Post by spenc193 on Apr 21, 2008 11:55:18 GMT -5
To begin, I imagine that everyone will tell me to just reference another thread. But I believe that this movie has the potential for many different interpretations, and I would not go so far as to say that any one is wholly wrong. The movie has a broad range of topics outside of time travel including social and religous commentary. After two views of the film, I am simply stating my analysis of the plot and speculations as to some of the unanswered questions in the film. Without a doubt there are individuals here who have seen this movie significantly more times than myself and so have greater insight. I'd enjoy some feedback from those individuals as to whether I'm on the right track or not. Here it goes:
If you have visited the official site, then it is apparent from the document mentioned in the final segments of the flash animation that some vague organization has traced the origin of the engine that fell on Donnie's house in 1988 to a flight from Colorado to Honolulu in the year 1991. Essentially what they are saying to one another is not that the engine is a similar model, but the exact match, indicating that the same engine exists in the same timeline. I didn't go to a forum such as this to figure out my questions i simply sat down and tried to formulate some answers. I decided that an engine from the Honolulu flight might have failed at some point in the future after 1991 and after falling off the plane entered a portal into a tangent universe that was currently in the year 1988. It is here that on that fateful night Donnie is awoken by Frank, the manipulated dead. I believe Frank to be a hallucinatory vessel of some higher power (I've seen them called the Movers here, but I'd rather believe it is God, as we do see Donnie begin to believe in the end, however, not necessarily the Christian one.) which awakens Donnie and warns him of the end of the world. Donnie is awoken because he is intrinsic in a series of events that a higher power (that which is manipulating the dead) is setting in motion to return the artifiact (plane engine) to the primary universe, because if he does not the destruction of this tangent universe will result in the destruction of the primary also. The tangent universe is doomed according to the pott. So we know how the film plays out and Donnie, the living vessel, is able to return the engine from his mother's flight (the exact plane which loses its engine in the primary universe in order to create the tangent in the first place) to the primary universe 28 days later and set the story straight. The engine from the 1988 tangent universe travels back in time 28 days into the primary universe.This is where we encounter a significant time paradox, or loop if you will. The engine from the tangent universe must be returned to 1988 in the primary, not only because it is from the year 1988 and so must exist in that year to avoid a subsequent paradox, but it must also be here in order to kill Donnie and allow the universe to proceed logically as accorded by the "movers." The loop now lies in the fact that Donnie in the year 1988 must die by a damage plane engine from year xxxx in the future, in order for the universe to continue long enough for the engine to even malfunction in the first place. The events of the past are dependent upon a future event which itself could not have occurred without these events in the past happening in the first place. It is a closed circle. Please critique and correct any errors.
However, I just realized that there is a hole in my theory. In the orginal timeline Donnie would have lived through 1988 and lived to see the remainder of his life. For we know that in the orginal universe, (at least in the theory I presented above), the engine from the Honolulu flight malfunctions in a year after 1991 (ala 2002 or 2010) so there was no engine to kill him in 1988. So the entire fiasco in the tangent universe occurs when the engine does malfunction, in order for Donnie to send the engine back to the primary universe. But the question here is....that event alters the events of the past in the primary universe so essentially the time loop that comes to exist in the primary unierse (that I mentioned above) would really create a whole new timeline, and if not it would have destroyed the events of the future in the orgininal primary universe, which we know cannot be because the year that the original engine that fails must come to pass. We must now assume a new timeline, or just a paradox which is a closed circle with no end, ultimately happening over and over creating an infinite amount of alternate timelines/universes. Why does Donnie have to die in the primary universe when the engine is returned? How does his being alive here have any effect on the progeneration of the primary universe. It would seem he could have avoided his death and still kept on living. The artifact was returned, I thought that was all that mattered. I should think that there are some answers to this question in the pott. Could anyone please help me with these questions as to the holes in my theory?
This next theory is stretching it abit, but it is possible as an answer to my question on Donnie's necessary death that, in 1988 in the original timeline Donnie was intended to die (whether it be by the plane engine or not), however, a higher power realized that Donnie was lost and had not found faith in anything yet. So this power altered the universe in order to allow the events in my orginal theory (above) to occur in order for Donnie to find God, and at the same time understand that he was supposed to die and that things were altered for him. In this way Donnie was now unafraid to die, and welcomed it with the knowledge he wouldn't be alone. The universe was then able to continue on. The time loop still exists in this framework however. As I said before, because the engine returning to 1988 in the PU would alter the events of the original PU, then a paradox occurs. The events in the future after 1988 in the PU could not have been eliminated, because the engine would not have been around to be thrown backward in the year xxxx after 1991. So then I am lead to believe that a loop is ever present, happening over and over again creating new timelines after each cycle, spawning new universes each time.
If you have visited the official site, then it is apparent from the document mentioned in the final segments of the flash animation that some vague organization has traced the origin of the engine that fell on Donnie's house in 1988 to a flight from Colorado to Honolulu in the year 1991. Essentially what they are saying to one another is not that the engine is a similar model, but the exact match, indicating that the same engine exists in the same timeline. I didn't go to a forum such as this to figure out my questions i simply sat down and tried to formulate some answers. I decided that an engine from the Honolulu flight might have failed at some point in the future after 1991 and after falling off the plane entered a portal into a tangent universe that was currently in the year 1988. It is here that on that fateful night Donnie is awoken by Frank, the manipulated dead. I believe Frank to be a hallucinatory vessel of some higher power (I've seen them called the Movers here, but I'd rather believe it is God, as we do see Donnie begin to believe in the end, however, not necessarily the Christian one.) which awakens Donnie and warns him of the end of the world. Donnie is awoken because he is intrinsic in a series of events that a higher power (that which is manipulating the dead) is setting in motion to return the artifiact (plane engine) to the primary universe, because if he does not the destruction of this tangent universe will result in the destruction of the primary also. The tangent universe is doomed according to the pott. So we know how the film plays out and Donnie, the living vessel, is able to return the engine from his mother's flight (the exact plane which loses its engine in the primary universe in order to create the tangent in the first place) to the primary universe 28 days later and set the story straight. The engine from the 1988 tangent universe travels back in time 28 days into the primary universe.This is where we encounter a significant time paradox, or loop if you will. The engine from the tangent universe must be returned to 1988 in the primary, not only because it is from the year 1988 and so must exist in that year to avoid a subsequent paradox, but it must also be here in order to kill Donnie and allow the universe to proceed logically as accorded by the "movers." The loop now lies in the fact that Donnie in the year 1988 must die by a damage plane engine from year xxxx in the future, in order for the universe to continue long enough for the engine to even malfunction in the first place. The events of the past are dependent upon a future event which itself could not have occurred without these events in the past happening in the first place. It is a closed circle. Please critique and correct any errors.
However, I just realized that there is a hole in my theory. In the orginal timeline Donnie would have lived through 1988 and lived to see the remainder of his life. For we know that in the orginal universe, (at least in the theory I presented above), the engine from the Honolulu flight malfunctions in a year after 1991 (ala 2002 or 2010) so there was no engine to kill him in 1988. So the entire fiasco in the tangent universe occurs when the engine does malfunction, in order for Donnie to send the engine back to the primary universe. But the question here is....that event alters the events of the past in the primary universe so essentially the time loop that comes to exist in the primary unierse (that I mentioned above) would really create a whole new timeline, and if not it would have destroyed the events of the future in the orgininal primary universe, which we know cannot be because the year that the original engine that fails must come to pass. We must now assume a new timeline, or just a paradox which is a closed circle with no end, ultimately happening over and over creating an infinite amount of alternate timelines/universes. Why does Donnie have to die in the primary universe when the engine is returned? How does his being alive here have any effect on the progeneration of the primary universe. It would seem he could have avoided his death and still kept on living. The artifact was returned, I thought that was all that mattered. I should think that there are some answers to this question in the pott. Could anyone please help me with these questions as to the holes in my theory?
This next theory is stretching it abit, but it is possible as an answer to my question on Donnie's necessary death that, in 1988 in the original timeline Donnie was intended to die (whether it be by the plane engine or not), however, a higher power realized that Donnie was lost and had not found faith in anything yet. So this power altered the universe in order to allow the events in my orginal theory (above) to occur in order for Donnie to find God, and at the same time understand that he was supposed to die and that things were altered for him. In this way Donnie was now unafraid to die, and welcomed it with the knowledge he wouldn't be alone. The universe was then able to continue on. The time loop still exists in this framework however. As I said before, because the engine returning to 1988 in the PU would alter the events of the original PU, then a paradox occurs. The events in the future after 1988 in the PU could not have been eliminated, because the engine would not have been around to be thrown backward in the year xxxx after 1991. So then I am lead to believe that a loop is ever present, happening over and over again creating new timelines after each cycle, spawning new universes each time.