A Sound of Thunder

Today, as of discussed yesterday, Joey and I went to Jubilee to watch “A Sound of Thunder”, the 3pm one. Somehow the person didn’t understand that we wanted middle row, and gave us the last row, and Joey didn’t check, and so, we were high up there, watching the show with the exit sign emitting bright lights straight at us throughout.

The show starts by showing the boss of the Time Safari Company, Charles Hatton (Ben Kingsley), demonstrating the whole procedure of hunting in the prehistoric time, the safety measures taken to ensure that history is not altered in any way, in any size. They hunt for the same Tyrannosaurus at the exact same spot and time, makes people wonder why one hunting party doesn’t meet up with the previous ones (loophole Mr. Scriptwriter)? Then came this lady, Sonia Rand (Catherine McCormack), barging into the office and spraying reddish liquid onto the clients. Shouting that history will be altered and unknown consequences will occurred if the trips continue, as she was pulled away by the guards. Travis Ryer (Edward Burns), the main scientist responsible for the trip (he did it just because he wanted to study the extinct animals’ DNA from remote), caught up and asked the guards to let go, as he was very interested to know what Sonia was trying to say. And then they went on to talk about their initial interest, plans, and tricks pulled by Charles Hatton in the contract for doing the whole thing and well, nothing happened.

Then there was this one time, when there was an accident, whereby one of the personnel, Tech Officer Payne (David Oyelowo) damaged one gun without noticing it, which enabled the story going of course! Because the guns were designed and programmed in such a way that not until the lead, Travis Ryer starts to fire, no one can, just another precautionary measures to make sure clients do not shoot at anything else. So it goes on, they thought it was just another usual trips, until when the tyrannosaurus starts to threaten their life and their guns are malfunctioning. This starts the whole thing. (It was supposed to die there and then, but instead it was chasing after the hunting party, strange huh?) Travis Ryer tried to distract it until the guns were fixed, and both the clients were given instructions to hide behind the bushes. And long last, guns fixed, tyrannosaurus dead again, and they embarked on their way back. What they didn’t notice was a footprint left behind, with soils, which probably meant that someone DID step off the tracks. And the all-resourceful Charles Hatton manages to convince the clients that it was once in a lifetime, hard to get, escaped from death trip, which, stupidly both of which accepted.

On the night itself, there was some sort of a wave moving through the whole city. I don’t know what it was also until later part where they said it was a time wave, supposed to bring about the changes abruptly in an instant that was supposed to come slowly throughout millions of years. Strange plants started to grow in the city, tall, odd ones. This was the first evolutionary change. The very first to be affected will be the very first to come in the wave. No one thought of anything yet, just felt strange, awesome eh? Only until the next trip, whereby the hunting party went back to the designated time only to find that the tyrannosaurus was already dead, and they met up with the volcano eruption that was supposed to come 5 minutes later. The computer in charge insisted that it was right in the sending of time; Travis knew then that something is very wrong. After which, he went to find Sonia, trying to get some answers from her. Then strange things happened. There was a cry from outside her apartment as they were in the midst of their discussion; they went to open the door, only to find a human being covered by small, black things. That figure fell, only to reveal that it was ‘eaten’ up by the ‘insects’ that looks quite like ants but much bigger. Both of them panicked and Travis Ryer started spraying water from a hose to try and halt the marching army of insects. This unknowingly sparkles one of the electricity area. Travis saw it and pulled Sonia along as they jumped off the balcony. They were supposed to be dead in this way, but just at this moment of time, another time wave hits. And they fell onto the branches of an enormous tree, which was not there just seconds ago. They were astonished to find that the city is now, a tree city, full of forested areas.

All of them gathered at the Time Safari. It was decided that Travis would travel back to stop the hunting party so that all these evolutionary changes would be stopped and everything be back to normal. And just when Travis was traveling, another time wave hit again! And because of this wave, they realized that it was impossible to travel through the time wave to reach that time when everything started to change (hunting party). But quickly, Sonia came up with one and only way, and that was to throw Travis further back in time (hunting at 65million yrs ago, thrown to 65.1million yrs ago), before pulling him forward 0.1million years to the actual scenes. But this way, the atomic particles are simply not stable enough, and Travis only has a time span of 15-20 seconds to stop the hunting party. Clearly not enough, they have to find out exactly what did they change, so they could tackle the problem straight away in the limited time allowed. Viewing from the video, no one can seem to find anything wrong. But a check discloses the fact that an extra 1.3grams was brought back. Charles Hatton find that the Anti-Bio something feature (sorry, didn’t remember the name) was too expensive to be used and didn’t use it at all, which would have stopped any bio items from entering this dimension. There was no time left, human will be affected in the last time wave (supposedly humans are the last to be affected by the changes), which was no more than a few more. They HAVE to find the clients to know what was brought back.

In a party of five, Travis, Sonia, Payne, Dr. Lucas (Wilfried Hochholdinger) and Jenny Krase (Jemima Rooper), they decided to find the client that was always in a frantic state during the trip, because they believed he had the most possibility of stepping off the track. They moved through a park, the nearest way to the client, where they were observed and followed by an unknown thing. Payne while complaining about wanted to go home accidentally stepped on a thorn-like stem, where it quickly snapped up and pierce its thorns into him. They heard noises and shuffling of movements, in turns leading to hasten pace and they were out in a more open area soon enough. Out of a sudden, a creature jumped out of nowhere and grabbed Dr. Lucas away. Travis immediately entrust the injured Payne to the ladies and chase after it with his hydro gun. He was stunned to find out what creature it was. It had a gorilla face, strong limbs and two very long teeth, longer than a vampire, having a tail too (komodo lizard with gorilla face and cobra fangs?). With no time to lose, Travis fired a shot at the creature, which was useless as the gorilla (I will call it this here xD) had some sort of armored body. It was amazing, because the hydro gun has firepower no less than shotguns, except that it was shooting ice instead of bullets. The gorilla ignored him, trying to eat up Dr. Lucas, but upon repeated firing, the gorilla was frustrated at being disturbed for his meal, he turned to face Travis, stood up high, raising its arms (like a gorilla), growling and showing its fangs. Travis took the chance and shot it at its chest/throat, which luckily is penetrable. Payne died here, killed and eaten by countless gorillas, as he was too injured to go on anymore.

The rest finally reached the place, which was near a mall. At the time of their arrival, they saw a father bringing a child right into the mall, to find foods. Gorillas attacked them, where Travis came in the nick of time, shooting at its throat and saved both the father and son. Then they saw, the remaining living residents actually lived inside a cage, and all armed, to fend against the gorillas. But if all the gorillas come and attacked together, I believed it was of no use, haha. They found the client in his apartment along with several other survivors. They checked through his equipments from the trip, nothing was found. He told them this (something like this): “Just because I was frantic, it doesn’t meant that I forgot and didn’t watched my actions, I did my safety precautionary measures well too!” which I think makes a lot of sense, another way of saying “do not judge a book by its cover”. Knowing that they had no chance of making their way to the other client on foot, this client offered his car to them.

Upon reached the destination, they were astonished to find that some people actually killed among themselves! When they reached the client, he was behaving strangely. In the end, he killed himself, marking that the changes could not be stopped. It was only here, that they knew, the plants that have the sensitive thorns-filled stems, which likes to attack people, actually have poison in the thorns, which causes hallucinations and mental breakdown of victims. And then, they saw it, a dead butterfly under one of the boots. Just imagine a butterfly that died just five minutes before its actual one (volcano what), could cause such a big change? During their drive back to the Time Safari (who knows what changed after many time waves), they were not alone. Creatures with wings attacked them (giant bats =D). The bats rammed on the side of the car, tore open the top cover, and there goes our dear Dr. Lucas (just simply cant escape death). And right at this moment, they were hit again by another time wave, throwing the car to its side. Strangely, all the bats disappeared.

Inside the Time Safari, they went to find out whether the time machine was still available for usage, and to search for anything they could find for usage. While Travis opened the cupboards, he found the police officer (deployed by the government to ensure time traveling is safe) hiding in one of them. The very first that the police officer muttered was: “Keep your volume down, you wouldn’t want to wake them up?” and he refused to leave with the rest for search of time machine. So after Sonia gotten the hard disk (containing program for time traveling), they left, leaving him behind. He was scared, and knew not what to do, and finally decided to follow them, which was rather, abit too late a decision. By then, the gorillas jumped from above (just what are they? Bats also? XD) and surrounded him, there goes another guy~

While walking inside something like a train, they found no way out, and decided to walk back. And at this very instant, the top of this place collapsed and buried the back. Water gushed in and filled the place. Knowing that the train would not be waterproof for long, Travis suggested blasting open a window and swim to safety. Jenny hesitated and asked for a little time for her to prepare mentally, and right at this time, a sea monster burst right in and pulled her out (eaten I guess). Water started to rush in, Travis and Sonia had no time to lose. Travis covered Sonia, as the sea monster (sea dragon I would call it) returned track. Of course Travis lost in the battle with the sea dragon, but well, luck would always be with the heroes and heroines. A big chunk of rock felled and cut the sea dragon into 2. Right then, Sonia dived back in and revived Travis (obviously drown but yet…).

Then they made their way back to a local university (I suppose Sonia works here). They were glad to find the time machine still intact. Travis began locking Sonia’s research lab up as they already knew the gorillas were hot on their tracks, coming in from all direction. As Travis prepare for take off, another time wave seems to hit, and the gorillas only had seconds more till they would break through and invade. Sonia timed it well, the doors were blasted open by the time wave, but Travis had already gone back in time. Meanwhile, all the gorillas were gone (god knows where they went) and well, we got a chance to see the evolved form of humans, lolx.

Travis upon reaching, was in blank, but quickly recovered to stop the client from falling off the track. After which, he hastily told Jenny about what happened. Jenny of course was surprised to find 2 Travis but was quick enough to remain calm. Then Travis disappeared into particles. When backed at Time Safari, everything was back to normal; no one could remember what had happened, those that died, well, were back to life. Jenny immediately pulled Travis to a side and passed him a red ball; containing the information of when the other Travis was speaking to her during the hunt. On the following day, Travis went to find Sonia (again on same day huh?) to pass her the red ball, telling her, that it would be useful for use against Charles Hatton and to shut down the Time Safari, ensuring the history, the present and the future would not be altered.

The show is basically about 100minutes long, but I was not able to catch some parts of conversation, due to the fact of slang, fast speaking and no dialogue. Whenever I watch any show, it is a must for dialogue, as I used both my ears and eyes to ‘hear’. Overall, the plot is fresh, though not much of any particle effects, no romantic developments, and the usual monster eat human. Certainly a movie worth paying for, though I’m not sure what, but it attracts. Abit of lengthy post this time, I think I almost wrote the whole story down, but just as of what I am, I love to do this, don’t blame me if I spoilt ur appetite for the show for disclosing so much, =>
Rate: 7.5/10

16/09/05