Before Avengers: EndGame, This Blockbuster Geeky Movie Used a Similar Time Travel Technique 10 Years Ago!!

Enjoyed watching Avengers: EndGame, arguably one of the best superhero movies of all time, if not the best? And like any of us, did the movie leave you asking questions about what you witnessed? The beauty of movies like Avengers: EndGame, Interstellar, The Dark Knight etc, is that they happily engage the viewers in filling in the blanks at places and that too, in a nice way. For years we have been talking about the spinning top at the end of Inception, but have we started hating the movie? Similarly, the whole time travel saga in Avengers: EndGame left the audience wondering how they managed it and if it makes sense. Avengers: EndGame: Confused by All the Time-Travel in Marvel’s Superhero Film? Explaining What Really Happened in Layman Terms (SPOILER ALERT)

It does, and actually, makes more sense than many of the popular Time Travel movies in Hollywood. In Avengers: EndGame, The Hulk/Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) poo-poohs movies like The Terminator, Back to the Future, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures and even Hot Tub Time Machine and what they make of time travel. According to him, any excursion to the past cannot affect your future in any way, because when you go into the past, that past becomes your new future. However, by going in the past and changing it, can create alternate realities with their own timelines and futures. This possibility of Time Travel is something many scientists support. So if you think Wolverine saved the world in X-Men: Days of Future Past, think again!

Interestingly, there has been another film, that many movie-geeks love, that uses a similar time travel theory to forward its plot, and that's the 2009 reboot of Star Trek.

This version of the popular science fiction series follows the legacy of the original Star Trek series and brings back fan-favourite characters like Spock, Captain Kirk, Uhura, Bones and others. But how do you narrate a new story while not wiping out the memories of the original series?

Easy.

Time Travel.

At the beginning of the film, we see how a Romulan warship emerges from a lightning storm (near a black hole) and destroys a Federation starship. The said starship has Kirk's father (intriguingly played by a pre-Thor Chris Hemsworth) who gets killed while trying to save his pregnant wife and the rest of crew.

This event changes the timeline for Star Trek and creates a different reality for the new trilogy to survive. In this reality, a lot of things have changed. Unlike being a responsible officer, Kirk is now a womanising brat. A seemingly asexual Spock is in love with Uhura. Also, Kirk and Spock hate each other's guts at least in the first film.

It doesn't affect the events of the original timeline in any way, as we see through the fate of an older Spock (the late Leonard Nimoy).

Later, in the same movie, we find out that the Romulan ship had come from the future who was being chased by this version of Spock. Both of them got into the black hole and travel in the past, but the Romulan ship reaches the new reality 20 years before Spock. Spock arrives in the same reality where his younger self (Zachary Quinto) exists, but the actions of the latter don't affect the former. Even when Spock's planet is destroyed, it still doesn't affect him, because he has lived that past, and this past is now his new present.

The older Spock later confuses Kirk when they meet on an ice-planet, talking about time travel dynamics, and how you should not reveal to the past self about the existence of a future self in the same timeline. You know, because of time-travelling paradoxes!

Watch the scene below:

However, towards the end of the film, we find out that older Spock was merely pulling Kirk's leg, as he not only meets younger Spock but also takes the responsibility to rehabilitate the surviving Vulcans (whose planet got destroyed).

In the sequel, the older Spock even helps the heroes by revealing the truth about the antagonist's John Harrison's real identity as Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch).

So yeah, dear Marvel, Star Trek beat your Avengers: EndGame about giving the most plausible Time Travel theory! That too, by a decade! What do you make of it?

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 03, 2019 10:10 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).