SPOILER WARNING:
If you haven’t seen Donnie Darko (and would like to see it) then READ NO FURTHER – you have been warned!
The same goes for Superman the Movie (from the seventies).
I intend to discuss the ending of both movies and why things are as they are in the Donnie Darko movie.
Now we can continue on to what I would like to discuss:
Is Donnie Darko Superman’s scapegoat?
My reason for asking is this:
Donnie Darko is essentially a movie about a superhero*, Donnie (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) who ends up saving the world through time travel. In the process Donnie succeeds, but he pays with his life as he is crushed by an engine from a commercial airliner.
Superman – the movie – is essentially a movie about a hero, Superman (played by the late Christopher Reeve) who ends up saving Lois Lane through time travel. In the process superman succeeds and pays no price whatsoever! This is extraordinary for any movie that involves time travel… it is one of the unwritten rules about time travel in fiction: You Cannot Change History Without Paying a Price.
* if you watch the DVD with commentaries, almost everything will be explained. The rest is explained in “The Philosophy of Time Travel” written by Roberta Sparrow which is also included on the special edition DVD.
So this is how we come to the point I would really like to discuss:
Is Donnie paying the price for Superman’s sin?
When Superman travels back in time at the end of the movie, he does so, not because it’s the smartest thing to do, or because he is allowed to do it – in fact he is strictly forbidden by his Kryptonian parents’ to change the history of planet Earth – but because he has just lost Lois Lane who has died in an earthquake.
When it comes to the unwritten rules about time travel, another one is as follows: You Can Try, But You Will Never Succeed, In Bringing the Dead Back to Life. -Not unless you start your journey back in time before they actually die… in other words, you can save them while they are dying, not when they are dead. You can only save someone who has already died if they died as a consequence of your time travelling, and your last action brings everything back to the way it was… in other words, you delete the part of history where you suddenly become able to travel in time, and by doing so you prevent yourself from ever being the (indirect) reason for someone else’s death, thus saving them.
A third rule could go like this: Anything You Do That is Strictly Selfish Will Not Succeed. You can only gain from time travel, if you do something completely unselfish and as a sideeffect (and karma) you end up on easy street.
Superman breaks all the rules.
Let’s look at the rules one more time, but for argument’s sake, lets take them in the opposite order:
1. Anything You Do That is Strictly Selfish Will Not Succeed.
1. Superman’s reason to go back in time and put everything right doesn’t come from the goodness of his heart; he does it because he has just lost the love of his life: Lois Lane, who has died. He doesn’t really do it because he wants to save her, he does it because he doesn’t want to lose her. His action is selfish to the core.
2. You Can Try, But You Will Never Succeed, In Bringing the Dead Back to Life.
2. Apart from CPR and shouting “CLEAR!” a lot, most (or all?) stories about bringing dead people back to life never end well. That is… apart from Superman. He just does it no sweat.
3. You Cannot Change History Without Paying a Price.
3. Superman succeeds in changing the history of planet Earth that day and goes on with business as usual.
(And by being able to travel back in time, any story about Superman in the future could easily be over before it started, because everytime something bad happens, he could just travel back in time and save the day before it even knows it needs saving.)
In other words: Superman has a huge bill to pay karma-wise, but karma never collects.
This is where Donnie comes in. Someone has to pay the karma-bill and Donnie fits it like a glove.
Donnie is a superhero. He wasn’t born that way, but when the space-time continuum rips open, thus endangering the existence of the entire universe, he is chosen by whatever higher power there is (let’s say Fate) to be the saviour, simply because he is closest to the centre of the disaster.
Donnie and everyone around him are cast into an alternate reality/dimension/whatever, where he and everyone else are mere puppets in the hands of Fate, being manipulated to work towards the common goal: to save all existence.
In fact, the only one who has any choice at all is Donnie -and only at the very brink of destruction, where he and he alone has to decide whether he will sacrifice himself for everyone else’s sake.
What’s even worse: unlike Superman, Donnie’s action will never be remembered. When he sends a metal object through the rift, he himself is killed by that object in the past (in the real world, not the one created to ready him for his task) and people will only remember him as the poor kid who got squished by an airliner’s engine.
Let’s take the rules one more time, for Donnie’s sake:
1. Anything You Do That is Strictly Selfish Will Not Succeed.
Donnies action is not selfish. He has been pushed by his surroundings all through the movie to do what he has to do to save everyone else but him. But in the end, it’s his choice.
2. You Can Try, But You Will Never Succeed, In Bringing the Dead Back to Life.
Donnie’s girlfriend, Gretchen dies at the end of the movie. This is one of the last pieces of the puzzle that has to happen to make sure that Donnie will be at the right place, at the right time to make his choice. But two things are in effect here: first thing is that Gretchen dies in an alternate reality, or said in another way: she dies as an effect of time travel. Secondly Donnie closes the rift and kills himself in the past, thus saving the entire universe and preventing himself from any more time travelling.
3. You Cannot Change History Without Paying a Price.
Donnie actually saves history from being changed, but he still pays the ultimate price… but why?
The question here is:
What causes the rift in the space/time continuum?
My answer is Superman. Superman’s selfish action has caused a rift in the space/time continuum – and why do I come to that conclusion? Well, I haven’t just pulled it out of a hat, though it might seem like it. Apart from the fact that both movies are about superheroes and time travelling, there is one more thing that connects both movies: the engine!
In Superman the Movie, Superman saves the President, when Air Force One is suddenly hit by lightning. The pilot exclaims something like “We just lost the whole engine!” (I don’t have the movie near me, so I can’t find the exact quote). Superman comes to the rescue and takes the place of the, now missing, engine.
So when karma comes to collect, what is more fitting than squishing someone else with an engine from an airliner?
