Regular readers may remember that I have a thing for a couple of science fiction tropes. My time travel debate recently got a resurgence as one of my friends shared some information he had come across about physics and gravity and different rates of time. It got interesting for a minute until he realized he had made an error. Haven't had a chance to talk about my teleportation issue for a while, though, and this is why I'm glad we're discussing the film we're discussing today. Here's my thing: don't do it. If teleportation was a physical possibility, it would not be what we think of, which is the disintegration of our atoms to be transported to another place and reassembled. What would really happen is the information would be copied, destroyed, and simultaneously constructed at another point. Like an instantaneous fax machine attached to a shredder. You would die. What would be walking around is an exact copy with all the same thoughts, feelings, and memories, which wouldn't realize it's a copy, but it's still a copy. Your individual consciousness would be destroyed, to be replaced with an exact copy. (Read Michio Kaku's excellent book “Physics of the Impossible.”) People tend to not understand this, which is frustrating, but I generally point to two films as decent illustrations. The Prestige pretty clearly demonstrates the true horror of the idea, but as evidence, I like to point to The Fly.
So, it's a good thing that Baxter Avenue Theaters is hosting a midnight screening of The Fly tomorrow, Saturday. Cronenberg's classic film stars Jeff Goldblum as a scientist working on making teleportation a reality – a task at which he succeeds. The trouble is, when he tests it out, a fly makes its way into the first pod, and their DNA is fused together upon transference, with some incredibly ghastly results. It's pretty cool. Check it out.
Baxter Avenue Theaters is located at 1250 Bardstown Road. Further theater information and advance ticket sales can be found at the Baxter Avenue Theater website.
Image: Internet Movie Database
