Talk:Primer (film)

message: Two engineers, Abe and Aaron, supplement their day-jobs with entrepreneurial tech projects, working out of Aaron's garage. They attempt to create a box in which any inserted object would lose weight. However, after Aaron discovers that the box displays electric anomalies, Abe continues the experiments alone. One day, Abe approaches Aaron and reveals that any object left inside will bounce in time between the point the box is turned on and is turned off. Aaron realizes that, if one could enter the box when it's being turned off, one could exit the box after it was turned on, in the past. Abe reveals that he's done that: he built a bigger box and left it in a warehouse. He spent the day in a hotel, and later got into the box and exited in the past, reliving the day.
Aaron builds a box for himself and both travel to the past, after checking the stock market; this way, they can buy shares a few hours ago and slowly become rich. Aaron expresses the idea to punch Platt, their former investor, and travel back in time so he doesn't have consequences. Abe is opposed, since he doesn't know if they can change the past. During one occasion in a hotel, Aaron gets a phone call, and when they relive the day, he gets the same phone call, meaning his other self in the hotel doesn't get it. Abe realizes they can change the past.
During the night, some kids wake up Abe. He goes to Aaron and tells him they can punch Platt, get in the box, and prevent the kids from waking up Abe. The other Abe and Aaron will eventually get in the box, and Platt won't have been punched. However, on their way, they discover an unshaved Thomas Granger, the father of Abe's girlfriend, who is existing alongside his other suburban self. Granger falls into a comatose state after being pursued, and both engineers realize that for some reason, Granger has used a box and come back in time. Unable to get answers from him, Abe returns to the warehouse and enters a "failsafe machine" - another box who has been running since the beginning of the experiments.
Abe returns to the first day, and drugs his other self. He meets Aaron, but collapses due to fatigue. Aaron then reveals that he has also gone back in time, for the second time, bringing a disassembled box with him. The first time he came back, he used Aaron's failsafe after discovering it, and left his own failsafe in another room. He later drugged his other self, and recorded the conversations with Aaron. After Abe used his failsafe, Aaron used his own, and tried to drug his other self who just had drugged the original Aaron. However, due to fatigue, he couldn't, but his other self left anyway, since this Aaron had already recorded their conversations and had an advantage.
The two men briefly and tentatively reconcile. They jointly travel back in time, experiencing and reshaping an event where Abe's girlfriend Rachel was nearly killed by a gun-wielding party crasher. After many repetitions, Aaron, forearmed with knowledge of the party's events, stops the gunman, becoming a local hero. Abe and Aaron ultimately part ways; Aaron considers a new life in foreign countries where he can tamper more broadly for personal gain, while Abe states his intent to remain in town and dissuade/sabotage the original "box" experiment. Abe warns Aaron to leave and never return.
The ending of the film reveals that the Aaron who left is explaining the events to someone through a phone call. Abe watches his other self so the time travel experiments don't take place. The Aaron who left the country is seen with French-speaking workers, constructing a warehouse-sized box.
What do you think? WKMN? Later [ Let's talk ] 15:56, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Oppose.  Not because I am married to my previous content, but because this rewrite flips tenses, is slang-jargon-y (realizing that my own version may qualify as 'stilted'), and because it falls into the "But really Other-Thing was happening, but really Other-Other Thing was happening" murkiness aforementioned.  This isn't a ding on your work -- time travel is difficult to summarize clearly and concisely. Sskoog (talk) 23:36, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrite attempt