New Nerd Talk!!! Nerd Talk is where some of the Nerds here at SWN answer questions from you, the fans, about Nerd culture. This week we talk about our Favorite Time Travel Movie, also check out our last Nerd Talk HERE where we talk about our Favorite Classic Horror Monsters. Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel HERE, we have some video Nerd Talks up right now and we will continue to do our video toy reviews and Live Streams in the future. Thanks for reading and if you got a question to ask the Nerds you can email us at Snarfkris@Gmail.com and make sure to comment with your own answers in the comment section below or on the FB page HERE.
Raz
Favourite time travel film? That’s easy! BILL & TED OF-COURSE!!! I don’t care what anyone else says whether they think it’s “Back To The Future”, “Terminator” or any others for me this is THE ultimate time-travel film. I grew up wishing I could do what they did, so much so infact that I used to go into phone booths and just press buttons pretending to be them. These guys were the coolest dudes ever to a kid who grew up in the 90’s and watching them interact with these historical figures (who even taught me a thing or two) and bring them into the modern age was hilarious, let’s not forget they had the awesome Rufus as-well who showed adults could be cool (only George Carlin could play this part).
One thing I love about this film is that all seriousness goes out the window, they completely fuck up the time continuum and in theory should have ruined the world as we know it, yet they don’t care just along as they pass their history exam! You cannot take this film seriously and I love that, I’ve seen people argue about time travel and it’s repercussions and how films always get it wrong, ask them “What about Bill & Ted?” and I usually always get the same answer “Yeah but that’s Bill & Ted, that’s different”. This film threw the rules out the window and it didn’t care and it also gave us very wise words to live by:
“Be excellent to each other. And… PARTY ON, DUDES!”
Derf
This week’s Nerd Talk was a little hard to narrow down. The subject matter is our favorite Time Travel film. Now, knowing the SomewhatNerds like I do, we all have the same favorites when it comes this category. You have your Back to the Future’s, Bill and Ted’s, Terminator, and hell, let us not forget the Army of Darkness. SO, I didn’t want to repeat a movie so I chose the film the Source Code.
For those of you who may not remember this film, this is the movie where Jake Gyllenhaal keeps going back in time to prevent a bomber from blowing up a train. Each time he fails he awakens back on the train. Remembering vaguely what went wrong the last time. It is a good movie with a lot of twists and turns and an ending that most didn’t see coming. If you haven’t seen it, it is definitely worth at least one viewing. If you have seen it, it is worth a reviewing. Until next time, unleash your inner NERD and get your READ on!
Billiam
This one was really hard. I was able to narrow my pick down to two movies right away but deciding between them was harder than I thought it would be. The first and most obvious choice is Back to the Future. It’s a classic. Just hearing the theme song gets me pumped. It gets me more pumped than the Rocky theme. I watch Back to the Future a few times a year and even try to put it on as background noise when I’m cleaning or building models. This fails, however, as I eventually get sucked in and and watch the entire thing without touching my chores.
No matter how much I love the Back to the Future trilogy, there’s another film that holds a special place in my heart. One that’s not just my favorite time travel movie, but one of my favorite movies of all time. That movie, my friends is…
That’s right. A Next Gen Star Trek movie. Star Trek: First Contact is the best of the The Next Generation series of movies as well as being one of the best Star Trek movies of all time. The basic premise is that Picard and the Enterprise were sent to watch the Romulan neutral zone during the second Borg incursion but come to the rescue, saving Worf’s life in the process, and destroy the Borg Cube. However, a small escape sphere created a temproal vortex and went back to the year 2063 to stop Zefram Cochrane from making his historic first warp jump. The crew of the Enterprise E chased the Borg into the past and had to help save Cochrane’s first mission all while trying to get the Borg out of the Enterprise.
Star Trek:First Contact had a great story that keeps me entertained even after twenty years of watching it. The main story is, of course, the saving of the past and the fight against the Borg but the subplots were interwoven so well that they never felt out of place and when they came up it always felt natural. The first was Picard’s feelings towards the Borg and how his time as Locutus still affected him even years after. This came out between his many scenes with Lily who brought a new take and fresh voice to his struggle. The second big side story was Data and his obsessive dream with being human. The Borg Queen could give him all that as long as he joined them. The final side story revolved around Riker and Geordi realizing their hero isn’t who history remembered him as and also helping him become that man.
Certain scenes still give me chills even after all this time. The Borg Queen had some of the best lines. “Brave words. I’ve heard them before, from thousands of species across thousands of worlds, since long before you were created. But, now they are all Borg.” Even her entrance was awesome. Her top half being carried down by machinery before being connected to her waiting body. “I am the beginning. The End. The one who is may. I am the Borg.” That line! That line still gets me. Every time the Borg have been encountered it was always “We are the Borg. Resistance if Futile.” But for her, SHE was The Borg. She was the embodiment of the most devastating enemy the universe had ever seen. The Q were almost immortal beings who had a vast array of powers but Borg were this never ending onslaught of darkness. Even after Picard and the Enterprise beat them, they weren’t defeated.
First Contact beats out Back to the Future not only because it was a great movie but because it was THE movie for all the Next Generation fans. It was full of action and suspense. It was funny and heart warming. It was sad and scary. It wasn’t just a great Star Trek movie, it was a great movie overall. Even though I knew the crew of the Enterprise was going to win in the end (because they always do) I was still on the edge of my seat because I didn’t know how they were going to do it. Couple all that with an emotionally moving musical score and director (and damn good Riker cosplayer) Jonathan Frakes love for the series and understanding of the characters and you get a fantastic movie. This was the movie TNG fans needed.
You know what? I’m going to go watch it. It’s been a few months. I’m due for a rewatch.
Snarfkris
I’m a kid of the 80s … so I’ll have the most obvious answers in the world but you can go wrong with some Bill and Ted and some Back to the Future. These are movie that I still watch until this day. And its all of them Back to the Future 1-3 and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey, I love them all. Yes both series have some weak moments but there is nothing better than George Carlin as Rufus, the leader of the Church of Bill and Ted or Micheal J Fox playing “Johnny B. Goode” at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance … it’s 80s time traveling goodness.
Plus we may be getting a sequel to Bill and Ted here soon …. there is always that …
Critter
When it comes to time travel, I believe South Park said it best in a their Gooback Episode:
“Aaron, I’m standing at the time border which scientists say follow Terminator rules. That is, it’s one way only and you can’t go back. This is in contrast, say, to Back To The Future rules, where back and forth is possible, and of course, Timerider rules, which are just plain silly. Anyway, it appears that the man from the future is here to stay.”
That being said, time travel is really interesting and almost always has some sort of horrible outcome. Beit Terminators trying to murder you before you were born, Napoleon loose in a shopping mall, or Biff just calling you a butthead spanning decades. Even though these are pretty terrible things to happen in a timeline, they end up being really entertaining, but nothing is as messed up and hilariously screwing up a time line like what Fry did to it in Futurama.
If you’ve read past NerdTalks, you may know many of us here at SomewhatNerdy are big Futurama fans, and I’m no exception. It’s one of my favorite shows of all time in fact. And when it comes to an intrepid time traveler, Fry is the best. In the episode “Roswell that Ends Well” we see fry and the Planet Express crew fly back in time due to a microwaving popcorn mishap to the 1940s, where they become the infamous Roswell UFO crashing, well Bender’s body and Zoidberg are at least. So Fry and Bender’s severed head try to rescue their comrades from an Army base while trying not to mess up the timeline. Fry, however, in all his idiotic glory does the exact opposite and ends up killing his grandpa and doing the nasty in the pasty with his own grandmother, which inadvertently made him his own grandfather. Which turns out is a major reason why he’s so important in the series.
Not to mention he’s time traveled several other times. Once to stop from getting frozen and sent to the future in the first place, and of course, the fact he has witnessed the end of the universe and the beginning of the universe…twice, I’m sure there are other times, he seems to do it all the time. I think that pretty much shows his time travelling chops, making Arnold’s time travelling exploits look like a wet turd on hot cement by comparison!
