The Wachowski Brothers also gave you the Matrix sequels. Sometimes there’s a balance to be maintained between enabling the writers to bring a whole, cohesive vision to the screen, and giving them a whole lot of money to shoot their first draft.

I hated Butterfly Effect. Saw it in theatres. Hated its guts. I can’t say I loved the director’s cut, I still think it contained some profound crappiness of writing in the small scale, but the most important thing, the larger scale, the story, worked. I respected it. It was like a good episode of The Outer Limits, at movie length.

Another thing you should never do is fuck with Ridley Scott. Kingdom of Heaven made me furious at its nonsensical suckiness in theatres. The director’s cut is magnificent. Forty minutes longer and feels an hour shorter than the theatrical version… it restores motivation and logic and momentum to the picture, making it one of my favourites of that year. It could have made a real dent at the Academy Awards too, I think, if they’d released Ridley’s original version.

Howdy outofafrica,

I compare B.E. to the Sixth Sense. Both are extremely well done and very clever–the way fiction should be.

Hi sophia,

Thanks for your comment!

I got why that incident helped him, but remember Ashton’s whole life is always different after he time travels because the changes he makes alters the timeline not just in the “present”, but when they actually happened.

To make things a little clearer, since Ashton’s injury happens when he’s a child the timeline after that would change and he would have had those scars when he entered the prison. They would have surely been noticed by our inmate before that point.

From the inmate’s point of view, Ashton reads a note then shows him scars that he had when he entered the prison–no miracle is apparent.