10 Movie Characters Who Fought Younger Versions Of Themselves
If you kill your younger self, what happens to the older you?
Gloomy German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that "the worst enemy that you can meet will always be yourself". He was probably thinking more about improving on the faults of your past self rather than smacking him round the head with a good right hook. But movies like to make that kind of metaphorical internal struggle into a literal external one.
After all, everyone kind of looks back and thinks that their past self was kind of a dumb screw-up. Who wouldn't want the chance to go back and kick some sense into that idiot? No? Just us?
Fortunately, through the magic of time travel, cloning, a newer factory model or any number of other fantastical contrivances, many movies down the years have given their heroes (and villains) the chance to do just that.
Let's look back at ten times that movie characters fought it out with younger versions of themselves and find out whether old age and experience really does beat youthful enthusiasm.
10. The Fizzle Bomber - Predestination
In this twisty time travel thriller, based on a Robert A Heinlein story, virtually every character is a younger or older version of the protagonist. Ethan Hawke's time agent-turned-bartender is both his own mother and his own father. And that's not even all. Confused? You definitely will be. This movie has overlapping timelines all over the place.
Predestination builds to a climactic confrontation in 1975 between the agent and his psychotic adversary, the Fizzle Bomber. Surprise, surprise, the bomber is also him, sent mad after years of time travel and determined to destroy the time agency once and for all.
Before they fight, his future self tells his past self that the only way to break from the same predestined time loop is not to follow the path that the older self had taken in his shoes. That means that his younger self would have to refrain from killing his older self. If only the bomber can convince the agent that he really is his older self.
Told you it was confusing.
The Winner:
In the actual fight? The younger self by shooting his future counterpart. But in the wider scheme of things all of his/her incarnations lose from being stuck in the same messed up time loop.