@Jazzycola said:
@Dookysharpgun said:
Fringe season 3's end; proving that JJ Abrams doesn't understand time-travel, how a paradox works, or how to write a great story without contriving the shit out of it to get another season or two out of the franchise.
Man come on...Time-travel at this point in time is merely imagination. It's all a person's interpretation. That's like saying You don't like a certain person's vision of heaven.
...no, it's not anything like that. When Eureka dedicated a two part episode to time travel and a paradox, it was explained in such a manner that made it both believable and entertaining. Abrams' idea was to use the concept to extend the series, slowing it down because he realised it had built to much momentum, he based his entire ending idea off of a single person, the only person capable of leading the events to said ending, disappearing from reality. In truth, it's logic that was missed out on here: something can't happen if the catalyst didn't exist in the first place, which is what Abrams' writing seemed to have alluded to. It's more than he doesn't understand logic, or how time itself works, it wouldn't matter if he was breaking new ground coming up with something new, he could do what he wanted then, but this was a huge 'fuck you' to anyone who was really enjoying the series and character progression, to see the entire show take a nose-dive all because of a writer's inability to keep a steady pace. It was used as a retcon to the series, and not even a well thought out one.
It's not like it's hard to grasp, plenty of sci-fi writers, long before Abrams, carried out the concept in a more believable way than Fringe did...and moreso to the point, why is this even an argument, it's a freaking TV show, I watch TV to escape reality, furthermore, if many other books, movies and shows can carry out the concept, why can't another show? Back to the Future had better methods of explaining time travel than this, and while not entirely accurate, it still made it believable. Who cares if it's imagination? If used piss-poorly to cover poor choices in storytelling pace, it's still shit, and leans more towards a poor writer and producer than anything else. Interpretation only goes so far, but it's widely held as a belief throughout sci-fi, the genre fringe is based in, that time travel/manipulation can't work the way Abrams has set it up to. I mean, interpretation is grand, but this isn't interpretation we're talking about here, it's how it was used: as a method of extending the lifespan of a series, gutting the pace and the characters in order to drag it out and contrive it. It wasn't believable, so much so that I think he went back on the plot-point in the fourth season, proving my final point that ties into the first two, that it was used without appropriate understanding of the concept, and only for extension purposes.
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