Café Seoul is back? What?
Cool glasses, Arnie!
Ladies and gentlemen, Rob and Eugene left season 5 not knowing when they would see each other again, let alone record another episode. But there was then a time that over facebook or kakao chats that Eugene discussed time travel theory with Rob, who thought this ought to be something they document, because Eugene has theories and time travel sensibilities that most movie watchers don’t even think about.
A lot of that comes from Eugene having discovered the webpage of Mark Joseph Young who really was the first to solidify in writing ideas that Eugene had independently been kicking around in his head since watching Back to the Future II in 1990 at the age of twelve. No other person was able to succinctly and clearly explain these complex ideas, and since then Eugene has gone about analyzing the science of time travel films using these ideas. This is why Rob and Eugene reached out to Mark prior to recording the first few episodes of this season to get his blessing. Graciously, he obliged.
So you’re just going to review old movies?
Not really review… more like analyze. Sure it may be a great film, but DOES IT WORK? What had to have happened in the ORIGINAL timeline and subsequent timelines in order for what we saw onscreen to have happened? What can we know about what will happen (if anything at all) after the movie ends?
This is what this podcast will now be about. Yes, we’ll review the films we analyze to see if they are good films, but the more interesting (and nerdy) discussion is to reconstruct previous timelines.
As this is the first episode of season 6, Rob and Eugene talk a bit about time traveling Captain America in Avengers Endgame, take a question about Back to the Future 2, then get into explaining the theories that will be the basis of this podcast.
The podcast was recorded in August 2019 because travel wasn’t so easy in 2020, where Eugene came from. Eugene then returned a year into the future before finally finding the time under quarantine to edit and publish this first episode. (Translation… when you’ve got a kid and are always exhausted when he finally gets to sleep, podcast editing takes a backseat if it isn’t your job.)
Diagram 1. These are the three possible outcomes of time travel under the replacement theory. Courtesy mjyoung.net
Café Seoul 