On Timelines

Probably going to have to look into it further, but it looks like the European humanities tours are actually in the spring instead of the fall? There's still time to sign up, but the whole point of doing it after next summer's job was because, you know, I'd have the munny by then after having worked a job all summer.

I analyzed the timeline of Spider-Man: Homecoming as I watched it last night, and thought about how the timelines are so compressed in fiction. Same night that Peter finds out about the alien weaponry in use and the bodega explodes, Ned discovers Peter's secret, kind of deal. In fact, I watched the credits to Oliver Stone's World Trade Center today, and well first of all that's a very well-cast film they've got some true gems of stars in there, but second of all, instead of the disclaimer that the work is fictional and any similarities to reality are coincidental, this being based on a true story there's rather a disclaimer that "certain actions and characters have been dramatized," which ends with this sentence: "similarly, the timeline of events has been compressed and edited to accommodate the motion picture format." Like it's an inherent part of the format, a feature of the medium itself, that timelines get compressed and edited.

Only, it's totally the same way in real life too. In real life, all the plot points happen conveniently spaced together, as well. It's something I noticed yesterday, writing the post, and really realized today. I have to link to previous posts to explain the context for what I'm referring to in what's going on in my life, but 9x/10 I only need to link to one post to explain multiple things I'd thought were unrelated. Check out this post which I'd been going to link to last night- but didn't need to, because all the beats had already been explained in the other post I linked to instead. It even talks about looking forward to the Justice League movie in that one, just like all the stuff from last night! This whole saga, playing out in only a few posts instead of many.

Kind of disconcerting to realize, on one hand, like, most of your life is just non-plot-relevant filler, but on the other hand, hey, maybe you're so important that they will make a movie of your life, or that your life is already, and everything's all helpfully plotted conveniently for them.

Anyway, timelines in movies are no joke very fascinating things to pay attention to. For real. Like, the timeline of the third act of Captain America: Civil War makes almost zero sense, unless you pretend that the quinjet must be very, very, very, very slow to get to Siberia? Maybe they had to stop several times on the way there and gas up, I don't know....