The Jacket vs The Butterfly Effect

Has anyone seen both the Butterfly Effect and the Jacket? They're both extremely similar movies, about someone who has the ability to change the future to some degree, by some power in their mind. The Butterfly Effect deals with a troubled boy who can go back in time to change the future for the better, and mucks things up. The Jacket is a darker tale, about a Gulf War Vet who was shot in the head, and as a result, has memory loss, and is accused of killing a Vermont State trooper, and put away for insanity. He's placed in a jacket, and given a cocktail of drugs, and finds that he has the ability to go into the future, where he finds that he's died.
In the end, both stories seem to be about saving a girl that both characters care about, and using the time travel type story to fullfill that.

Personally, I've found that I enjoyed the Jacket a lot more, as it's a bit darker and a little simpler storyline.

Thoughts?

 

Honestly, I've never seen The Jacket, so I'm unable to really comment on that film.

Though I will say that I connected really well with Butterfly Effect. The objective views of both films most likely reside with the age group that watched them. Being a teenager (When I watched it the first time) I understood and connected with the overall storyline. The Jacket sounds more like a mature movie ... at least, more mature then Butterfly Effect. I'd be interested to see the responses and see what age group prefers which movie.

 

It is a bit of a more mature movie. It's rated R for a bit of violence and Kirana Knightly topless in a couple scenes, as well as the overall storyline being a bit darker.

 

I saw The Jacket. Suffered the common time-travel paradox in that the only reason he went into the future was to investigate an occurrence that would never happen if he never travelled to the future in the first place.

Also, I thought Jacket was inconsistent in that it presented the future as destined and unchangeable. According to the rules of his time travel, there was nothing he could do to prevent his death. That being the case, the mother's death should also have been inevitable and unstoppable. The upbeat ending was a cheat, IMO.

Haven't seen Butterfly Effect, but my roommate owns it, so perhaps I'll watch it tonight and weigh in.

M. Scott

 

Okay, I saw Butterfly Effect.

First of all, I actually thought it was darker than Jacket, mainly because it had a bittersweet ending. I liked it.

Of course, for an apparent genius, Evan didn't have a whole lot of brains in his head. For example, the "blockbuster". He KNOWS that in less than ten seconds, the dynamite explodes and renders the mom and baby into chunks of meat. What kind of idiot gets anywhere NEAR it? Honestly, from that point on it lost my suspension of disbelief.

The downsliding was cool and made sense -- he didn't write the entry so he couldn't go back to that, then he didn't write any entries at all because the boom happened before he started keeping the journals -- but then the suicide in the womb also didn't make a whole lot of sense. Being able to start from the beginning with 4 lifetimes of combined knowledge from day 1, there's other things he could have done.

It's a bittersweet thing that he chose to sacrifice himself just so he knew the girl he loved would be happy, but seriously now, there were other ways to handle it. Just because that gypsy got on his case, it's not the only way it could have gone.

Also, there was no setup to the fact that he didn't just need the journals, but that the home movies would also suffice. In fact the NECESSITY for the journals was pretty well-established. Deus ex machina in the worst way, there.

Between the two...I'd say Butterfly Effect is the more integrated story overall. The ending of Jacket feels too tacked on. Butterfly Effect's ending is a little forced, but it's mostly consistent with the logic and setup of the film.

M. Scott