I just watched the movie The Butterfly Effect, which I thought was well-done. Interesting, gripping, well-acted, and satisfying. There were a number of nitpicks I had to overlook in deciding it was a good movie, such as the mixing of non-sequitur causality (Minkowski "block universe" theory -- 12 Monkeys flawlessly used this version of time travel) with a parallel-reality-shifting sort of "the past can be changed" idea. Both are perfectly okay, but not together, as you can see if you watch the movie.
Anyway, I'll keep away from spoliers to deliver this message, because I think it's an important one. After watching the movie and checking the IMDb message board for it as I often do for movies I enjoy, I was appalled to see people bringing up a Simpsons episode, and claiming the movie was based on that...SERIOUSLY. I've seen the episode. Before that, in grade school, I read the short story A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury. That is what the Simpsons episode was based on.
Apart from the title, actually, and the idea that a small change in the past can have a large effect in the future, there wasn't really that much of a connection between A Sound of Thunder and The Butterfly Effect, or even that Simpsons episode. But I swear, I'm sick and tired of seeing people make wild claims about movies being based on some other form of visual media. Read books, people!
In fact, here, just read the story. It's short. A Sound of Thunder, by Ray Bradbury (1952).
And I thought I'd gotten over people thinking that the ideas in The Matrix were original. I'm sure to anyone reading this, I don't actually need to mention Gibson, Sterling, Stephenson and all the others who created the whole setting and world used there, even including the term "the matrix" to describe that virtual world... Oh, I just did. Sorry.
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