Your New Favorite Time Traveler 2067 Explained

It is such an amazingly brilliant time for indie film making right now. It used to be that when Independent film makers wanted to do something as crazy as a time travel movie, you’d break out a few tarps, some PVC pipe and rent a storage unit for your filming needs. (Cough, Primer) But now is a completely different day in the world o’ film. The Russian films that have been coming out with just ridiculous special effects sort of has been tipping me. But today, with the release of 2067, we get the entire package: screenplay, acting, editing, and special effects in one perfect indie time travel movie. Trust me, this is going to be my ‘go to’ recommendation for a good long while, I’m sure. So let’s get to it: your new favorite time traveler 2067 explained…wherein we walk through the movie, explain the confusing bits, and discuss what it might really be saying.

Wait, what? You haven’t heard of the film 2067?!?! <record scratch> Well, we gotta fix that right now. It’s an Australian film that tells the story of a planet where all the plants have been killed. And where all the oxygen is gone – save for one production company’s artificial manufacturing. But it isn’t enough to keep the humans of the world alive. And so an adventurous scientist builds a time machine in order to get a cure for this oxygen disease that is happening now. As with all time traveling movies, something is rotten in Denmark, and time is running out to save the planet from itself. Want to watch this film, intrigued? Check it out at any one of the links below:

Alright – from here on out – the rest of this post will be spoilers top to bottom. If you are curious why I deal in spoilers 100% of the time? Well, that is a great question random internet denizen. Appreciate the question. Well, because THiNC. is not a movie review website. (Yes, observant savant, I do rate movies, but only to help you decide which movies you might prefer watching over others.) I try to only bring you movies that I would recommend for you to watch. And all the movies I bring are of the Indie film, Hollywood mold-busting genre. Why? Because I’m tired of the same old, same old, that continues to come from the corporate ruled Hollywood focus on money and ROI. Which brings us back to 2067. Yet another foreign, mind-busting, indie film that Hollywood only wish they had made. So let’s pay our $1.50 en masse, and help these guys make another movie as soon as possible.

2067 Movie Walkthrough

The year is 2067, and planet earth is in a really bad place. The last of the trees and the plants have been harvested, and destroyed. It looks like a Blade Runner hellscape where the inhabitants of the earth just randomly die due to the impacts of an oxygenless planet. Chronicorp though has a plan. Chronicorp, the world’s largest supplier of breathable air to the people of the world, realizes that they aren’t going to be able to create enough oxygen to save the planet. And so, their number one scientific mind, Dr. Richard Whyte, begins constructing a way to communicate with the future in order to learn how the future has solved this pandemic – the O2 Rejection Epidemic. Early on in Whyte’s research, he was able to bounce radio waves into the future, and received a signal back that said: “Send Ethan Whyte.” Who is Ethan you ask? Great question. Everyone asks that exact same thing – well, Ethan happens to be Dr. Richard Whyte’s young, 8-year-old son. But soon after the signal is received, Dr. Whyte goes missing, and Ethan’s mother is shot in an alleyway mugging for her oxygen supply.

But thankfully, Jude was there for Ethan, and raised him as his brother, and as a mentor. The two spend their time working on the finicky city nuclear power reactor and keeping the city alive. The two seem to be constantly interceding when the core is on the verge of melt down. Which makes it really weird when, out of the blue, the leaders of Chronicorp call Ethan up and tell him about the message they received from the future…oh, come on, you remember, the whole “Send Ethan” bit? Right, that one. Anyway, Ethan is a little shocked about the whole thing to be honest, and mainly because of Xanthe. Xanthe is Ethan’s girlfriend who has begun bleeding out of her lungs when she coughs…you know, as a result of there not being any plants on the planet anymore? So, she’s not doing well. And Ethan has had a plan to save her through his working more shifts, and buying her better and better O2 masks. But the world needs Ethan. At least, that is what Chronicorp, Jude, and Xanthe are saying, so he goes. Guess I gotta go save the world.

After some chaos, and some high-jinks, Ethan is chucked into time, over the city, and lands in a ball of flame. But what he first realizes is that the city seems empty. Shrouded by dense jungles and forests. But empty. And remember, Ethan’s only real reason for going was to find the cure for Xanthe’s O2 Rejection sickness. Ethan isn’t seeing any open pharmacies though…”Cough, um, excuse me sir, can I get 42 billion doses of O2 Rejection Sickness pills? That’d be great, thanks.” More concerning, than the lack of people, is the fact that he finds himself, in his space suit, shot in the head. Hrmmm. He’s obviously been left to rot, so this has to be him from the past. But his wristband is green. WHAT DOES THE WRIST BAND DO?!?

Anyway, after noticing that the dead Ethan’s Archie has been modified, and when he makes the same modifications to his Archie, he’s able to get signals of the surrounding area. But in a really bad move straight out of a B-movie, Ethan, who is hungry, eats a berry, a gallberry. (But after looking up some information about gallberries… uh, it causes belly aches? And they are indigenous to the United States? Are we in Australia? WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?) And dies. Sort of. Jude arrives from the past, and saves his life from the life threatening belly aches he was having. PHEW. And the two men head to the bunker on Archie’s sensor. And the very first thing that happens is that the bunker checks Ethan’s DNA via his bracelet. So that is why the message from the future said send Ethan Whyte, no one else could enable the station. Maybe we should recap. The scattershot time implications are getting a little crazy.

2067 Recap So Far

Young Ethan, and Richard, his dad, love spending time together. Yay! But Dr. Whyte has other things on his mind, like for example, time travel. And he is able to figure out how to open up radio waves to, and from, the future. As a result, the very first radio broadcast they get is for them to send Ethan Whyte. So Dr. Richard Whyte goes to his son, and places a painful bracelet on his son that will check his DNA and transmit the results to the time travel station he has been working on. And why does the station in the future ask for Ethan? Well, because there is a massive power failure at the station in the future and it jeopardizes the future of the planet because the time machine can’t link. Are we all caught up then? (You know I had to recap just for myself don’t you?) Great.

Well, that is when Ethan can see from his father’s logs that they can’t even begin considering sending matter into the future because they realize that there’s been a massive power issue in the future. When the station begins the 4 hour (?!) countdown to send them back to the past, there’s a problem because the cities power has completely gone pear-shaped. Jude and Ethan need to get to the city’s nuclear reactor in order to get the bunker back online. But Jude takes them to Xanthe’s class room, where he sees written on the wall – “God has left this place.” And he also finds Xanthe’s skeleton. She apparently died with the children of her classroom.

Interesting things begin happening now though, because Ethan has begun to not trust Jude. Not even a little bit. Why did Chronicorp send Jude, of all people, forward in time? Why not a medic to save his life? Or better yet, a soldier? But Jude? What is going on? Worse, is the fact that it was Jude’s voice he heard on the Archie unit he found on his body right before he is shot in the head. Is it Jude who eventually kills him? What is going on here? Well, all of this comes out there in Xanthe’s classroom, and ends up with Jude pointing a gun at Ethan’s head. A GUN?! Well, Jude convinces Ethan that he is here for him – and that they’ve been brothers ever since his parents died, and that he’s here for him. Then jump to Ethan and Jude heading to the power center, and solving the problem with the power in a way too excited and built up way. But they get it fixed dangit… and now they can head back to the Chronicle.

The question that Ethan has really been asking himself is, is it even possible to change the future, effectively? Which, in turn, is a larger question for ourselves. Can we make a change? Can we learn something new? Can we lose weight, get a doctorate at 60? Can we become the person we hoped we would become? But nothing they are doing is changing anything – Ethans’ dead body is still there on the floor at the entryway to the Chronicle.

As the guys are at the Chronicle in the future attempting to get the system all back up and running again, we flash back to the Chronicle in the past, where we learn that Chronicorp (Tragicorp?) gave up trying to solve the earth’s problems, and instead, to send an ark of people into the future. The earth is clever enough to solve its own problems, if only it can do without us pesky humans doing our damnedest to destroy the planet. So instead of learning from our mistakes, and making the changes that we need to make in order to save mankind, Regina makes the decision that they would send as many humans as they can into the future in the thirty second window the portal is open. She’s bailing on mankind? huh. Who knew that an international conglomerate could be so heartless? And, oh wait, what is this? Regina is the one who told Jude that he was going to be Ethan’s guardian now that his parents were both dead? And it was Tragicorp that murdered Ethan’s parents?? Well, that throws a minor wrinkle into things.

Alternate, original timeline Ending 2067

Because this is a time travel movie, we actually can know a lot about how the ending of 2067 should have ended…or better yet, how it originally ended. And if you don’t understand that ending, then you probably will think that the “new” ending is meh, at best.

We know Dr. Whyte received a message saying send Ethan. Which makes Ethan the most important person on the planet all of a sudden. And we also know that Jude was Ethan’s guardian established by Chronicorp’s murdering of Ethan’s parents. They did that to control the one person who could eventually save the planet (or save them anyway). Jude was paid to take care of Ethan, teach him everything he needed to know about repairing the city’s power, over and over again. Ethan goes to the future, all but dies there because of a berry mishap I’m still confused about. But JUDE! He arrives, saves his life and they are able to get Ethan logged into the system, identified via DNA, then the city’s power fixed. Then, after the countdown, Jude and Ethan travel back to 2067…where, immediately upon return, he’s met by Regina and a long line of humans who are about to haul ass into the future. Ethan is shot in the head, and left in the hallway. And then, all of humanity dies in the past, leaving a remnant in the future to scratch out an existence like Columbus in the new world.

So, when Ethan is standing in the Chronicle Bunker, he is considering several things at once. Should he bring the Chronicle power online. Should he jump back. What about Xanthe? Oh, RIGHT! There is no cure, we have to fix the earth instead. So Ethan realizes, there really is only one way. And that was to ship the earth a pile of plants that they can use to jump start the planet again.

Thoughts on That Ending

OK look, the ending was too clever by half. In order to provide a satisfying ending that will appeal to a broad range of movie goers, Xanthe needs to be saved. End of story. When Ethan decided that going back wasn’t an option (he’d be killed) his decision to forklift an enormous pile of plants back in time was his only option. But here’s what humankind would have done with those plants… They would have bred them, and planted them, and bred them…and just like what happened originally, they would have killed them all by thinking that profit was more important than caring for the earth. And although the movie’s matte painting artists are to be commended, that is some next level optimism crap right there! hahaha.

Yes, the movie pushes a story about climate change to the extreme. Yes, it goes too far in its optimism. But, at the same time, for an Indie film maker to make a movie this good from a special effects and acting standpoint, it deserves to be seen. Did they stick that landing? No. But I enjoyed it all the same, and would gladly fund a gofundme to help these guys make their next movie. This was a very confidant, and very well executed movie. And I was glad to be given the chance to enjoy it.

Now, go ahead, lambast my opinion in the comments. But know, in advance… you are wrong. OK? As long as we can start there? Great. Let the wrongness begin! hahah. And if you are hoping for more movies like this one – don’t worry, I got you:

  

Edited by: CY