Expanding on Did You Ever Wish

Now normally, I don't revisit blogs much. I re-read my blogs just for a frame of reference, to see where I was at a particular point in time, but I don't go back and update or expand. Until today.

Because I've been thinking about the movie connection to what if. In the movies, when the protagonist gets to see the what if, it's fairly inevitable that they return to the life they knew; the one they had lived. Somewhere there's a morals clause in the screenwriter's manual that says, "if you show your s/hero what could have been, they must choose what they already have. If they don't, you'll never work in this town again." Because the only movie experience I can think of where we see 2 different scenarios play out is Sliding Doors and in that movie, essentially she ends up in the same place, it just takes longer to get there. (And nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition). The one other movie instance I can think of where the shero gets to go back and try to change things is Peggy Sue Got Married, and in the end, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't change anything. Her actions were slightly different, but the end result was the same. Apparently Nicolas Cage is inevitable, like the tides.

What is the underlying morality that dictates that, if shown the what if, you still have to chose the what is? Just once, I'd love to see a movie, or since I'm a fairly voracious reader, a book in which our s/hero sees the what if and when offered the opportunity to choose, chucks the what is and goes for the what if. And you cannot tell me that's what happened in A Christmas Carol because Scrooge chose to change his present and by changing the present, he potentially changed his future. He wasn't given an opportunity to change his past.

That's basically what I'd like to see. A situation where there's an opportunity to change the past and have it stick, and also to see the opportunity taken. I think, though, that if I want to see that book, I may have to write it myself.

Uh oh, I may have just had an epiphany right here. Better go check my pants.