Thinking about it this way, the story of this "Later" has many surprising details.
Although the plot says that Christ, played by Nicholas Cage, can see what is going to happen within two minutes of himself, which looks like a time travel science fiction theme; in my opinion, this is simply a vision of game theory. exhibit. What Christ did is similar to what an economist who studies game theory does: Under limited conditions, he derives the infinite possibilities of future occurrences, and then compares these possible results to reach the optimal conclusion. But Chris doesn't need to use a computer or use primitive mathematical formulas like an economist to do calculations. He is an inherent ability that can be seen when he is born. So at the beginning of the film, Chris escaped from the guard tracking section in the casino. It was really exciting! This is simply a game theory robot!
Nicholas Cage’s performance in similar clips said "playing cool" or "in place", according to the storyline, if such an optimal choice in advance is possible, then life is so magical and cool, so the theater Here the audience laughed and cursed: This kid is really out of luck!
Later, the movie repeatedly jumped between reality and speculation. If you look at it from the perspective of game theory, the whole story is about the relationship between possibility and choice, which is completely reasonable and normal. One detail that attracted me was that the FBI detective played by Julian Moore talked with Chris’ girlfriend Liz played by Jessica Biel and asked her to administer medicine to Chris when she returned to the hotel room, but she could not administer the medicine as soon as she entered the house, but wait two minutes before acting. . I repeatedly thought about whether this arrangement was reasonable: as soon as Liz walked in and Chris came to greet him, from then on he could see everything that might happen in the next two minutes, so he could not prescribe the medicine within two minutes; but as time progresses, Chris should also I can postpone and see all the possibilities in three or four minutes. The explanation implied in the movie is that after Liz met Chris, Chris went into the bathroom to shave, so he could only see the possible future in the physical space related to his own activities. The drug was administered by Liz two minutes later because it happened in another room. , So he can't see it. Although this explanation is not perfect, for example, suppose Chris and Liz talked at the hotel entrance for one minute before entering the bathroom, and Liz happened to prescribe the medicine at 2:59, then Chris could still see Liz prescribe the medicine at one minute. For another example, when Chris enters the warehouse to extrapolate everything possible to find the optimal route, his "visual range" is not limited by the physical range. This bias in detail is a flaw in the film's theoretical system. Its purpose is only to show Liz's feelings for Chris. In fact, it can be deleted, but adding it does not affect the overall game system of the film.
For the anticlimactic ending that many people hate, I personally like a certain element very much. Chris uses his superpowers to make all the most optimal choices in every two-minute period to achieve the most perfect and correct future, but in the end he finds that the perfection of each step is still the end of death. This kind of paradox between the staged correctness and the overall correctness in game theory is once again visualized through specific stories-people try their best to choose the best course of action each time in the process of speculating about the future, but because Disturbance by the factor of "lucky", even if every step is optimized, in the end, it may still be negative and positive and choose the most wrong path. In fact, if the story reduces the elements of action movies and puts all the power on this paradox, the depth can also go up, and the interestingness can also increase a lot. But again, there must be entertainment standards for entertainment films. If you accept the prerequisites of the story of "Later", it will not come up because of the absurd plot like "a little character was found by the FBI to save the world". , Then this movie still has a lot to enjoy and experience.
Part of the content is published in "Movie World" magazine, if reprinted, please indicate.
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