2004’s Primer was made on a tiny budget, but it delivered an important science fiction film that many now consider to be a genre classic.
What Is It?
This film starts with two inventors tinkering around in the evenings in their garage with various ideas they hope to patent and sell. They accidentally stumble upon a process that appears to bend time and they start to investigate it further which leads to their successful attempts to travel back in time. At first, their time travel excursions are mostly harmless, traveling back a few hours and buying stocks that they know will rise in price later in the day. But then they start using their time travel apparatus to try and go back and change events that have already occurred. When things do not turn out the way they planned, they try again and eventually find themselves caught in a seemingly endless cycle of struggling to correct their own mishaps. Eventually the two friends find themselves at odds with one another with one wanting to bow out of the endeavor while the other wants to take it to even greater levels.
Cast: Shane Carruth, David Sullivan, Casey Gooden, Anand Upadhyaya, Carrie Crawford
Crew: Shane Carruth (Writer/Director/Executive Producer)
Original Release: 2004
Legacy:
This independent film was made on a micro-budget and has almost no special effects, but it delivers an excellent piece of science fictions dealing with the consequences of time travel and has worked its way into consideration as a classic genre entry.
A Closer Look:
Time Travel presents many problems when used as a story device in science fiction and fantasy tales. The implications of the impact that a time traveler could have on past, present, and future events are potentially earth-shattering, yet this is often poorly handling by television shows, movies, and sometimes even books dealing with the subject. Too often, writers use time travel simply as a contrivance to carry the story forward and rarely care about establishing consistent rules or logic involving temporal activities, or if they do, they rarely follow them. Primer, an independent film that came out in 2004, bucked this trend and presented a well thought out story addressing the possibility and moral implications of time travel.
This movie was written by first-time filmmaker Shane Carruth who is a mathematician and an engineer. He gives us a plausible, scientific explanation for time travel which the two inventors (one played by himself) discovered by accident as a by-product of a completely separate experiment. He also presents some of the moral quandaries associated with time travel, but he does it in a very subtle way. At first the two inventors just want to use it make money in the stock market which they will then put back into their after-hours business ventures. A morally questionable action, but one with limited impact. However, when they start trying to change bigger events in the past, they find themselves unable to deal with the grander consequences of their actions and also find themselves dragged into a seemingly endless downward spiral.
Unfortunately, the movie does become a bit muddled toward the end, but at least it does not completely derail or descend into Back to the Future-style silliness with its time travel antics. Carruth made this film on a microscopic budget of $7,000, but it does not show. It has almost no special effects, but neither does it need them. It draws in the viewer at first with its sense of invention and discovery and then with the time travel quandaries that start to develop as the two inventors find their reality spinning out of control. The script is dense and at times tedious, perhaps even obtuse. But rather than losing the viewer because of its complexity, this produces a desire to re-watch the film to see what you went over your head the previous time.
And this one definitely stands up to multiple viewings (though I would advise not committing too much brain matter because I am not quite certain Carruth fully resolved all of the threads). Still, for an intelligent, well made science fiction movie dealing with time travel (and there are very few of those) this one definitely stands the test of . . . time (sorry couldn’t resist). It may have been made by a newbe filmmaker on a micro budget, but the movie holds its own when placed next to many of the bigger science fiction productions from the major studios.
Why Was There No Sequel?
This film had a limited release in theaters, but it still pulled in over half a million in gross receipts which is pretty good considering that it only cost $7K to make. Primer represented a good start for Shane Carruth as a filmmaker, but then he did nothing else until 2013’s Upstream Color. There are certainly opportunities to continue the story of Primer, but artistically it perhaps works best as a one-off. Carruth probably could proceed with a sequel if he wanted, and he could follow the template of the first film if he wanted to keep costs down. But so far, it appears that he has decided to leave this one alone.
Should It Be Rebooted?
Considering the fact that this film is already counted as a classic by many, there is very little a reboot could do to improve on the original production. Of course, that never stops Hollywood, and apparently there have been discussions of redoing the movie with a bigger budget. Nothing seems to have come of that, though, and perhaps that is for the best. A sequel with Shane Carruth closely involved might be acceptable, but let’s keep this one off the Hollywood shortlist for possible reboots.
Interesting Facts:
This film made the rounds of the festivals in 2004 and 2005, receiving some notable accolades. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004 along with the Alfred P. Sloan Prize for films dealing with science and technology. Shane Carruth took home a Best Writer/Director award from the Nantucket Film Festival in 2004, and the film also won Best Feature at the London International Festival of Science Fiction in 2005.
Primer was pretty close to a one-man affair. Not only did Shane Carruth have a starring role, he also wrote, directed, edited, and produced the film, and he composed the music for it as well. He had no filmmaking experience prior to this apart from working on an independent movie as a microphone operator.
Where Can You Watch It?
The film has been released on both DVD and Blu-ray, and it is available to purchase VOD. It is not currently available on any of the major streaming services.
Read More About the Movie:
Wikipedia
IMDb.com
Also check out John Kenneth Muir’s in depth analysis at his blog Reflections on Cult Movies and Classic TV
