Long ago and far away
In “The Final Countdown” the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz is overcome by a strange electrical storm and throws the ship back in time to December 6, 1941. The day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Captain Matthew Yelland (Kirk Douglas), defense department expert Warren Lasky (Martin Sheen) and Commander Richard Owens (James Farentino) are tasked with the decision on whether or not to allow the attack or interfere and change the course of history.
Although the carrier is equipped to intervene and stop the attack on Pearl Harbor the question is should it. Not only is the movie a Science Fiction movie put also a discussion in Ethics. And from both sides. The Americans have their view and the Japanese pilot has his.
Katharine Ross and Charles Durning also star in this little “what if?” movie. It’s a great Science Fiction story. With all those stars the acting is great. The action is there. The continuity is there. It’s all very well done. And it’s cool to watch. So do yourself a favor and leave all the “what ifs” behind. Don’t worry about the logistics of time travel or the accuracy of the physics. Just let it flow and you'll do just fine.
Like the “Philadelphia Experiment” and the “Time Tunnel”, going back in time can be a tricky thing. There are paradoxes. There have been quite a few movies that try to represent it. Although Einstein’s Theory of Relativity does not rule it out, physics usually does. The two main categories of time travel paradoxes are the “Closed Casual Loops” and the “Consistency Paradoxes”.
Examples of the Closed Casual Loops are the “Predestination Paradox” (someone goes back in time and trying to stop an action from happening actually causes it to happen.) and the “Bootstrap Paradox” (someone goes back in time and his actions creates something that in the future goes back in time and creates the same thing etc. etc. in a forever loop).
Examples of the Consistency paradoxes are the “Grandfather Paradox” (you go back in time and kill your grandfather so how are ever born to go back in time and kill your grandfather?), the “Lets kill Hitler paradox” (if you go back in time to kill Hitler you erase the reason for you to go back in time) and “Polchinski’s Paradox” (something goes into a wormhole and emerges on the other side in the past in time to collide with it’s younger version and stop it from going into the wormhole in the first place).
Whichever paradox you subscribe to it doesn't change the fact that "The Final Countdown" is fun to watch.