as 1, 2, or 3. One of them stabbed another with a pair of scissors. Why?
Hector 2 (the Hector that has used the machine one time) stabbed Hector 1 (the Hector that hasn't used the machine yet) with the scissors precisely because he remembers being stabbed and he's trying to recreate the events that led him to use the machine.
There is only one timeline in the movie, and things happen only once (the time travel rules in the movie follow Novikov's self-consistency principle). Hector just experiences them from different perspectives; in this case, the attacker and the victim.
mcp, thanks for your reply.
> precisely because he remembers being stabbed and he's trying to recreate
> the events that led him to use the machine.
OK, so why is Hector 2 trying to recreate events? Why doesn't he try to prevent Hector 1 from reaching the machine? Would he not want to avoid the entire incident?
Because he WANTS things to play out exactly the same, it's the safest way to make things go back to normal. If Hector 2 hadn't screwed things up and seemingly killed his wife, then things would have been fine. Hector 1 would have jumped into the past and Hector 2 could have gone back to his life.
If instead Hector 2 prevented Hector 1 from reaching the machine, then Hector 2 would have prevented Hector 2 from being created. But if Hector 2 was not created, then he never could have stopped Hector 1 from getting in the machine. Thus it would cause a paradox and who knows what the consequences of that would have been.
This is what I don't like about this movie. Hector is an idiot. He doesn't stop and think, he just acts out what he's seen before! It's a paradox as it would never happen the first time
shareThis is what I don't like about this movie. Hector is an idiot. He doesn't stop and think, he just acts out what he's seen before!
Hector doesn't always act out what he's experienced, remember the phone call? He wasn't trying to recreate anything at this point, yet nothing changed. And when he makes a second trip to the past to try to save his wife, he obviously isn't trying to recreate anything, on the contrary, he's trying to change things. Yet, nothing changed.
It's a paradox as it would never happen the first time
There is no first time.
There is no first time.
Bingo. Like trying to find the beginning of a circle.
Let's be bad guys. share