Cinematic parallels movie#
Cinematic parallels plus#

That Liar Lies: Stated by Tinker when he returns from upstairs and gets shot.

This is unsurprising, since she apparently travels with The Building for a living.

The Social Expert: Polly naturally takes the lead when the others screw up some part of the deft dance of impersonating themselves in an alternate universe, going so far as to insist that Ronan's a mute because of some childhood disease.

Riding into the Sunset: The group sees a bright light outside at the end and go out the door to see what it is at the end of the movie.

However, some hilarity ensues when Polly reveals that it's sort of 'approximately' 36 hours. Especially if someone is attempting to nuke The Building as you're leaving.

Race Against the Clock: The Building jumps every 36 hours, and Polly insists quite seriously that one doesn't want to get left behind.

Cinematic parallels plus#

However, it is pointed out there's no evidence of foul play, plus he gets reported for patrols to look out for, so it's somewhat subverted.

Police Are Useless: When Ronan and Beatrix try to report their father missing, they are given the old 'has to be missing for 24 hours' line, which isn't true in Real Life.

Cinematic parallels movie#

Pilot Movie: Originally set up as a TV movie pilot, it was released as a stand-alone movie with the possibility of being a series.

Not surprising, since you have to haul things across alternate Earths yourself, and nukes give you the biggest bang you can drag out of The Building.

Nuclear Option: Apparently this is how alternate versions of Earth take out each other's trash.

Most of which didn't turn out too well, since Alex and his wife decided that 'our' Earth was a safe place to raise their kids.

The Multiverse: The setting of the film is revealed to be a small set of hundreds (or thousands) of alternative histories of Earth.

Malicious Misnaming: Inverted, as Harold would desperately prefer to be called Harry, which Ronan has no interest in respecting.

Made of Indestructium: If Tinker's story is to be believed, the nuclear bomb was set off right across the street from the building, yet the building was unhurt.

Fish out of Temporal Water: On the tech world they visit.

Then she doesn't recognize the TV show Ronan mentions that she should.

Foreshadowing: Polly walks into the room after the nuclear blast, instead of being on the floor with the rest of them.

Foreign Queasine: A 'crombie' - some sort of food with crab claws sticking out of it.

All the while Ronan and Beatrix continue to seek their father. Along the way they're kidnapped by wasteland scavengers, dodge nuclear blasts by fleeing to parallel worlds, and commit identity theft against alternate versions of themselves to survive. The enigmatic Polly finds them and gives them some exposition into how travellers like themselves comport themselves in strange worlds that range from the postapocalyptic to the eerily advanced. They soon discover that the derelict building is actually a parallel-worlds machine that transports them into a random alternate Earth. Inside the graffitied walls are covered in deranged messages ranging from warnings that 'contagion has spread to Earth 33' or that the 'natives are friendly, no weapons on Earth 168.' He and Beatrix (plus their tagalong neighbor, Harold) follow the message to an abandoned building.

There he finds his sister Beatrix, his father's go-bag, and a strange device wrapped in a newspaper declaring President Clinton has been assassinated. Bad-boy runaway Ronan Carver gets a cryptic phone call from his father, telling him to come home.