If you could go back in time, would you still do what you did?

Project Almanac not a good movie, much less a quality time travel movie. Looking at the numbers, it’s not like this is a box office hit or a masterpiece that has received high scores from critics. Project Almanac is just as trivial as hundreds of movies rewinded in front of the viewer’s eyes every year, every month… But somehow, it makes the writer surprise in a moment when the final scene gives way to black curtain, bringing to mind a question that each of us must ask ourselves throughout our lives..

That question reminds the writer of another movie that seems to be far beyond Project Almanac in terms of quality scale… and of course willing to call itself a “blockbuster”. That is Edge of Tomorrow – film adaptation of the novel All You Need Is Kill by author Hiroshi Sakurazaka.
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Like a fellow believer who is far inferior to him in terms of stature, Edge of Tomorrow recounts the journey of a soldier who accidentally wields the power to turn time, allowing him to resurrect a day before if he unfortunately dies in battle. school. But go on and on and on into that vicious circle, everything becomes more and more like a joke of fate… causing him to witness the woman he loves die and die hundreds of times in front of his eyes.

With Project Almanac, that extreme irony is no less comforting. The whole movie seems to be a self-inquiry: if you could go back to the past years, what would you do? Surely most of us will have the same answer: “Fix the mistakes of the past”. That’s what the main character did, repairing himself… who saw an opportunity coming to the person he loved, but because he was stupid, he missed it.
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Holding a time machine in his hand, that idiot came back, did what he was supposed to do, regained the moment he missed and brought back the love that had been pursued silently for years. But changing the past also means changing the future, and like dominoes falling emotionlessly, the path we choose will lead to countless endings, like a tree that sinks into the ground with hundreds of thousands of roots. multiply.

What would that idiot say if he knew that the price for that love was the safety of his friends, the lives of his relatives and the surrounding blood? What would that idiot say if he knew that in exchange for his happiness, people out there had to suffer? That’s where the guy, you, me.. and maybe we’re all faced with a grim choice… Back to the beginning, erase everything and pretend everything never happened, both joy and pain.. or are you stuck in an irreversible vortex just to keep your love?
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It’s when we secretly wish everything was as easy as a game, where you can redo whatever you want, whenever you feel unsatisfied, for whatever reason you think is right. Failure? The game will take you back to the last save point. Die? The game will revive you as if nothing happened. Wrong choice? Come back this time, come back next time, come back again, come back forever, come back until you’re satisfied.. But every time we come back, will the emotional value remain intact, will they Are we really satisfied with the end result.. or just like an empty shell imagining satisfaction measured through a dozen lifeless, meaningless conditions?

Who knows we are who we are when we make our own decisions, choose the path that our heart really wants… not cold calculations, regulations, rules imposed upon by a certain system or society. Whether good or bad, happy or sad, those unique choices make each person’s ego… and that’s priceless.
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The other question you can bring back any answer you want, correcting mistakes, choosing again, or doing what you should have done. But for the writer, if he could go back to the past, relive the lost moments and retrace the paths he used to go, the writer would still make the same choice as the original. Even though I know it will push me into a bottomless pit, even though I know my life will change from here on, even though I know there’s nothing more than sadness in front of me… but I will still choose.
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