The Butterfly Effect is a 2004 American science fiction thriller film written and directed by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber. It stars Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Eric Stoltz, William Lee Scott, Elden Henson, Logan Lerman, Ethan Suplee, and Melora Walters. The title refers to the butterfly effect.
The Butterfly Effect (2004)
Roger Ebert wrote that he "enjoyed The Butterfly Effect, up to a point" and that the "plot provides a showcase for acting talent, since the actors have to play characters who go through wild swings." However, Ebert said that the scientific notion of the butterfly effect is used inconsistently: Evan's changes should have wider reverberations.[8] Sean Axmaker of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called it a "metaphysical mess", criticizing the film's mechanics for being "fuzzy at best and just plain sloppy the rest of the time".[9] Mike Clark of USA Today also gave the film a negative review, stating, "Normally, such a premise comes off as either intriguing or silly, but the morbid subplots (there's prison sex, too) prevent Effect from becoming the unintentional howler it might otherwise be."[10] Additionally, Ty Burr of The Boston Globe went as far as saying, "whatever train-wreck pleasures you might locate here are spoiled by the vile acts the characters commit."[11]
Matt Soergel of The Florida Times-Union rated it 3 stars out of 4, writing, "The Butterfly Effect is preposterous, feverish, creepy and stars Ashton Kutcher in a dramatic role. It's a blast... a solidly entertaining B-movie. It's even quite funny at times..."[12] The Miami Herald said, "The Butterfly Effect is better than you might expect despite its awkward, slow beginning, drawing you in gradually and paying off in surprisingly effective and bittersweet ways," and added that Kutcher is "appealing and believable... The Butterfly Effect sticks to its rules fairly well... overall the film is consistent in its flights of fancy."[13] The Worcester Telegram & Gazette praised it as "a disturbing film" and "the first really interesting film of 2004," adding that Kutcher "carries it off": .mw-parser-output .templatequoteoverflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequoteciteline-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0
Chaos theory teaches us that small events can have enormous consequences. An opening title informs us that butterfly flapping its wings in Asia could result in a hurricane halfway around the world. Yes, although given the number of butterflies and the determination with which they flap their little wings, isn't it extraordinary how rarely that happens? "The Butterfly Effect" applies this theory to the lives of four children whose early lives are marred by tragedy. When one of them finds that he can go back in time and make changes, he tries to improve the present by altering the past.
Do their lives have no effect on the wider world? Apparently not. External reality remains the same, apart from minute adjustments to college and prison enrollment statistics. But it's unfair to bring such logic to bear on the story, which doesn't want to really study the butterfly effect, but simply to exploit a device to jerk the characters through a series of startling life changes. Strange, that Evan can remember everything that happened in the alternate lifetimes, even though by the theory of the movie, once he changes something, it didn't happen.
Parents need to know that The Butterfly Effect is a 2004 sci-fi thriller in which Ashton Kutcher plays a college student who can relive the past and attempt to change it for the better. The movie doesn't shy away from traumatic events and dark subject matter. There are scenes involving child molestation, prison rape, animal cruelty (a dog tied up inside a sack and set on fire and killed), accidental murder, suicide, drug addiction, mental illness, and prostitution. One the characters is beaten to death with a baseball bat. In another scene, one tween kills another tween by stabbing him with a large piece of scrap metal. While serving time in prison, the lead character, on the verge of performing oral sex on two inmates, stabs them both in the groin. It has male and female nudity, talk of sex, and sex acts; a college student tends to walk into his dorm room while his roommate is having sex with his girlfriend. Adults, tweens, and children frequently curse, including "f--k." Homophobic and racial slurs are used. This fearlessness in terms of not shying away from subject matter that is difficult and troubling sometimes overshadows the deeper points the movie is trying to make about "the butterfly effect," "chaos theory," and how events and decisions large and small can play huge roles in determining the kind of people individuals turn out to be.
This movie is pretentious. The title comes from the idea, here attributed to "chaos theory," that the flap of a butterfly's wing can produce a typhoon half a world away. It's an irresistibly intriguing notion -- all of us have thought about what would happen if we could go back in time and make a different choice. But this movie's plot lacks imagination, insight, and even believability.
The Butterfly Effect takes its name from a premise of chaos theory: a butterfly flapping its wings in North Africa can cause a typhoon half-a-world away (see Jurassic Park for a similar explanation). In this case, we're not faced with a question of spatial causality, but of how re-arranging the time stream can result in a slip into an alternate reality. By following the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) principal, The Butterfly Effect manages to move forward without confusing or losing its audience. This isn't one of those films where a moment's inattention will result in total bewilderment, although it is a good idea not to take a trip to the snack counter.
Evan Treborn (Kutcher) is a 20-year old college student with a bigger parcel of emotional baggage than most young Americans. Since age seven, he has been experiencing blackouts at moments of high emotional stress, such as when a friend of the family molested him, or when he and some friends became involved in a prank-gone-bad. Evan learns that, by concentrating on the words in a journal he composed while growing up, he can transport himself back in time and re-live certain events. Sometimes, he can make changes; sometimes he can't. When a childhood friend, Kayleigh Miller (Amy Smart), commits suicide because of something Evan does, he becomes obsessed with reworking her life. And, when he does, he learns that he might have been better off not meddling with the complex formula of cause-and-effect.
The effect is a stunning and accurate representation of the colors and vibrancy found in your favorite movies. As its secret is revealed, Movie Palette is sure to become a conversation piece as you try and guess which color represents which scene.
The world is vast and complex and it may sometimes seem that our small decisions and actions have little to no impact on the big picture. However, if you think about minute details of your life, you may be able to see how a small event was actually the catalyst for a huge change in your life. For example, maybe you bumped into someone at a coffee shop that happens to work at your dream company and eventually got you an interview there. What if you had chosen a different coffee shop, or been there five minutes later? You may not have met the person that got you into your dream job. The idea that something small, like getting coffee, can have much larger effects, such as altering your career is called the butterfly effect.
It used to be thought that the events that changed the world were things like big bombs, maniac politicians, huge earthquakes, or vast population movements, but it has now been realized that this is a very old-fashioned view held by people totally out of touch with modern thought. The things that really change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe.
The earliest utterances relating to the butterfly effect seem to have come from Benjamin Franklin, from the 13th or 14th century. He offered a poetic description of the idea that small things can have significant effects on larger consequences:
However, although ideas similar to the concept may have been circulating for centuries, the butterfly effect was first named by meteorologist and mathematician Edward Lorenz. Lorenz was searching for ways to accurately predict the weather, however, he found that mathematical linear models did not provide accurate predictions.1 Just as it would be almost impossible to predict that you would land your dream job by deciding to get coffee, Lorenz found that initial weather conditions were not sufficient indicators of future weather conditions.
Lorenz realized that small changes in initial conditions could lead to drastically different effects when he changed an initial atmospheric condition by 0.000127. Such a small, seemingly insignificant change, caused a model to predict very different future weather conditions.1 He realized that minuscule changes in a starting condition could mean an enormous difference in later events. In 1963, he published a paper with these ideas, titled Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow. In this paper, he essentially argued that weather predictions are inaccurate not only because knowing the precise starting conditions is impossible, but a tiny degree of change also throws off the results.1
Although ideas similar to the butterfly effect have been in circulation for a very long time, Edward Lorenz was the first to put these thoughts into a publishable paper and the first to liken the concept to a butterfly flapping its wings. It is thanks to Lorenz that the concept is deeply embedded within popular culture. His metaphor allowed the concept to be taken out of purely scientific discourse and be understood by the general public.
 38c6e68cf9