all rise report is in session
welcome to watch mojo's the verdict the
series where we tackle the biggest
debates in pop culture
and put them to rest today we'll be
deciding once and for all
is groundhog day a time travel movie
that's right woodchuck chuckers it's
groundhog day
how can you know the future it's one of
those
infinite time loop situations you might
heard about
that i might have heard about yeah
remember
like any high-profile court case there
are strong arguments to be made on both
sides
if you disagree with our verdict be sure
to state your case in the comments below
let's dive in oh but first a spoiler
warning is in effect
watch out for that first step it's a
doozy
this should seem simple right it's so
simple a time travel movie involves time
travel
but when you put that term under the
microscope and start pulling at the
strings
the definition unravels into a much more
nebulous concept
one with which groundhog day has a
rather complicated relationship
time travel
what the vast majority of popular cinema
is narrative driven
but there's more than one way to tell a
story many films play fast and loose
with time and chronology
without making their narrative
explicitly centered on time travel
memento is a non-linear head trip that
will have you more twisted up than 90
of time travel movies how am i supposed
to heal if i
can't feel time
the fountain and cloud atlas both take
us on complex journeys through time
and yet neither can rightfully be called
time travel movies
from womb to tomb we are bound to others
past and present where do you draw the
line
and where does groundhog day fall
someday somebody's going to see me
interviewing a ground i think i don't
have a future
i think it's a nice story in order to
answer this question
we'll be taking a look at the unifying
features and characteristics
that time travel movies overwhelmingly
share in common
time travel is a plot device not a genre
in and of itself
whether it's used in a thriller comedy
or action film
there's often some shocking twist that
implicates the protagonist or another
character
in unexpected ways the ending of 12
monkeys is a great example
phone call i just made five minutes ago
and five minutes ago 30 years ago they
just put it together
james cole's traumatic childhood
experience takes on a whole new
significance
predestination starring ethan hawk is a
more recent example with a delightfully
complex twist
can we change our futures i i don't know
a rival is one of those gray area films
is it about time travel or the
perception of time
how can you know the future regardless
like many time travel movies
it brings things full circle in ways
that wouldn't be possible without a
character being displaced in time
but what about our buddy phil given that
he's reliving february 2nd over and over
again
groundhog day is all about
predictability a gust of wind
dog bark cue the truck
this proves to be surprisingly fertile
ground for bill murray's comedic style
but
no major plot twists clay when entering
lake geneva
this river is clear blue upon exiting
jim what is the road
the roan good for one thousand dollars
instead the film uses repetition to
serve up a revelation of a more personal
variety
when phil's imprisonment in punxsutawney
invites self-discovery
well sometimes i wish i had a thousand
lifetimes
i don't know phil maybe it's not a curse
just depends on how you look at it fun
fact the film's original draft
did actually include a massive twist in
which we learned that rita
is stuck living the next day over and
over again
time travel movies almost always involve
a mechanism of some sort
when this baby hits 88 miles per hour
you're gonna see some serious most
commonly time travel is made possible by
some sort of time machine
or a time master the latter is any
individual with the ability to move
themselves or others through time
this might sting a little
[Music]
as for the time machine it can be any
device
magical mechanical or even a force of
nature like a black hole
that makes time travel possible what
about the time slippage
neither one of us have time to worry
about relativity right now dr man
most time travel films have certain
rules which are often tied to their
mechanism of choice
if you travel to the past that past
becomes your future
and your former present becomes the past
which can't now be changed by your new
future exactly
assuming a christmas carol isn't one big
dream even charles dickens provided a
mechanism in the form of ghosts
i can remember nearly 1900 years i'm the
ghost
of christmas past no one ever does a big
exposition dump in groundhog day however
nor does phil ever discover
why this is happening to him there are
rules and phil tests them in a variety
of ways
but they don't yield any answers apart
from you're stuck
every morning i wake up without a
scratch on me not a dent in the fender
i am an immortal if groundhog day is a
time travel movie
it's more interested in the journey than
the science
speaking of rules most time travel
movies agree that you should not
interact with your past self awful
things happen to wizards who meddle with
time harry
the implications vary from one movie to
the next but
it's almost always bad seeing a
doppelganger could drive you mad
or even destroy you because physics
then again if the time travel movie
subscribes to a closed loop theory
in which everything has and always will
play out the same
an assist from your past self may be an
unavoidable part of the equation
you're as bad as me wrong i'm sending it
right
thankfully for phil he is the only phil
in punxsutawney on february 2nd
well other than the groundhog of course
and let's be honest
this town isn't big enough for two of
him the master
punxsutawney phil the world's most
famous weatherman
the groundhog rather than traveling from
the future to the past and encountering
his past self
phil simply wakes up again the same
morning in the same physical state as
before
but remembering already having done so
we get that the time anomaly that phil
is experiencing is a uniquely
frustrating one
but hey at least he doesn't have to
worry about paradox psychosis
the seven stages in paradox psychosis
are stage one
denial two itching three extreme thirst
and urination
four excessive gas five acute paranoia
six uncontrolled perspiration and seven
homicidal rage when you mess with time
bad things can happen just ask marty
mcfly third time's a charm
one false move and you can rewrite
history or
give your nemesis the tools to get
filthy rich you might be in nobody back
home
but when you time travel lives hang in
the balance
funny i never thought it would be you
time travel movies almost always involve
an element of trying to rewrite the past
or avoid messing it up in terminator
changing the past is the machine
mandate and yet it's this time traveling
arms race that actually
leads to the birth of john connor but i
guess i have a while yet before you're
old enough to even understand these
tapes
the reality is even a small change can
have
massive consequences seriously how many
times did ashton kutcher's character get
it wrong in the butterfly effect
well you're gonna be okay i can change
it
in phil's case however the repetition
makes him feel as if his actions have
no consequences we could do whatever we
wanted
[Applause]
that's true we could do whatever we want
and so he initially shows a complete
disregard for the happiness and
well-being of both himself
and others he explicitly puts himself in
mortal danger to test the limits
i'm betting he's gonna swerve first in
many ways
groundhog day flies in the face of
time-honored time travel themes by
making phil want nothing to do with this
break in space-time
he doesn't desire to bring about change
or preserve anything
he doesn't have any explicit purpose
i'll give you a winter prediction
it's gonna be cold it's gonna be gray
and it's gonna last you for the rest of
your life
or so he thinks
while there's no authority to tell him
what's going on phil does wind up
finding meaning in his experience
yes yes i'd like a piano lesson please
this isn't a film about writing past
wrongs
saving the future or establishing
equilibrium in the time stream
but despite his initial resistance
phil's experience living the same day
over and over again is a journey of
personal growth people want
coffee get it while it's hot oh thanks
phil
larry skim milk to sugar
yeah thanks phil while time travel plots
are inherently convoluted
they most often follow fairly
conventional narrative arcs
by contrast groundhog day is a
deceptively simple but
fascinating exercise in storytelling
because it goes against
how stories are typically told rather
than the boredom one might expect
the writers were able to find meaning in
the repetition
what did you do today oh same old same
one
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have you reached a verdict the evidence
has been presented
and we are ready to render our verdict
groundhog day
is not a time travel movie it's a time
loop movie and while one could argue
that this is just a subtype of the time
travel genre
it's clearly cut from a very different
clock okay what do you want me to do
i don't know the narrative structure of
a time loop movie is such that it
actually eschews all the usual
characteristics of
a time travel movie in favor of one
unifying principle
getting out of the time loop something
is different
good or bad anything different is good
groundhog day isn't a time travel movie
but it's arguably more important as a
result
it's been interpreted as everything from
a spiritual guidebook to an analogy
about military service and a lesson in
economics
no matter what happens tomorrow or for
the rest of my life
i'm happy now because i love you
though groundhog day was not the first
time loop film
it did popularize the mechanic giving
birth to numerous imitators
it's one of those infinite time limp
situations you might heard about
that i might have heard about yeah from
the concept of having the character's
repetition cued by a certain song
to the now classic montage of time loop
debauchery
the film's influence reverberates
throughout pop culture
and it does it on its own terms what a
date
this has been
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