In the Yesterday Movie, a miracle somehow consigns the Beatles to oblivion. But it also produces several other changes that are mentioned in the movie without much explanation. Cigarette smoking seems to have been forgotten, and Coca Cola, and here and there a few other things. Several musical groups that existed in fact are noted in the movie for their non-existence.
- My take on all of this was that other changes resulted from the disappearance of the Beatles.
- But my son, who saw the movie with me, thought that at least some of these changes were independent and not results of the Beatles' disappearance.
Neither alternative seems perfectly sensible to me.
Why did they made those changes in the story?
POST-SCRIPT
I just re-read this post (with comments and answers) long after the original post, and I'm struck with a perverse urge to clarify.
It seems to me that the Beatles' disappearance was a miracle to benefit Jack, a struggling musician who is thinking of quitting music. This theory is what makes the movie emotionally satisfying: he needed a miracle, and he got one, "and in the end" he showed that the Beatles influenced him not just win wealth and fame (to his advantage) but also to tell the truth (at least seemingly to his disadvantage). And of course it also suggests something about the merit of the Beatles' songs that is very gratifying to their fans today.
So while the film-makers may have said that they're not interested in the mechanics of how an event could un-happen, I'm still interested in how these other changes make sense within the fantastic theory. It can't be that the film-makers intended to pose only the question of whether the Beatles' music would be popular under the circumstances of the film (introduced at a late date, performed thus, etc); if that were the only interest, there would be no relevance to the long introduction about Jack's struggles to make it as a musician and about how much it would mean to him.