Subject:  Eek! Time Travel
Date:  Fri, 22 May 1998 17:52:58 EDT
From:  JKrapf007

Hello I read your Army of Darkness Time Travel Interpretation, I would like to clear up a couple things for you...

at the end of Evil Dead 2 Ash is transported back in time... but since they didn't want the movie to be 4 hours long they decided to make Ash 'destroy the evil' right then and there.

But several years later they made AOD and expanded on the idea... Ash saved everyone and returned the book to the castle.

(the castle is where the book was found by the professor, he says it in Evil Dead 2)

So Ash WAS the promised one, and he DID full-fill the prophecy(sp?)

Anything you don't understand or would like to talk about please e-mail me back.

-Justin Krapf

PS- My brother (Sauce96) is a time travel enthusiest, he has written many stories about it.  I think you and he would have some good conversasion.
Drop him a line sometime.

Justin--

  Thank you for your clarifications.  As I implied, I had a lot of trouble finding a copy of either The Evil Dead or The Evil Dead 2, and it seems that you were more attentive to them than those I was able to question.  However, you also misunderstood me.  Perhaps I was not sufficiently clear on a few points.  This is the twelfth time travel movie I've discussed on this web site, and there is a fine line between explaining things clearly in each page and repeating things ad nauseum for those who have read some of the other pages.  Perhaps I can clarify them for you.

  I'm not sure exactly what you mean when you say that Ash destroyed the evil at the end of Evil Dead 2.  I understand that to be a remake of The Evil Dead (which was not 4 hours long, either), and my sources say that the movies had the same ending--but they could have been mistaken.  However, your point that the book was found at the castle by the professor is an important one, and requires that it was moved from the graveyard to the castle in both time lines.

  So Ash was the promised one, and did fulfill the prophecy in the second time line.  This apparently you did not understand.  Permit me to clarify it.

  There have been many stories based on time travel.  When time travel is an essential part of the story (as opposed to being an incidental aspect), writers tend to create various temporal paradoxes.  They generally do this either as an honest attempt to wrestle with the complications of tampering with time, or as a complete blunder revealing their failure to fully consider the implications of what they have done.

  Some time back, I created and published (in the Multiverser game system) a new theoretical approach to unraveling such paradoxes.  Observing that one cannot enter a point in the past without altering history in some way (it is anthropocentric arrogance to suggest otherwise--your mere mass changes the gravitic forces of the universe), I maintain that once you enter the past, you end the future at the moment you left it, and create a second timeline in which history is altered.  Using these films to illustrate, there was an original time line which led from that castle in the past through the birth of Ash up to the moment he is sucked back in time.  It has a history.  Ash cannot have been at that castle in that history, because he must be born in his own point in time before he can go back in time--that is, Ash's life must begin with his birth at a specific point in time and space which must have arrived through its own chain of events before he can travel back into history and alter it.  His appearance near the battlefield where the events of Army of Darkness occur therefore changes the history which led to his own birth.  The way this is handled under my theory is not that difficult:  the original timeline ends at the moment the traveler leaves it, all of time reverts to the moment to which he returns, and history continues forward to the point at which the traveler originally left--the second timeline paralleling (or more precisely diverging from) the first--and then a determination is made as to whether history can continue beyond this point.  If you look at some of the other movie discussions, this will be clarified by multiple examples.

  Thus, although Ash was the promised one in the history which remains, he could not have fulfilled the prophecy in the history which existed when he was born in the first time line.  Thus what my page attempts to do is recreate what the history might or must have been in that first time line--the one in which Ash could not have been, because he had not yet been born.

  I realize that this is not the way most writers view time.  However, after much consideration I have not found another approach to time which preserves the free action of men in the present and makes possible all of the things they could do were they able to move backward through time.

  I hope this clarifies what I was saying.  I'd be glad to answer any other questions.

  As to the spelling problem you had, "prophecy" (with a "c") is the noun form, that which is predicted, and has an "ee" sound at the end.  "Prophesy" (with an "s") is the verb, referring to the act of making the prediction, and ends with the long "i" sound.  And prophecies are "fulfilled".

  Thanks again for your interest and your input.