Flashpoint vs. Back To The Future Part 3

I was thinking about Flashpoint how Barry save his mother and the whole world falls a part because he save her. In Back to the future part 3, Doc Brown save a woman name Claire who was suppose to die, and when Marty goes back to 1985, the world does not fall a part. After thinking about this, I don’t see how Barry save his mother affect the world, it’s not like she became a famous person. All Claire got was a school name after her.
Flashpoint is a great story, but do you think it’s a bit extreme? I would have to pick Back to the future part 3 as more accurate on saving a person who is NOT famous if you travel back in time.

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I love both. Mary Steenburgen is a lovely person and Doc and Clara are a cute couple.

I try not to heavily dissect time travel stories, even one as thoroughly well constructed as the Back to the Future series. They tend to metaphorically turn into a labrynthine M.C. Escher mental spiral once you lift up the hood and look at their nuts and bolts.

That said, I see your point about the thematic similarities.

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Well that’s the thing you just never know what will happen with time travel sometimes you get lucky. Or Doc Brown has been the reverse flash this entire time (as I recall he can move through time without messing with things). Or maybe that’s why Doc, Clara, and their kids (Jules and Verne) went traveling through time, so they and their decendents wouldn’t have any fixed time origin. ( Not quite awake yet so if this doesn’t make sense🤤

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Biff Tannen is to Marty what Reverse Flash is to The Flash: a thorn in their sides.

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The “Butterfly Effect” has been a common deal when it comes to time-travel stories. A small event changed in the past can have unexpected and large changes down the line. It really depends on the writer. As for Flashpoint, the in-story explanation was that Barry’s actions resulted in a “temporal boom” (like a sonic boom, but with the timeline), which is why saving his Mom affected totally unrelated events like Superman’s arrival on Earth, the Wayne murders, and so on.

It sounds clever and all, but given the aftermath, the reasons for the story in general (the reboot), it just irks me. I’m certain bigger fans of Barry Allen would also point out that originally, his Mom was never murdered nor his Dad arrested. He was just a decent guy that got powers and became a superhero because he was a decent guy.

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It’s been ages since I’ve seen Back to the Future III but I thought the people of Clara’s time assumed she was dead since she disappeared once she started traveling with Doc. I know a lot of time travel stories use that loophole of a character secretly going somewhere else after their supposed death to keep the timeline intact. For example, Zari used this loophole in Legends of Tomorrow by sending Helen of Troy to Themyscira.

As for Nora Allen, her death was more of a butterfly effect where that small change created a large ripple effect that led to Flashpoint. There was no loophole with her because she was unmistakably dead, and after she was saved she didn’t vanish elsewhere and lived her life as normal. Once again using Legends of Tomorrow as an example, this is similar to the situation that happened when Constantine saved Desmond.

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@Beagle Before Doc and Marty saved her, she died after her spooked horses led ran over a cliff, and they used her name as a memorial. Marty remembered this because when he was younger, he and other kids would jokingly talk about teachers they’d like to see fall off that cliff. So there is an “original timeline” where Clara died. But since she didn’t, and the Old West town folk assumed “Clint Eastwood” died (Marty’s alter ego), he got the memorial named after him and chances are Clara went about her life until Doc completed the Time-Train.

Again, it comes down to the writer and how they want the story to go. That isn’t to say time-travel stories can just use the space-time continuum as a deus ex machina to do whatever they want, but different takes can still work in their own way, for their own stories.

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Mad Dog: “What’s yer name, dude?!”

Marty: “Eastwood. Clint. Eastwood.”

Mad Dog: “What kinda stupid name is that?!”

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Ray Bradbury walks in, watches Back To The Future 3 in an eyeblink. reads Flashpoint in its entirety, says, “Huh!” And then returns to Elysium to beat HG Wells and some other cronies at Poker

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To be fair, we don’t see much of 1985 once Marty gets back in Back to the Future III. WWIII could easily be happening and we’d never know. Or maybe because Barry used the Speed Force for time travel, and that is more intrinsically connected to natural time, whereas the Delorean could be using the “backroads” of the space/time continuum to time travel. Or maybe due to the fact that because Barry’s mother was saved, he never got his powers, therefore never creating the Speed Force, which then created a sort of cosmic backlash, while Doc Brown saving Clara would have no such effect. Or… okay, my head is kinda hurting now, so I think I’ll just chalk it up to the different kinds of time travel better fitting the narrative of each story.

@MH, did you see Isaac Asimov arguing with Arthur C. Clarke about whether Johnny Mnemonic or The Matrix was the better '90’s Keanu Reeves sci-fi flick? Robert Heinlein was their impromptu referee.

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@Vroom. I can’t remember seeing that Vroom.

@MH Okay, thanks MH.

@Vroom Did you see such a thing, Vroom?

@MH No, but I did see a DeLorean rolling down the train tracks. It got hit by a train (the driver jumped out and is okay. He appears to have a…floating skateboard? No, that’s preposterous. It’s not even logical.), so the resale value is slim to none MH.

It was a nice looking DeLorean too.

@MisfitHighlander, if I could give you more likes for your comment I would. “Sound of Thunder” might be my favorite short story of all time. Ray Bradbury’s works are amazing.

Is this movie of A Sound of Thunder any good?

The movie kind of suffers from trying to take a very short story and stretch it out to a full length feature film. It would be great for an anthology series like the Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, or Treehouse of Terror

I kind of liked that movie better than critics.

And Bradbury is called a master for a million reasons, all of them ideas

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I’ve never read anything by Bradbury, but he liked comics, so he’s a-okay in my book.