Plot synopsis
Dr Evil and the Ministry of Defence have both invented a time machine since we left them two years earlier. Dr Evil has returned from space and uses his time machine to travel 30 years back to 1969 to steal Austin’s ‘mojo’ from his cryogenically frozen body. This is the essence that makes him irresistible to women.
Austin goes back to the 60s in a time-travelling Volkswagen Beetle. Once there, he joins forces with CIA agent Felicity Shagwell and meets his cryogenically frozen body. He then tracks down Dr Evil to get back his mojo and stop him from taking over the world.
In the process, Felicity is killed, so Austin travels back ten minutes in time and joins forces with himself to save her. They then return through a time portal to 1999.
My comments
Dr Evil goes back in time to steal Austin’s mojo, so that he can become irresistible to women. He is not trying to change the past; he is trying to steal something from the past and bring it back to the present.
Therefore, he must believe that the timeline will converge after his departure, so that he will be able to return to the same present that he left. Either that or he believes in a model of time with a double-well timeline and that removing Austin’s mojo is not a major enough event to cause the timeline to diverge.
Summary of time travel
When Austin goes back ten minutes in time, he is trying to change the past by preventing Felicity’s death. This is more because he fancies her than to try and restore the timeline.
The fact he chooses to return to the present with her confirms this because now she will be missing from the timeline and that would surely cause it to diverge in a double-well model.
As it clearly did not, this film is using a converging model of time. The past is clearly open, and the future must also be open, as he will now share a new future with Felicity.
Category of time travel
Science fiction: time-travel transporter, a time-travel vehicle and also cryogenic freezing.
Model of time
Open past, open future with a converging timeline.
