A Sound of Thunder (film)

Infobox_Film
name = A Sound of Thunder


writer = Ray Bradbury (short story)
Thomas Dean Donnelly
Gregory Poirier
Joshua Oppenheimer
starring = Edward Burns
Ben Kingsley
Catherine McCormack
director = Peter Hyams
cinematography = Peter Hyams
music = Nick Glennie-Smith
editing = Sylvie Landra
producer = Renny Harlin
Elie Samaha
Howard Baldwin
distributor = Warner Bros.
released = September 2, 2005
runtime = 103 minutes
country = USA
language = English
budget = $52,000,000 (estimated)
gross = $5,989,640 (worldwide)
website = http://asoundofthunder.warnerbros.com
amg_id = 1:288765
imdb_id = 0318081

A Sound of Thunder is a science fiction film released in 2005 directed by Peter Hyams. The movie was originally planned for a 2002 release. However, flooding in Prague (where the movie was shot) and other financial difficulties-including the bankruptcy of the original production company during post-production Fact|date=August 2008

Premise

A "Sound of Thunder" is loosely based upon the short story A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury. The film is about "time tourists" who accidentally interfere too much with the past and thus completely alter their present.

Plot

According to the film, the established rules of time travel are:

#Don't change anything in the past.
#Don't leave anything behind.
#Don't bring anything back.

These protocols were established, in part, by businessman Charles Hatton (Ben Kingsley) who has recently developed a time tourism service called Time Safari. For an extraordinary price, Time Safari will take clients through a wormhole to a time in pre-history to hunt dinosaur game. Scientist Travis Ryer (Edward Burns) is the designated leader for these safari expeditions, along with several other guides. Only creatures that are doomed to perish--such as dinosaurs about to die in a volcanic eruption--are downed by safari patrons. According to the guides, this ensures that Earth's evolutionary timeline will not be disturbed. The safari participants embark on their time tours wearing camouflage fatigues, helmets with sealed faceplates (like astronauts), and armed with rifles that fire nitrogen bullets that dissolve so as not to leave behind evidence (another precaution to avoid disturbing the timeline).

On one excursion, the guides are escorting a party of wealthy clients that includes two friends traveling together. One of the men, who is extremely nervous, is surprised by a pre-historic butterfly which he tries to shoot when it flutters close to his helmet. He learns that his weapon will not fire, as all safari patron weapons are tied remotely to Ryer's. He alone can fire first, thereby deactivating the safety feature on the tourists' rifles.

The group gathers before a large tar pit, waiting for their prey. As scheduled, they are charged by an "allosaurus" but in a rare equipment failure, the safety on Ryer's rifle does not deactivate. Neither Ryer or any of the safari patrons are able to fire.

Panicked by the attack, the two wealthy tourists run off to seek cover. Ryer and the guides stay to distract the dinosaur, while quickly trying to exchange gun parts in order to slay the beast. They are successful, and the party regroups to return through the time portal. Unseen to the party, a footprint of tar has been left on the path, indicating that someone has stepped off of it.

On the next expedition, Ryer and a new party of time tourists arrive to slay the allosaurus. As they wait for the creature to emerge, Ryer checks his watch, realizes it's late and that the allosaurus should have already arrived. Instead, they find it has already died. Furthermore, the volcano, which erupts after the explorers return to the future, is already in the process of erupting, and they are forced to return to the present.

The Federal agency that oversees temporal travel opens an investigation and shuts down Time Safari in order to review protocols. Ryer seeks out Sonia Rand, (Catherine McCormack) the original developer of the time travel technology and the computer (TAMI) that controls the jumps. Throughout the film, Rand and Hatton are at odds. She believes that Time Safari is essentially playing with fire and she eschews her previous association with company.

Ryer and Rand are chased out of her apartment when a time wave is unleashed, as a result of the past being altered. Rand explains that since they altered something in the past, the future will proceed to change in a series of ripples. She says that the changes cannot all happen at once, and that they will proceed in order of evolution: first, everything will reset, then the vegetation will change, then wildlife, and finally humans.

Under supervision of the temporal agency, Time Safari attempts to send Ryer back to fix the past with the help of Rand. Ryer is sent back several seconds before the party's excursion that caused the rift. When he arrives, he discovers he's in the American Southwest and about to be trampled by an Apache tribe on horseback. Ryer ducks out the way in time, but sees another time wave is about to hit. He leaps through the wormhole, but just as he exits the time machine the wave hits, causing all power in the Time Safari facility to go out.

When backup power is restored the building and the city are covered in dense vegetation. The team studies a holographic recording of the original trip, but finds nothing. One of the scientists, Payne, (David Oyelowo) discovers the team arrived just over a gram heavier than when they left--indicating one of the members brought back something from the past they should not have. It's also discovered that an administrator with the agency that oversees time travel has been paid off by Hatton to forgive shutdown of a bio filter, that screens out organic matter.

This knowledge leads to the discovery that one of the time tourists stepped on the butterfly, bringing it home, and critically altering the evolutionary chain of all organisms on Earth. Another time wave hits just before they reach the portal and they must continue on foot. They reach the portal, but it doesn't work. The party decides to try to reach a university a particle accelerator that can be modified to function like a time machine, may help.

They manage to reach the university, but various re-evolved creatures attack the group, including a pack of babboon-like dinosaurs, a flock of pterodactyl/bat hybrids, and carnivorous plants. Eventually only Ryer and Rand are still alive. Rand manages to send Ryer back 65,000,001 years to dodge the time waves, then he is sent forward one year to the point when the original explorers traveled into the past. In the present, the final time wave hits and Rand is turned into a fish-like being. Meanwhile, Ryer tells the explorers about everything that will happen in the future. He stops the explorer from stepping off the path and killing a butterfly, and thus the future is saved.

Back in the present, Ryer is shown the video of the alternate Ryer who saved the future. He requests that they shut down the time portal to stop such an occurrence from ever happening again.

Cast

* Edward Burns: Travis Ryer
* Catherine McCormack: Sonia Rand
* Ben Kingsley: Charles Hatton
* David Oyelowo: Payne
* Jemima Rooper: Jenny Krase
* Wilfried Hochholdinger: Dr. Lucas
* August Zirner: Clay Derris
* Corey Johnson: Christian Middleton

Acceptance

The film received overwhelmingly negative critical reviews. [The critical roundup website [http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sound_of_thunder/ Rotten Tomatoes] reported that out of 88 reviews of the film, 81 reviewers gave it a poor rating; the film scored an average rating of 2.8 out of 10.] Common complaints against the film included its poor special effects, uninvolved performances, scientific errors, Ben Kingsley's hair [ [http://movies.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/movies/02soun.html A Sound of Thunder - Movie - Review - The New York Times] ] [ [http://www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/reviews/A-Sound-of-Thunder A Sound of Thunder Movie Review, DVD Release - Filmcritic.com] ] [ [http://www.moviejuice.com/2005/sound MovieJuice: A Sound of Thunder] ] , and lack of respect for its source material. As a result of poor reviews and lack of promotion, the film--which was estimated to have cost $52 million--grossed less than $8 million in worldwide release.

cientific and logical inaccuracies

In the film, Time Safari, Inc. claims to take people back in time 65 million years. However, Allosaurus lived during the Jurassic Period, which ended 145 million years ago.

After the crew returns from the trip, Ryer talks to Payne about the malfunction. Payne then mentions the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and that it says nothing can be certain. Actually, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle does not state that "nothing can be certain". It states that the momentum and position of a particle cannot both be exactly known. As the precision with which one of these properties is known increases, the precision of the other property decreases. Similarly, with time and energy. The uncertainty in knowing these pairs of values is not due to a defect in any instrument; it is a fundamental law of nature.

A basic principle in the movie is that every wave of time has another step in evolution, such that first weather changes, then plants, then insects, then larger creatures. The premise is that each of these are greater steps in evolution, from simpler to more complex. This is a common misunderstanding of evolution. There are no more or less evolved creatures. Every organism is constantly adapting to its environment. Thus plants and insects would not be simpler stages of evolution, and come in earlier waves before the larger animals.

Also, if there were to be a volcanic eruption soon after the killing of the allosaurus in the bog, the butterfly would also have been killed through it, therefore any changes in its fate would not have affected the future, like the allosaurus.

Behind the Scenes

* At the beginning of the film, during a speech comparing the accomplishment of time travel to other great accomplishments in history, a "landing on Mars" is mentioned as being accomplished by an astronaut named "Brubaker." This refers to the 1970s sci-fi movie "Capricorn One", also directed by Peter Hyams, in which a character named Commander Charles Brubaker--played by actor James Brolin--was to have been the first man on Mars.Fact|date=November 2007

*In Travis' apartment in a Chicago highrise, banners of the Chicago Cubs' future World Series titles can be seen.

*Director Renny Harlin was originally hired to direct and Pierce Brosnan was to star.Fact|date=February 2008

References

External links

* [http://asoundofthunder.warnerbros.com Official site]
*imdb title|id=0318081|title=A Sound of Thunder
*rotten-tomatoes|id=sound_of_thunder|title=A Sound of Thunder
*mojo title|id=soundofthunder|title=A Sound of Thunder
*cite web| url=http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/gallery/box_office_bombs?pg=4| title=Movies that were box office bombs| publisher=boston.com