We are now on our sixth installment in attempting to unravel all the confusing temporal problems in the film Primer. We started with a simple mistake the travelers made, and have been watching the story unravel ever since. Last time we said that Abe and Aaron were on their way to find Joseph Platts and punch him in the nose, when they were interrupted by the appearance of someone who could not be there, and abandoned their plan. That, we said, would be the problem we addressed this time.
As mentioned, Aaron and Abe are on their way to assault Joseph Platts, intending then to use their time machine to undo what they did. Enter Thomas Granger. Granger has been seen before. He is father of Rachel, the girlfriend who was threatened by the shotgun at the party. He is also a venture capitalist, and the best hope they have for funding at this time. Our time travelers spot him on the street as they leave Aaron's home, and realize first that he appears to be following them and second that he has three days' growth of beard, although he had been clean shaven that morning. They call his home and get him on the phone, confirming what they fear: the man who is following them has traveled from the future. Somehow he discovered their well-kept secret of time travel, and used either their machine or another.
They never find out what happened. They chase him, he runs, and he slips, hits his head, and is last seen lying comatose in Abe's apartment as they struggle to sort out the puzzle for which they now have insufficient pieces.
Aaron and Abe spend hours wrestling with the question of what happened, and never reach an explanation. Such an explanation could take months to unravel, and they do not have months; they barely have minutes. However, there is an explanation that fits all the known facts, and although it requires extrapolation, something much like this must have happened.
We know that Abe and Aaron were planning to assault Platts and then attempt to undo that assault by traveling to the past and preventing the activation of the car alarms. Had they succeeded in the second part of their plan, they would have undone not only their assault on Platts but their trick of preventing the alarms, and so would have created an infinity loop, two alternating histories with no future beyond them. Had they succeeded, then, Thomas Granger could never have traveled from the future, because there would be no future.
Yet the question being asked is, what could possibly have induced either of them to give Thomas Granger the information about the time machine, such that he could make that trip? There is an answer they overlook. Their plan is to assault a very wealthy man and then use time travel to undo the assault. If they succeed in assaulting him, though, they will almost certainly be arrested. If they are arrested before they can reach their time machines, they will find themselves jailed awaiting a judge's descision on bail--and every minute that ticks makes it that much more difficult to survive in the box that will take them back to earlier that evening. They need someone to make that trip and prevent them from committing their crime.
It does not matter whether they told Thomas Granger, or whether they told Rachel Granger who told her father, or whether they told Aaron's wife who told Rachel. What matters is that somehow the job fell to Thomas Granger, who made the trip to prevent them from committing the crime.
He succeeded, not as he intended but certainly so. That is bad news for history, because a time traveler changed the past based on information from that past, information now erased and unavailable to him. Further, the intrepid pair cannot figure out what happened, and so they cannot create an adequate substitute for it--and certainly they cannot expect that Thomas Granger will volunteer to travel back several days to die of a head injury just to prevent his daughter's boyfriend from being convicted on a well-deserved assault charge. We have an infinity loop. It was not the way anyone thought the deed would be prevented, but the deed was prevented, and the film brings us to the end of time.
It is not, however, the end of the movie. There are still a couple more problems that need to be addressed, which we will do next time as we look at the end beyond the end.
Comments
Thomas Granger (the time traveler) has become a paradox. There is now no need for Abe or Aaron to inform the original Thomas (the one sleeping at home) about the time travel boxes. What had been perceived as the present (to Abe and Aaron) is now viewed as the past.
'The Granger Incident' is the most frequent point of discussion for 'PRIMER' fans. Thanks for adding this film to your list.
Tim S. wrote, "There is now no need for Abe or Aaron to inform the original Thomas (the one sleeping at home) about the time travel boxes."
As mentioned (and will be discussed in more detail in our upcoming series on temporal theory), this depends on your theory of time. Under replacement theory, this creates an infinity loop: if Granger can prevent the boys from seeking Platts (which he evidently does), he can also prevent himself from coming back from the future; but if he does that, he does not prevent them from seeking Platts or himself from coming to the future, and we have an infinity loop.
Seen this thirteen times this year, it's getting to be an obsession, but a nice one. The Granger question still puzzles me, then I noticed something at the start of the movie last night. When they start to build the first box in the garage they have a set of blueprints on the wall, which we don't get to see fully. Robert says 'These guys are funded, liquid helium' there then follows a discussion where Abe explains how they can do the same but without the cooling. Where did these plans come from? It's not clear to me. Did Abe steal the plans from Granger in the first place? Remember Granger is the one hope they have for funding. I think Granger already had a time delay device, and Abe and Aaron are building a copy.
I was thinking about the name 'Granger', then it occurred to me: Stewart Granger appeared in the Prisoner Of Zenda. Surely Primer is not Shane Carruth's retelling of Zenda? There are many similarities - impersonations, kidnappings, druggings, plots and counter plots.
Granger #3--thanks for your comments, although you seem to have posted the same comments to two different articles.
If their competition has filed for patents, their designs become public record, and the boys could obtain copies that way. It is part of the patent process that designs are made public, partly so that others can challenge whether the patent is original, and partly so others can build on what is already discovered. Also, there is nothing in what they are studying to suggest that it is a time device; they were working on superconductors.
As to Stewart Granger, he was in seventy-six movies or television episodes over parts of seven decades, plus appearances as himself in other works, several of them significant. It is unlikely that we are supposed to associate the name to one of those works.
Thanks again.
--M. J. Young
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