2014 Film Olympics: Out of time

Posted Saturday, February 8, 2014 at 12:01 AM Central
Last updated Friday, February 7, 2014 at 6:04 PM Central

by John Couture

By now, we are utterly confused about the time difference between the United States and Sochi. To make matters worse, those of you on the West Coast are nearly a whole day behind the festivities.

You could say that this is the first Olympics to incorporate time travel. Of course, you'd be wrong, but still it's fun to think about.

Given that most of the events will be over and their results broadcast a hundred times over on your social media channel of choice by the time it airs in prime time that it's going to be nearly impossible to catch up to live events before the Olympics are over. For me, it's going to be a very interesting conundrum. I have to live on social media for work and yet, I'm a huge hockey fan.

It's going to be very hard to stay spoiler free during the work week. The weekend isn't so bad as I don't have any problem getting up early to watch the games. Heck, in most cases the kids will even force the issue.

So, given this rip in the space time continuum that we will experience over the next couple of weeks, I've decided to give out medals to the top time traveling films. At first, I thought this was an easy task as several immediately stood out, but then more came to mind and even more after that. Before long, I was overrun with dozens of high-quality time travel films.

It was hard to select only three, but I'm a professional. I'm sure there will be great debate on these, but here are my medal winners for time travel.

BRONZE

When T2 is your bronze medal winning film, you know the competition was stiff. This sequel is probably the best film in the franchise and it's not even close. Again, the competition was so stout that if I were to do this list next week, T2 could win the gold medal. As it stands, the Terminator takes home the bronze.

SILVER

You know, we could have simply done a whole category of just Terry Gilliam time travel films and filled up the medal stand. As it turns out, Time Bandits takes home the silver here and it could have just as easily nudged out the film above for gold, although that would have been a bit of an upset methinks. A great film that plays loosely with the whole time travel concept, but really, who wants to be bothered with science when we are watching a comedy?

GOLD

Even though this was a competitive category, there's one film that definitely earned the gold and that is Back to the Future. It can be argued whether or not it's the most accurate time travel film, but this isn't about accuracy, it's about legacy and when it comes to time travel films, it starts and ends with Back to the Future.

Well, it's starting to come together. By next week, I should be humming along nicely.

Here is the medal count update. As you can see, it's a very tight race thus far.

Check back tomorrow when I make the Bond. James Bond. connection to these Winter Olympics.