Bravo. Really, this is fantastic.

Heh, you actually wrote another article about Primer. Cool. I haven't read it yet though because I haven't seen the movie. I plan to though. Eventually. (And if I remember, I'll turn on subtitles.)

There were a couple things I could never resolve... This helps a lot.

Nice article! Your first article on Primer was what prompted me to see it. Great movie!

How many viewings did it take you to get all this? Superb work figuring it all out!

There are no flaws in how Primer deals with time travel. I think you misunderstand how it works. Instead of there being a global timeline, it instead works on the basis that every human has its own timeline at every instance. Normally, ALL instances of time will have the same timeline for any person, only that it is shifted in time. But Primer says that there are infinite YOU's, all in sequence. But that each of those YOU's are independent beings. Since normally there is nothing to make them act differently, they only appear to be the same person.

So you can indeed use the same box if you want. Suppose you enter the box at 2 PM and exit it at 1 PM. You then wait around for an hour and stop your double from entering the box. You can then enter said box no problem for a second time.

But let's suppose you DON'T enter the box. No one is entering the box. Truth is that a few minutes into your own personal timeline's future, there IS someone in the box (he is going back in time from everyone else's POV). However, from your personal timeline's point where you stopped your double from entering the box, there won't be anyone there. So if you DO enter the box, there will be a double in the box with you, but a few minutes into the future from your POV (your future is actually back in time for everyone else) and this is perfectly fine as there is never more than one person in the box at any given time. You will never meet this double because he is in your immediate personal future (unless he goes back in time to meet you).

Back to the situation where you DON'T go into the box. What then? If you don't go into the box, who will stop the double on the next iteration? Well, no one. You stopped him from getting into the box. So if you wait around for two hours, then if you could look two hours into Earth's past, you would see that no one is there to stop the "double". So he gets into the box, goes back into the past, waits an hour and stops his double. This scenario will flip back and forth.

And this is actually what the story of Primer is all about. If you get into a ping pong situation, you only fixed the situation for a segment of your personal timeline (if you fixed anything at all). The other side of the ping pong timeline is still screwed. And this ping pong effect is what happened when they use the failsafe (and knocked the guy out and put him in the attic). This is why Thomas Granger came back. Because half of the timeline is screwed and in that messed up half, Granger used the box to try and come back and fix things. Only problem is that he calculated the amount of time to go back wrong. He ended up on the wrong side of the ping pong timeline. The side he ended up, the timeline was already "fixed". His presence there will have unforeseen effects because he's just created his own ping pong timeline without realizing it. In the timeline that isn't screwed, Granger has no need to get in the box because everything is fine (these two scenarios will happen one after the other continuously). So you have the failsafe of Aaron ping ponging with the ping pong timeline of Granger. What effect this will have overall will be unpredictable.

Sam, I guess you're just that good of a writer, but I enjoyed reading this more than actually watching Primer.

You ask why Abe Two suggests that he's staying to protect Kara and Lauren from Aaron Three. In that same conversation, Aaron suggests that they kidnap Kara and Lauren, make doubles of them, and then go travel somewhere with copies of each in separate hemispheres. Abe Two wants to make sure this never happens -- that Kara and Lauren's lives are never disrupted by their doings.

after reading this, i though you might have a giggle at this:

http://xkcd.com/657/large/

bottom right is a character interaction line flow for Primer (the rest of the image is pretty fun too!)

Randall Munroe is a quitter. His main error was to treat time as a one-dimensional axis.

Are you entirely sure the phone call is placed to Aaron prime and not Abe prime?

I don't think it really matters who the phone call is directed to.

There's the graph of primer that xkcd did (although I expect it's wildly inaccurate)

http://xkcd.com/657/large/

If Aaron 3 steals his own (Aaron Prime's) passport, how did Aaron 2 (Hooded Aaron) get to France?

OK, but why did <u>Abe</u> failsafe (for four days) all the way back to Monday when he didn't need to?

Because he felt he'd lost control of the situation and he'd lost his nerve. This is pretty clear from the movie.

Not really sure what this is. I'll try to read this when I am not so tired and write some feedback. I really loved the Primer Universe book. Is any of this based on the book or just personal speculation? The whole hidden clue thing makes me wonder if any other films are similar to this effort by the film maker. Too bad he only made one film. Leaps and bounds better than the Prestige.

It just popped into my head this evening: How did Aaron bring the failsafe machine back with him? I can see bringing the "coffin" back, but how do you take the machine into itself? Do you take a new box and the machine in with you?

Oh, my head.

The answer to this question is that you can make doubles of the machine just like you can people. All you have to do is fold one up and take it with you, and make sure your double on the other end doesn't take it back inside at the end of the day. Since Aaron was keeping two of his doubles from going inside again (drugging and persuasion), it's safe to say the extra machines also stayed outside.

It's like wishing for more wishes; you can use a time machine to make more time machines. :-) Rule of thumb: always take a time machine with you when you go inside one. :-)

This is great! But..... the explanation says - "They put Granger to bed at Abe's house; Aaron cannot approach him with(out) actually somehow knocking him unconscious." - However, in the film, both Narrator Aaron and Aaron Three suggest that it is Abe's proximity that causes Granger's unconsiousness. Why would being close to Abe cause Granger's unconsiousness?

Very nice explanation of everything but at the beginning of the article you mention "While fiddling with the device, Aaron pokes his hand right the way into the field and Abe puts his hands over it to drop punched holes into the field. This becomes significant later." I don't see where you explain where this is significant.

The first time we see Aaron on the bench it is Aaron "recording the conversations of the day'. He is wearing the earpiece only for cosmetic effect because he knows he will be wearing the earpiece when comes back. If he doesn't wear the earpiece while recording he will not be able to record people's reactions to the earpiece when the same conversation comes up again.

Imagine if Aaron recorded the conversations and the next time around he wore red, floppy, clown shows. By introducing a new visual variable the recorded conversations would become much less helpful.

Aaron is so smart that he knows he needs to keep as close to the same appearance as possible to try to keep the conversations the same. Since Aaron knows he will need the earpiece later in order to listen to the conversations he knows that he needs to wear it while recording in order to keep the conversations the same as the recording.

@Bobz

According to a theory on http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ehsvr/which_one_movie_blew_your_mind/c18754k

"The idea — such as it is — is that is Granger talks to Abe, he'll tell him something that'll motivate Abe to use his failsafe box to go back and reset everything, thus preventing Granger from ever traveling in time, resulting in a paradox. It's this looming paradox that causes Granger to black out whenever Abe is near."

Reading this has made me very angry! And my head hurts! Pay for my brain transplant!

I would also like to know more about the punched holes - how are they significant later in the film?

Useful explanation thanks, but my head is still resisting the knowledge.

Thanks a lot for excellent explanation. I finally get it.

Last time I felt like this was while studying the formal definition of halting problem :)

"Abe then puts forward a confusing and potentially dangerous plan to visit Joseph Platts at his home, punch him in the face, then, around 03:00 Friday, to use these boxes to go back in time to 17:00 Thursday and make sure that neither the car alarms nor the punching happen. In theory, as a result, both Aaron and Abe's doubles would stay in bed all night, get into their boxes at 15:15 Friday as normal, and leave this timeline permanently, leaving just one of each of Aaron and Abe behind."

You see, Abe should have thought this one over.
Their daily trips go from 08:45 to 15:15 (or 15:15 to 08:45 rather) on the same day. If they had managed to sleep through the night, they would've woken up Friday morning, restart the machines at 08:30, set the 15 min timer, and jump in at 15:15. Meanwhile, the leftover duo would have witnessed another set of doubles re-emerging from the storage facility shortly after 08:45 Friday morning. The problem of duplicates remains.
In theory, it might have possibly worked if they somehow convinced their doubles to leave the machines on and not restart them so that when they went back, they would be able to go as far back as 17:00 Thursday afternoon (the same emergence time of the duo that prevented the kids setting off the car alarms). Of course, they can always just kill them too! Abe's stock plan was much more sound.
Indeed, we find out near the end of the film that any time symmetry is broken in a manner that significantly affects your double (ie. not entering the box when he/she should have), we get the duplicates dilemma. Think of how many Aarons there would have been if he didn't nail that party plan on his third run. He would've had to keep going back and convincing the previous to take a hike.

It helps to remind oneself that the premise for time travel in reality is not understood at all. So we go on what is presented by the storyteller. In this case, history can change and branching timelines exist. The story unfolds from a particular perspective - Abe's perspective - starting from a particular timeline (a timeline where Abe did not go back to gas himself, but a timeline already altered by Aaron). If the story followed Aaron in a certain timeline, we could have seen him going to the party to witness the incident, going back to drug himself, recording the week's conversations, going back again to fight himself, and convincing the previous to leave, and so on. It might have been a longer movie, and probably not as intriguing. Stranger still, it might have been a very different movie altogether if it were told from either Aaron or Abe who got drugged. From their perspective, they just built a machine they didn't even understand yet, and suddenly they wake up in the dark not knowing how they got there. This subject does tend to get confusing. I kept asking myself, how could symmetry really be broken? Wouldn't I always see the end result? In other words, if I wanted to go back a few hours to make a change.. to say hello to myself for instance; wouldn't I have seen myself greet me a few hours ago in the first place? And so, you can get trapped in this circular logic if you don't accept certain rules like the possibility of multiple timelines.

I don't see why the hole punch bits from the beginning are relevant, does anyone know why?

The hole punch bits aren't relevant. What's relevant is that Abe and Aaron both stick their hands into the machine.

*is stupid* I still don't understand why their hands going into the machine is relevant :\

Concerning Aaron swapping the Failsafe boxes: wouldn't Abe know his failsafe, f0, has been swapped for Aarons f1 or f2, as the timer would differ by the time it takes Aaron to exit f0 and set up f1/2? Assume it's not that bit a time difference and doesn't really matter.

I disagree that he builds at warehouse sized Time machine at the end. Because that makes little sense what is he gonna take back that needs that Much space? And he can only use it ONCE. Instead there is the last line of the movie. " Good morning, every have meter.... everywhere.... everywhere." What is he asking them to build every half meter.... everywhere? Time Machines... a LOT of them.

He is filling the warehouse up with a LOT of time machines, that way he can turn them ALL on at once. This way he will always be able to go back to the moment they were ALL turned on... and be able to always have a fail safe, until his health gives out.

I have a few questions, if anyone could help :)

1) At the point where Abe and Aaron are testing their device at their garage and they think they blew it. Then they decide to remove the case so they can pick up Aaron's camcorder. Now all this is long before the fateful Monday in March when the whole main plot begins. After they both say '1-2-3' and remove the case, the scene blacks out and changes, showing Abe unconscious on the floor and the sound of static can be heard. It's really strange; what on earth happened here? Notice how Aaron calls him on the phone and Abe wakes up; then the scene REPEATS and Abe is still on the floor while Aaron's voice continues talking (asking him if he's hungry) and Abe is shown to pick up the phone again. It looks like there's TWO Abes here... For example, we see that one Abe gets up and Aaron is heard saying 'Abe, it's 7'. Then we see Abe getting up AGAIN and Aaron now says 'Abe, it's 7 at night'. This repetition of movements, and the way the scenes are presented, show (at least to me) that we have here TWO Abes. My initial theory was that this was a result of Abe Prime's proximity to the time machine which he had brought in his house (???) to test it, after they took Aaron's camera out of it and removed the case, and somehow he'd fallen unconscious as a result of so many 'leaks' (no cover). But I really am not sure. So what's up with this scene here?

2) After the last scene at the fungus lab, right after Aaron asks "Wait digital or old mechanical?", and Abe replies "Exactly. I did both." Then Aaron: "And?" and Abe: "I want you to do it". At that point... Well, first, I want to make sure: this is on Monday late morning, right?

3) Anyway, the NEXT scene shows another Aaron playing with some garden clips while next to him we hear Abe and Aaron talking (about to discover what their device really is; it is heard in the background "We thought we were degrading gravity" etc.) Now, it is obvious this Aaron is impatient as they are already in the storage facility as well. He keeps looking at the clock on the wall, which however shows 14:08. So which Aaron is this and where and when did he come from and why is he there and when does he intend to leave and where to?

The hands are relevant because they stick them in there when testing and that part of their bodies are aging faster than all the others, just like the webel growing mold the hands age causing them to not be able to control writing. Which is why Aaron said he knows the letters he just can't get his hand to make them........ I think.

Would it be possible to:
- Modify the small prototype box to eject any object inside at the right time
- Power it up, intending to insert a diamond a few minutes later
- A few moments after powering it up, at the window, the duplicate future diamond should be ejected
- Don't insert the diamond, effectively doubling your money. So much easier than going in yourself and doubling money by trading in the stock market (forex would've been better). I would think that'd raise some insider trading alarm bells.

You're loading ideas you have about time continuity which are not in the final cut of the movie. Unless you have inside information on the writer's intent, you are making assumptions with no backing.

There is no reason to think that observer-dependent wave collapse plays any role here. No examinations of the hand or paper placed in the already active field which is open to observation are ever carried out - how would you know if your hand aged a few thousand minutes? No mention is made of effects of observation, the characters are worried about the lack of environmental containment suitable for the field ; and the idea that a camera signal full of static equals probabilistic indeterminacy is a ridiculous leap.

The question of whether time is singular or branching is irrelevant, all that can be known is what is observed, and every observer will always only know one path, whether or not there are any other paths. This movie treats time branching the same way "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" does: it is never mentioned or hinted at.

A confrontation with your other self "causing" two of you to exist in the same timeline is laughable. Lock yourself in a room, fly to the moon - there are still two of you in the same timeline. The only concern that is close to this is that the chain of causality flowing from any action (not just meeting yourself)may cause your other self to not get into the box - which would leave two of you permanently walking the earth.

There's alot of good stuff in this post, but when you assume you make an ass out of yourself and anyone who accepts your assumptions.

I think being unable to write was just a side-effect of several trips inside the machine. It seemed to affect the brain somewhat. Aaron told Abe to compare it to writing with his left hand and they looked the same.

Also, It didn't make sense for Abe to have affected Thomas just by proximity, if the reason was causality. Abe and Aaron doubles have gone near each other and prevented each other from going back without suffering the same effect.

I'm thinking something like this happened: In one timeline, Thomas Granger found out about the machine, and probably used the failsafe. In the same timeline, Abe used the same box and was disintegrated. This sorta explains the proximity problem between Thomas and Abe.

I enjoyed the film, but I could not buy into the fact that either character's main concern was to go back in time to manipulate the stock market and basically steal money in that way. These guys created a Time Machine, they're geniuses. Both characters develpment indicated that their primary concern would be to continue research related solely to the time machine and its effects. They wouldn't be interested in punching someone in the face or stealing money, that part just didn't fit, and really didn't add anything to the film. And for a couple of geniuses, go figure, they invite an ex-boyfriend to the party for no reason whatsoever, out of the blue. Are these guys high school dropouts? Yeah, sounds like it to me. Carruth could have easily found a more realistic scenario for the emergency travel back circumstances.

Awesome, awesome explanation. But to me, the lingering question is... what happens to the other Abe? One flies off at the end of the movie, one wakes up in the attic, and the other....

Not a time machine the size of a warehouse.

Not thousands of time machines in a warehouse all turned on at the same time.

Thousands of time machines in a warehouse turned on at *different* times.

Set them to kick on in sequence; one at noon, one at 1pm, one at 2pm, etc., day after day, week after week.
At any time in the future, you can return exactly (well, within the hour) to any date/time you choose. Just pick the machine that activated at the date/time you want to travel back in time to, and hop in.

Even better, you no longer have to do it all in one session -- you don't have to sit in a box for a full month to go back in time a month. Get into the box that started 4 hours ago, spend 4 hours in it, then get out, stretch your legs, go to the bathroom, have lunch, grab another oxygen bottle, then get into the box that started 4 hours before *that*, etc. Repeat until you've gone back however far you want.

I appreciate the author's input on this film. It stimulated a lot of interesting reads.

Given the "reality" of the movie, what would happen if you put a running time machine inside of a another time machine then turn that machine on?

From what I can tell, you can only travel back in time to the point where the machine was turn on. That's like an anchor point. When you turn the machine off, you are in essence opening up a door through time. However, it seems you MUST sit in the time machine for the length of time the time machine was on. You have to experience that time (in essence, you gain that time as part of the time travel). But I was thinking if there was a way to compound the length of time you traveled through, and decrease the amount of time you spend in the box by sitting inside 2 time machines.

I know this is all fiction, but it's neat to think about.

So much to read, not sure if this has been touched upon, but if one of the premises is alternate time lines, you don't necessarily need 'multiple' failsafes for the scenario to play out. the only thing that need exist is the 'you' in the box you came out of. It creates what seems to be a paradox, but if the concept is changeable/multiple time lines, as soon as you step out of the box, whether you are still in it or not is irrelevant.
i.e. you can prevent the 'earlier you' from entering it if you desire, but because it's an alternate timeline, you just prevent the 'you' in that timeline from going back to create another version, etc. (yeah, splinters get nuts to follow)
Think of it this way - if you can in fact go backward in time, the moment you step out potentially creates a new timeline where anything that happens from that moment forward is irrelevant to the old timeline, including the part where you were sitting in the box going backward. It's like creating a wormhole between alternate realities - once you step out of the hole and the machine shuts down or whatever, you are in a new place/time with new causalities. So if you wanted to re-use the same failsafe, you just keep the 'other you' from getting into it, say by drugging him in your attic, then you can use the same (empty) failsafe box to go back again.

With that said, the last scene would, however, require one additional failsafe (which is mentioned in the movie) for both of them to have been able to go back via the long-term failsafe mechanisms to have fore-knowledge at that moment. But this only means that for that last 'loop' from Aaron's perspective, he only need 'allow' Abe to enter the first failsafe while he enters the second. He could have technically used the other failsafe many times already and come out of it again playing the long-loop again and again and the only thing he need to each time is make sure that Abe wasn't entering it at the end of the long-loop.

Oh, and of course the duplicate thing - any time you 'prevent' yourself from re-entering at the end of the loop is where the potential for a duplicate of yourself would occur.... until you re-enter the box again and go back to create yet another different time line (and another potential for a duplicate) - there would only end up with one duplicate of yourself in any one timeline - at least in the same-box-reuse scenario. As soon as you prevent yourself from entering the same box making it available for 'new you', you need to get 'old you' out of the way when you go back and until you loop again (or old you loops at all), there are two of you. If you don't loop in his stead, there is two of you. But as long as you continue to re-use the same machine preventing 'old you' from doing so, that time line is left with one of you and you become a duplicate back at the same point in time with a new branch.
A 'third' you wouldn't occur until you prevented 'old you' from going and did not take 'old you's place then repeated that whole process yet another time. I didn't see anything in the summary that would have suggested that.

I just have once concern regarding the bench scenes in the movie. I don't believe it's Aaron 3 the entire day. I think the very first time you see them on the bench, they are in the 1st timeline and it's the original Aaron and the original Abe that traveled back on that 1st Monday afternoon to Monday morning to tell Aaron about the boxes. Aaron is wearing an earpiece, but his reactions and demeanor seem genuine and there a few scenes that same day when he's not wearing an earpiece at all. I think that when Aaron 2(hooded Aaron) went back through the failsafe to Monday, he recorded all conversations from the week. the second time we see them on the bench on Monday, it's Abe's double and Aaron 3. The first bench scene is original Aaron and Abe from the very first time travel while his former self from the day is waiting at the hotel.

Why would Aaron built a new LARGE time machine in the end of the film??? For what purpose? To send MANY people back in time? What for?

@Maxim: He left the country and has to now survive a lifetime in that time line. He is probably being commissioned to build it. He probably has no use for such a large time machine himself, but I'm sure that the military would love to have technology like that on such a large scale and would pay whatever it takes for it.

@Maxim: He left the country and has to now survive a lifetime in that time line. He is probably being commissioned to build it. He probably has no use for such a large time machine himself, but I'm sure that the military would love to have technology like that on such a large scale and would pay whatever it takes for it.

That would be the French military?

The Primer concept was a great story, unfortunately, it got swallowed up its own ass by the random, confusing dialogue and the shocking continuity problems. Not bad for $7K, but would have been better if the director didn't take himself and the story so seriously.

awesomemovie and awesome explanation

"At this point, the narrator, Hooded Aaron, reminds us that HE, of course, does NOT come from a timeline where everything worked out perfectly. Hooded Aaron has only been to the party once, and he has only seen how it originally played out."

This is wrong.... And I think the movie contradicts itself too. The first Aaron never went to the party. The third Aaron went to the party back when he was second Aaron. However, second Aaron never gets to go to the party at all because third Aaron makes him leave. Thus, when second Aaron makes the phone call and says that he can say what he did when he went, he must be wrong. Unless third Aaron or second Abe told him what third Aaron had done.

Thanks for the explanation of Primer - really useful. I felt so stupid watching this film. I couldn't follow all of the subtle plot lines at all. Just vague ideas as to what was going on. So it's nice to have it laid out like this, assuming it's all correct of course! I don't want to know if it's not though!
Reading some of the comments here blows my mind though. This is just a made-up story someone wrote and turned into a film ..... for fun. It's extremely doubtful that they discovered time travel in the process and that their "theory" holds any water, so I just don't understand why people even try to rip it apart, find flaws in it, expand on it. What's the point? Just enjoy the movie, doin't suck all the fun out of it. And yes I know some people are just discussing what was in the film-maker's mind and that's completely separate - nowt wrong with that.

Amazing article! This is quite an achievement. Well done, sir. Now the only thing I need to figure out is why the movie is called Primer in the first place.

I think the simplest explanation for Aaron's warehouse-sized time machine is to enclose a very large amount of air, water, and food. It could be a long-term failsafe.

I also wonder about nested running boxes. Run box A for a week. At the end of the week, enter box A with box B and turn on box B. When you emerge from box A at the start of the week, you've got box B, /which has been running for a week/. Assuming that nested boxes don't destroy the universe or something, this method could enable you to go back even before the machine was invented.

One confusing thing in the movie is that they call their (causally) past ones their doubles. Their existence is based on that the "double" will enter the machine later, so they remember everything the double experienced.
This confusion leads to that you cannot focus on the more difficult parts, and end up more confused.

There is either a typo or something I'm not understanding from the explanation. In the explanation you write that His wife asks him about the rats in the attic on Tuesday nite while they're drinking a few beers but then at the bottom of the explanation you say that they had this conversation on Wednesday. Is the original Aaron (Aaron_0) the one that had the original conversation with his wife or is it the Aaron that has already went back via the failsafe?

Great piece. Primer is one of my favourite movies. Such a lot to think about in there.
I'd hazard a guess that if indeed the large warehouse is to be a time machine, it could not only be used to take back large supplies of oxygen, food and supplies, it could also concievably be used to contain a dwelling, cars, helicopters, weapons, or ANY technology. If you started the machine today and left it running for ten years, then potentially you stop the machine in ten years time, and fill it up with rayguns and iPhone25's and $50 billion in used 2012 banknotes(Without getting in yourself), that stuff could magically appear in five minutes time. Or lets say you turn it on now and wait fifty years till someone invents a zero point energy machine. You could stick that in the machine and get it out in five minutes. There's no limit to what could be sent back in a warehouse of that size... I suppose it's about learning to think big!

greatly explained, i only understand like 50% of the movie before this, just still thinking about the difference of Primer's mechanics+heat time machine versus Stephen Hawking's timeholes time machine

@bar

the idea is great, but i can't imagine staying in a hotel or any way to be sequestered for 10 years to avoid a paradox,

You are awesome. Thanx a lot!

The issue I have is something mentioned during the director's commentary but not really explained and that is that at no point in time is matter and energy static. That is to say, the entire universe is constantly expanding so if you were to move in time it would also be necessary to move through space also else you'd end up exiting into where the time machine was and not where it is.

Primer is actually one of the few time travel movies which deals with this properly. When you are travelling back in time, you are also following the path backwards through space, because you are inside the box the entire time.

So, let's say that once inside the box one were able to accelerate one's self to a velocity approaching the speed of light in order to benefit from the effects of time dialation. Other than seriously complicating the math, that would significantly reduce the amount of time needed to stay in the box and hence the need for large amounts of oxygen, water, food...etc.

On Monday, the day starting when Abe and Aaron meet on the bench, why is Aaron sometimes wearing an earpiece and sometimes not? For instance he has no earpiece the when Ane shows him Abe's double the first time.

@Tulsa: I think someone kinda answered this already. The presence of the earpiece depends on which timeline we, the viewers, are being shown. In the "original" timeline, there shouldn't be an earpiece at all.

@Peter this question is totally bugging me as well, arghhhhhh!

"2011-07-03 05:32:59 by Peter:

I have a few questions, if anyone could help :)

1) At the point where Abe and Aaron are testing their device at their garage and they think they blew it. Then they decide to remove the case so they can pick up Aaron's camcorder. Now all this is long before the fateful Monday in March when the whole main plot begins. After they both say '1-2-3' and remove the case, the scene blacks out and changes, showing Abe unconscious on the floor and the sound of static can be heard. It's really strange; what on earth happened here? Notice how Aaron calls him on the phone and Abe wakes up; then the scene REPEATS and Abe is still on the floor while Aaron's voice continues talking (asking him if he's hungry) and Abe is shown to pick up the phone again. It looks like there's TWO Abes here... For example, we see that one Abe gets up and Aaron is heard saying 'Abe, it's 7'. Then we see Abe getting up AGAIN and Aaron now says 'Abe, it's 7 at night'. This repetition of movements, and the way the scenes are presented, show (at least to me) that we have here TWO Abes. My initial theory was that this was a result of Abe Prime's proximity to the time machine which he had brought in his house (???) to test it, after they took Aaron's camera out of it and removed the case, and somehow he'd fallen unconscious as a result of so many 'leaks' (no cover). But I really am not sure. So what's up with this scene here?"

Primer 1(Redux)(Summary)

Abe the 2nd has decided to watch over the original Abe and Aaron and stop them from discovering time travel. After his disastrous attempt of sabotaging the coffins. He has made a severe mistake in which he informs Mr. Grainger of time travel, in hope that his funding to another project would push the original Abe and Aaron to pursue other projects. Unbeknownst to Abe the 2nd, he inspired Mr. Grainger not to fund the other project, but instead to seek the newly created failsafe box, which unexpectedly resulted in Mr. Grainger going back several months which explains why everything goes black and Abe Prime is on the floor in the first movie. Also the mysterious warehouse is explained in which Aaron the second, seeks to become truly prescient.

IDK, I really wanted to expound on the original movie and fix the plot holes, I'm just a time travel nerd. How does it sound?

Does Primer have branching timelines, or a single timeline you can "edit"? Near the end of the movie, the narrator says "the last revision is what counts, apparently". Since the narrator is Aaron, that belief makes sense, because how else do you justify abandoning your wife and kid in a different timeline, just to save some folks at a party?

But if there's a single timeline that gets "scratched" whenever someone enters a box, I don't understand how Aaron and Abe were able to use two different boxes to go back in time together. So it seems the movie has a plot hole that I can't close. Anyone?

Reply to Noni about nested boxes: sorry, you can't go back another week. When you get into box B, you'll backtrack along the path that box B took through spacetime, so you just end up where you started.

Another interesting point: what happens if you put a working box on a scale? I gave it some thought, and came to the conclusion that a box with a person inside has to weigh less than one without. (If you use it to go forward in time, it weighs more, as usual. If you go forward and back, it cancels out.) And then I realized that the original purpose of the boxes in the movie was to reduce the weight of objects. Wow!

Reply to RobertLockard: the movie is called "Primer" because it's about who is more prime than whom.

what i dont get is what the debt is and if all is resolved at the end , them why is he building a warehouse sized time machine at the end

As I see it, Hooded Aaron (2nd Aaron) brings another box back with him (recycling he calls it) and sets it up when he gets out, goes and records all the conversations for himself. Then uses the box he brought back to go back yet again and becomes 3rd Aaron.

As 3rd Aaron he interacts with his past self (2nd Aaron) and convinces him to leave. It is at this point 3rd Aaron has stopped 2nd Aaron from ever using the second box and becoming the 3rd.

Also 2nd Aaron had subdued Aaron prime which altered the events that had Aaron prime entering the failsafe in the first place to become 2nd Aaron. This frees up the failsafe to be used by Abe and as 3rd Arron is the current Aaron at this point and he used the second box they would have never been in the failsafe at the same time.

I'm going on the idea here that time does not retroactively correct itself (otherwise 3rd Aaron would never exist as 2nd Aaron never went back to become him.) So with this you could go back in time and kill yourself or your parents but remain there in a timeline where "other" you does not exist.

The questions I don't understand are: When Abe prime and Aaron prime awake, what are there lives like, how will they react to what there counterparts did while they slept? Does 2nd Abe prevent them from ever going back again? What happened in the off screen timeline that causes Granger to go back? Which Aaron is it at the end in france 2md or 3rd?

But if Abe(2) stays back to sabotage the making of the time machine by their doubles..dont all subsequent timelines get affected as well by either the late making of the machines and boxes or them never getting made at all?

I applaud this very thorough explanation of the plotline in Primer, (probably the most thorough there is on the net), however there is only one tiny aspect that I disagree with. At the end of the film, when Abe travels back a week and tries to undo his mistakes, that is indeed Aaron 3 he is speaking to but was not at the beginning of the film. In the beginning, he is speaking to Aaron 2, who successfully plays out the timeline as he intended to originally. When Abe travels back to alter the timeline, he is met by Aaron 3 BECAUSE he fail-safed and Aaron has supremacy over the timelines since he stole the original fail-safe machine. Abe can never go back farther than Aaron, but each time he does he will displace and be met by additional "layers" of Aarons who has traveled back along with him to negate whatever Abe attempts to change. Basically, whoever can go back the farthest in time has the most control over the universe but at the cost of having the most duplicates at any given time.

To answer some other questions and pose new ones on here, Aaron 2 is talking to Abe 2 over the phone and explaining why he was knocked unconscious by one of his own doubles. The "debt" he is repaying Abe is stealing the fail-safe machine and thus robbing Abe of having ultimate say over the fate of his invention, not to mention forever distorting Abe 2's timeline.

There are also a lot of questions here about what effect any particular action has on other people's timelines and what not. Understand, what Primer demonstrates is that when it comes to time travel, subjective experience is all that matters. You can do whatever you want and alter timelines however you see fit, but only YOU will experience any altered timeline you have created. Everyone else that doesn't make the trip you made will be oblivious to any changes you have made as their timeline will stream with those events always having occurred. That is why Abe 1 is oblivious he is talking to Aaron 2 in the beginning because that particular Abe never traveled that far back yet. Therefore, he will always remember the timeline that way with never having interacted with Aaron 1 on the bench. Aaron 2 (and ostensibly Aaron 3) must remember what originally happened with the original Abe in his own particular timeline.

As to who is building the warehouse sized box at the end of the film, it seems obvious to me that is in fact Aaron 3. I say obvious because his facial hair growth is slightly less than Aaron 2's in the kitchen scene, indicating he hasn't gone as long without shaving.

Finally, I have always wondered, what would happen if you put a box on an airplane and turned it on right before take off? Would you immediately exit the box before even making the trip you were about to take?

So I decided to revisit one of my all time favorite movies, Primer. This was my 3rd time seeing it again. I agree and disagree on various parts, but I have another question more importantly, one I had not put much thought into previously. It's not mentioned in this wrie-up and I didn't see anything about it in the comments either. Is it safe to assume that Rachel does indeed get kiled at the party? My guess is that she does get killed at the party, and perhaps Aaron feels responsible for inviting the ex-boyfriend. I can't think of any other reason that Aaron would be so determined to correct the events of that night. I think that Aaron goes back and stops the armed gunmen, but all he does is prolong her death until a later date, as evidenced by the future Granger, they both agree he should only know about the machine in the case of an extreme emergency. After this realization he concludes it wasn't enough, and resolves to go back a second time, this time getting the shooter arrested. Perhaps it doesn't add up but it makes some sense to me.

The other thing I don't understand is the logic behind the fail safe device. The fail safe device doesn't actually accomplish anything for them in the movie. The original boxes are set in a loop so that they will not meet their past selves, and they will always stay one day ahead of their copies on the timeline. Even once they are finished making their fortune and stop using the boxes, they will still maintain their own time line. The point of this is that even though they travel back in time, they keep their original lives by making their past selves travel back also, in a constant loop. Abe and Aaron take over their copies lives, while the copies take over their copies lives, and the copies of the copies take over their copies lives in an endless loop. The fail safe can go back the entire length of time it was active, but all this does is leave them in the past, essentially ereasing their future. Unless they go about the grisly task of killing their copies in the past, and taking over their lives, they can't actually change anything. By going back they can only alter the lives of their copies, their future selves are simply left stranded and alone. The fail safe device is the only way for these time travel twists and turns to be possible, but from a logical plot standpoint, its existence does not make sense.

I also thought of what I think might be an inconsistency, what happens to Aaron 1 when he uses the fail safe device and then relives that week, this time recording all the conversations as Aaron 2. At this time there should only be Abe 1, but Aaron 2 has now replaced Aaron 1. Aaron 2 now goes about the week pretending to be Aaron 1 with Abe 1. We know that Aaron 2 drugs Aaron 1 and puts him in the attic, we see this when Aaron 3 comes back on Monday. Are we to believe that Aaron 2 keeps Aaron 1 in the attic for 4 days? What about the fact that when Aaron 3 arrives we see Aaron 1 escape from the attic that same day (Monday). The only logical conclusion is that Aaron 2 actually killed Aaron 1, but this can't be true because Aarons wife talks about hearing noises in the attic on Tuesday or Wednesday. We know that the last scene on the bench is Aaron 3 talking to Abe 2 on Monday, meaning that for the majority of the movie we are seeing Aaron 2. We know that Aaron 1's first 4 days are never shown, I believe it must have something to do with the Party. There must have been a good reason for Aaron to go all the way back, seeing as they were making a killing in the stock market.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings, haha

The problem with these explanations is that it is impossible for Aaron 2 or Aaron Prime or Aaron 3 to live at the same time for more than a short period. In this explanation, Aaron 3 convinces Aaron 2 to leave town and not go back in the box. In that case, no Aaron 3 could exist. Aaron prime only exists until he climbs into the box, at which point he becomes Aaron 2. there is a brief period (6 hours) when both Aaron 2 and Aaron prime exist at the same time, until Aaron prime climbs into the box, leaving only Aaron 2 in existence.

If Aaron 2 climbs in the box, then there is a brief period (less than 6 hours) when Aaron prime, Aaron 2 and Aaron 3 all exist, until Aaron prime and then Aaron 2 each climb into a box, leaving only Aaron 3 in existence.

If Aaron 2 never climbs into the box, there is no Aaron 3. If Aaron Prime never climbs into the box, there is no Aaron 2. Once past the 6 hours, only one Aaron remains - who is the original Aaron, just with all of the experience of going back and forth in the box and spending time as Aaron Prime, then Aaron 2 and finally Aaron 3.

It is therefore impossible for Aaron 2 to go to France and build a warehouse sized box - unless Aaron 2 is a manifestation from so far in the future that he and Aaron Prime can exist at the same time. At some point, Aaron Prime has to disappear by going into the box in order to create Aaron 2, leaving only one Aaron. It is possible to have a finite period of infinite Aarons as he keeps looping back by climbing into the box, but ultimately, the line reverts back to a single Aaron.

If any Aaron were killed at teh party, it would kill all Aarons. Example. Aaron Prime gets into box at Midnight Friday and gets out at noon Friday creating Aaron 2. Both Aaron Prime and Aaron 2 exist between noon and midnight friday. After midnight, only Aaron 2 exists. thus, if Aaron 2 gets killed at 11 p.m. on Friday, Aaron is dead. If, instead, Aaron 2 goes into a box at Midnight Friday and goes back to 12:05 p.m. Friday, there are now three Aarons in existence between 12:05 friday and Midnight Friday. After midnight on Friday, only Aaron 3 remains. Thus, if Aaron 3 gets killed at 11 p.m. at the party, no Aaron exists after midnight. If one of the other Aarons finds out and then does not get into the box, then the subsequent Aaron was never created. If Aaron 2 does not get into the box at midnight, Aaron 3 never existed.

Think of it another way, Aaron is a single line that loops back on itself each time Aaron (in whatever iteration) climbs into a box and the aaron line cross its own path when Aaron (now Aaron 2) climbs out of the box at an earlier time. It just continues looping back on itself, but it is still a single line. If you break that line at any point, it is the end of Aaron. Otherwise, the "box" is not a time-travel device but a cloning device creating new, entirely independent, Aarons.

As far as the Thomas Granger incident, a lot of people are forgetting some key details. Granted, the most reasonable explanation is that Granger is sent back because at some later date Rachel is in fact murdered by her ex boyfriend. For whatever reason, (probably because they were arrested for punching Joseph Plaats in the face), neither Abe nor Aaron could be sent back to prevent it. So one of them must have told their version of Thomas Granger to use one of the boxes (presumably Abe's) to go back and stop them from punching Plaats so that they don't get arrested and therefore can use the boxes to ensure nothing ever happens to Rachel. Him falling unconscious in Abe's presence could be because if two people use the same box they become saturated in a magnetic charge. (Positive repels positive, negative repels negative). But I have a much simpler and simultaneously much more complex alternative explanation for Thomas Granger's presence:

Let's break down exactly what happens solely within the Granger event itself: Abe and Aaron get in their car on their way to punch Plaats in the face. On their way they notice Granger sitting in the car. Who do they call to verify it is his double? Thomas Granger. In the middle of the night. Granger likely has called i.d. and probably recognizes Abe's voice. It stands to reason that perhaps the phone call Abe made somehow leads to Granger discovering the time machines and using one to go back in time. The reason he is knocked unconscious by Abe's presence is because he is suffering from recursion. Abe is the source of Granger's paradox, he called him, he came back in time, and around and around we go.

2012-11-12 17:37:23 by Vladimir:

>Reply to Noni about nested boxes: sorry, you can't go back another week. When you get into box B, you'll backtrack along the path that box B took >through spacetime, so you just end up where you started.


Why should we take the same path ? We are in a new timeline with a one-week "loaded" box so when the box is turn off the time encounter a cul-de-sac and go back the other way, and we end-up one another week earlier. We don't know how it works, if the machine load with "negative time", set a spacetime path or just define an interval where the time flip-flop, we can only make guess.

About the end, it could be Aaron 2 planning to life inside a machine so "you will not find me". With 1300*one month he has more than a century to spend, and he can even invite babes inside (ok its not very realistic...)

I still don't understand why Aaron had to go back to Monday twice thus creating Aaron 2 and 3 permanently. What was he trying to accomplish?

@ Maw : Aaron traveled back because in the original timeline, he was not at the party. As the audience, we are left to only speculate as to what occurred and will never truly know what actually transpired in the original timeline, especially since the level of deception in which Aaron is willing to go is finally revealed to us at the end. Now, in order for him to alter the past from what originally happened, he had to take his past double's place. In order to do that, he had to render his double unconscious to occupy his role so that the world is not encountering two Aarons simultaneously. (This would obviously raise some concerns). We learn, however, that a third Aaron returns from the future and attempts to render Aaron 2 unconscious but is unsuccessful. Clearly, while this indicates something still went wrong when he tried to correct the past, it also is due to the fact that Abe failsafed and had no intention of telling Aaron about the boxes, thus resulting in a third "layer" of Aaron in the timeline Abe 2 has arrived at.

This is problematic for Aaron because if he is never told about the boxes then his doubles will not vacate timelines that he intends on occupying by entering the box at the intervals in which he did. He would be condemned to either having to kill his own doubles to remove them permanently if he wanted to keep traveling or stop traveling altogether, neither of which sound like very attractive options to Aaron. Thus he failsafed to return to an earlier point than Abe so that he will forever have supremacy over the timelines. (The film depicts Aaron as the kind of person that probably didn't like when he first learned of the machines and realized he was existing in a universe altered by Abe. He is the kind of person that would rather have that power over others). So to answer your question, what he is trying to accomplish is to produce an outcome of perfect results for himself, an obsession that has consumed him since he became intoxicated with the power to travel through time and set things howeveri he sees fit.

so after all of this my head hurts.....

Thank you!

This explanation is awesome! How often did you have to watch the film in order to write it? :P

cool

How does the watch run forward when going backward through time?

here is a thought, if you started a smaller box in the future, then got into a larger box with the smaller box running and you outside the smaller box and went back in time, then emerged from the larger box with the smaller box and got into the smaller box, could you go back into what would be the future...

Bobber: or you could just wait a while

@ Teddy : The watch runs forward because it is still subjectively experiencing time progressing forward. What was odd that they noticed was the AMOUNT of time that the watch had subjectively experienced and the actual time that had passed from outside the box. This indicated that the watch was experiencing twice the amount of time because its arrow of time was no longer linear but parabolically shaped. Therefore it was making forward and backward trips which resulted in a doubling of the minutes it had experienced subjectively. The only flaw the film has from this standpoint then is that Aaron and Abe would have had to subjectively experience 12 hours in the box to travel back 6.

@ Bobber : No. What you just described is essentially what Aaron did to travel back farther than Abe. He folded up the failsafe box and took it back with him into his box. He then opened the failsafe that had been running the entire time within the first box and traveled back in it to an earlier point. What would happen in the scenario you presented is that you would wind up deeper in the past, not farther in the future.

I don't understand Abe's and Rachel's relationship. She's supposed to be his girlfriend, right? Why do they seem increasingly distant as the movie progresses? At the party scene near the end, they don't even speak to each other and it looks like she's there with a date. Even on the phone, Abe doesn't seem to be very passionate or show any kind of romantic emotional attachment to her. Also, I don't understand how she could be at the party originally. Abe has to be told at one point that Aaron stopped her shotgun-wielding ex-boyfriend, which means that she was there and Abe wasn't. But later, it's established that the only way to get her to attend the party is to have Abe invite her, that she only goes because he's going to be there. In a movie as complex as this, it's easy to miss that one minute detail that pulls it all together, but having just watched it twice in a row, I can't figure this one out.

@Bishop. From how I understood it, Abe and Rachel's relationship is one in which Rachel is more interested in Abe than he is in her. They don't seem to me to be officially boyfriend and girlfriend, but they are in the early stages of developing a relationship. (This is commonly referred to simply as "talking" in the modern dating lexicon). Maybe I am looking too deep into it but it seems that Abe is reluctant to have a full fledged relationship with Rachel because the film seems to depict her as a bit of a floozie. (She just broke up with her ex, she is "seeing" Abe and at the party flirting with some random guy which seems to be the catalyst for her ex walking in with the shotgun, I don't think they went to the party together). As far as the inconsistency you pointed out, good point, but I think a simple resolution for continuity here would be that Abe may very well have invited her to the party in the original timeline and just simply didn't go. After all, it is clear to us that whichever timeline we're talking about, he and Aaron have been working around the clock on a time machine. In a more grim possibility, perhaps in the original timeline neither Abe NOR Aaron went to the party in the original timeline and Rachel was killed at the party. We will never truly know what originally happened because Aaron has permanently altered events, which is the entire point Carruth is making with his cautionary tale about time travel.

Thank you for this explanation! It cleared up exactly what I had missed.

After watching it again, here are my 2 cents, I believe there has to be minimally 4 Aarons. Aaron Two, who is narrating, mentions that he had thought it would be a good idea to record the conversations of the day, but he never actually did it. He just says it's an idea he had. That means that in order to even have a recording, Aaron Three (or higher) would have had to make a recording for the Aaron we are watching when he stops the ex boyfriend. So, we would have Aaron Prime, Aaron the Narrator, Aaron the Recorder and Aaron the ExStopper at a minimum.

TWIN AARONs IN SAME PLACE AT THE END?
Forgive me if this has already been mentioned but I watched Primer twice yesterday, the second time after reading the brilliant analysis/explanation above, and I could swear that at the very end, there are TWO Aarons in France (starting to build the warehouse-sized device). If you watch closely (and this happens throughout the film) there are varying amounts of facial growth on Aaron. Sometimes he's clean-shaven and then in the next scene he has 2-days' growth. However, and this is the biggie: if you watch carefully at the end, the first dialog spoken by (an) Aaron in France is "Morning" by an Aaron with not too much facial hair and no one standing near him, his back is to the camera and he's facing to his left (looking towards left of TV screen). Then the camera swings left and there's an Aaron with almost a beard (much more facial hair than the one who said "morning") and people all around him, with him facing the camera and looking to his left (to the right of tv screen) who then says "every half meter... everywhere". Then the camera swings right again to the Aaron with no one around him, still back to camera & facing 'left' who repeats "everywhere". The french guy seems to even look back & forth between the two Aarons as they each speak. I've run it back dozens of times and I'd swear there are two of them. Presumably Aaron Prime (Hoodie Aaron) and then the one who left at the 'end" (last scene in the USA). Can anyone confirm this for me? I'm 99% convinced that there are either two of them in the scene or that they are suggesting that there are two Aarons in separate locations and both are building enormous boxes. After watching it yet again just now, I'm even more confused, 'cause although in the first part of the scene they even pan around the 'room' to show they're indoors, yet (my) second Aaron is near a forklift and it appears to be outside. Can anyone check the ending & see if you can figure out if I'm right that there's "something there" and, if so, what the heck it is? Thanks!

@Lance
I saw this too and you are right... there are two at the end. However, this could be Aaron 2, who was convinced to leave, or he could have just created more versions of himself to assist with whatever project he was working on. I like the theory that someone mentioned above: he is trying to ultimately control his universe. I would love to see a sequel that follows his project though!

Great article. This movie is among my favorites of all time. It is amazing what you can do with $7000 budget.

I have read many of the comments here. Someone above mentioned an early scene where Aaron is picking Abe up at his apartment and the camera keeps cutting to Abe asleep on the floor. Aaron says "it is 7pm" or whatever. I have been wondering if that was done just to disorient the viewer because it doesn't seem possible that either of them had gone back that far at that point. It does seem odd though because if one or both of them had come back that far, a reminder of what time it is might be needed.

I have often wondered about Aaron's new refrigerator. It is new (he tells his wife that they have to throw out the first couple of batches or ice). I was thinking that it was somehow related to when he is getting ready to take the copper tubing from Abe's fridge. Again, it doesn't seem like the time travel would have started at the point but it seems odd that the script makes such a big deal about the ice. Of course, the script was written to keep the viewer off guard so there is a fair amount of dialog that is not related to the plot.

Finally, I always assumed that the reason Grainger had come back was related to his daughter getting shot and/or killed at the party the first time through and that Abe told him about the box and he used it to stop the shooting. They say that they may have told him if it was an emergency.