Donnie Darko - discuss it (megaspoilers naturally)

i happen to think donnie darko has a lot to do with fate and destiny and how you cant change it as well as time travel. it shows how time travel can alter ones destiny or fate, but in reality we are not able to do it. Alot of its probably to do with the fact that donnie's kinda schizo!

I always thought that Donnie was choosen to save some people (ie: his girlfriend) and "frank" took him to the future to show what would happen if he lived, and his death would stop that chain reaction which would cause his future girlfriend's death...or something. I don't know, its fun to watch though.

Some of the delteted scenes with Frank should have stayed in I think.

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"I would kill someone in front of their own mama for a ten speed. And if anyone testifies against me I'll gouge their eyes out."

donnie dies, so that the world wouldn't end, becaause if he didnt live then Frank wouldn't have exsisted.

I disagee with the interpretation that Donnie Darko decided to die to save the world. That makes no sense to me. I saw the end of the world as happening regardless of his actions, and he died by the plane engine because he forgot about it. If Donnie did indeed stop the end of the world from happening, the plane engine would have never been sucked into the wormhole to begin with, and he would of never died by the engine.

To me the movie was a rather bleak tale of destiny and how we cant change it. Darko was meant to die by that engine and the world was meant to end. He and the bunny couldn't change that regardless how hard they tried.

The destiny of the manipulated living is to return the artifact to the tangent universe in order to save it.. Donnie did save the world.

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Then explain the engine. Didnt it rip through the wormhole that was created at the end of the world if Donnie stopped the end of the world from ever happening?

I guess Ill have to rent it and listen to the commentary again, but I still dont see how donnie darko dying saved the world.

Pretty off base here. Watch the commentary, where the director says Donnie did indeed die to save the "real" world. There is a tangent universe (one of the DVD chapters is actually called "Tangent Universe") that is created, which sets the events for the destruction of the 'real' universe and Donnie is shown what must be done to prevent the tangeant universe from being created. Roberta Sparrow had actually already traveled through time, seen what was to be, and then wrote the book for Donnie to be given later, and then proceeded to walk back in forth in the middle of the street (looking for the letter she knew Donnie would write, insane from her knowledge) so she could be in front of Frank's car when she needed to be, causing Gretchen to get killed, finally pushing Donnie into the knowledge of the sacrifice that had to be made. As for sacrificing himself to save the world, do you see the correlation between Christ and Donnie here? In the commentary, the director states there are heavy religious themes in the story. This fact, coupled with the conversations between Donnie and Noah Wiley, lead me to believe the sacrifice theme was religious in nature.

Barrymore, who helped fund the project, also wanted to comment on the exploitation of children (a bitter commentary on her own childhood perhaps?), hence the whole Sparkle Motion story thread. This film is rich with social commentary, and although it has a few warts due to the lack of experience on the (very talented) directors parts, I think it is a fascinating and thought provoking movie. I look forward to the next R. Kelly project

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That would be called a paradox, and in any instance of a time travel scenario, there is invariably a paradox...

No that would be bad writing...

Are you saying that there's a single time traveling movie out there that doesn't have a paradox in the story? Think about it.

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Ok, please explain how you solve the paradox conumdrum that exists with time travel. Some things can't be quantified, or explained, or "written well", because the possibility doesn't exist. It's the whole "Chicken or the Egg" theory, which has no solution. It is a great philosphical question of our time, yet can never be proven either way. The same is true of paradox. Imagine you somehow discover time travel, build a device that can carry you back in time (not forward, that can't happen, as the future does not exist yet), to the day before your father met your mother. Your time machine is quite bulky and heavy and you manage to materialize on your father, killing him, before you were concieved. How is it possible that you just killed your father when you don't exist yet? There is no way to write this so it makes since, thus creating a paradox. This happens invariably with thime travel theory, there is no way around it. Eventually you reach a set of events that can not possibly take place.

Now, to look into the future (as Donnie was), one would only need to KNOW future events with certainty, not actually travel any where. If one is certain, absolutely certain, of events that will take place at a later time, they have, in essence, traveled through time into the what they now would know as the past (what we know as the present) and can now change what is to come. As Wiley explained in the film, this very idea negates the existence of those future events...creating a paradox.

The inherent problem with time travel.

To understand this one must try to disregard thinking about time travel as physically moving to and fro through time in some sort of device (like in my earlier, hollywood-esque example). One must consider the perceptual concepts of space-time: stop thinking of space and time as separate entities, and start attempting to perceive them as inextricably linked to one another. I am a graphic designer and a musician, and am unable to properly explain all these concepts clearly enough for someone else to understand, and I only understand the concepts to a certain point myself. I recommend reading The Universe in a Nutshell and A brief history of Time by S. W. Hawking, for more concise information on the subject.

Back to Darko: Not everything in this film can be explained, and that is on purpose. The director states this. He wants his audience to think about things. I believe he achieved this.

Offhand I can think of no paradoxes that extreme in any time travel movie. Be it the time travler, any of the back to the futures, or millenium.

Sedai, you make a lot of good points but I still have a hard time swallowing the engine problem. In the movie Millenium a paradox occuring meant a threat to all existence; which makes more sense to me. In other movies and stories, usually one time stream prevails, never both. Overall I think Darko is a pretty good film, but I have a problem with this paradox.

Your description can be applied to Donnie Darko as well.

It's all pretty obvious to us really intelligent people. Pfff...you and your paradoxes.

It takes quite an insurmountable level of intellegence to watch the directors commentary. If you're a blithering retard like yourself, that is.

Unlike You, that "blithering retard" hasnt managed to get themselves banned. See ya!

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One of the things that I liked the most about this film is it's obscurity and how there's no REAL certainty in its ending. For this reason, I doubt I'll be seeing the director's cut of the film -- I like the mystery (which isn't so much of a mystery anymore bc I've done so much reading about the film)

So, what happened to Hellraiser? What did I miss?

In his criticism of Schindler's List, things went way bad way fast. He wound up insulting everybody, throwing "Nazi" around like it was going out of style (especially at Yoda), and basically slit his own throat...board-wise. It was all rather fruitless.

Oh, well.

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