This new timeline is a fresh start, so to speak, a new chance to prevent the bombing and save Claire. This breach instantly creates a second branch in time. Timeline #2: Using the time machine, Doug travels back four and one-half days.
He decides to use the time machine to go back and save Claire. Present-day Doug investigates the bombing, but of course finds no clues from the future. There are no clues in Claire's apartment, no fingerprints, no odd answering machine messages, no ambulance at the bait camp. In this timeline, there is no Doug from the future to interfere. The terrorist dumps her body in the river and drives the SUV onto the ferry. She does not go back to her apartment and change into a red dress. Following is the sequence of events: (Events Before the Beginning of the Movie) Timeline #1: Claire gets a call from the terrorist, who wants to buy her SUV.
In other words, it took two attempts to save Claire ( Paula Patton) and the ferry.
Deja vu theory movie movie#
This earlier Doug must have already gone back in time before the beginning of the movie and left the clues. So who left them? It must have been another version of himself from an earlier timeline. But if he created an entirely new timeline when he traveled back and the original timeline is no longer accessible, then he personally could not have left the clues in the original timeline. You might also assume that the clues he has already found in the future are the ones he himself left after going back. Initially, you might assume that after Doug traveled back in time, he was operating in the same timeline he left. From Doug's perspective, everything he's experienced from the branch-point forward gets reset. So when Doug goes back, he creates an entirely new branch in time in which the events from the original branch never occurred. The original timeline, from the point of the branch forward, either continues in parallel or ceases to exist altogether. She explains, in so many words, that when a person travels back in time, a new timeline is created that branches off in a different direction from the original path. The key to understanding the plot of this movie is the time-travel explanation given at one point by the female scientist. Deja Vu, like many other time travel movies, has a complex plot.