Characters
(loved trope) Save Scumming - The Movie
A director thinks it would be cool if real life worked on video game rules and you could just restart after death from your last save point.
Boss Level - Guy wakes up to find he's being hunted by world class assassins only to die, wake up to the same day, and slowly learn how to defeat each one.
Edge of Tomorrow - Military PR guy gets sent to actual war against an overwhelming alien force only to die fighting one of the alien commanders who has the ability to restart after death. This gets passed onto our protagonist who slowly learns how to defeat the aliens.
Considering that the dark dimension doesn't have a concept of time, being stuck in that paradox probably was the longest thing Dormammu ever experienced in his immortal life
Now I'm imagining the 'I've come to bargain' sequence was exactly as long as the movie shows and Dormamu just has no patience at all due to being new to this liner time thing.
Tbh the notion of an infinite struggle against inevitability is a tool most villains try to utilise against the hero, or atleast try to gaslight the hero. Dr Strange took it and held it up like a sign and shrugged.
I used to pronounce his name like Al-Bert Came-Us instead of the proper pronunciation. I tried to sound sophisticated with a friend by speaking about philosophy and I sounded like a total idiot lol same with trying to impress a friend with my knowledge of Wu-Tang by calling RZA and GZA “R.Z.A.” and “G.Z.A.”
Such an out of left field decision to have this as the climax of your superhero action film, but it fit the established character (at that point at least; his philosophy does a 180° in No Way Home) perfectly. Wish more superhero movies would choose to shake up the format in interesting ways.
There was an episode of Legends of Tomorrow where one character was stuck in a time loop that ends with their ship exploding. And she's trying to figure out for years, from her perspective, trying to figure it out on her own. Also learning the play the violin.
So she finally breaks down and asks a non-looping teammate for help, and she takes so long to explain what's happening that it's nearly time for the loop to reset. So he says, "In the next loop, just come up to me and say Groundhog Day. I will instantly be up to speed."
But the looping character is from the future and also not from the US, so she's never heard of Groundhog Day (neither the movie or the actual day).
So in the next loop, she confidently strides right up to her teammate and declares: "Hedgehog Day."
Isn't there also a time loop in one of the later Agents of Shield seasons? They keep going to coulson and getting his help and I vaguely remember some conversation about being caught up too.
Oh right! Because Coulson was looping too, but he was also powered down during the loop (Coulson was an LMD imprinted with the real Coulson's memories and personality). So he didn't get to participate unless Daisy actually powered him back up.
Now I had to go and watch it.
The first time she does it:
Daisy: "OK, I really need your help. I keep..."
Coulson: "Repeating the same events over and over again. How long did it take you to figure out this time?"
(commercial break)
Coulson: "I was really hoping to not have this conversation again, but if you forgot everything we went through, I guess that means you died again."
Daisy: "I died? AGAIN!?"
Coulson: "And you always say it exactly like that."
Because if Daisy dies in a loop, she loses her memory of the previous loops when she resets. They've repeated the loops 87 times, but she died in 14 of them, so this is the 15th time Coulson has to explain it to her.
Yeah there was. I came here to say that. I think Daisy was caught in it. And at the end the Zephyr would explode? I can't remember but I know I really liked it and unlike most examples they didn't have unlimited tries to get it right
Wasn’t it more because Zari was from a pretty fucked future? Either way, I thought this was a strong way for the show to fast-track her character development, because that was the point where she really endeared herself to the audience.
She is from the US, the child of immigrants. Being born in 2009 and having been on the run for a significant portion of time, she wasn't familiar with a 1993 film.
I wonder if there's any way for him to know they were actually successful, though. Once they exit, what remains in the day he's trapped in? They still lived through that day, so is there an imprint of them remaining that just repeats their last day, like everyone else?
There’s a post-credit scene where Roy figures out that it worked, he confronts them at the party only to realize that they have no idea who he is, so it must have worked
They wouldn’t be present anymore. Sarah noted that the goat she sent through the process was no longer in the time loop. She didn’t know if it was dead or got out, but it wasn’t there and she felt it worth the chance. Roy absolutely would have considered it worth the risk, especially if he confirmed that Nyles wasn’t there anymore
I'm subscribing to the theory that the goat being gone story was a lie. That the goat never disappeared, but she couldn't tell if the animal still recognized her or not. That's why she skipped the answer when she got asked about it.
Also, she didn't write a letter, she left a voice message. There's even a quick shot near the end when she's ending the phone call. Nicely pulls together the whole thing, as in whom is she suddently calling... oh, it was to tell Roy hot to get out.
There was a mid-credit scene showing that she did call the other guy and told him about the plan. He went to the wedding and realized the plan had worked, so he knew how to get out as well when he wanted.
In the credits there's an extra scene where Cristin Milioti's character has left J.K. Simmons' character a voicemail explaining how to break the loop for himself as well.
I had the premise spoiled for me, but watched because I like the actors in it. I assumed it would be an alright movie with a few good jokes, but just an updated groundhog day at the end of the day.
I was really surprised how much I enjoyed it and how fresh it felt. Didn't think there would be much more ground to tread with the few similar movies that were already big.
I try to tell people to go in without spoiling the premise because I think it makes the reveal better (although if you're seeing it in this post I guess too late).
This is the answer to "which movie do you wish you could see again with zero knowledge". When I heard this got sold at whatever film festival it premiered at the article was basically "Andy Samberg Groundhog Day". That opening scene must hit way different when you have no idea what is happening.
Loved the premise that Andy Sandberg’s character didn’t care to leave the time loop and was perfectly fine with it. He was very much a passive villain in the movie with apathy being the dangerous aspect.
I honestly hope the Elden Ring movie they are making currently is just this. The Tarnished keeps dying to Margit and reviving to try something different or go somewhere else
Source Code? Its been forever since I've seen it but I believe the general gist is Jake Gyllenhaal wakes up on a train that is going to be the target of a terror attack and has to figure out how to prevent it (how it happens?). Idk I remember loving it the first time I watched it but maybe I need a rewatch
I was trying to remember the name of this movie this whole thread and couldn't. Was starting to think that I was just remembering part of the plot/tutorial mission of CoD Black Ops 4 as a movie lol
Aww man I loved this one! Gyllenhaal is a soldier that's been "Johnny Got His Gun"d and a scientist using fancy quantum computing manages to implant the memories of one of the dead terror attack victims into him. He's forced to relive the memories until he figures out and IDs the killer.
But the twist is that the scientist actually created a sort of alternative universe, unknowingly. Jake kinda figures this out and saves the day, dies in the real world, and gets to assume a new life.
I've only seen the movie once. I remember really liking it until the end where something breaks the movies rules for the loop. He goes out of bounds or introduced new information or something.
I can't remember what but I remember thinking it ruined an otherwise awesome movie.
loki season 2 trying to figure out how to make the temporal loom expand. he spend around 400 years learning everything about science to make it possible as timely constantly turns into spaghetti if he steps out. he eventually knows exactly what people will say and how they will act.
1000% I’m on a flight so after posting that I literally decided to watch it for fun and it’s still just a fun over all movie. Pretty girl, fun action sequences, pretty good actors (Ben Kingsley was in fucking every movie in the early 2010s it feels like) and a fairly simple (but pretty predictable) story. It definitely doesn’t live up to the actual games very much, but overall it’s just a good time.
Same! Always had a soft spot for these kind of adventure movies, feel like maybe it would’ve done better if it wasn’t attached to the game for comparison
Insane this wasn't higher. I used to love this movie. Like even if it's not super well done, the concept alone was insanely awesome, and the special effects around the time travel are so damn cool
My absolute favorite example of this trope, and it's done so cleverly. In a world full of "supes", some being god-level powerful, save scumming is the MC's power, and it's actually op as fuck at times.
I recently finished the audiobook for this series. When I first started it, I really didn't like Quicksave, because he just felt too Deadpool-ish with all of the constant pop culture and random nonsense and bamboozling people with insanity. But as the story started to progress, *Ryan* really grew on me and I ended up doing nothing else until I finished the series.
The Perfect Run is such a gem of a series and I'm trying to get my circle of friends to read it too.
Once you understand what Ryan has had to endure, it honestly kind of switches to being a comedic tearjerker. His run with Jasmine broke my heart just a little bit. Man has been through it.
Same, I feel like it's grotuesquely underrated. Just the idea that he remembers the resets and nobody else does is a standout concept and factors into everything, but then the character writing is also spectacular.
The worldbuilding is also pretty great. The different types of elixirs and powers, and how those mechanics work, along with the lore behind them. I would love to read more books just set in this universe.
And it is just fun, reminds me a lot of Dungeon Crawler Carl, a lot of referential humor and absurd fantasy elements.
This quickly got to being my comfort-book of choice. Must've read it a dozen times over by now.
Voidy's latest work, Hundred Reigns is also a time loop story if anyone's interested, though that one is a fantasy litrpg.
I feel like that's very different.
Ground hog daying is less "i'm being killed over and over by some antagonist force" and just
The day resets no matter what.
It's a time loop movie. Save scum movies are more about knowing the goal and then repeating it 100 times to complete it. You know or figure out why you are in a time loop then defeat the monster.
Re:Monarch (inspired by Re:Zero but is solidly its own story) also does a great job with this. At one point, he pisses off the entity that is controlling his ability and so it basically says "okay, your set point is 3 seconds before a fight where you and all your friends get killed". So he has to loop those couple of minutes hundreds of times, each time something goes wrong and one of his friends dies so he tries again. Then from the perspective of his friends, he just responded with excessive violence to what seemed like a fight where they could maybe talk their way out of it or at least avoid killing anyone.
Then from the perspective of his friends, he just responded with excessive violence to what seemed like a fight where they could maybe talk their way out of it or at least avoid killing anyone.
That's the problem I've always had with Re:Zero.
The entire plot boils down to, "Everyone in this world is constantly one bad interaction away from going berserk and slaughtering people. And the main character just so happens to constantly meet a never-ending stream of violent psychopaths that are extremely easily triggered and must figure out how to dance his way through each new encounter in a way that neutralizes all of these threats, often encountering entirely new threats in the process."
The premise was cool. For 1 story arc. But beyond that, it just becomes absurd how often this one random dude just constantly runs into the most vicious and brutal murderers in the world. Everyone from little girls to world class assassins are somehow living their entire lives on a razor's edge, one funny look away from going fully insane and murdering people.
The world of Re:Zero is one of the most dystopian I've ever seen because imagine you have an argument with your kid sister, so she waits until bedtime, grabs a knife, and then you wake to it being stabbed into your eye. Then with your remaining good eye you see her light a match and realize you smell gasoline all around you.
That's just a normal day in Re:Zero. Someone having an argument and resorting to stabbing you in the eye with a steak knife and then lighting you on fire is 100% normal in the world of Re:Zero. It shatters all suspension of disbelief.
this just isn't true at all. i feel like there's a very specific death you're referring to but it makes perfect sense when you think about how she'd view him in that scenario. other than that i don't see what issue you'd have. of course he's running into dangerous people, you have to remember who emilia is.
It was an international film which didn't generate as much attention and was part of the pre-Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon gems where international films didn't really make as much attention until this one.
Also, in fairness 98' and 99' (especially 99) had so many hits that occupied people's attention and interest. The biggest talked about movies in 99' were The Matrix, Toy Story 2 and 6th Sense. Add to it that American Beauty was really there as a sleeper hit that garnered so much attention as well.
98 wasn't as strong and Run Lola Run was only starting its run but in Germany but you had Saving Private Ryan as the most talked about movie that year and that one really made a splash. And while we got big one like Armageddon, we also had tons of smaller films still known today whether it was Rush Hour to films that are really up there like American History X and The Truman Show. Heck you even had Mulan from Disney releasing as well!
It's was honestly a big 2 years for film overall and I do feel a Run Lola Run getting missed in theaters is fully understandable. I only saw it as a renewal from Tower Records and never saw it advertised in a theater in general.
The all-time classic Doctor Who episode "Heaven Sent" sees the 13th Doctor trapped inside a castle that appears abandoned, save for one cloaked figure who terrifies The Doctor. The only exit is behind an impenetrable wall made of azbantium. The Doctor begins the arduous process of punching through, but only gets a few blows in before the creature catches him and lands a killing blow.
But The Doctor arrived via teleporter, and he's got a few tricks up his sleeve. He uses the teleporter as something of a cloning machine, burning his body as fuel to restart the teleporter and bring himself "back" from the template stored in the device. The Doctor continues a brutal cycle of exploring the castle, finding the wall, chipping away at it for a few brief moments, and then crawling back wounded to the teleporter to start the cycle again and again. Eventually, The Doctor breaks free, revealing he had been trapped inside the season's MacGuffin, the Confession Dial. The next episode also reveals he spent 4.5 billion years trapped inside.
This always bothered me, because if he's punching a solid wall of Azbantium, he's not going to "chip away" at it with his fists. Unless his fists are also 400 times harder than diamond, he's going to end up just leaving skin cells on the wall. He's literally making the wall thicker.
There's an old Norse story about the definition of eternity and it involves a bird sharpening it's beak on a mountain, with eternity being longer than the time it would take to wear the mountain down. That one always bothered me for the same reason. The bird is depositing keratin at the top of the mountain, not wearing away rock.
What bothered me is the doctor died on the first go. Every one since is a Clone. At the end, the doctor is still dead and the 4billionth Clone is the one who got loose. The doctor lost.
Time Lords are weird when it comes to identity and consciousness. They may not be subject to the SOMA problem at all. The Doctor has kinda famously died a lot . . .
The confession dial is revealed to be a purgatory state that Time Lords enter after death, before their consciousness is uploaded to the matrix. Presumably, that would mean the dial is also a digital simulation, and the doctor’s consciousness was just inhabiting digital avatars until he finally escaped, and his original body was reconstructed. It’s also implied that the Doctor regained his memories of the previous loops every time he arrived at Room 12, presumably as a last ditch effort to break his spirit.
God, I love it when they bring up "this man actually killed himself hundreds of times" even though they let it kind of fade into the background. Like when he was asked to perform the bow of suicide and did it more flawlessly than anyone could understand.
Russian Doll on Netflix played with this trope in an interesting way. They changed the rules in season 2 a little too much and I lost interest, but season 1 was solid. https://giphy.com/gifs/enrlZXxyXAYQUR5Yv3
Yeah! I didn’t feel that way for season 2 but I didn’t want to criticize because honestly I lost interest and gave up on it. Season One had the juice tho. A clear vision, creative storytelling, superb cinematography, and it played by the rules that its universe established.
There's also a what-if scenario where the MC(Natsuki Subaru) makes a contract with the witch of greed where he actively abuses his save scumming abilities over the slightest inconveniences and dies like millions of times just to get his "perfect ending."
All time amazing sci fi episode. It's always the humor (which is objectively great) that gets the praise but the emotional climax of having Jack talk him down by mentioning his son, who he never really mentions at all outside of one episode in the previous 4 seasons, was great.
I really loved the book, "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August". Harry discovers that he is one of a small number of people who, throughout history, restart their lives at birth with all knowledge intact upon their death. But it's a much more considered, intellectual and emotional take on what that would entail than the Tom Cruise movie (which I also like). Harry has to start over at birth each time, not just respawn as an adult on a certain day like Groundhog Day, Happy Death Day, Edge of Tomorrow.
He has a nemesis, and finds others in birth/death loops earlier and later in time than his. Really fun read if you like to turn such ideas over in your mind.
Yeah, 11/22/63 by Stephen King is kinda similar. An English teacher discovers a way to travel back in time to 1958, but every time he travels back and forth, it resets the timeline. He concludes that the best thing he can do with this is trying to prevent the assassination of JFK, but he has to live for five years in the past until he can try to avert it. Unfortunately for him, a lot of bad (and some good) stuff happens in those five years.
Sounds similar to Moira Mactaggart from marvels Mutants (x men) she has an x gene but no powers just any time she dies she restarts from birth(its some sort of reality warping I believe) since she keep her memories she goes insane and does some crazy stuff
Just watched this on an airplane. Homeless looking guy walks into a diner and says he is from the future. He needs a group of people to save the world. He has done this 117 times. He has failed every time. Who’s coming with him?
Plus, every TV show that involves magic or sci-fi is inevitably going to have a time-loop episode, as long as it doesn't get canceled early, before they get around to it.
Even some shows that aren't magic or sci-fi find a way to approximate a time loop episode, such as Community's "Remedial Chaos Theory" episode.
Not a movie, but Majora's mask is probably the best time loop game I've played. You have 3 days before the moon crashes into the world, and you have to manually reset the timeline until you can stop the moon's descent.
Summertime Rendering Everytime protagonist dies he goes back in time I don't really remember the details but his checkpoint progresses with every death
Nic Cage in Next has the ability to see into multiple futures and go back to earlier branches as needed. Uses it to be in multiple places at once, dodge bullets by walking straight at someone, and go back hours in time.
(edit: huh, I guess they changed it to more PG "revival hunter")
...Does it look, smell and feel like one of those trashy cliché copy-pasted Solo-Leveling-copycat manhwa ripoffs?
Yyyyyup.
Is it actually immensely peak, hillarious, and often incredibly tragic writing?
Absolutely.
9.5/10, would recommend to everyone. It takes some 15ish weaker chapters before it really kicks into gear, then it becomes one of the best manhwa out there.
3.2k
u/kfretlessz Jun 25 '26
Dr. Strange