Five Films About Time Travel
Ever since H. G. Wells published The Time Machine back in the 19th Century, the idea of traveling in time has proved
fascinating. Who would not want to go into the past, perhaps to see a play by Shakespeare in the Globe Theater, or to witness some of history’s greatest events, or just play tourist in-say-Ancient Rome or 18th Century Paris? Or maybe, travel to the future, to witness whatever wonders lay ahead.
Unfortunately, examples of time travel stories on film are a little thin, especially compared to stories about space exploration. Three of what we’re offering are either based on or inspired by Wells’ seminal work. One is a Star Trek film. The other is something very interesting from former Monty Pythonite, Terry Gilliam.
George Pal’s The Time Machine
George Pal’s film pretty much, with some alterations, adheres to the story of the book. It starts in Victorian England, on the very cusp between the 19th and 20th Centuries. It starts with George, the time traveler played by Rod Taylor, explaining to some friends at dinner that he has discovered the secret of time travel. His friends, with the exception of Filby, played by Alan Young, are somewhat skeptical.
Some time later, the friends are invited to dinner again. Their host is no where to be found at first. Then, George shows up, his clothes in tatters, filthy, and very much the worst for wear. He tells his friends that he has indeed used the time machine to travel into the future. He stops off, first, in 1917, and meet’s Filby’s son, also played by Alan Young, then an
officer in the First World War. Later he meets the son again, in the mid 1960s, just before a nuclear war destroys
London.
To get past the horrific effects of the war, George has to travel to the very far future.
There he meets the innocent, child like race known as the Eloi. Including a beautiful girl named Weena, played by Yvette Mimieux, they seem to live an idyllic life, without care or want. But this is just a fa�§ade. George soon finds that not only has all knowledge of the past and of science been lost, but that the Eloi are being preyed upon by a hideous, cannibalistic
race that lives underground known as the Morlocks. It seems that human evolution has taken a divergence. George risks his life to save Weena and some other Eloi from the Morlock dinner table and barely escapes with his own life.
George laments to the Eloi, “What have you done? Thousands of years of building and rebuilding, creating and recreating so you can let it crumble to dust. A million years of sensitive men dying for their dreams… FOR WHAT? So you can swim and dance and play.” He clearly intends to do something about it. After being refreshed by food and drink, George returns to the future, carrying some books, to try to restore civilization.
Time After Time
Time After Time is inspired by The Time Machine, but this time H. G. Wells, played by Malcolm McDowell himself is the time traveler. Unfortunately a good friend of his, Dr. John Leslie Stevenson, played by David Warner, steals his time machine and heads off to the far future on 1979. It turns out that Dr. Stevenson has an excellent reason to go on the lam through time. He is non other than Jack the Ripper and the police are hot on his heels.
Wells is horrified. He assumes that the future is going to contain a socialistic utopia and that it will be ill prepared to deal with a psychotic serial killer like Jack. So he takes the time machine himself to the future to try to stop the Ripper. He finds himself in
San Francisco, in the middle of a museum dedicated to-oddly enough-H. G. Wells.
The interaction of Wells to the world of 1979 is priceless. Especially funny is the sequence of Wells ordering a meal at “that Scottish place” McDonalds. Wells is taken in by a lovely woman named Amy Robbins played by Mary Steenburgen. Wells also discovers that 1979 does not contain the utopia he thought it would. Indeed, the world of his future is so filled with war, crime, and violence that Jack the Ripper is far more at home in it than Wells is. Nevertheless, Wells, fussy, nebbish, unlikely hero that he is, sets forth to stop the bad guy, get the girl, and get back to the 19th Century
so that he can write all of those books.
Star Trek: The Voyage Home
Inspired by the beloved Star Trek series, this film has the crew of the
Enterprise dealing with the consequences of their actions in the previous two movies. The
Enterprise is destroyed and they are under threat of court martial for a number of
violations of Star Fleet regulations as a result of their efforts to bring back Mr. Spock from the dead. So they proceed to Earth in a captured Klingon battle cruiser to face the music.
Meanwhile, a gigantic alien probe arrives in Earth orbit and starts to broadcast a devastating signal that is causing massive storms across the surface of the world. Kirk and company discover that the probe is trying to contact hump backed whales, an intelligent species that became extinct in the 21st Century. The aliens seem to be indifferent to the bipedal land species that has developed things like cities and faster than light flight. If there are no hump backed whales to reply to the probe, it looks like it’s curtains for Earth. So Kirk and company decide to take the Klingon ship back in
time to fetch back some hump backed whales before its too late.
There are the usual fun sequences of the people from the future interacting with the world of the 1980s. There’s Spock dealing with a punk rocker with a loud boom bock with his trusty nerve pinch. There’s Chekov, in his thick Russian accent, asking for directions to the “nuclear wessels.” And there’s a woman, of course, in the form of Dr. Gillian Taylor played by
Catherine Hicks, who catches Kirk’s interest.
The film itself is a romp, with some action around the aircraft carrier
Enterprise, a chase scene in a hospital, and the final rescue mission to save the hump backed whales from a fishing boat. By the end of the movie, the whales are saved, the
Enterprise crew is saved, and the Earth is saved.
12 Monkeys
12 Monkeys is one of the most interesting time travel films ever made. In 1997 a mysterious plague wipes out five billion people. By the year 2035, the remains of the human race lives a precarious life underground. A convict named James Cole, played by Bruce Willis, volunteers to go back in time to collect samples of the plague virus before it mutates into its deadly form so that scientists can study it. He is told that the plague was released by something called the Army of the 12 Monkeys. Unfortunately, Cole is sent back six years earlier than planned. He is locked up as insane in an asylum. There
he meets Dr. Kathryn Railly, played by Madeleine Stowe, and the insane son of a famous scientist named Jeffrey Goines, played by Brad Pitt.
Cole escapes from the institution shortly before the plague is supposed to strike. What happens after is one of the most intriguing depictions of one of the clichÃ?©s of time travel in a twist ending. The performances are superb, particularly that of Willis who proves once again that he’s not just another action hero. Even Pitt shines as a crazy person and one wonders why he doesn’t get these kind of meaty roles these days.
Simon Wells’ The Time Machine
Directed by H. G. Wells’ descendent, Simon Wells, this is a rather uneven translation of the classic work. The time traveler, played by Guy Pierce, loses his true love to a pointless murder. He builds a time machine to try to go back into the past to change things. He soon discovers that though he can change some superficial details, the results are always the same.
He heads for the future to try to find answers. He sees the Moon destroyed in a nuclear accident, which is the catalyst for the world 800,000 years later that contains the Eloi and the Morlocks. There’s a cute Eloi played by Samantha Mumba and an evil Morlock played by Jeremy Irons. H. G. Wells’ social commentary is cast aside for action and adventure. The special
effects, however, are first rate. Still, the creators of this movie fixed a lot of things in the story that were not broken. The George Pal version is to be preferred.
If you liked this article, check out” The Use of Time Travel in Cinema and Film.”
