Contact

Contact

In the movie contact there is controversy over the concept over the twin paradox theory. While early on in the movie there is a conversation where they get the concept of the twin paradox correct and it seems like they will be on the right track to make the movie somewhat make sense, by the end of the movie they completely ruin the entire thing. By the end of the movie when they try to show how the twin paradox works they end up getting what they initially got correct completely backwards. In the earlier conversation they discuss that when they send people through the machine that time would pass much faster in the outside world  and slower for the person in the machine. They also say that when the person would return that it could be as much as 50 years in the future compared to when they left. This theory is correct however the movie makes it out that while the main character was gone for 18 hours in the real world it had only been around 1 or 2 seconds. This completely goes against what they had stated earlier in the movie where they said more time would pass in the outside world. There is an easy way that they could fix this problem within the movie to make it to where they would stay true to what they predicted. What they would have to do is somehow make the pod that they end up dropping take much longer to fall or have it end up suspended in the air for quite some time while not much time has passed for the person within the pod. This was a very simple yet drastic mistake that the film makers made that was more important to get correct than they may have thought. It is an easy mistake to fix and something that they should not have gotten wrong seeing as how they get it right in the beginning.

Comments

  1. Prof. Chris FragileDecember 3, 2019 at 7:55 PM

    But you see how this would have changed the whole tone of the movie, right? Much of the movie was dealing with faith vs. knowledge. Ellie comes back with no proof of her trip, but she *believes* that she did indeed visit with aliens, while almost everyone left on Earth doubts her story. If the pod had been suspended in midair for 18 hours or disappeared and reappeared sometime later, then no one on Earth would have had reason to doubt her.

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