The Butterfly Effect

This article is about the film. For the metaphor, see Butterfly effect. For other uses, see Butterfly effect (disambiguation).

The Butterfly Effect
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Eric Bress J. Mackye Gruber
Produced by	Anthony Rhulen Chris Bender J.C. Spink A.J. Dix Toby Emmerich Jason Goldberg Ashton Kutcher
Written by	Eric Bress J. Mackye Gruber
Starring	Ashton Kutcher Amy Smart Elden Henson William Lee Scott Melora Walters Eric Stoltz Ethan Suplee Logan Lerman
Music by	Michael Suby
Cinematography	Matthew F. Leonetti
Editing by	Peter Amundson
Studio	Katalyst Films
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date(s)	January 23, 2004 (2004-01-23)
Running time	113 minutes 120 minutes (Director's cut)
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$13 million
Box office	$96,060,858

The Butterfly Effect is a 2004 American sci-fi psychological thriller film that is written and directed by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber and starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart. The title refers to the metaphorical butterfly effect, a popular principle in chaos theory which states that in any dynamic system, small initial differences may, over time, lead to large unforeseen consequences.

Kutcher plays 20-year-old student Evan Treborn, with Smart as his childhood sweetheart Kayleigh Miller. He finds he has the ability to travel back in time to inhabit his former self and change the present. Having been the victim of several childhood traumas aggravated by stress-induced memory losses, he attempts to set things right for himself and his friends, but there are unintended consequences for all. The film draws heavily on flashbacks of the cast's lives at ages 7 and 13, and presents several alternate present-day outcomes as Evan attempts to change the past, before settling on a final outcome.

The film received a poor critical reception, but was nevertheless a commercial success, producing gross earnings of $96 million from a budget of $13 million. The film won the Pegasus Audience Award at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Science Fiction Film at the Saturn Awards and Choice Movie: Thriller in the Teen Choice Awards.

Plot

In the year 2002, Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher), who suffered severe sexual abuse and traumas as a boy (played by Logan Lerman) and a teenager (played by John Patrick Amedori), blacks out frequently, often at moments of high stress. While entertaining a girl in his dorm room, he finds that when he reads from his adolescent journals, he travels back in time, and he is able to "redo" parts of his past, thereby causing the blackouts he experienced as a child. There are consequences to his choices, however, that then propagate back to his present life: his alternate futures vary from college student, to prisoner, to amputee. His efforts are driven by the desire to undo the most unpleasant events of his childhood which coincide with his mysterious blackouts, including saving his childhood sweetheart Kayleigh (Amy Smart) from being molested by her father (Eric Stoltz) and harassed by her aggressive brother (William Lee Scott).

The actions he takes, and those he enables others to take during his blackouts, change the timeline in the new future wherein he awakes. As he continues to do this he realizes that even though his intentions are good his actions have unforeseen consequences. Moreover, the assimilation of dozens of years' worth of new memories from the alternate timelines causes him brain damage and severe nosebleeds. Ultimately, he decides that his attempts to alter the past end up only harming those he cares about. But Evan realizes that the main cause of everyone's suffering in all the different timelines is himself.

At the conclusion of the film, Evan purposely travels back in time one final time to the first day he met Kayleigh. Scaring her away, he finally succeeds in saving Kayleigh's life. He then destroys all of his journals and memories so that he is not ever tempted again to make any more changes.

The film ends eight years in the future with Evan leaving an office building in Manhattan and passing Kayleigh on a crowded daytime sidewalk. They alternately pause and turn after spotting and passing each other. While Kayleigh seems to have only a vague intimation of having seen him somewhere before, Evan remembers her very well and after hesitating, allows the moment to pass and lets her walk away from him without saying anything.

Cast

• Ashton Kutcher as Evan Treborn
  • John Patrick Amedori as Evan, age 13
  • Logan Lerman as Evan, age 7
• Amy Smart as Kayleigh Miller
  • Irene Gorovaia as Kayleigh, age 13
  • Sarah Widdows as Kayleigh, age 7
• Elden Henson as Lenny Kagan
  • Kevin G. Schmidt as Lenny, age 13
  • Jake Kaese as Lenny, age 7
• William Lee Scott as Tommy Miller
  • Jesse James as Tommy, age 13
  • Cameron Bright as Tommy, age 7
• Melora Walters as Andrea Treborn
• Eric Stoltz as George Miller
• Ethan Suplee as Thumper
• Kevin Durand as Carlos
• Callum Keith Rennie as Jason Treborn
• Lorena Gale as Mrs. Boswell
• Nathaniel DeVeaux as Dr. Redfield
• Tara Wilson as Heidi
• Jesse Hutch as Spencer
• Jacqueline Stewart as Gwen

Reception

Critical reception was generally poor. Sean Axmaker of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called it a "metaphysical mess", criticizing the film's science fiction mechanics for being "fuzzy at best and just plain sloppy the rest of the time". Mike Clark of USA Today also gave the film a negative review, stating, "Normally, such a premise comes off as either intriguing or silly, but the morbid subplots (there's prison sex, too) prevent Effect from becoming the unintentional howler it might otherwise be." Additionally, Ty Burr of The Boston Globe went as far as saying, "whatever train-wreck pleasures you might locate here are spoiled by the vile acts the characters commit."

According to the film review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, The Butterfly Effect garnered mixed to average reviews, with the film receiving a 32% rating — classifying it as "Rotten". On Metacritic, it has a score of 30 (generally negative reviews) out of 100.

Box office

Despite the critical failure, the film was a commercial success, earning $17,065,227 and claiming the #1 spot in its opening weekend. Against a $13 million budget, The Butterfly Effect grossed around $57,938,693 at the U.S. box office and $96,060,858 worldwide.

Awards and nominations

2004 Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films (Saturn Awards)

• Best Science Fiction Film - nominated

2004 Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film

• Pegasus Audience Award — Eric Bress, J. Mackye Gruber - won

2004 Teen Choice Awards

• Choice Movie: Thriller - nominated^{[citation needed]}

Home media

The film was released on DVD as the Infinifilm edition on July 6, 2004. This edition was released with the theatrical cut (113 minutes) on one side and the director's cut (120 minutes) on the other. The DVD also includes two documentaries ("The Science and Psychology of the Chaos Theory" and "The History and Allure of Time Travel"), a trivia subtitle track, filmmaker commentary by directors Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, deleted and alternate scenes, and a short feature called "The Creative Process" among other things.

Alternate endings

An alternate ending shows Evan and Kayleigh stopping on the sidewalk when they cross paths. They introduce themselves and Evan asks her out for coffee.

Another alternate ending is similar to the one shown in the film, except this time Evan, after hesitating, turns back and starts following Kayleigh. This ending was utilized in the film's novelization, written by James Swallow and published by Black Flame.

There also is a third alternate ending (listed as the director's cut on the DVD release) where Evan watches his own birth video when he is in the clinic, which makes him travel back in time to the moment of his birth when he was in his mother's womb. Evan decides to kill himself and thus he was never born. Without him ever being born, Kayleigh and her brother decide to live with their mom going on to have happy lives, and Lenny also grows up happy without Evan's destructive presence. Evan's mother later on had a daughter. Earlier in the film Evan's mother mentioned that she had three stillbirths before him. This suggests that their father's abilities were passed down to each of them and they all made the same decision in the end, to never have been born at all.

Sequels

The Butterfly Effect 2 was released on DVD on October 10, 2006. It was directed by John R. Leonetti and was largely unrelated to the original film. It features a brief reference to the first film in the form of a newspaper headline referring to Evan's father, as well as using the same basic time travel mechanics.

The third installment in the series, Revelations, was released by After Dark Films in 2009. This sequel follows the life of a young man who journeys back in time in order to solve the mystery surrounding his high school girlfriend's death. This film has no direct relation to the first two and uses slightly altered time travel mechanics.

External links

• Official website
• The Butterfly Effect at the Internet Movie Database
• The Butterfly Effect at AllRovi
• The Butterfly Effect at Box Office Mojo
• The Butterfly Effect at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Butterfly Effect at Metacritic
• Original script