Meet the Robinsons/Headscratchers

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Meet the Robinsons

• Okay. Originally when I first watched this, Fridge Logic made me wonder why, if Lewis saying "I will never invent you" changed the future to the point where Doris ceased to ever exist, why all of the "Robinson Family future" didn't fall apart as soon as he said he wasn't going to fix the memory scanner. But then, I realised they have, in fact, justified this with the foot-slip you hear in the very first part of the movie, as that shows us that the version of time that we're watching is the version where Lewis gives up and Wilbur Robinson goes back in time to fix things, assumedly a Stable Time Loop of sorts -- essentially, Lewis saying "I won't fix this" didn't change the future because that decision -- the decision to give up and not fix the scanner, forcing Wilbur to try and fix things -- is the decision that brought about the future that we see. HOWEVER, if this is so, then Bowler Hat Guy's (and by extension, Doris's) existence is necessary to force Wilbur Robinson back in time to bring about the future that we see, so declaring that he'd never invent Doris should have destroyed Lewis's "Robinson Family Future" as well, by ensuring that Bowler Hat Guy would never initiate the time travel that forces Lewis to try again with his memory scanner. A Timey-Wimey Ball indeed.
  • WAIT. I'm having second thoughts. If Doris didn't exist, then no one would have been there to mess up his scanner the first time, so the future would, indeed, happen as Lewis had first seen it -- but none of the time travel would've happened! (Meaning he shouldn't remember it, for one thing -- meaning he might create Doris after all -- augh, Temporal Paradox!)
    • Not to mention that Lewis would have tested teh memory scanner on himself, and probably things wouldn't go like the end of the movie portrayed. Really, I stay with the Stable Time Loop theory.
  • See Timey-Wimey Ball. If you want to use logic in that scene, the fact that Lewis wouldn't invent Doris would mean nothing, as Doris already had future Goob invent her. Even if it did, in order for it to work like that, Time would have to have simply not realized that matters until Time heard Lewis point that out.
    • But Future Goob is not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. Without someone else first having concieved her, how could he have taken the credit for Doris's creation? Without a prototype to present to Inventco, he has nothing.
      • Both scenarios, though, involve the Robinson Family Future coming about, whether it's because of Doris' interference or not (it's reasonable to assume that Lewis would've let his soon-to-be adopted mother try the machine after he did, and that he might start a relationship with the frog girl even without knowing in advance he'll eventually marry her). In this way it's sort of a greater stable time loop that involves not only the movie but also the original timestream before Bowler Hat Guy and Doris interfered. The only way to break the time loop would be A) Doris and Bowler Hat Guy figure out a way to actually -win- in one of the repetitions of the loop, or B) Doris and Bowler Hat Guy don't steal the time machine but instead attempt to plot revenge without using time travel.
  • But the thing that got me was that Doris took over the future by going back in time and making Goob look like a genious inventer, therefore she was never invented herself. This would mean the timeline could hold instabilities without cracking. But Lewis was able to destroy her by using a timeline that can't hold instabilities. Basically if he could uncreate her using thought then there's no way she could control the future without having existed. It seems like too big of a plot thing!
    • This Troper came up with a rather interesting theory for the time. She imagines Time being like a story, with Older Goob/Bowler Hat Guy being footnotes in the story. (This troper, argueably, has just read House of Leaves). To get to the future that Lewis sees, Older Goob and the Crapsack World had to be read through...so to speak, but in the end, the story is the same. I mean, come on, like Lewis would ahve learned the Keep Moving Forward and the "I think you're right" to Franny on his own, without future help. So thus, Bowler Hat guy stays until Lewis wakes Goob up, in which, presumeably, he'll disappear as Doris's world did. Doris could also be seen as a footnote, and her disappeance was just the end of the footnote.
      • Another theory: Everything that we see was Lewis's Batman Gambit plan to get his and Mike's lives on track. Years down the road, maybe while working on the time machines, Lewis realizes that everything he knows about time travel doesn't work like what he saw (the night of the cold sweat awakening?). So he not only needs two time machines, he needs a DOR-15 that will carefully manipulate Mike's memory (with his permission), he needs holograms, and he needs multiple styles of cloaking devices.
  • This Troper's brother (and I agree with him) believes that there are actually two timelines going on. The first timeline is the movie as presented but then the second one begins when Lewis is adopted and begins his life. It will be much like the original parallel timeline but Goob will be happy and sucessful and there will be no Doris. Lewis will, of course, remember his adventures (since the Time Traveler's memory always works differently) but that will be an alternate universe where the Robinsons now have a pet dinosaur and Goob will hopefully pick up the pieces of his life.
• An alternate version of one scene, included on the DVD, has Bowler Hat Guy be the one to wake up his younger self at the baseball game. He then dissolves away into the aether, just as Wilbur Robinson did when the past was altered so that he would never be born. So what does this mean for Goob/Bowler Hat Guy? Surely he wouldn't literally cease to exist just because he didn't become a bitter, twisted, and extremely unhygienic Dastardly Whiplash character. Why didn't he just transform to reflect the adulthood he would have achieved without the grudge against Lewis? Maybe that's why they decided not to use that version of the scene...
  • Maybe this "aether dissolution" isn't of the same kind, meaning only that he wouldn't be there, as he wouldn't be trying to foil Lewis' life since his life wasn't ruined after all (DORIS, on the other hand, probably would). Mike Yagoobian's corrected future self is somewhere else in the future, doing his business, probably playing baseball.
    • Yeah, that's what I figured. It's just a little disturbing that they chose to represent both alterations in the same way.
      • It's possible that they were the same type of alteration, and Wilbur was in fact born but was off doing his business as a slave to the hat.
• Let's just state the contradiction simply: From the first appearance of Wilbur onward, the entire film happened because Bowler Hat Guy stole the time machine at Doris' suggestion. By undoing both Doris' and Bowler Hat Guy's existence (presumably Goob grows up to be a completely different person as a result of Lewis waking him up in time for the winning catch), Lewis should have undone the entire plot of the film. Of course, the only reason Lewis thought to wake Goob up was because of Bowler Hat Guy's Start of Darkness, so the logical conclusion is a paradox:
  • because of Lewis' actions, Bowler Hat Guy never existed, therefore
    • the whole plot of the film never happened, therefore
      • Lewis did NOT undo the villains' existences, therefore
        • Bowler Hat Guy DID exist, therefore
          • The plot of the film DID happen, and thus the paradoxic cycle starts all over again
  • See my (well my brother's and mine) split timeline theory above.
• Okay, so in the first ten minutes of the film, Goob can be heard saying that his little league team has "lost every game." Yet, missing one catch has somehow cost the Dinos the championship. This seems like a pretty trifling mistake and that this troper should probably just relax, until you remember that dwelling on that one catch is what causes him to grow up the way he does. Seriously?
  • Maybe the Dinos managed to start winning after that line of Goob's. But still, dwelling on that one catch though...
  • Well, Goob is rather imbalanced. Perhaps he's just an Unreliable Narrator. Granted the kids got mad at him for falling asleep during a game, but there's no reason to believe they genuinely hated him, especially after the following line, and his non-sequitors when he grows up.

Kid One: Hi Goob, what up? Kid Two: Hey Goob, you wanna hang out? Cool binder. Older Goob: They all hated me.

• • He actually says "we've been doing better recently" or something to that effect... thus, they'd improved enough to get into the cup...?
• How did the Bowler Hat Guy get that huge dinosaur in his comparatively small time machine?
  • The front seats push forward, of course.
  • Some feature on the machine that allows for expansion of the bubble the machine generates to travel the timestream?
  • It's Bigger on the Inside
  • Hammerspace
• What's up with that one-eyed purple octo-butler?
  • Quite possibly robotic, or maybe gene spliced. I wouldn't exactly put it beyond Lewis's capabilities to figure out how to do either.
• Ok I can understand some of the family writing off the similarity of Lewis and Cornelius but really, you expect me to believe you can fool his wife (who knew him at 12 on top of all that) with a hat? It helps that his voice would sound different at that age but come on, she ignores all of it up till the hair which is the easiest to write off as coincidence?
  • Well, his face is considerably different when he's older. If she wasn't paying a whole lot of attention, I can see her not noticing. The hair, however, is really a striking similarity.
  • I've always thought the family knew what was going on all the time (Cornelius might've told them earlier) but were just acting.
• Why does Cornelius need reminding who's at fault for the time machines being gone? Hell, he lived the reason. He KNEW Wilbur lost one and wrecked the other. I'm starting to wonder if, perhaps, we aren't seeing the time stream fix itself as that happens, though, since Bowler Hat Guy/Doris have been taken care of... the universe needs an explanation as to why the machines are gone...
  • When he comes back, the first thing he does is freak out about the time machines being gone. Even after he sees himself, he looks in a explain-this-now way at Wilbur. Why didn't he slap his forehead and go 'oh my gosh, so it was this business trip!'?
    • Cornelius thought that the time machines were stolen. After all, it's been 30 years and seeing the future, a lot has happened since. I don't think you'd go "oh right, this is when that thing happened 30 years ago" when you see you time machines gone. My first assumption would be "oh my god, the time machines have been stolen!!!!". When he comes outside, he sees what happened and his wife explains. And it doesn't seem a explain-this-now face but more a you-wrecked-the-time-machine-and-had-me-repair-it face to me. After all, we know Wilbur is going to be in a lot of trouble...
• Also, so, Calvin's Dad was right? Pictures of the past are color pictures of a black and white (or in this case, sepia-toned) time? Look how much more vibrant Lewis and Wilbur are compared to the surroundings. Everything else is brown.
  • It was very rainy that day, and all we saw in comparison was the clothing of the mother and the orphanage, neither of which were likely to be super-vibrant. Lewis and Wilbur were under a blue light, while the mother was under a yellow one.
• How come the Robinsons still had that Dinosaur (as a pet presumably) at the end, even though it was Doris and Bowler hat guy that went to get it, which of course didn't happen as Lewis uninvented Doris and Bowler hat guy never sought revenge?
  • They don't really know when, exactly, Bowler Hat Guy pulled the T Rex out of the time stream, and, putting him back in at the wrong time could, possibly, destroy the time stream, and lead to Lewis not existing, for instance.
    • And, er, it seems the presence of Lewis is enough to create a brief bubble around himself and his family, and occasionally, say, Bowler Hat Guy, so he can see the future Dor-15 had planned for them. So, Lewis being there for the return of the time stream caused the T Rex to still be there when the family returned, as they'd apparently adopted it after the attack.
  • Lewis seemed to really like the idea of having a pet dinosaur. In the new timeline he decided to get one.
• Why do we still refer to him as 'Bowler Hat Guy'? 'It Just Bugs Me' is full of spoilers... Why do we keep tiptoeing around the issue?
  • I dunno. Maybe because it's either Bowler Hat Guy (as he was known for most of the movie) or Future!Goob (which is more outright spoilericious than everything else here).
• Two things really bug me in this movie: Cornelius and the ending. Why in the name of all that's loving would Lewis change his name so easily? Sure, it was to keep a shocking revelation (Lewis is the patriarch of a large family and the smartest mind on Earth), but really. I can think of two scenarios that would be more plausible (Lewis being a teacher-mentor to Cornelius, no Lewis means no Robinson Family Future. And Lewis being Cornelius' or Franny's father; because seriously, why in God's name would Lewis change the name he's had for 12 years for no apparent reason). And the ending just seemed like one giant Deus Ex Machina after another: he finds his adoptive parents (that's fine), becomes famous (understandable, but the all the praises seem a bit much), changes his name (see above), and gets frog girl by just saying "You're right" (How freaking unhinged is she to fall for him just like that), and then parts ways from his "friend"/roommate Goob and the orphanage owner who he's known for a hell of a lot longer than his new family to presumably never seen them again (Seriously, I don't think "Keep Moving Forward" meant this). Couldn't they have just built another statue to Walt than make the ending just shout "Praise HIM"?
  • I'm assuming that the frog girl (Young!Franny) didn't fall for him all at once. It probably happened while they were in high school or something. 12 is a little young to be falling in love, but a simple crush/friendship is believable. Plus it's fairly common (though foolish) at a young age to become mildly infatuated with someone you barely know. Heck it happened to This Troper once in the 10th grade. But anyway, my point is that their relationship probably started small and then deepened over time. Keep in mind that Lewis is the only one at this point who knows that they'll end up getting married.(But... yeah, isn't that kind of awkward?)
  • Who's to say his name isn't actually Cornelius? I defy you to come up with a better nickname for Cornelius than Lewis. And it's perfectly likely that he did keep in touch, as emotionally affected as he was over Goob. Plus his departure was very light and not particularly emotional, so it probably wasn't final.
    • Uh... "Neil"?
    • What does Walt Disney have to do anything with? Yes, they used part of his quote, but they weren't worshiping him or telling people to. They use the "Keep moving forward" theme (and I think quote) on Phineas and Ferb but so far I've seen no one who's said something along the lines of what you wrote. Talk about an over-reaction...
• This just really bugs the crap outta me: Wilbur obviously comes from the best possible future, where Lewis never gave up on his inventions, learned from mistakes, and is essentially the new Albert Einstein. Why did Wilbur need to go back in time over a decade-and-a-half, when he could have just as easily gone back an hour and just locked the garage?!
  • Maybe the time machine can't go back hours, just years. Or maybe it was because too much damage had already been done to the timeline. or...... maybe he's just that stupid...
  • Because ADVENTURE!
  • Probably should just go with "he's stupid". Really, this troper got the feeling that Wilbur was pretty much that dumb kid who screwed up and made an even bigger mess trying to fix it, completely oblivious to the far easier solutions available. Only, you know, IN THE FUTURE!
  • I think it's because it wouldn't have worked anyway. The time-machine exists outside of time. Because it was already taken in the future, going back to prevent it from being taken is impossible, because it no longer exists in just that time. It's now in a different time as well. Or something. Time machines are difficult >.>
• What's with the Meanwhile in the Future plot? Lewis has to do something before Bowler Hat Guy can sign, but he fails, and due to this the future spontaneously switches halfway through, leading you to wonder how Bowler Hat Guy got in a position to sign in the first place as well! The only thing I can think of is a split timeline, one good and one bad, and once the good one is carried out, they travel back and carry on with the bad one. But there's no indication of anything like that!
  • It seems to switch to a past, the signing period, that has the seemingly uncaused(?) Doris in it, as well as a time-transplanted Bowler Hat Guy. Doris brings about the bad future.
• When Lewis first sees the time machine, he says something like:

Lewis: Wow, I never thought time machines would be invented in my lifetime!

• • ...Only that wouldn't ever make sense for anyone to say. First, he doesn't know that Wilbur is from his lifetime. Second, if a time machine is invented in anyone's lifetime, it can travel to yours, making the point moot.
  • He's probably just blurting out something, caught up in the awe of the moment, and not choosing his words carefully. He is twelve, after all.
    • Also he might have seen Wilbur punch in the destination date and simply did the math.
  • Lewis said (admittedly, I've seen the Dutch version): "I never thought my generation would travel through time!" Which has a double meaning, as in HE traveled through time. So you could see it as "I never thought anyone with a time machine would want to go to the early 21st century!"
• If Doris could control people's minds, why didn't she just take over Goob and do everything herself?
  • Maybe she's a sadist and wanted to watch him sqirm.
  • Also, it's very suspicious, and unnatural looking, even people in the past would suspect something, also, Goob needed to talk at his presentation, if Doris took him over earlier, he would freak out when she came off, but he'd be weird, especially with that hat over his eyes.. And I just realized that if they figured out that Helping Hats could control people...
• Future Lewis TOUCHES Past Lewis. Where are the Reapers to correct this paradox?!
  • They got unmade when the Universe went foom and never got slotted back in when it was remade.
    • If the timelines had split then these aren't quite the same Lewis' anymore. One was from one universe and the other was from the other one (it works with Trunks in Dragon Ball Z).
• How come no one has mentioned the fact that Lewis's mother abandons him and suddenly takes him back because she finds out who he is? It is never mentioned why she abandoned him, and if she had a valid reason, like not being able to care for a child, then she shouldn't be allowed to take him back.
  • Wait, what? When did that happen?
    • No, the point is that it's not his real mother (and father) who adopt him again. But anyway, if it had been really her, there could have been a good reason. (Not able to afford it, nowhere to live... though twelve years would be a long time for something like that.) Or good-ish, at least... There'd probably be some questions as to *why* she's adopting him now, unless she doesn't tell who she really is. She still could very well do so, though, again, after twelve years, that would be kinda weird.
    • 2P Here, and thanks. I just watched the movie, and was a little confused so... ^^;
• I am still confused. You mean Lewis' mom put him in the orphanage, only to run back 12 years later to get him?
  • No, Lewis' mom never came back. He got adopted by a nice couple who happened to be part of the future family. Lewis MEANT to stop her from leaving him, but decided that it was for the best.
• I'm apalled at the Idiot Ball everyone in the Future has. Wilbur makes it clear that Lewis has to wear a hat because otherwise, they'll know that he's Cornelius Robinson as a young boy. Except...um...well...DOES A CHILD LOOK ANY DIFFERENT WITH OR WITHOUT A HAT!? If my 11-year-old self suddenly appeared in front of me wearing a hat, guess what? I'm still gonna recognize that this person is me from the past. Also, when they finally realize who he is, Mrs. Robinson kicks him out. Um...what? Why doesn't she just explain to him why he can't live with them anymore rather than making him assume she and the others are terrible people for booting him out just because he has spiky yellow hair (Look at the whole thing from his perspective. As far as he knows, that's why they dump him is because of his hair).
  • In her defense, she didn't kick him out, per se. She just said he had to go back to his own time. If she had told him any more, it might've screwed up the timestream.
    • Plus, what really got him mad was that Wilbur pretty much told him, "Yeah, I'm not gonna take you back to see your mom even though I told you I'd would..." Had Wilbur not said that, Lewis wouldn't have ignored him and gone straight to the guy that was currently luring him into a trap.
  • Why did Lewis join the Bowler Hat Guy anyway? He had the same story as Wilbur (I'll take you to your mom), and uh, I' don't know, he's an obvious Dastardly Whiplash! He fell into the same trap twice! Nice going, Future Albert Einstein...
  • At that time, he's very angry, upset, and not thinking clearly. He's only...what, 10? They're notorious for making bad decisions when they're that angry. Consider this: He spent the whole movie believing that Wilbur would take him to see his mother, only to have Wilbur casually shoot the promise dead on the spot. No doubt Lewis is feeling betrayed and used. Not to mention that the family, mere seconds after accepting him into the family, tell him to go.
  • As said above, he's 12.
• During the "Another Believer" sequence, we keep seeing Lewis take home wagonloads of invention parts from that shop. Where does a ward of the state get the pocket money to buy all that stuff?
• So, Bowler Hat Guy and DOR 15 need the memory enhancer to present to Inventco, and then they give the idea for the Helping Hat...But why don't they just present DOR 15 as the Helping Hat in the first place? Why do they need the memory enhancer?