A Sound of Thunder
starring Edward Burns, Catherine McCormack, William Armstrong, Jemima Rooper, David Oyelowo, Corey Johnson and Ben Kingsley
written by Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer and Gregory Poirier
directed by Peter Hyamis
I like Science Fiction, but only if it’s good, and good science fiction is usually pretty hard to find. A Sound of Thunder is good science fiction, and I thought it was exciting to watch. The year is 2055. Time Safari, a Chicago firm, has perfected technologies to send people back in time, but as tourists on dinosaur hunting expeditions, with three rock solid rules: 1) don’t change anything in the past; 2) don’t leave anything behind; and, 3) Don’t bring anything back.
The story is based on a short story by Ray Bradbury, and it is a good premise. So good in fact that it is an old idea. Here are some other time slip movies I have seen and liked: Time Cop, Philadelphia Experiment, Time Machine (well, I didn’t like that one), Timeline (pretty lame, for a Michael Crichton story, but…), Demolition Man, Back to the Future of course, and most recently, The Butterfly Effect.
I think the film could have been much more exciting if the writers pursued the idea of a dinosaur coming back (forward) to the present. But I guess the Jurassic Parktrilogy pretty well covers that plot. Instead, the plot focuses on the disturbances in Time caused by the ripple effect of accidentally brining something back into the present from the deep past. As a result, the fabric of Time is disturbed by “ripples,” like throwing a stone into a calm pond, and world is periodically overrun by “time waves” that roll over the landscape, just like a wave of water. Now, there is an interesting premise that could have been played much better, I thought. Still, it was an okay movie.