A Sound of Thunder (or, "A sound of failure")

In his 1952 short story "A Sound of Thunder," Ray Bradbury theorized that tiny changes in the past could have enormous consequences for the future. If one were to, say, time travel to prehistoric times and crush a single butterfly, they might return to the present and find it radically altered as a result of this seemingly insignificant event.

Nearly sixty years later, the term "The Butterfly Effect" remains part of the zeitgeist, even inspiring a 1994 episode of The Simpsons, in which Homer makes numerous visits to the past in an attempt to undo his murder of a prehistoric mosquito. But while this is one of the funniest episodes of The Simpsons, it is only the second most hilarious work inspired Bradbury's short story. In fact, that honor goes to the even less convincing 2005 film adaptation of "A Sound of Thunder," coincidentally entitled A Sound of Thunder.

Of course, it may seem futile to nitpick the logic of a science-fiction film; after all, it is one of the few genres proudly containing the word "fiction" right there in its moniker. But science-fiction works best when it contains that grain of truth, that shred of realism that makes even the most outlandish concept seem plausible. If a sci-fi movie can make up its own rules while maintaining its own internal system of logic, the audience will gladly go along for the ride.

Judging by its 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and $2 million domestic gross (less than 4% of the film's $52 million budget), very few moviegoers were willing to take this particular ride. Set in the year 2055, A Sound of Thunder tells the story of a company called Time Safari, which allows wealthy clients to travel to back to the age of dinosaurs in order to gun down a T-Rex, just before a volcanic eruption would have destroyed it anyway. When one of these jaunts goes horribly wrong, the time travelers return to present and discover that their world is being taken over by... monkey... lizard... things?

It's always easy to blame the director or the actors when a movie goes this wrong, but the sorry digital effects and overall unfinished feel to the movie might charitably be attributed to the bankruptcy of the original production company in the middle of post-production. No, this is a case of a film doomed from the first page of what must have been the worst screenplay ever written. If the names Thomas Dean Donnelly, Gregory Poirier, and Joshua Oppenheimer are not already blacklisted in Hollywood, perhaps A Sound of Thunder should be rereleased in theaters to remind the world that Battlefield Earth is not even close to the worst sci-fi movie ever made.

At every opportunity, these writers go with the dumbest possible choices in adapting (and extending) the source material, both scientifically ("time waves"? Really?) and dramatically (the second act accomplishes exactly nothing). The government's interest in time travel technology amounts to one guy who is characterized as a wet blanket for thinking this is all a bad idea. Even the actual Butterfly Effect is handled with impossible stupidity, since the death of one butterfly is nothing compared to the T-Rex they casually shoot at, with stray bullets going every which way into the past. But that doesn't affect the future at all.

At the end of the day, A Sound of Thunder falls victim to its own version of the butterfly effect: an accumulation of many unstoppable failures -- including flooding during production, and the studio's subsequent bankruptcy -- eventually lead to a creative and financial disaster on a scale that no one could have predicted. But of course, it all comes down to the one little fail that triggered it all: a studio executive saying "yes" instead of "no" to a terrible script. We would build our own time machine and go back to prevent this movie from ever happening, but it's just too awesomely bad to resist.

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