Question: Obviously, Evan has traveled back in time more than what was shown in the movie itself. I was just curious, how many times had he likely time traveled before the second-to-last jump, with the blockbuster that killed Katie? Keep in mind, I'm talking about off-screen ones done as well on here.
Question: I'm guessing that Evan can travel back to "memories" an infinite amount of times as he has been to the junkyard and the basement memories at least twice, but what I don't get is why, after he saw the horrible repercussions of giving Lenny the shard which led to the psychotic brother's death, why didn't Evan just NOT give Lenny the shard, but still give the bro the moving motivational speech that made him rethink the burning of the dog? Then the dog would be safe and the bro wouldn't be killed traumatically, damaging Kaylee? Why didn't he keep that bit that seemed to work out, but not give Lenny the weapon?
Question: I am confused about the second-to-last time travel of Evan where he ends up in the hospital/institution because he killed Kayleigh with the blockbuster. Since Kayleigh died after Evan began journaling (I remember Evan writing about being excited to meet Kayleigh's real dad), what happened to the journals that the doctor says Evan never had them? He must've had a journal with something written in it.
Answer: Yes Evan did write that single entry but this time he was at a disadvantage because in this new reality the younger him had already started the blame game of blaming himself and showing symptoms of being in trauma due to which he was institutionalized that same day the incident in the basement happened. Now about that single entry that he wrote before going to meet Kayleigh's dad, it is shown that in this particular reality as he did not maintain a proper journal after that, it got lost and everybody thought he never even started writing it before the basement incident happened leading to everyone believing there is no journal. This explanation is supported by an incident in the movie where the teenage Evan is making a journal at his attic right after his blackout with the blockbuster and Larry being admitted where he finds a box with his grandfather's death certificate and some weird photos in that attic. Later when he is institutionalized and asks for the journals from the doctor the doctor also tells him how his father kept asking for a photo album, suggesting his father also ended up in that institution by jumping realities and ending up in one where his photo got lost and he couldn't reach them anymore (the same photos Evan had found earlier in that attic). So his father got stuck in that institution and he didn't even have a of his birth like Evan did. Unlike his father, Evan got the video of his birth where he was able to stop himself from being born just like his two earlier brothers who reached the same conclusion and were shown in the movie as still births.
Answer: My assumption is that Evan didn't have black outs after that incident. In the first "future" he said "seven years with no blackouts." So in that alternate future, he must have stopped having blackouts much earlier (at 7 years old) and stopped the journals earlier too.
Question: Within the last 5 minutes of the film, Evan (Ashton Kutcher) wakes up from his very last life changing flashback in a dorm room with his roommate, Lenny, the fat blonde kid from his childhood. If you recall, in the flashback which preceded this, Evan as a young kid tells KayLee at her birthday party to "Never talk to me again or I'll kill you and your family." The flashback changes his future so KayLee would still be alive, as she is appeared on the streets of New York when Evan (the stockbroker) walks past her, in the final scene of the movie. The question is, if the flashback is supposed to correct the past to change his future, how is Evan still friends with Lenny (fat blonde kid), but has no relation or 'real' knowledge of KayLee, nor does Lenny.....?
Chosen answer: During the movie Kaylee specifically told Evan that after her parents split up the reason she chose to stay with her abusive father was because of her friendship with Evan. Since Evan changed the past by never becoming friends with her, Kaylee and her brother went to live with their mother after the split which was ultimately a better life for them. Lenny was also a neighborhood friend and there is nothing to suggest that Evan wouldn't still be friends with him even though he never became friends with Kaylee.
Thank you, I was confused about how one sentence change the whole ending.
Answer: He isn't a stockbroker.
Question: This movie confused me. I know that when Evan blacked out was actually when he went back, but what I don't get is how he got back or why the hemoragging happened. I also don't get the whole scar thing. Wouldn't he have hemorrhaged from having the scars or is it only at major changes that he hemorrhages?
Answer: He hemorrhaged because his brain had a hard time adjusting to all the memories of an entirely new lifetime. The doctor explained it when he showed how very little memory space Evan had left near the ending of the movie (the brain scans). The scars would've healed by the time he got to each new reality.
Question: In the scene where Evan visits an institutionalized Lenny locked in restraints, Lenny accuses him of having known on the day of the junkyard (where Lenny stabbed Tommy with a shard) that "something big was going to happen" and that Evan "should be where I am". How did Lenny know that Evan foresaw the "future" as it were, and that he changed the course of events which lead to his imprisonment?
Question: When Evan ends up in the mental hospital, the doctor states that Evan invented the whole story about being able to change the past by reading his diaries. This implies that the Evan must have known that he could change the past throughout the entire timeline and talked to his doctor about it. But how could he have known about his abilities before the actual scene where he wakes up in the mental institution and realizes that he has killed Kaitlin by changing the past?
Answer: In one scene the doctor is explaining to Evan's mother about what part of the brain had been changed to which Evan replied, "That's the part where memories are stored." Also every time he goes to one of his black outs he is essentially filing in the blanks. So when he fills in the blanks he is creating new memories. This would allow him to know of his abilities as a kid, he just didn't know until he unlocked his black outs.
Question: (Director's cut) In the end when Evan is hiding under the table in the hospital, just before he starts to watch the movie, he writes something on a paper. He says, "If someone finds this, my plan didn't work and I'm already dead. If I can somehow go back to the beginning, I might be able to save her." Who is he writing this for?
Chosen answer: Each time he alters his past, a lifetime of memories are added to his brain, in addition to all the memories he has accumulated of all altered lifetimes. In the hospital life at the end, the doctor explains, via brain scans, that Evan's brain is at nearly max capacity for memories. The doctor doesn't know why, and they think he is delusional, but Evan knows, and we (the audience) know, it's because his brain can only handle so many memories of altered lifetimes, (which is why it has gotten physically harder and harder for him each time he comes back to present day). In his last attempt to alter his past, he understands that his brain may not be able to handle it, it might not work, and it may kill him to try. This would mean nothing from this hospital life is altered, and everyone exists as he left it, so the hospital staff would be walking in to find his dead body. So the note is kind of like a suicide note. He doesn't have time to explain everything in detail, so he sums it up saying if they find him dead, it means his plan didn't work, and he was trying to save the girl.
Question: I have watched both endings to this movie and I love the director's cut much better...BUT, I don't understand somethings about the alternate ending. When Evan is killing himself in his Mother's stomach, his Mom says "for you I was pregnant THREE times" Is this a mistake? After Evan and his Mom went to the physic she told him that she had been pregnant TWO times before him and that they were still births. Also what confused me was that they flashed forward to show that his Mom had a child with his Dad and what looked like to be a little girl...so, does the cycle start all over again? and is that why she said THREE times instead of TWO?
Answer: The cycle will not start again, because the father of the little girl is not Evan's father.
Answer: This is already dealt with in corrected mistakes, but, we are being shown what happens after Evan has killed himself. We hear his mother tell her new daughter that she had three stillbirths (Evan being the third). And the cycle will not continue because only the males were affected (Evan's father and grandfather before him).
Righteously explained. However you should add that Evan's mom married to a new husband that's why the trait was ended.
Answer: When we see the kids being brought to the house with the "Welcome Kids" lettering draped over the front door, that is when Kaitlin and brother Tommy decide to move in with their Mom and away from their pervert Dad. They do this because there was no Evan for Kaitlin to want to stay with her father to be near. I had to watch that scene several times to get that. Everything we see after Evan "thinks" his way back in time to his mother's womb is what happened because Evan never was.
Answer: At the end of the director's cut with the mother on the hospital bed there is a very short baby cry. Is has been said that Evan killed himself in the womb but why the short baby cry that makes it seem that he lived but they just didn't show him.
Question: At the end when Evan wakes up in the hospital, the doc told him that he killed Kayleigh. How did he do that? With those two killing scenes? The theatrical ending means he became normal and could change the past?
Chosen answer: In that version of events, Evan was indirectly responsible for Kayleigh's death when he lit the stick of dynamite in her father's basement to threaten him; she mistook it for a sparkler and picked it up and the ensuing explosion killed her. In all the film's various endings, Evan goes back to a time before this incident; Kayleigh thus survives into adulthood and lives happily ever after.
Question: I'm wondering why Evan's necklace was never mentioned at all during the film? He wore it during every stage of his life, showing that it must have been very important to him, yet it was never talked about. I'm guessing it was a gift from his father before he was institutionalized, I just find it strange that they would leave something like that out.
Chosen answer: They expect you to make the connection on your own. His necklace is the necklace of Saint Christopher. A martyr who "the world gave a heavy burden" by carrying Christ across the river. Originally, Evan's name was going to be "Chris Treborn" aka Christ Reborn and was going to martyr himself in his mother's womb (this can be seen in the director's cut). Eventually, this all was changed, but the character still continues to carry the burden of the world on his shoulders like Saint Christopher.
St. Christopher is also the patron saint of travelers which is a good connection as well because he is traveling through time.
Question: I just saw the movie on DVD and I was kind of surprised when I saw that the ending was different than what I heard. In the movie, the ending was that Evan goes back and dies in his mothers stomach. However, I have heard from a friend and read in magazines that Evan lives and meets up again with the girl. I was wondering, why did i watch a different ending? Is it maybe cause i live in Europe?
Answer: The DVD has two sides, here in the US. One side is the Director's Cut with 6 additional minutes of footage (including the fortune teller scene), with the ending you saw. The other side is the Theatrical Cut, which was released in the cinemas here. SPOILER: The ending is that he goes back to when he first meets Kayleigh and says something to make her dislike him, therefore going to live with her mom and never see him again. At the very end, he passes her on the street, but they don't "get together".
Question: If the reason that Evan is blacking out is because he's returning to the past and he returns to the school room the day that he draws the picture to get the stigmata, Why does he draw the picture when he hasn't killed the inmates yet?
Chosen answer: Because that what he was planning to do.
Question: How is it possible that some of Evan's gaps, being his blackouts, are filled in with stuff that already happened in his life before he knew about his ability (standing with knife, drawing 2 dead man, talking to his father), and other gaps are filled with completely new stuff that changes the moment and the consequence. So: Evan has some gaps filled in, in the past, with things that still have to happen, but also some gaps are 'just' filled in with actions that never had place in the first place? It is all a bit of a mess for me, but I hope someone understand my question.
Answer: Evan's blackout gaps are just that. Gaps. Not only hereditary (his dad had it, remember?), they occur at random intervals and random events in his life as part of his life. Later, he has the option of filling in those gaps with his NEW experiences and thereby changing his future. He is in control; changing his future by choosing the time & place.
Answer: Yeah I brought up the same thing to my GF. I think they just edited things out things that would made sense. The kitchen scene he could grab the knife for any reason but the drawing at the school could be during blackouts he is aware of all the alternate life events. There is a another theory that he was just traumatized and in the mental hospital the whole time. Just in his head thinking he is fixing stuff living other lives. How the Dr. knew about his other lives when Evan just got to that new life in the hospital. In no other flash back did people know about other lives. The girl even commented he is totally different and walks different.
Question: When Evan went to see his father when he was young (not when he came back), why was his father trying to kill him? When he was young, he had no idea about his ability, so he couldn't talk about it and make his father try to kill him.
Chosen answer: Every time that Even blacked out was a moment that he would later return to as an adult. He couldn't remember them because he hadn't experienced them himself. It is a little confusing, but he basically skipped over those blackouts in his childhood. So just before he spoke to his father, his future self stepped in and spoke to him.
Answer: Evan's father is trying to kill him because he has the same ability as Evan, and is trying to kill him to prevent him from hurting himself/anyone else.
Answer: The point of the movie was that, no matter what he did and how he tried to change things, they always ended up bad. If he went back and did that, something unforseen would have happened to make things terrible. Evan realized that everything bad that happened to them was because of him. He then decided the only safe way to make things right is if he just took himself out of their lives all together. That's the logic the filmmakers went by, if you don't want to accept that, then you will just have to consider it a plot hole.