Time loops are wild. That’s the tweet. Just kidding, but they are! Time loops are their own genre and a trope found in video games across widely accepted genres. One interesting takeaway about time loops is the possibility to take life to the extreme, usually involving death. We discussed how Save the Date and 12 Minutes utilize this mechanic in a game space, and the same can be said of Groundhog Day using it in a film space. It is interesting to compare the same trope in both films and games and see how the creators chose to not only implement it, but also how it appears differently given the medium. Let’s get into specifics:
In Groundhog Day, we see Phil jumping into a query with the groundhog Phil, exploding the truck. The drop is in slow motion, there are multiple angles of the truck flipping on its roof, getting smashed, and eventually exploding with Phil the groundhog squeaking. The scene ends and shifts into a new iteration of the same day, with the clock rolling over to 6am like it has been throughout the film. Both Phils just died in a horrible car explosion, yet everyone wakes up like that never happened (it didn’t for everyone else, but especially Phil the human). Phil takes the opportunity to die in a multitude of ways, as we learn during a discussion at the diner with Rita. I find it so interesting that while being stuck in this loop, Phil figures his life will reset to the day before, and uses this as an opportunity to die in different ways. I wonder what promotes this? We get no motivation from Phil, so it seems up in the air/up to interpretation. This phenomenon is not exclusive of Groundhog Day, however.
Save the Date and 12 Minutes also take life to the extreme in their time loops. Save the Date‘s time loop is the player trying to stop them and/or their date from dying. Every time the date fails, players are given a “Game Over” and are sent right back to the beginning. There is some urgency when the main character discovers the day continues to loop, and the player uncovers new dialogue options that acknowledge the loop and their inevitable death. The extremity in this game comes from seemingly unlimited possibilities for how the player and their date dies.
12 Minutes‘ use of extremity comes from the actions of the player and the immediate reset of the day. There is an option to kill the cop who comes to arrest the main character’s partner, and the result is an immediate pull back to the beginning of the game with the character out of breath, confused. Here again, life is put at risk (maybe not to the same extent, but more so future) and the time loop repairs potential irreversible damage. People come back to life, everything is reset, and the only people who know of it are those aware they are stuck in a time loop. Life is being threatened in each of these instances, yet the games take a more urgent and adrenaline-filled response while the film offers one dramatic scene, followed by a montage of deaths and ultimate acceptance.
Why are life-threatening or life-altering situations so prominent in time loops? Does it have to do with human behavior? If we agree that time loops are a genre, then do these situations count as measure/requirements for said genre?
I found it interesting here that to demonstrate the extremity of the situation in 12 Minutes, you chose to look at the possibility of shooting the cop, and not any of the other ways you could die or kill. To me, there seems to be an interesting distinction between the extremes you presented for Save the Date and the other two works, namely that in Save the Date you are never the one in control of the life and death situations. In Groundhog Day and 12 Minutes, the extremes you mention are meant to show the emotional side of a time loop, they’re some of the first and most impactful signs of the deterioration and desperation that these characters experience. Save the Date doesn’t really have an equivalent moment of life and death, and it doesn’t really need to. Save the Date doesn’t really demonstrate a time loop in the same way the other two do, because the main character isn’t meant to be a character in the world, they’re you. They know they’re here by choice, and could leave whenever they’re satisfied or bored, they always have an easy way out. On the other hand, the other two protagonists are trapped and desperate. At that moment they’ll do whatever they need to break the time loop, whether that’s killing or dying. This is an important step in the moral time loop, because it forces the characters’ personalities to break down as even their most desperate moves to escape fail. It shows the viewer how desperate they are, and it shows them that there isn’t an easy way out of the loop. So I don’t think that life ending or life changing events are an important part of narrative (moral) time loops, but rather some form of controlled self destruction, that forces the character to change.
I think this is an interesting point to note about time loop games! And I think the reason for this notion of extremity simply comes from the genre, because if the character is put in a position where they can make any decisions or actions without consequences, why limit them to choices they would make normally? Perhaps this constitutes a reason to consider time loop to be a genre, since drastic decisions would then be one of several tropes for this genre.