Most movies are not ambiguous narratives but instead easily understood with their comprehensible
chronology.
However, not all movies are created equal and whether it be through alternative dimensions,
time travel mishaps or just lazy storytelling, there are still plenty of films that leave
audiences bewildered by the start of the closing credits.
Here are 10 Famous Movie Timelines that Make No Sense.
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The Fast and the Furious franchise The Fast and Furious began as a fun action
flick with likable characters and awesome car racing scenes.
It has since become one of the most popular franchises around thanks to its increasingly
ridiculous stunts and endearing cast of characters with driving skills and close familial bonds.
The timeline seemed simple enough until Han showed up in the fourth film, Fast and Furious,
even though he died in the third film, Tokyo Drift.
Tokyo Drift initially feels like a standalone film as it does not feature Paul Walker’s
Brian but instead a teenager named Sean.
However, Vin Diesel's Dom shows up in the third film to tell Sean that Han used to hang
with his crew.
This is news to viewers as Han did not appear in the first film.
It is not until a few films later that audiences are given enough information to figure out
that Tokyo Drift takes place between Fast & Furious 6 and Fast 7.
The chronology makes even less sense considering the characters in Tokyo Drift use flip phones
after the characters in the sixth film carry around smartphones.
It is an unnecessary skew on the Fast and Furious timeline but is easily forgiven by
audiences.
Hot Tub Time Machine 2 The first Hot Tub Time Machine has plenty
of flaws with its time travelling logic.
In the film, four guys accidentally go back in time to a weekend ski trip in 1986.
While three of them look like their younger self to everyone else, Jacob played by Clark
Duke walks around looking like his current self because he was not alive yet.
That alone makes little sense in the time travelling rules, but let us take a look at
the much more nonsensical timeline in the sequel.
The film opens to show Nick, played by Craig Robinson as a famous music producer and performer
who in their version of the present has released famous songs such as “Smells like Teen Spirit”
and “Mmmbop”.
While amusing, this would be impossible as Rob Corddry’s Lou is the only one who stayed
in the past at the end of the first film thus making it impossible to steal and release
other musician’s song as his own.
The rest of the plot gets even sillier when Lou is shot and jumps in the hot tub to go
back in time and catch the shooter.
Only he ends up going into the future to find the killer.
This shouldn’t make a difference since the shooting has already happened and is not being
prevented.
Things get worse when they return to the present and see that it was their future actions that
caused the shooting in the first place.
None of it makes any sense but neither did making a sequel to Hot Tub Time Machine.
The Butterfly Effect.
In 2004, after years of playing a goofball on That 70’s Show, Ashton Kutcher made his
foray to serious acting with the drama The Butterfly Effect.
The film is dark, entertaining and has timelines that are a bit of a head scratcher.
Kutcher’s character plays a man who has had a difficult life made even more troubled
with his ability to time travel.
While audiences can easily accept time travel as a rational way to push along a plot, The
Butterfly Effect does not seem to understand its own chronology and limits for Ashton’s
character Evan.
One particularly confusing moment is when Evan finds himself in prison and attempts
to prove to his religious cellmate that he is able to speak to God.
He does this by returning to his childhood, piercing his hands and returning to show his
cellmate scars resembling stigmata.
The problem with this is that after Evan goes back in time to hurt himself, the timeline
would have shifted because of those actions.
However, Evan manages to return to the prison with his cellmate amazed by the stigmata.
Evan would have had those scars once he walked into the prison because he changed the timeline
as a child.
The change would only be known by Evan, and this is also assuming his actions did not
alter his path to prison.
The Butterfly Effect has many moments similar to this in a wacky timeline that proves time
travel is not a substitution for a cohesive and reasonable plot.
The Purge Horror films are not always required to make
the most logical sense, but they also rarely stray too far from a basic premise.
For a frightening home invasion flick, The Purge is rather audacious in its plot.
The 2013 film sets the events of movie nine years into the future.
In those nine years, America has enacted a yearly purge that allows law abiding citizens
to commit any crime without consequence.
Murder seems to be the primary desire for the general public and since enacting the
new purge law, the unemployment and crime rate have dropped significantly.
The timeline does not make sense for The Purge in relation to how quickly everything changed
in nine years.
How did America adapt so easily and quickly to the rules and tradition of The Purge?
Furthermore, how did citizens become accustomed to cold blooded murder in such a short time?
Even worse is that in Purge: Election Year, the main character’s family is killed in
a purge that takes place in 2010.
The Purge may be an entertaining and chilling film but without setting the events of the
purge into the much more distant future, the believability and justification for the timeline
in unlikely.
Friday the 13th Franchise Even for a Slasher franchise, The Friday the
13th timeline is over-the-top with its completely nonsensical timeline.
Jason Voorhees’s origin story begins when he is just eleven years old in 1957.
The physically deformed Jason is cruelly teased as a camper at Camp Crystal Lake.
Since the counselors were too busy with each other to pay attention to Jason while he was
swimming in the lake, he drowns and every counselor that ever works at Camp Crystal
Lake again pays for that mistake.
Jason first appears in the second film which takes place in 1981.
How did this ghostlike entity age even though he died as a child?
Since they never found his body, could it be assumed that he did not die that day but
hid away for almost 25 years before exacting his revenge on a new set of counselors?
If that is the case, why is he basically immortal?
The films get even stranger when you factor in Jason X, in which it is stated that he
is in a frozen stasis for 455 years after being placed in the chamber in 2010.
This would make Jason 64 at the time of being frozen.
The man sure is spry for someone nearing retirement age.
Rage and revenge must be good for your health.
These inconsistencies are just a few in a franchise full of timeline issues.
Planet of the Apes The twisty timeline in Tim Burton’s Planet
of the Apes is enough to give most viewers a headache.
In the original Planet of the Apes, the twist ending was a classic, but the remake, if you
can call it that, did not use a simple twist ending but rather one that just didn’t make
any sense.
Mark Wahlberg plays an astronaut named Leo who lands on a planet called Ashlar in the
year 5021 where humanoid apes run the world and treat humans as slaves.
When Leo returns back to the past and lands in Washington D.C., the Lincoln memorial has
been replaced with a monument of the ape commander from Ashlar, General Thade.
How could this be?
How is it that the future could alter the past?
Rather than giving audiences an even more shocking twist ending than the original, the
film does not provide any answers about the timeline and leaves audiences confused.
Looper Looper is one loopy movie that is full of mind bending situations.
Just as any film about time travel has more explaining to do, Looper does not explain
all that much.
Joseph Gordon Levitt plays a man named Joe who is working for the mob in a distant future
where time travel is possible.
He is one of the few Loopers who are sent to the future and past to eliminate people.
He does a great job but the bad guys decide to close the loop and has the future Joe sent
back in time to be killed.
The main issues with the timeline for Looper are the inconsistencies such as old Joe remembering
things that happened to his 25 year-old self, but 25 year-old Joe not remembering events
from his 10 year-old self.
Pairing that with multiple timelines that are impossible based on choices that are made
by other characters and actions made by Joe, Looper has a timeline that seems to do its
best throwing audiences through a loop.
Back to the Future II There is no disputing that the Back to the
Future films are classics but since the franchise deals with time travel, the films open themselves
up for ridicule for its perplexing timelines and unlikely realities.
In Back to the Future II, Marty and Jennifer's head into the future thirty years to 2015.
Once they are there, they see their older selves and their children.
However, just as Doc’s dog Einstein disappears momentarily to test the time machine in the
first movie, this would mean Marty and Jennifer would not be around in 1985.
Making it impossible for them to have the kids they are seeing.
We can assume that they return to 1985 with their children’s existence being proof of
that.
It does not explain why they try to hide from their future selves as their future selves
would expect them to appear since they were the ones who travelled in the future thirty
years before and would remember doing it.
It may seem nitpicky and Hollywood time travel rules are never certain but thinking about
the events in Back to the Future II is certainly mind boggling.
Sin City: A Dame to Kill for
The movie Sin City is based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller and has a unique timeline.
Just like the graphic novel, the stories within the film were not told in chronological order
making it difficult to understand who is dead, who is angry, and who allies are until you
examine the film later and reorganize the proper linear story.
It is tricky but still possible.
The sequel, A Dame to kill for does not achieve that same possibility.
When considering the first film, the second film does not seem to make sense even if viewers
watch it as standalone stories that need to be sorted like a puzzle.
There are characters who should be dead or two characters who have never met, or somehow
forget they know each other.
There are far too many instances of faulty timelines to even begin to note them all.
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For was not a commercial success which may be due in large part of
its illogical timeline.
X-Men Apocalypse Keeping a clear and understandable continuity
for a film based on a comic book series is not a small feat, especially with its multiple
reboots and spin-offs.
The X-Men franchise may be the guiltiest of inconsistencies with a muddled sense of character
history.
X-Men Apocalypse seems most intent on causing audience’s confusion.
Magneto is shown in 1983 as a fairly young man and played by Michael Fassbender.
Yet Magneto managed to endure Auschwitz as a child nearly forty years prior.
Fassbender is not the only one in the prequel cast to look young.
The entire cast is supposed to have aged twenty years even though the actors were cast only
five years prior.
Speaking of aging, what about Jubilee?
Even with recasting and being relegated to the sidelines as a glorified extra, she always
seems to be in high school no matter what year the films are set.
There is also the disconnection between the events in Days of Future Past and Apocalypse.
Mystique captured Wolverine and was a villain, but in Apocalypse, Wolverine is free and Mystique
is on team X again.
Some have said X-Men holds a few alternate timelines, but for casual film viewers, it
is just confusing
What do you think of our list?
Were there any movies we forgot with timelines that left you befuddled?
Let us know in the comments.
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