I will try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible for those of you who haven't read the source material, while trying to get across my one, main big problem with this movie. To do this, I will reference another time-traveling movie to get my point across. Let me tell you a little story...
In the '80s, I read a book, then watched a movie called "Somewhere in Time" starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. In this movie, Reeve is at a party when an old woman gives him a watch and whispers
"Come back to me...". This watch turns out to be a trigger for time-travel, and Reeve ends up in the 19th century, falls in love with a young woman, and spends some time having a glorious affair. Due to the mechanics of the time travel in that movie, he is suddenly and unexpectedly catapulted back to his own time in the future leaving behind that old watch, and try as he might, he cannot go back again.
Here's my problem. Where does the watch come from in the first place? As we understand matter in this universe, things and objects do not spontaneously erupt into being from nothingness. Just as nothing in the universe is ever truly destroyed, nothing is ever truly created, it's just assembled out of existing matter. Even the smallest components come from somewhere. If his journey is a closed loop, at some point, somewhere, he has to enter that loop in the first place. So does the watch. The watch is made of complex parts... metal and springs. Somewhere on it is a maker's mark. It was manufactured. How then did it enter this time loop? From what mountain was the gold of the case mined? Where was the engraving done? This is not magic, or alchemy... this is science. All matter in the universe has to come from somewhere. To use a driving analogy, even if you are stuck on a roundabout driving in circles, you entered it from one of the side roads in the first place.
All of Predestination's talk about the ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail, is a load of philosophical horseshit. That matter has to come into being... been assembled. It cannot create itself, because if you follow the chain back, even two cells have to come from somewhere. The atoms those cells are comprised of have to come from somewhere.
The movie excels as a time travel movie in a lot of respects... the level of detail, of tying back to bits and pieces was excellently done. The problem is that the whole thing is predicated on a very specific kind of paradox, and saying "that's just how a predestination paradox works" is a cop-out.
Show me the alternate timeline that leads into this one being created and looped back on itself. Sure, I can buy that. But you can't show me a sealed terrarium that you only put water and one kind of plant life into, and then expect me to buy the turtle that's now miraculously sitting in it. The closed system has to have the parts put into the system in the first place. Using "Predestination" plot points now, if that was at Space Corps, or during surgery, tell me that. But don't expect me to believe that something spontaneously came into being out of nothingness. Not without some kind of outside force.
None of my usual counts for anything in this movie. The biggest possible "holy crap!" moment was telegraphed. I could have rolled my eyes at the Space Whores... um, Space Corps, but why bother?
I still give this movie a four out of five. The acting is impeccable. And the story is engaging and interesting, right up to the very bitter end. I just wish it hadn't hung the whole thing on a trope that I cannot accept.
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