Mamma Mia! Math: unraveling the Tangled Timeline from here we go again



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Do not waste your emotion. There is no point in getting angry at the sloppy framing of something like Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, the cinematic equivalent of a golden retriever puppy-panting, happy-go-lucky, almost pathologically eager to please. There are catchy tunes, sunny skies and the widest bells all over the country; he launches Andy García as a mysterious piece named Fernando, solely for the purpose of going out Dear to give love at first sight to "Fernando" of ABBA in 1976. He gives to the people what he wants. [19659002] But still: Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again – which should ideally be designated by its complete canonical title, exclamation point included – plays fast and loose with time and space, enough to occasionally distract myriads of pleasures of the film. At least, if you are the kind of nut who stayed awake at night by questions about how cars from Cars make baby cars. (Watch out: Spoilers and Excessive Pedantry Follow.)

Trouble Starts in Movie Godfather: Part II Flashbacks that illustrate this crazy summer when Donna Sheridan (in her early years, played by Lily James in her older years, played by a pair of overalls filled with Meryl Streep ) found love three times over with a trio of eligible foreign singles. Her story begins in May or June 1979, when she is about 22 years old – what we know from a useful chyron that appears on the screen just before Young Donna releases a problematic ABBA B side to her graduation diploma. 39, college studies.

the year 1979 is perfectly fine; just ask Billy Corgan However! Donna's wild youth was also the subject of a musical number in the first film: "Our Last Summer", sung gently in this film by her adult contenders. (Yes, even Pierce Brosnan. ) According to Bill, Aging Casanova Stellan Skarsgård plays, their appointments with Donna unfolded during "Flower Power Time", which would have their last summer, well before 1979, in the late 1960s or early 1970s, according to my precise scientific calculations. Short flashes of Brosnan and Skarsgård in the flirtation of young people also support this idea; they are dressed like regulatory hippies.

"Our Last Summer" may not be entirely reliable; After all, we encourage rhyming "Seine" with "rain". But the moment that this implies makes more sense than the chronology established in the second film, since Skarsgård, Brosnan and Streep are all in their mid-60's in real life, and thus would have been appropriately with bright eyes and with a bushy tail during this earlier period. But none of these people was close to 22 in 1979, as Donna was apparently. ( Colin Firth, who plays the third man in Donna's life, is only 57 years old, a relatively young spring chicken, but not yet old enough for it to work.) Brosnan and Skarsgård receive groovy wigs in their flashback, but Firth is transformed into Johnny Rotten -punk lover – an emissary of another era.)

However! To complicate things further, in the first film, Donna's daughter, Sophie ( Amanda Seyfried ) – the result of one of her Last Summer appointments – is supposed to be 20 years old. And this film was released in 2008. And 2008 does not come 20 years after the late 1960s or early 1970s, or even 1980, when Sophie was really born, according to the timeline of the new film. And although it is perfectly possible that Mamma Mia! was released in 2008 but not in 2008, there is no indication in the film itself that we are supposed to watch a piece of the time, unless the period in question do not be "crazy dream, circa n anytime". Could the first movie actually be in 1999, when the scenic version of Mamma Mia! was created in London, or 2001 created on Broadway? It is literally impossible to know for sure

However! It is also almost impossible to determine how much time has elapsed between the events of Mamma Mia! and the events of Here We are returning. In real life, it's been 10 years; In Here We Go Again, everyone certainly seems to have aged for a decade. There is a lot of comical things about this, when a pbad smuggler tells how bad it was for poor Skarsgård!

Still, Bill says at one point that he's a man in his fifties. plays someone a lot younger than the actor in real life – which corresponds to the chronology established in Here We Go Again, but does not match the evidence under our eyes. And at another time, Sophie tells Cher's character – who plays the matriarch of the Sheridan family – that she's "about 25 years behind" to start acting like Sophie's grandmother. Which would indicate that only five years have pbaded between the films

However! If that is true, and so it is supposed to be 2005 – according to The Retcribed Chronology of – How Does Bill's Colleague Have an iPhone, a Device That Does not Have a Device? was not made public before 2007? Did she have a first prototype because Bill was named Best Swede of the Earth, or whatever the price that almost prevented her from helping Sophie? (Note from aside: Was this literary distinction, ascribed by some sort of Swedish academy, supposed to be … the Nobel Prize ?!)

Plus: Dear-her character has a name, but let's be real: who cares? – She says that she met Fernando in Mexico in 1959, a year where Cher herself was 13, and Andy García was all three years old. But why would the film work so hard to age these characters, while desperately trying to age the Meryl generation? What was in the air that night, Fernando?

And speaking of: Have we collectively decided not to worry that Cher, 72, is apparently old enough to be the mother of 69-year-old Meryl Streep and the grandmother of Amanda Seyfried, 32? She is too young to play even Sophie Sheridan's grandmother of 25 years, if Sophie makes 25!

Not to mention: Did Christine Baranski have this same Velma Kelly Crispy Bobette for the last 25, 30 or 39 years, depending on how we count? I mean, what should we believe, that it's some sort of magic xylophone or something?

So, yes: the only possible conclusion is that the movies Mamma Mia! unfold in a fabulous, sun-soaked wormhole, a limitless Mediterranean kingdom beyond the limits of what we, mortals, call "time". This, or a lazy scenario.

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