2025-11-27
I like this movie. As other time travel movies it has plot holes (doesn't all of them except for Army of the 12 Monkeys?), but I believe I can explain them. It does require one small leap from the plot: that the people in the movie don't actually know how time travel works.
It's explained early on in the film that they can bridge two points in time, but that these points are like "rafts flowing along the same river": as one moves forward in time so does the other. They point out that the bridge is unstable and janky; that they would still be sending rodents if it wasn't an emergency.
Their idea is this: humanity is dying out in the future and they need soldiers. By taking people from the past they can replenish the ranks, but of course they can't take anyone or everyone. If you will die before the invasion you qualify, for example. At least that's what happens to our protagonist. They want to take as many as they can, but they don't want to cause anyone who already exists in the future to disappear. Or something like that.
Here's what they don't understand: when they first initiated the bridge the "river" of time split into two parallel flows. The people on the raft ahead are not recruiting people from their own past, but starving the other timeline of people they will need to counter the same threat when their raft gets to it. With a reduced population pool there will be less innovation and production capacity, meaning less chance to defeat the White Spikes when they inevitably appear.
This also means that the present timeline can do anything without changing the future that they're connected to with the bridge.
-- CC0 Björn Wärmedal