While your comment is being summarily dismissed by Trekkies and fans of films like Primer, I think you are absolutely correct. What is most problematic about time travel films (aside from those who abuse the grandfather paradox and have their protagonists fading from photographs, leaving an awkward empty space in an image that never would have been taken in the first place), is completely ignoring a theory which would make time travel plots work: The Chronology Protection Conjecture.
By removing the "what would happen if I killed my own grandfather?" conjecture from the picture, time travel plots could be interesting and consistent, without the writers ever having to pull a deus ex machina by splitting time lines (I think we can agree that the time travel plot is a 'deus ex machina' in and of itself).
The last thing anybody ever needs to see is another plot where someone makes an otherwise imperceptible change in the past, then returns to a future where, uh oh, the Nazis won.
And to that end, my biggest fear is that J. J. Abrams will explore the "what if Obi-Wan didn't die in front of Luke, but made it onto the Millenium Falcon? Then Luke would have no astral voice telling him to "let go", and hence he'd never turn off his targeting computer, and uh oh, the Empire won.
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While your comment is being summarily dismissed by Trekkies and fans of films like Primer, I think you are absolutely correct. What is most problematic about time travel films (aside from those who abuse the grandfather paradox and have their protagonists fading from photographs, leaving an awkward empty space in an image that never would have been taken in the first place), is completely ignoring a theory which would make time travel plots work: The Chronology Protection Conjecture.
By removing the "what would happen if I killed my own grandfather?" conjecture from the picture, time travel plots could be interesting and consistent, without the writers ever having to pull a deus ex machina by splitting time lines (I think we can agree that the time travel plot is a 'deus ex machina' in and of itself).
The last thing anybody ever needs to see is another plot where someone makes an otherwise imperceptible change in the past, then returns to a future where, uh oh, the Nazis won.
And to that end, my biggest fear is that J. J. Abrams will explore the "what if Obi-Wan didn't die in front of Luke, but made it onto the Millenium Falcon? Then Luke would have no astral voice telling him to "let go", and hence he'd never turn off his targeting computer, and uh oh, the Empire won.