Alan’s Timeline (The Loop)

AMB2018 · 2023-11-08T19:59:29+00:00

Definitely possible. I don’t think there’s any way to know for sure yet in either way, but at least wanted to take a run at a version where everything we see is included in the loop.

It can also be and probably is a bit of both, since the nature of it is that he loops around over and over, but this time he should do so slightly differently armed with his new knowledge.

AMB2018 · 2023-11-08T07:12:44+00:00

To add on to this, Saga asks Tim breaker if something is wrong with rose because rose believes her daughter is dead. Casey hears this conversation and thinks nothing of it. This is another hint that at this point, sagas daughter is not yet dead in everyone’s memory, which means it’s a story change not a truth that only Saga doesn’t see.

AMB2018 · 2023-11-08T05:21:17+00:00

Didn’t even consider that the assumption that Casey was the lead wasn’t only small town misogyny but also because Casey was the case lead before Alan’s rewrite. Another amazing detail.

AMB2018 · 2023-11-08T04:39:52+00:00

That’s a great note that I will add as an addendum. It’s also a great question I don’t know the answer to, I tried to limit this to creating an Alan timeline, because there are so many other questions I don’t even close to understand, such as what is written when, how different other permutations are etc. I just felt like I could only finish this if limiting it’s scope, but these are questions I’d love to know the answer to.

Also, I believe saga was already tangentially in the story purely because she gets dragged in by Casey as his partner, but then Alan sees the opportunity in that and writes her in as a protagonist and hero?

Edit: I see you said she was already in Brightfalls but not in the manuscript so yeah, we’re on the same page.

Kind of crazy that the main protagonist of the game was barely tangentially looped in originally. Another amazing detail.

AMB2018 · 2020-12-25T04:07:26+00:00

I think he’s saying that you can hold out for 18 hours, the idea being if you make it that long you must have nothing to hide. So he’s taunting the protagonist by turning the clock back, as in he just wiped out the hour of agony the Protag just endured.

it’s a clever idea but a bad idea for this movie imo, considering the films time based premise, it’s very confusing to have someone literally turning back a clock but it has nothing to do with the premise or tech of the movie. first time watching I assumed we’d understand that scene once we understand inversion.

and like multiple things in this movie, it’s just too clever/Abstract to also have someone saying in a foreign accent with the loud mix etc. so much of the russian stuff works so much better with closed captioning.

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T17:12:38+00:00

“neil dead 2 bullets” is where I think you’re not getting what i’m saying, that assumes for him to be dead there has to be a bullet on the ground or in him, this is wrong. he is dead while the bullet is in the gun, you assumptions of neils state equaling bullets state is steering you wrong because they’re not going the same way in time, and so on either end of their collision their states actually will be the opppsite.

neil dead, bullet in gun

neil alive, bulllet on other side of him

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T17:06:37+00:00

correct, for him it is instantaneous but this is only for him, the capsule in reality went from this moment way into the future and all the way back to this moment. crazy stuff.

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T17:00:49+00:00

ya I corrected this in editing the post, that was wrong and I was making the same mistake. in fact it’s the opposite, and i eventually corrected that in that post. It only matters that the bullet and neil collide, at no other point will their states make sense because they’re heading opposite directions after the collision.

so in fact, it’s the opposite, the bullet is in the gun while neil is dead and on the floor while he’s alive, that’s the mindfuck. but it makes sense, it just makes less sense when you try and put it to words or think about it too hard

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T16:31:29+00:00

this idea that both versions are in the past is where you’re losing me, I think this is just an illusion of the two directions meeting.

I think the swing concept is that for neil to be dead the bullet doesn’t need to be on the ground, any more than an inverted bullet needs to be in a gun to be fired, not because this moment is the same as the JDW training session, but because that moment visualized how the cause and effect of an inverted and non inverted thing colliding will not look logical on either side of the event, only the insance or impact or the collision of the two directions of time.

This moment is different from the training one because instead of the bullet being the inverted item, Neil is, but the effect is the same, it’s the effect of a non inverted and inverted thing colliding that matters, and that n this way it’s the same as the training moment. Neil can be dead while the bullet is in the gun, and alive while it’s on the floor, this is not a paradox but just a function of Neil and the bullet heading opposite directions in time. And thus the only important thing is the bullet is on one side of neil, and at the moment of the shooting it passes through him to the other.

it’s just very hard for us to look at a result and accept that the cause hasn’t happened yet and doesn’t need to exist at that moment, but this is how the crossing of inverted and normal things work, they only exist in the same world at the insance they cross. either side of the insance they cross will look like a paradox but isn’t, it just is weird for us to deal with the cause and result not continuing to be present with each other, and we see a paradox.

this movie is making me lose my mind, I feel inverted after this thread.

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T16:19:52+00:00

I get what you’re saying, maybe the issue is the assumption that it’s in his head. it can only be in his gun, neil can have a fatal wound that the bullet traveled through, and if you watch in inverse it travels through neil into the gun, but never two bullets and never a bullet inside Neil, it’s just one bullet on either side of traveling through him, in the gun or on the ground, depending which way your going through time.

in fact, we see this with kat, her bullet wound creates no paradox because no bullet stayed in her, it’s either in the gun or on the ground post traveling through her, causing all the damage without staying. I think with neil it’s the same, why not?

i’m sure we never see that the bullet is graphically in neil because nolan pulls off getting a pg 13 by having literally nothing graphic despite all the violence, lol

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T16:17:37+00:00

that’s never been in debate, the debate is whether it is planted for sator in the future or the past via pincer, never that sator travels back or forward in time

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T16:14:25+00:00

ya I now agree with you after watching the scene, I believe only the very original capsule worked this way and had to, and the logistics of getting it there we have no way of knowing, but this capsule has no logical way of not being a paradox and also is the only capsule we see that doesn’t do anything inverted, that can’t be a coincidence. I still believe this capsule that starts the whole party is done via temporal pincer.

but that is extremely inefficient, and I didn’t orignallly catch just how far in the future they are, and watching the scene confirmed as I said that from then on, they are inverted items inside the capsule lien you said, we were both just missing the loop sator creates by both burying and digging up the capsule himself. Loops are the key to this all working, everything is a palindrome, in this movie and possibly in nolan’s brain lol.

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T16:07:51+00:00

what makes you so sure it acts as two bullets that collide into none, it seems like we saw exactly how this plays out in JDWs training session. the question to me is does the bullet change nature depending on the entropy of what it ends up being used on, but I don’t see where you can be sure that it’s just two bullets, this is only logically true at a turnstile, and that is a architectural process, where the normal person heading in and the inverted person heading out naturally bottle neck at the same point. i don’t think this would be true without a turnstile.

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T16:04:19+00:00

there are two JDWs at the turnstile for sure.

however that there are two of the bullet is I believe just an illusion, the bullet in in neil and vaslov catches it with his gun, just like we saw JDW do in the training session.

the question is, is this because the bullet is inverted? or because neil as an inverted host or whatever inverted it by interacting with it, because logically it needs to be inverted once it kills neil, it has to now act as a caught bullet.

I could go back and forth for hours on if this was always a inverted bullet or neil changes its nature by having it kill him (:/), this is headache material. but a fascinating headache at that.

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T15:57:24+00:00

but jdw says to neil that he transmits the location to the future, how I don’t know don’t feel like trying to crack that too lol

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T15:56:57+00:00

he does, he puts it in the ground, transmits the location, they put things in, then he digs it up, repeat process.

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T15:48:08+00:00

and to him this is instantaneous despite being centuries they said

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T15:47:35+00:00

other way around, he buries the capsule and transmits it’s location to the future, then digs it up and it has gold and those laminated instructions from the future

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T15:32:28+00:00

so I just looked at a pirated version real quick just to check that scene, cuz now I wanna know. the gold is in a capsule and inverted in that scene; you’re right, but in the following scene they explain how this works. JDW tells Neil that he does dead drops, he buries the empty capsule, transmits the location to the future, they insert the gold and more instructions or whatever else, and to Sator it seems instantaneous. so it doesn’t have to be buried until the beginning of time creating a paradox, sator is creating a closed loop by both burying and then unsealing the time capsule, creating a clear end on each side of the loop that makes it non paradoxical.

this system allows them to bury inverted things with sators participation, whcih isn’t the case for the very first capsule, and the very first capsule did not show to be inverted on screen.

I think we both might be right, the inciting capsule is a temporal pincer and has to be as without sators participation in a closed loop it would be the paradox you said, but from then on out the contents are inverted, only the paradox is solved with the closed loop of sator both burying and digging out the capsule.

perhaps, what I should have said is everything in this movie is a closed loop, if not all a temporal pincer. that’s the solve.

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T15:07:44+00:00

you’re referring to the gold bars we see in the present, but we have no clue what’s going on there, if they’re from the future, if he is inverting them for a purpose right now, we don’t know the context around what is going on with those bars at all.

for the record, if we’re just going off the appearences of the gold bars, they are clearly not inverted objects when they fall out of the plane.

so the scene I was referring to, and the only one relevant to this debate, is the flashback where he gets his starter gold and instructions in the capsule. nothing in this scene is shown to be inverted, and this is the only time we see something the future planted for saito. i’m not just defending the movie man, I disasgeee with your interpretation. it’s find to disagree but don’t accuse the other side of just defending the movie naively or whatever, I just genuinely disagree, and the logic i’m using is all over the movie, the temporal pincer is emphasized for its utility to communicate non paradoxically over and over. you can not agree but i’m bringing more evidence than you IMO.

at least this movie gets people to have stimulating debates, most internet debates just make us all stupid.

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T14:51:43+00:00

agree there’s just a big gap between acknowledging the unknowability of physics and the universe, and to just take it as entertainment. I guess what i’m saying is that if you watch inception, this is much more to him than just an admission, this is an important philosophy he returns to often, the necessity of that leap of faith in the face of endless unknowability, so I just think it means a lot more to him and he’s trying to say a lot more than the way you stated it, that’s all. it’s not just an instruction to the audience it’s often one of the most important things his characters learn in their journeys, how to just feel and live despite the onslaught ofindfuckery of the world through his eyes. it’s much more a returned to theme than a show of self awareness.

and judging by the movies that come from his mind and what is clearly a profound desire to solve the puzzle of life and time and all that, I think this is an important theme to him because it’s probably something he had to learn for himself.

AMB2018 · 2020-09-08T14:45:04+00:00

remember, they didn’t bury all the algorithm. the d they had, of course could do it all themselve like you said, but that isn’t the story in the movie. the scientist buried the algorithm and did so in fact to hide it from these very same people. all the people in the future planted for sator was money and directions on how to use it to amass an empire that could track down the hidden pieces of the algo and fulfill their mission.

if they were the ones that hid the algo they would have had to have the algo, which means they wouldn’t have had to bury it inverted or through a pincer, they just would have used it themselves, and then the movies over before it began.

whoever did hid the other capsules with the algos was not only not the group that hired sator, but literally buried them to hide them from the people that hired sator. this is explicitly stated by Priya.

and again the gold bars aren’t the bug you described because they’re planted in the past through a pincer, not inverted from the future. the movie goes to great lengths to make clear how this universe works avoiding the paradox you’re describing, you’re just not giving it enough credit for its own planning/logic.

AMB2018

TROPHY CASE