Hi! Recently I askad here a question regarding what sort of plot should I have for an animated short about an old man that has invented a time machine and uses it to go to the past to bring back an everyday object from there, to then artificially age it and sell it as an antique. From the answers I recieved I decided that there could be a secret agency that keeps time travel a secret so that there wouldn't be people who go to the past to unintentionally (or intentionlly) change the course of history. Once the agency would find out that this man has found a way to time travel they would try to stop him. And the question I have is about the ending - the first thought that came to my head was that a man from the agency had to kill him (and he does). Is this idea something I can work with or does it seem too over the top? I could put in the film a story about his granddaughter and their relationship which would make the ending even more heartbraking. Although I think I’ll put in the story about his granddaughter even if this isn't the ending it should have.
Using a time machine is over the top sci-fi to begin with, so murder is to be expected in that category. Meeting relatives is done in almost every time travel story, so I would avoid that. Why try to artificially age the items when you can just hide them somewhere to be collected later? Every item crossing time will consume more energy and someone has to pay that electric bill which might exceed the value of the goods.
Thanks for your answer! From what you said I think that you misunderstood - the old man doesn't time travel to meet his granddaughter, she’s still alive. Maybe you did understand it, sorry if so. I even was thinking that he might bring a toy from the past because maybe the future is a war ruined dystopia and they don't make toys anymore. Nevertheless I think I might go with your advice and leave the granddaughter part out. I guess theoretically he could hide the object somewhere and then collect it in the future. We could also just asume that bringing an object from the past doesn't consume that much energy. Maybe the only problems with hiding the object somewhere would be the risk of someone finding it, or if the object gets destroyed or erodes too much. Maybe those could be problems that my character has to deal with in the story.
