In 1943, the French science fiction writer René Bach zavelle, in his novel Le Voyageur Imprudent, first proposed the "grandmother paradox" that became known as the "grandmother paradox". To this day, even though his novel has been submerged in a vast sea of books, this highly groundbreaking and forward-looking theory has been widely used by later generations of science fiction stories and film and television works.
This theory raises such an intractable conundrum: If you had the superpower of traveling through time, could you go back in time and kill your grandmother? If you killed her, there wouldn't be you at all, and how can you go back in time and kill her?
Today, when quantum physics and parallel universe theory are not yet complete, this paradox still deeply plagues countless scientists and creators of science fiction works. But that doesn't stop good and bold science fiction works from constantly being born, especially science fiction movies about time travel.
From "Time Machine" to "The Butterfly Effect", from "Former Destination" to "Interstellar"... With its unique charm, time travel constantly ignites the light of the soul that has been buried deep in people's hearts for a long time, and bursts out brilliant sparks through the creation of science fiction works!
The film we want to mention today, compared with the previous classics of time and space travel, has a little more tragic rendering beyond scientific theories, but it also has an unusual cruel reality charm.
Like Blade Runner, the story tells that in the future world, human technology is highly developed, while in the dark social environment, human life seems more and more insignificant. Gangsters can assassinate their enemies with impunity, but they must cover up their murderous crimes without leaving a trace. So they thought of using mature time-travel technology to cover everything up.
Thus came the "Ring Messengers", a group of killers, at a fixed time and in a fixed place, waiting for the assassination targets of the gang to teleport from the future with their hands tied, black hoods and silver bricks strapped to their bodies. All they had to do was shoot a headshot at the person teleported over, then bury the body and take the silver bricks as a bounty.
But in order to keep secrets, when the "ring messengers" reach a certain deadline, the gang organization will teleport the "ring messengers" 30 years later, and let the "ring messengers" kill their future selves, which is called "sealing the ring". This is where the title "Ring Messenger" and the basic backstory of the film come from.
After completing the sealing ring, the killer can enjoy the remaining thirty years of life with the huge assets accumulated from previous missions.
The protagonist of the film, Joe, as an excellent ring messenger, quickly ushered in his own ring after successfully performing countless missions.
Then he went to Shanghai, and for the next twenty-three years, he burned and looted, spent money, and did everything he could, but found that his heart still could not be completely at peace. A moving Chinese girl appeared in front of him at this time, and love saved and reshaped Joe.
But 30 years flew by, and soon the day of the sealing came, and the elderly Joe witnessed his wife accidentally encounter the killer organization because of the sealing. In anger, Old Joe traveled back to the day when he sealed his ring with the time-space machine, in a vain attempt to strangle the future "rain summoner" in the cradle of childhood.
Old Joe, who had lost his senses, and Little Joe, who had lost his senses, met in the past time and space.
In the end, Old Joe, bent on rescuing his wife, slaughtered the entire organization and killed two of the three boys who might become the leader of the organization in the future, the "Rain Summoner".
Little Joe suddenly understands that this is an endless time and space cycle at the moment when the last boy and his mother are about to be killed by Old Joe, and it is Old Joe who kills the boy's mother, Sarah, and the little boy is extremely twisted after losing his mother, and after becoming an adult, he commits many evils, controls the killer organization, and finally affects Old Joe's wife. And old Joe went back to the past and killed Sarah in order to save his wife, like a closed time and space loop, never having an end...
In the end, in order to save the boy and save the future world, young Joe chooses to pull out his gun and commit suicide, and old Joe is disillusioned... The little boy under the call of human sex and the care of maternal love did not become the evil "rain summoner" in the future.
The film's character choices that undergo a huge reversal at the last moment add an unprecedented depth of ideological core to the original seemingly unhurried plot, compared with the killer story of "Blade Runner" with an extremely depressing and dark atmosphere, "Ring Messenger" under the influence of minimalism creates a simple and deep texture in the picture atmosphere.
The plot story of this film is not worth mentioning is not the time and space travel meme it uses, but the strange perception of the time and space paradox and the interlacing of the past and the present and the past that it deliberately wants to show in the plot story, so that the audience in front of the screen can also look back from the past from the movie and touch the past years that have ceased to exist.
If we look at the scientific theories and logical structures of the real world, it is obvious that the story in the film cannot happen and exist. As far as the "grandmother paradox" mentioned above is concerned, if you killed yourself in the past, there will be no you in the future, how do you go back to the past and kill yourself?
Many physicists have said that even if the future can really invent the technology of time and space travel, even if we can really go back to the past, we can only be a bystander of history, if you deliberately want to kill yourself or your parents and ancestors, you will eventually be prevented by the laws of history itself. Therefore, we can see that in "Back to the Future" and "Avengers 4", the plot will set the future self and the past self can not meet, so as not to produce paradoxes, resulting in unexplainable embarrassment.
However, "The Ring Messenger" deliberately creates a paradox, which can be said to give a refreshing dose to the audience who are more and more sleepy in the old-fashioned time travel meme.
The film unexpectedly closely links two time-space rings, one is the life and death ring between old Joe and little Joe, if the old Joe played by Bruce Willis was killed in the past by the little Joe played by Joseph in the past, then Little Joe can live happily for thirty years, and meet his wife, and finally be sent back to the past to be killed by little Joe.
It seems that two people and two lives exist at the same time, but the essence is a person from beginning to end, and Joe's life has fallen into an infinite cycle from the beginning of the story.
The other ring is the ring of causal reincarnation between Old Joe and the future Rain Summoner, from the future to the past, Old Joe killed the rain summoner's mother, it was doomed to the sinister and vicious future of the Rain Summoner, which also doomed the final death of Old Joe's wife, and also contributed to Old Joe's time and space travel killer journey.
The two rings are connected and interacted with each other, one is tightly clasped to the other, and the wonderful plot and the truth of the story unfold like a mountain gate opening at the last moment of the film. These two story rings, like unsolvable mysteries, bring the protagonist of the story extreme thinking at the same time, but also put the question of how to choose in front of us as the audience.
As a masterpiece of the joint efforts of the director and screenwriter with great brain holes, "Ring Messenger" has achieved the great achievement of a good work at a lower cost and better production.
The film was at a 93 percent freshness high on Rotten Tomatoes that year, and it was also well received by a number of professional film critics, including the Wall Street Journal, the Rearview Mirror, Empire, the Los Angeles Times, and The Rolling Stone. The New York Post even commented that "a commercial masterpiece created by an independent spirit with enough intelligence, acting skills and a satisfying look and feel, this is the first must-see film this fall." ”
However, after the film was released in North America, it did not get a high public reputation as expected, and coupled with the widely criticized existence of a Special Edition in China, the film was also treated coldly in China. Maybe this is the result of the wonderfulness of the movie story that varies from person to person and from time to time!
But this does not negate the fact that the film has become an excellent science fiction film, especially as a low-budget science fiction film shot for 30 million US dollars, the unique narrative style and visual effects presentation of "Ring Messenger" that is comfortable between business and art can almost be used as a standard and model for the production of low-cost science fiction films in later generations.
Therefore, for the large number of criticisms that appeared on the Internet later on the Chinese capital injection of this film and the plot of the film story, I just want to say that the standard and effect of the film are not simply from the perspective of the investors of the film, the surface content of the story, the water army and the evaluation of public opinion, and the excellence of a film can only be determined by time and the final choice of the audience.
Just like the "Forrest Gump", "Pulp Fiction" and "Shawshank Redemption" of that year, only "Forrest Gump" was awarded the Oscar among the three classic masterpieces, but it did not affect the reputation and discussion of "Pulp Fiction" and "Shawshank Redemption" with continuous wide circulation and gradually increased, even far exceeding "Forrest Gump".
I only hope that one day in the future, more Chinese people can look at the road of film production and development in their own country more fairly, and correctly view the strong injection of Chinese capital into the global film market.
Although the movie "Ring Messenger" has various drawbacks, and even suffered from deletions and special screen additions when it was released in China, if you look at the appearance of the original work, it lives up to the praise it once had.
Finally, I would like to say that the discussion of Oriental philosophical thought in the film, under the combination of the oriental concept of causal cycle, the protagonist of the film, Xiao Qiao's persistent pursuit of human nature and the redemption of himself, are like the Chinese creation myth of the father day by day, carrying the weight forward.
The question, then, is, if the same difficult choice is in front of you and me, can we use the price of our lives to make the most moving footnote to human nature itself?