"The End of Oak Street Paradox."

 

"The End of Oak Street Paradox."

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr. MD

The plot of The End of Oak Street is loosely explained through the concept of wormholes. The story follows a family whose entire neighborhood is somehow transported 200 million years into the past, landing in the same general area during the age of the dinosaurs.

And yes, before I go any further, there are spoilers ahead.

So if you haven't watched the movie yet, you might want to stop reading here.

My wife had a great idea about how the movie was going to go.

She thought this would essentially be a simple Point A-to-Point B survival movie. The family would somehow make it through the dinosaur apocalypse, escape the prehistoric wilderness, and eventually return home more or less intact.

Which, considering that practically everyone else in the neighborhood seemed to be getting eaten by dinosaurs, was already a fairly generous interpretation of the family's chances.

Then Greg, the father, played by Ewan McGregor, dies.

My wife could not believe it.

And honestly, neither could I.

Except the movie apparently wasn't finished with Greg yet.

About fifteen minutes before the neighborhood is transported into the past, Anne Hathaway's character calls her husband, who is still very much alive at this point, asking him to have pizza delivered to the area in the hills.

And because of the way the movie handles the timeline, Greg survives.

The family is reunited.

There are tears.

There are hugs.

Everyone is happy.

The end.

Except...

A tiny thought suddenly appeared in my head.

"Wait."

That's a paradox.

Now, my wife had just wanted to watch a movie.

I, unfortunately, had just discovered a temporal problem and apparently could no longer leave it alone.

Here's the problem.

The family exists in the original timeline. The neighborhood is then transported 200 million years into the past. We, as the audience, are allowed to see what happens in that prehistoric timeline, including Greg saving his wife from being eaten by a dinosaur.

That means Greg's actions in the past directly affect whether his wife survives.

And if his wife survives, she can help their children survive.

And if the children survive, they can eventually reach the portal that allows them to return.

But here's the problem:

What happens if Greg isn't there?

Because in the original timeline, the family has effectively gone into the past.

Greg's survival in the ending depends on information and events connected to the family's journey into that past.

But the family's survival in the past depends on Greg being there to save his wife.

Remove Greg from that timeline, and his wife may die.

If his wife dies, the children may not survive.

If the children don't survive, they never reach the portal.

If they never reach the portal, the events that lead to Greg surviving don't happen.

Which means...

Greg doesn't survive.

Which means his wife doesn't survive.

Which means the children don't survive.

Which means they never reach the portal.

Which means Greg doesn't survive.

And suddenly we've gone from a dinosaur survival movie to Doctor Who before breakfast.

My wife, who had simply wanted to enjoy the movie, was understandably not thrilled that I had decided to perform a full temporal mechanics analysis immediately afterward.

She basically wanted to watch people escape dinosaurs.

I wanted to know whether Greg's existence was causally dependent on his own family's survival, which was itself dependent on Greg's existence.

Eventually, I did manage to explain the paradox to her.

She understood it.

She was still annoyed that I had thought about it.

And honestly, I can't blame her.

Sometimes you just want to watch a movie, eat your breakfast, and move on with your day.

Unfortunately, my brain occasionally sees a perfectly good ending and says:

"That's nice. But have you considered the implications of the space-time continuum?"

My wife did not appreciate this contribution.

But I still think the movie has a problem.

Greg isn't just the father who survived the dinosaurs.

He may also be the reason the story could happen in the first place.

And that, my friends, is how a simple dinosaur movie became a breakfast argument about causality.