Time travel, the cop-out

Time travel is fun until it's not. Often, it's a lazy attempt by a writer to unwind a stubborn knot in the story . Outside of Doctor Who, time travel more often than not proves to be an epic fail. Yet I can't think of a sillier rendition of it than what I saw this summer in Avengers: Endgame. If you are a fan of the Marvel universe, You probably cheered and cried for the epic conclusion of what 19 or so movies have been leading toward. You probably also ignored the ridiculous ramifications of this film's central plot device: Time travel. (Note: If you haven't seen the film you probably never will, which is why I'm going to spoil it here. Second note: I'm not an MCU fanatic and am at best a casual watcher). 

In short: Big bad Thanos wipes out half of all living things in the universe (that's 3.8 billion humans, give or take). Good guys lose. How to fix it? Go back in time and make sure it never happened. Five years pass. A solution appears. But a few are selfish: I'll help you do this but I get to keep the family I've gained in the past five years. End result: Everyone (and thing) returns five years after vanishing. All of a sudden, half the Earth's population pops back into existence. The film ignores the chaotic, disastrous results of such a reality (did people who vanished while on airplanes reappear in mid-air and plummet to their second deaths?). Imagine all those scenes of: "Hey, honey, I'm home. ... Honey? Who's this woman? Whose baby is that?" Ruh-roh. 

I've been tempted to play with time myself, but never to reset a plot. When I have used it (usually altering events by fractions of a second), I don't shy away from showing the disastrous consequences (the end of The Last Everything). If you really want to see the devastating consequences of time travel in action, please binge the stunning, intricate, and incredibly absorbing Dark on Netflix. You'll be glad you did.  

Now. I will go back in time and delete this blog entry for something more interesting. (You can do that, too. Just pretend you never read this. No, really. It works.)