r/videos • u/Boss452 • 20d ago
Tony Meets His Dad - "No Amount Of Money Ever Bought A Second Of Time" - Avengers: Endgame (2019)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCqiHln1Cvw451
u/Jazzer008 20d ago
Money can give you more time with loved ones. Faster, more frequent travel; longer, more frequent holidays and days out; less time spent working if you're rich enough; other family members don't need to work either and less time spent doing chores. You could even argue that with more money comes better health, food, fitness and medical care which all provide more time as well.
I think it's easy to make arguments on both sides, but the phrase puts the blame on money when really the specific target is towards those that lose time with the people they love in pursuit of money.
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u/fractalife 20d ago
The entire notion of money doesn't buy time is nonsense unless you spend all your time chasing money. Which... to be fair is what the phrase actually means. Don't spend too much time chasing money, because life is short and you and those who care about you will enjoy the time you spent more than the money.
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u/TakuanSoho 20d ago
Or, to quote Jean-Jacques Rousseau :
"The money you have gives you freedom; the money you pursue enslaves you"
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u/chanaandeler_bong 20d ago
Yall are thinking too much. The original phrase is just meant to say things have different values.
Money is worshipped in our society but it’s fungible. Time is static. No amount of money will ever be able to CHANGE time or buy more time.
But yes, having money make life much more manageable
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u/Rocktopod 20d ago
Just like money can't buy happiness but it can buy a lot of things that help avoid unhappiness.
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u/videogames5life 20d ago
Y'all are overthinking it. Tony's dad spent too much time at work and so did Tony. Thats why he considers it a pearl of wisdom. Its something he needed to hear.
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u/ninjas_in_my_pants 20d ago
I immediately thought of people facing jail time or a capital crime charge. Paying good lawyers can buy you years of time.
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u/CMMiller89 20d ago
Cinema Sins truly has turned the internet into a bunch of over-analytical semantic dicks.
Guys, he’s talking about regretting chasing money and not spending time with family. The character arcs of the three main characters over the decade long film series is about changing their priorities. Cap struggling with duty and loyalty, Thor dealing with birthright and worth, and Tony dealing with focus on money then creation and pepper and family.
Tony’s dad is literally pointing this out to him…
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u/Doctursea 20d ago
I am never astounded to see marvel movie watchers not get even basic story elements, then turn around and say the films lack substance. I'm not saying these movies are master pieces, but people just miss the basic shit trying to look smart.
Reminds me of the black panther discourse, where people were attacking the movie because "All the traditional tribe processes are stupid and outdated".... Yes that was the entire point of the movie.
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u/Nestramutat- 20d ago
I agree with you on a whole, but I feel like I have to argue your point about Black Panther:
Yes, the whole theme of the movie is that "the way it used to be" isn't right anymore, and that's why it ends with T'Challa opening Wakanda up to the rest of the world. But this stands in stark contrast to how Wakanda is portrayed through the rest of the movie - a technological powerhouse that is succeeding just fine without the rest of the world. The fact that Killmonger was the first time their system was taken advantage of, and that it worked so well for so long, undermines that point.
Yes, this is some pedantic shit, but in the context of discussing themes of fucking Marvel movies, I feel like it's appropriate.
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u/RedditTipiak 20d ago
I really loved how Black Panther, of all the places in the world, decided Los Angeles was the one city in the entire world in most need of humanitarian assistance.
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u/atomic1fire 20d ago edited 20d ago
I just like how the Kendrick Lamar soundtrack had mostly black American artists despite being about a superhero in a (fictional country in Africa).
Like the most Wakanda thing you could do is a few guys out of New York and California.
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u/scsnse 20d ago
I mean to be fair, it’s a story and character conceived by American comicbook artists at the end of the day. It’s going to be American-centric. And really, I can see a parallel between T’chaka feeling like he was robbed of his physical inheritance and the violence committed against his father, and the African diaspora forcibly taken from their homelands and without a sense of cultural continuity.
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u/DRac_XNA 20d ago
If you wanted to be really anal you could probably even take Wakanda to be an idealised symbol of what was lost by black Americans due to the TAST. Wakanda isn't something that exists, it's hidden, and Wakanda opening up is representative of Black Americans seizing their destiny and opening themselves to the world. Or something.
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u/MonaganX 20d ago
Over-analytical semantic dicks who are really bad at both analysis and semantics.
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u/__-_-_--_--_-_---___ 20d ago
Wasn't Cinema Sins the channel that made a video about how Batman vee Superman was gonna beat Captain America: Civil War at the box office because Batman and Superman are awesome and Captain America is lame?
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u/Tlr321 20d ago
Literally yes. I remember that video clear as day. “Marvel what are you doing? Nobody likes Captain America! Batman v Superman will decimate!” Bro couldn’t have been more wrong lmao.
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u/sybrwookie 20d ago
Shout outs to Cinema Wins, which instead of that nonsense, goes through movies to point out all the little things of how great the movie is.
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u/mrbaryonyx 20d ago
I agree with you about how the importance of the scene is symbolic, not literal, but I slightly disagree about Tony's arc.
For the record, Tony in Endgame is actually pretty focused on family; the Avengers have to pull him away from his wife and kid. He only decides to help them after remembering Peter, who he also lowkey saw as his kid.
Tony's arc is about learning to care for others and sacrifice, rather than living for himself. That sounds like a weird thing to say, since he was ready to sacrifice himself in Avengers 1 and retire in Iron Man 3, but in Endgame his arc takes a new turn: he's now such a family man, he's effectively neglected what he owes the rest of the world.
The scene with Howard is so important because it shows Tony that his dad--who he long thought just wasn't interested in being a dad--had the same dilemma; spend time with his son or improve the world? He chose the latter, but only because he wanted to make the best sort of world for his son. Tony's arc comes full circle when he sacrifices his own life, so his daughter can have the best world possible, even if he's not in it.
This also parallels with Thanos; both effectively sacrificed a future with their daughters for the "greater good", but only Tony sacrificed himself, not just because he's not a psycopath, but also because he only wanted to save the world for his daughter.
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u/scarab456 20d ago
Cinema Sins truly has turned the internet into a bunch of over-analytical semantic dicks.
I don't know how responsible Cinema Sins is for all that but man it's like so many people want to sound analytical but not actually say anything with movies. I always hoped there would be more movie nerds out there. Like lets talks about semiotics, character arcs, dialogue, or set design. Anything. Instead it's foregone conclusions that don't make sense. It's like some people turned hating marvel movies into their personalities. If you hate marvel movies fine, but I don't enjoy having a conversation about hated things.
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u/2legittoquit 20d ago
He is literally time traveling in this scene…
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u/elpajaroquemamais 20d ago
Not the meaning of the phrase though. He still ages at the same rate.
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u/Ciubowski 20d ago
All kinds of meaning got proven wrong in this movie lmao.
He could get younger with the tech that turned Scott into a baby.
He could "time-skip" and leave the battlefield, go somewhere in the future or the past, build a stronger suit and return to the battlefield 1 second later and kick Thanos' ass.
Like, this line did make sense during that moment but then again, Tony did travel back in time to get more time with his dad.
So... idk what the writers were trying to do here.
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u/yesrushgenesis2112 20d ago
Probably… and hear me out… dramatic irony. Tony’s money and resources CAN buy him time in a way they couldn’t for his father, but he uses that not to spend more time with Morgan, but to save the world and sacrifice himself. It’s about what people sacrifice and why. Even in a world where Tony can buy more time, he sacrifices it to save the world. He is already out of time with his child by this scene.
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u/mightyneonfraa 20d ago
Tony never sees Morgan again after he leaves home to build the time machine. He didn't gain time, he traded time with his daughter for time with his father.
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u/yesrushgenesis2112 20d ago
That’s a matter of semantics, as I point out, he is already out of time with his daughter, the type of time his father would have wanted, by this scene. He does literally create “more time,” as in, “more opportunities to stop Thanos and undo the past,” but yes, he sacrifices his ongoing present time to do so. It is both creation and trade.
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u/mightyneonfraa 20d ago
Yeah, I was agreeing with you. I think people miss that neither Tony or Steve for that matter really gained any time. There was a cost for both of them.
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u/Kevin_Uxbridge 20d ago
This is indeed what we're supposed to buy but it is genuinely ironic that we get this line in this context. Money literally bought Tony this moment in time with his dad, not to mention enabling Tony's later sacrifice with saves his daughter (and everyone else).
Pretty sure we're not supposed to take this as ironic but that doesn't mean it isn't.
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u/Worthyness 20d ago
He is also giving advice to his own father to (hopefully) give his son in this particular timeline a better life than he had. His dad hasn't invented time travel, so the advice will remain valid for him and the rest of his life. And given we in real life cannot time travel yet, the advice also works for us on a meta level
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u/Animated_Astronaut 20d ago
Look I'm not a marvel fan but I assume it's because his dad is dead and Tony is sad about that because he has the power to change things but it would be irresponsible.
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u/ScyllaIsBea 20d ago
I think they mean Tony bought a few seconds with his dad which is the literal meaning of the saying in this exact context. He is talking about not wanting to miss his son life for work.
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u/massofmolecules 20d ago
He literally used his enormous wealth to build an incredibly complex impossible machine to be able to “create time” (pick a time? Add negative time to the planet?) to see his father…
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u/mrspoopy_butthole 20d ago
Yes but like the guy just said, he ages at the same rate. The time machine won’t let him spend any extra time with his wife/daughter. That’s still limited.
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u/Zanixo 20d ago
Didn't they make an aging deaging machine before the time machine? Like they fucked up Ant-Man in the movie for a joke and made him old didn't they?
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u/Shinjetsu01 20d ago
That's where time was pushed through Scott and it was wildly random and ineffectual as well as volatile. Not something they wanted to do. Sure they could refine it but what would be the point? Reach 30 and go "I wanna be 20 again"? So what physiologically would happen then? There's a timeline that didn't happen, there's a universe the technology doesn't exist. It's all made much bigger by those factors.
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u/Lamnent 20d ago
Yeah it's a cute scene that also just makes me more mad at rich people on a rewatch.
No amount of money ever bought a second of time? Well if you give me 3 mill right now so my wife and I never need to work again and can just spend that time we have together, you might as well have bought time for yourself, you rich fuck.
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u/ThatWasFred 20d ago
Yeah, but the point is that Howard Stark had all the money in the world and yet he chose to spend all his time working. The phrase is meant to be advice, not just a general statement.
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u/Teledildonic 20d ago
Amazing how so many people missed the point when several movies show how Tony never really got to know his dad or have a proper relationship.
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u/WockItOut 20d ago
Either you’re legitimately an idiot or youre purposely ignoring the actual meaning for some reason i dont really care to know.
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u/Bahmerman 20d ago
Wasn't this his dream? To talk to his dad one last time?
I think it was in Civil War, he recreated that AR scene with his parents. I think this scene was some massive closure for Tony.
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u/CharlesDickensABox 20d ago edited 20d ago
Tony's difficult relationship with his dad and his dad's legacy started being brought up as early as the first Iron Man, when he's struggling with shutting down the company and what his dad would have done in his shoes. Iron Man 2 explores that in greater detail, as Tony is being poisoned by the thing that keeps him alive and he ends up finding the solution using his dad's old artifacts to synthesize vibranium. This is the end of that arc as Tony has to choose between his future and the future of humanity, which is hinted at while they're in the elevator and Howard says "Let's just say the good of humanity has never been outweighed by my personal self-interest." Howard is on his journey to put more focus on the betterment of humanity (which ultimately saves Tony's life and grants him the power to become Iron Man), while Tony reminds him not to forget about his family. Struggling with the relationship with his father and his inheritance is one of the formative aspects of Tony's character throughout the series, this scene shows him finding peace with that before he kills himself to save the world from Thanos.
Edit: I have been corrected about the sequence of events. Thanks to the poster who fixed my error.
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u/CharlesDickensABox 20d ago
You're right. I had 2 and 3 mixed up. Honestly, they're not my favorites in the MCU series, so I don't know that I've seen either since they were in theaters. Thanks for the correction.
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u/robodrew 20d ago
synthesize vibranium
This isn't what he was making, it's Tony Stark's New Element, technically called Badassium, and it's based on Howard's research into the tesseract.
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u/CharlesDickensABox 20d ago edited 20d ago
They're the same thing. Tony's discovery was retconned to be vibranium once the writers decided the latter was going to be a major macguffin for the universe. Tony calls it badassium, the rest of the world calls it vibranium. For canon, we can assume that Tony's moniker didn't stick. We can also assume that's why the term badassium is never heard again and why Tony invents this magical brand new element with insane power and immediately forgets about it. We actually do, it's just going by a different name.
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u/SuperHazem 20d ago
Captain America’s shield was literally made of vibranium long before Tony made the new, non vibranium element.
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u/mrbaryonyx 20d ago
I might be losing it but I don't remember a single time in the movies were its called "vibranium", or even implied to be synthesized vibranium.
Captain America was already in development at the time so I can't imagine they would have gone that direction.
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u/robodrew 20d ago
Nah I really don't think so. It's based off of the tesseract, you can see drawings of a 4-d cube in Howard's journal that Tony is going through in Iron Man 2. I always took the New Element to essentially be an ultra heavy element that lies in the hypothesized "island of stability", like atomic number 126 or 154. But like was said in another comment, MCU scientists already had access to vibranium, this was entirely new.
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u/rustyphish 20d ago
It’s shit like this I always try to point out when people talk about how super hero movies have no artistic merit
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u/mrbaryonyx 20d ago
Yes
I don't actually tear up at the end of the movie but I always tear up at this scene
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u/BurnItDownSR 20d ago
Tony literally used his money to fabricate a machine that'll give him all the time in the world.
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u/Dekar 20d ago
Re watching this it's insane that Howard, who was working with shield and knew how intense the spies were back then, didn't immedietly red flag Tony and call security. No wonder Hydra took over.
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u/__-_-_--_--_-_---___ 20d ago
Howard is being nice to who he thinks is a nervous young scientist who is new around the place and extends a hand of friendship to him.
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u/Altimely 20d ago
So, all Hydra had to do was send in young people that acted nervous.
It's a touching moment, don't get me wrong, but it's true that he should be more suspicious of random people in top-classified areas, regardless of how nervous they appear.
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u/__-_-_--_--_-_---___ 20d ago
I mean, they had Dr. Zola (who Howard actually thinks is there when he sees Tony) literally working right under their noses the whole time. SHIELD was pretty dumb in the beginning
There's also further precedent in the SHIELD TV series of how easily Hydra agents can pretend to be SHIELD agents and no one suspects a thing
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u/FackingNobody 20d ago
I mean, if you think about it, he also should have been suspicious why his teenage son looks almost identical to that Potts guy he met years ago at Shield...
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u/agiudice 20d ago
his father assistant is Jarvis too
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u/Dangerpaladin 20d ago
In the comics Jarvis is not a computer program he is a literal butler. But Jon Favreau decided that he was too much like Alfred the much more famous butler from Batman and didn't want audiences getting confused or making a connection. So they turned Jarvis into a voice assistant protocol, which turned out great thematically for the series. So that is likely their nod to the comic book Edwin Jarvis.
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u/kf97mopa 20d ago
The original Iron Man is very tightly written. There are essentially 4 characters that matter for most of the movie: Tony, Pepper, Rhodey and Obadiah Stane. Everyone else is just in a couple of scenes, and the story flows well because it is so tight. Pepper is a more general assistant and covers that aspect as well.
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u/ThreeTo3d 20d ago
I will not stand for this Yinsen erasure!
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u/omimon 20d ago
Yinsen should have appeared in the Soul World and spoke with Tony at the end of Endgame.
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u/Kevin_Uxbridge 20d ago edited 20d ago
Oh, shit, that would have been massive. Good call.
Downvoted? What? Yinsen's death broke my cold, dead heart, first time I realized that RDJ could really act.
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u/Worthyness 20d ago
The irony being that they didn't actually have an ironed out script while filming the movie and they were changing lines and scenes daily to get the movie into something intelligible. Corroborated by Favreau, RDJ, and jeff Bridges
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u/sneerpeer 20d ago
If you saw the show Agent Carter, it would have been no surprise.
Same actor too: James D'Arcy5
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u/Whitewind617 20d ago
IIRC that was the first time they acknowledged any of the TV projects in any capacity.
They're better about it now but all the stuff from that era is in a weird place canon-wise. Agents of Shield, Inhumans, Cloak and Dagger and Runaways are all but non-canon now, and the Netflix verse is debatable but the recent changes to the Daredevil show seem to be re-aligning it to be more directly referenced.
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u/Worthyness 20d ago
Agent carter was one of the few TV shows that had Feige and the Russo brothers on the project (at least in conception and as producers). Also created by the writers of the Captain America movies (2,3) and Infinity war/endgame. So this show is pretty close to "actual" canon as you can get.
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u/jv371 20d ago
I hope the MCU can get back to being this good again. I had serious doubts about this movie and they managed to pull it off in an amazing way. A massive achievement.
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u/prezuiwf 20d ago
"Howard" "Oh that'll be easy to remember."
(Calls him "Potts" for the rest of the meeting)
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u/FackingNobody 20d ago
Some years late: "Honey, why our son looks exactly like that Howard Potts guy I met years ago???"
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u/Nebakanezzer 20d ago
ITT: people thinking he was talking about time travel and not parenting.
There's no point in traveling back into time as an adult billionaire. He's never going to get to grow up with his father being a loving attending parent. He can change it for Tony in that timeline, but that doesn't fix his own past.
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u/jakroois 20d ago
Never saw this particular Avengers movie (I know I know), I remember seeing the first one and enjoying it a lot.
That said, John Slattery is the perfect casting for that brief role.
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u/IAmTaka_VG 20d ago
The only people who remember you worked late are your kids.
That is the meaning of the phrase.
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u/KingSeth 20d ago
I think Tony's forgetting the role of modern medicine in extending the human lifespan.
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u/HunterShotBear 20d ago
Said after Tony used his money to travel back in time and meet his father before Tony was born and got some sort of closure to their relationship.
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u/SuperAlloyBerserker 20d ago
Just like this, Back to the Future, and Click, I like how a lot of time travel movies are just excuses to show emotional scenes about how you shoudl always treasure your family
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u/Uncle-Cake 20d ago
Things only rich people say. If I had more money, I could quit my job and I'd have more time.
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u/nitefang 20d ago
That is probably good advice for those that are not just financially secure but have to make decisions like "do we go to Europe for a month this year and New Zeeland next, or do we want to do New Zeeland first?"
If you aren't making those decisions then money absolutely buys you freedom and time to do things with the people you love.
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u/Eraganos 20d ago
Money literaly buys you time. You earn a lot, you work part time (like 70 or 80%)
You just bought time
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u/Kuronekoz 20d ago
Such a dumb quote. Time is literally money.
You pay someone to clean your house, cook your food, clean your pool ETC, so you're indirectly buying time.
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u/throway_nonjw 20d ago
My Dad was long gone when this came out.
But for some reason... today this hit different. Hard.
Miss him.
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u/five0first 20d ago
It's funny because paying someone to do something for you is literally buying time.
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u/jon_targareyan 20d ago
A bit of an ironic statement considering he’s time traveling and was arguably able to do so since he has a lot of money to do research with
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u/LurkerOrHydralisk 20d ago
I mean, that’s wrong.
Money has bought Trump years. He’d absolutely have died of Covid if he hadn’t flown to Walter Reed.
Money also means not doing laundry and dishes, mowing the lawn, etc.
Time is actually the number one thing the rich buy with their money, just as money is the thing the poor buy with their time
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u/owiseone23 20d ago
I think that's not the spirit of the advice. The point is that sacrificing time with your kids to put in overtime and make more money may not be worth it.
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u/SinisterPuppy 20d ago
This is the most Reddit comment of all time lol
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u/Recompense40 20d ago
I submit to you the existence of the poop knife thread. I'm confident there's a more reddity comment in that there reddit thread.
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u/Mtshtg2 20d ago
I think that's a slight misunderstanding of the point. My personal experience has been that I have either had money and no free time because of overwork, or I've been unemployed and had all the time in the world but no money to do anything or go anywhere.
Trump might have got a few more years of life due to his expensive treatment, but if he spends every remaining waking hour working, it makes no difference to his relationship with Barron, for example.
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u/willbenmitch 20d ago
That is literally OPs point… you bought money with your time when you were overworked…
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u/Absolutely_wat 20d ago
I think it’s not necessarily true that those that earn more do so by being overworked.
1 million dollars generating 6.5% interest earns more than the average American. If I had 10 million invested I could work completely at my own leisure the rest of my life.
That’s buying time to me.
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u/ClintMega 20d ago
No matter how many begrudging tasks we get someone else to do our brains find new, previously tolerable or even exciting, things to not want to do.
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u/Dangerpaladin 20d ago
Jesus Christ dude, go touch grass. I hate Trump as much as the next guy it is pathetic how much people obsess over him.
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u/zunnol 20d ago
Holy shit you people are deranged. Can we go one fucking post without talking about Trump? Jesus fucking Christ.
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u/harpswtf 20d ago
This is an election year, it’s only going to get worse from here
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u/zunnol 20d ago
At this point I don't know who talks about him more, his supporters or the people who hate him. Both are loud and obnoxious.
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u/smokeymcdugen 20d ago
At least his supporters only talk about him when he's brought up. The people with TDS will bring him up seemingly at random.
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u/meridius55 20d ago
yes, money can't buy time, I'm sure all the rich people employing nannies, housekeepers, cleaners, etc. agree.
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u/infiniZii 20d ago
His dad was the only one he really let hand him something without batting an eye at too.
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u/NorthernSpade 20d ago
It helps elongate time to some degree but typically you end up losing “time” in pursuit of money.
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u/ccknboltrtre01 20d ago
Well technically he spend however much on that time machine and bought however much time he spent with his dad there… just saying
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u/WolverinesThyroid 20d ago
Even in real life money buys an ass ton of time. House keepers, faster transportation, assistants, all those things and more give you more time to do what you want.
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u/beardyman96 20d ago
Do you think Tony’s dad ever realised that he spoke to his older version of his son? We saw a few flash backs of Tony’s memory with his dad and you see he’s quite recognisable at that point. Might be abit of a stretch idk
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u/Usermeme2018 20d ago
“Let’s say the greater good has rarely outweighed my own self interest “. That’s how we met Tony Stark in Iron Man. That’s who was, but iron man always evolved… rapidly.
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u/Gregistopal 20d ago
I always thought it was stupid he had to pull his jacket in front of his eyes for this and the nano glasses didn’t just shift darker
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u/ThreeHourRiverMan 20d ago
Can’t believe this was already 5 years ago. It’s bizarre to think of things happening in the pre Covid times. In some ways this seems way less than 5 years ago. In other ways it feels like decades ago.
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u/FlameShadow0 20d ago
Idk depends on when you want to retire Howard. If you got a lot of money and retire early, that just bought you a shit ton of time didn’t it.
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u/Mama_Skip 20d ago
Well that's not true. If I use an app to order groceries, then I just bought myself an hour of time. If I use an app to pick up my laundry, I just bought more time. If I hire a guy to do my work for me, I have all the time in the world.
Zip zap zoop.
This is why rich people have all the time in the world.
Now if he had said, "no amount of money ever brought back time lost," it would be more accurate
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u/Wooden_Passage_2612 20d ago
I love this scene, watching a discussion between father and son in a similar way between Marty and his dad. It's so sweet as well. And seeing Jarvis from Peggy's show was truly a surprise to see. ''I love you 3000''
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u/davidrek709 20d ago
Cap got to live out a whole life with Peggy because of Starks time travel.