Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice breaks my brain. SPOILERS!

time loops always fall apart once you start thinking too hard about them

There are a bunch of different "time travel rules for movies." A subset of these "time travel rules for movies" do work out logically. The "many immutable universes" system used in Marvel can work out logically (though fans often confuse themselves into thinking it doesn't work.) Some movies, like Primer, do the "one mutable universe" time travel, and it also works out logically, though begets enormous complexity. But there's a very popular set of "time travel rules for movies" that don't actually work out at all: The "Back to the Future" rules. The Back-to-the-Future time travel rules work as follows: "Causality happens when the plot wants it to and doesn't happen when the plot doesn't want it to." It's a very popular choice for comedy movies (like Austin Powers or Hot Tub Time Machine.) It's an appropriate choice for Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice. It's an inappropriate choice for more serious or sci-fi movies like Looper or Butterfly Effect but you see there too.

You have to just accept time travel like you accept that a guy can turn into an ant.

Don't overthink it it's a goofy action comedy sci-fi, go watch Primer if you want to break your brain on a good time travel flick!

It was a very funny movie. I'm gonna miss Jackie Napalm. 

LOVED this movie. Also in my head they are going by Bill and Ted rules. At the end, Mike is going back to save Nick. There is a second Time Machine, so it can all still happen if Mike saves Nick. I hope there is an appetite for a Mike & Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice... because I would very much enjoy spending more time with these guys.

Dude he ruined the timeline by breaking the Time Machine in the beginning of the movie which would have prevented him from going back in time without even dying

Fell asleep halfway, I didn’t know it was a time travel movie and was highly disappointed once they introduced it

See? time travel movies are bullshit, full of plotholes. In order to enjoy, you kind of have to throw logic out the window or not think about it.

Before you get to present Nicks death erasing future Nick you have in the first few minutes Future Nick arriving in the present and “accidentally” destroying Time Machine, shooting its inventor and burning down the warehouse with all the gear, notes and research. Which means that present Nick has no way, at some point in the future, of time travelling back in the first place. And yes its revealed in an exceptionally clunky “oh the writers have been told to make a sequel hook with five minutes left of studio time” way, that there is a second Time Machine in a box elsewhere, but at that point Nick is dead and has no knowledge of that box. Also that box does not link physically to the one we see Future Nick step out of so even if he was alive he’s never using the second box. The instant Future Nick destroys the time machine he steps out of in the present day, he should have vanished from existence.

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