Research: The Butterfly Effect

"The butterfly effect is a phrase that encapsulates the more technical notion of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory. Small variations of the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system. It is a common subject in fiction when presenting scenarios involving time travel and with "what if" scenarios where one storyline diverges at the moment of a seemingly minor event resulting in two significantly different outcomes."

Okay, so the first film I'm researching is The Butterfly Effect (2004). It was directed and written by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, and distributed by New Line Cinema. It stars Ashton Kutcher as main character Evan, and Amy Smart as his friend Kayleigh.

As a young boy Evan experiences black outs at time of high stress and wakes up later unable to remember anything. As Evan grows older, these black outs become less frequent. However, he discovers whilst at college that if he reads his childhood journals he is able to travel back in time and 'redo' what was done. This, we discover, was the reason for his blackouts. Evan tries to change the most traumatic times of his childhood and save those around him, such as preventing Kayleigh from being molested by her father.

These actions he takes change the present when he wakes up, having altered the time line. This is where the films title comes from. Although Evan intends to do good, his actions ultimately have infinite consequences and often some things end up worse than before.

The final cut of the film shows Evan eventually going back in time to the beginning of his childhood to scare Kayleigh away so he can't alter her future anymore. At the end of the film, they pass each other in street, and she does not recognise him.

Other cuts show Evan turning and following Kayleigh, and another shows him stopping her and asking for them to have a coffee together. 

However, another alternative cut of the film's ending shows Evan taking a final trip back to his time as a fetus in the womb and strangling himself with his umbilical cord. His mother exclaims "Not again!" implying that she has lost children before, assumingly with the same time traveling ability who chose the same path as Evan. This cut was considered too morbid, and is instead included on the DVD special features.

The Butterfly Effect initially received mixed and average reviews, but won an award at the Brussels Film Festival.