A Sound of Thunder (2005)

Director:

Peter Hyams

Writers (WGA):

Ray Bradbury (short story)
Thomas Dean Donnelly (screen story) ...

Release Date:

2 September 2005 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Tagline:

Evolve or die.

Plot:

When a hunter sent back to the prehistoric era runs off the path he must not leave, he causes a chain reaction that alters history in disastrous ways. |

Plot Keywords:

Prehistoric | Evolution | Zoologist | Insect | Jump From Height

US TV Schedule:

Sat. Nov. 21	12:00 PM	SYFY
Tue. Nov. 24	3:00 PM	SYFY

Cast

Armin Rohde	...	John Wallenbeck (as Armin Rhode)
Heike Makatsch	...	Alicia Wallenbeck
Jemima Rooper	...	Jenny Krase
David Oyelowo	...	Payne
Wilfried Hochholdinger	...	Dr. Lucas
Edward Burns	...	Travis Ryer
August Zirner	...	Clay Derris
Ben Kingsley	...	Charles Hatton (as Sir Ben Kingsley)
Catherine McCormack	...	Sonia Rand
Alvin Van Der Kuech	...	Young Technician
Andrew Blanchard	...	George the Doorman
William Armstrong	...	Ted Eckles
Corey Johnson	...	Christian Middleton
Nikita Lespinasse	...	Newswoman on TV (as Nikita Le Spinasse)
Scott Bellefeville	...	Onlooker (as Scott Bellefeuille)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence, partial nudity and language.

Runtime:

USA:110 min

Country:

UK | USA | Germany | Czech Republic

Language:

English | Mandarin

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

Netherlands:12 | Canada:14A (British Columbia/Manitoba) | Canada:PG (Alberta/Nova Scotia/Ontario) | Philippines:PG-13 | Australia:M | Czech Republic:15 | Malaysia:U | Finland:K-15 | Iceland:12 | USA:PG-13 (certificate #40964) | Argentina:16 | Germany:12 | South Korea:12 | Singapore:PG

Filming Locations:

Czech Republic

Company:

Franchise Pictures

Trivia:

Pierce Brosnan and director Renny Harlin were originally attached to this film.

Goofs:

Plot holes: The film is excessively loose with its requirements for what constitutes a time altering event. For instance, any sound made by bullets fired, voices, footsteps, etc. would cause surrounding wildlife to react in a manner drastically different than if the alien noises had never been created. Furthermore, the presence of both the temporal pathway and the people walking upon it would divert wildlife from what would have been their original movements, causing drastically different outcomes for said creatures.

Quotes:

Alicia Wallenbeck: The doorman let me in. Told him I was your cousin from St. Louis.
Travis Ryer: I always did like Aunt Martha.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Troldspejlet: (#35.8)" (2006)

Chaos theory

Deja vue. As a child in the 60s I read a Sci-Fi comic book (based on Ray Bradbury's short story of the same name) that had the characters traveling back in time and hunting dinosaurs from an elevated path. Since dinosaurs went extinct, killing them could be done without hurting the sequence of events that brought us to where we are today. During one expedition a member of the team stepped off the path and killed a butterfly. Because that species did not go extinct and was a pollinator of other plant species, the sequence of events was broken. This started a chain of events that changed the entire course of the world, and mankind's, history. Plants were not pollinated, generations of evolution were lost, forests that should have been weren't. I've never forgotten that first experience with what was termed chaos theory and the youthful realization of the fragility of our timeline. In fact, that comic book was the last moldy one I threw out some 20 years ago. I remember reading it one last time before it went into the bag. This movie brings that basic story to the screen with some wonderful enhancements. While I could debate the obvious flaws in the story, it is still compelling to those that would choose to understand what we call time. I would say that time and space cannot be separated and that backward time travel includes the space of the entire universe. Undoing the movement of the entire universe is inconceivable. This is why some choose to play with multi-verses and all timelines existing simultaneously. But it is wonderful that man can even conceive of time-space and what could be.