Plot synopsis
Lewis is a 12-year-old inventor, who lives in an orphanage and dreams of finding his mother. A boy called Wilbur Robinson comes up to Lewis and tells him that he is from the future. He says that a man wearing a bowler hat has stolen one of his time-travel vehicles.
Wilbur then takes Lewis in his flying time-machine 30 years forward to 2037, where Lewis spends a day with Wilbur’s quirky family. Wilbur talks Lewis into helping him defeat the bowler hat guy in order to preserve the utopian future in which the Robinsons live.
However, the bowler hat guy wins, causing Wilbur to be erased from existence, so that Doris and the other robotic bowler hats now control the world.
Lewis eventually fixes the broken time machine and uses it to go to the precise moment and location where the bowler hat guy signs a contract that dooms humanity.
He tells him that, once Doris has what she wants, she will get rid of him. Doris tries to kill Lewis, but he merely says, “I will NEVER invent you!”, which causes the hat to vanish into oblivion. This causes the horrible future to transform into the utopian future of before.
Wilbur arrives back into existence, and they use the time machine to go back and find Lewis’ mother. He learns that he can only realise his full potential when he’s willing to let go of his past mistakes and “keep moving forward”. Lewis finally figures out that Wilbur is his son from the future.
My comments
Based on William Joyce’s book A Day with Wilbur Robinson. Like in the film, Back to the Future Part II (1989), Lewis needs to go back along the timeline to the point where the new branch was created. He then needs to stop the event that created it, so that the original timeline can be restored.
Summary of time travel
This story is set in a utopian future. It begins with Wilbur travelling back in time, where he meets his father as a boy called Lewis. He takes him on his time machine vehicle to show him the futuristic world he comes from.
When they arrive, nothing has changed, despite the fact that Wilbur has removed Lewis from the timeline. This infers a converging timeline.
The bowler hat guy and Doris travel back in time and make a significant change that causes the timeline to diverge instantly from that point on. This causes the original branch of the timeline to collapse and be replaced by the new one, so this movie is actually using a double-well timeline.
Lewis now finds himself on the unpleasant new timeline, so travels back to stop the bowler hat guy from making that change. This prevents the timeline from diverging, causing the previous timeline to collapse and be replaced by the original one.
He then goes forward to the present where he finds that Wilbur now exists again in his utopian world. At the end of the movie, Lewis has to return to his own time, so that he can grow up and become Wilbur’s father.
Category of time travel
Science fiction: time-travel vehicle.
Model of time
Open past, open future, with a double-well timeline.
The bowler hat guy causes a divergence:
Lewis goes back and restores the original timeline and then goes forward along it:
