The Time Machine (2002) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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Time keeps on slippin’, into the future.

Probably the most well-known story about time travel is HG Wells’ The Time Machine, which has been spruced up a bit for modern audiences. This particular outing adds in some further flourishes and themes that have become more expected in the genre. But does it deliver a story of a man out of time?

First Impressions

As with the original version of this film, a Victorian era gentleman travels into the future in a time machine. However, the trailer shows him making stops in other future eras before making it to the desolate future where the Morlock creatures rule. Let’s take a look at what a new version of The Time Machine has to offer.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

In 1899, Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce) works as a professor at Columbia University, but would rather be doing pure research. The faculty, in his opinion, is too shortsighted about what the future can hold. He meets Emma (Sienna Guillory), his girlfriend in the park where he awkwardly proposes marriage. However, moments later they are robbed by a vagrant lurking nearby and Emma is shot and dies. Alex, heartbroken, retires to his house and spends the next four years working on a time machine in order to bring his fiancée back to life.

Alex goes back in time four years and makes sure Emma is not in the park. But while he buys her some flowers, she is run over and killed by a horse drawn carriage. Mournful, he hops back in the time machine and moves further into the future. He stops in the year 2030 and visits the New York Public Library, where he speaks with a holographic assistant VOX-114 (Orlando Jones). Alex asks about the practical applications of time travel, to which VOX has no answer.

Alex presses on believing that someone in the future must have the answer he seeks. In 2037 he discovers the world is a mess. The moon has exploded due to a lunar shuttle accident and he is attacked by two police officers trying to get him to safety. He fights his way free and gets back to the time machine, only to be knocked unconscious. The machine travels forward further to July 16, 802701 where he finally manages to stop it.

Alex is found and nursed back to health by Mara (Samantha Mumba), an Eloi woman. She is one of the few that still speaks English, as taught to her by the “stone language,” carved placards from the 19th and 20th Century. Mara is curious about why Alex would want to be changing the past. She takes Alex back to his machine and asks him to take her younger brother Kalen (Omero Mumba) with him when he returns home. They are not safe in her time because they get attacked by the Morlocks, underground dwelling monsters that use the Eloi for food.

When the Morlocks attack, Mara is taken. Alex cannot understand why the Eloi don’t fight back. Kalen shows Alex one of the tunnels, which houses the controls for VOX, still functioning 800 Millennia later. Alex falls into a pit of Eloi bones and fears the worst. He finds Mara captive in the room of the Über-Morlock (Jeremy Irons), who explains that his people have been bred into castes, some for hunting, and some–like him–for leading. He demonstrates his mental powers by rendering a vision of Alex’s life if Emma had lived.

The Über-Morlock explains the paradox of changing the past with a time machine built after the death of Alex’s fiancée. One cannot exist without the other. Alex feigns to return home, but grabs the Über-Morlock and drags him outside the protective bubble of the machine, which ages him into dust. Leaping further ahead into the future (the year 635427810), Alex finds a world run wholly by Morlocks. Returning to Mara, he sets the time machine to self destruct. He and Mara escape as the time energy ripples through the Morlock tunnels, killing them all. The film ends with Alex’s friend Philby (Mark Addy) and housekeeper Mrs. Watchit (Phyllida Law) hoping that Alex is somewhere he can be happy.

“You’re a man haunted by those two most terrible words, ‘What if?’” – Über-Morlock

History in the Making

The 2002 version of The Time Machine is one of a handful of remakes of films from the 50s and 60s that arrived in the early 21st Century. This, along with Planet of the Apes, Rollerball, The Stepford Wives, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Solaris, and War of the Worlds, re-presented classic science-fiction films in updated packaging for modern audiences. Many of these films failed to achieve the success that was expected of them, which might be explained in any number of ways. Many of the original versions of these films are widely regarded, and are still readily available for audiences to watch. Some may have had the expectation that the remakes (or reinterpretations) of the stories were not as good as the originals, even though the newer films utilize modern filmmaking and special effect techniques. Others may have expected that the films should have to hit a specific box office number in order to be considered successful. Whether that was making back their costs or drawing in a certain number of viewers. In some cases the remakes were just not considered to be good films. The Time Machine had a little of all three of these situations going for it.

Out of all the various sci-fi remakes in the 2000s, The Time Machine was one that stayed much closer to the plot of the original film than others. It was more of a straight remake, rather than a reboot of the same idea, like Planet of the Apes. Both this version and the George Pal version of The Time Machine (1960) stay true to the story of a 19th Century inventor who creates a time machine and goes far into the distant future to discover what has become of humanity. However, this remake is less about the fascination for time travel and the pacifism of the main character as the 1960 version presents. The modern version deals with themes of love and loss and how humanity struggles with such things. In that respect the modern version adds some other levels of symbolism to what was originally a simple tale (as much as any time travel film can be). Yet, there are other elements that do not work in this new version. Some find a distaste for the humorous hologram VOX, others might find Jeremy Irons talents wasted as a telepathic Morlock. Either way, there are still some interesting ideas created by this version, and it may not be as clunky as it once seemed.

The most amazing thing about 2002s The Time Machine is definitely the director. Simon Wells was an animator and storyboard artist that had directed four animated films between 1991 and 1998 including An American Tail: Fievel Goes West and The Prince of Egypt. The Time Machine was his first, and only, live action film to date. But that’s not the interesting part. He is also the great-grandson of the original author of the story, Herbert George Wells. No pressure there. Certainly there was much promotion about this fact, which may be one of the few times that the progeny (let alone great-progeny) of an author has directed their work.

Genre-fication

This version of The Time Machine is a relatively pure remake. At its base level it’s about a man who chooses to travel into the future for personal reasons. He discovers untold horrors but also a connection with a woman and ends up choosing to stay there. As mentioned above, the original film’s main character had a fascination with time travel, but no real driving motivation–other than curiosity–to drive him through time. Here, Alexander is motivated by the grief and loss of Emma. That drives him to create the machine and to travel initially into the past to save her. However, once he realizes that he cannot change the outcome, he leaps into the future in search of answers about how to change the past. The original time traveler, George, was only spurred forward, after his initial curiosity, by believing he was leaping into an extended war. He lands first during World War War I, then WWII, before leaping into even a further, future war, before zooming 800 Millennia further away.

Alexander’s questions drive him forward on two stops where he seeks answers about his time travel to the past, before being thrown 800 Millennia forward. What this version does is change the reasons for the travelers journey. In Alex’s case, it’s the Über-Morlock that provides him with the answer to his question which makes use of a now common trope to time travel films, the paradox. Alex is told that the reason he cannot go back in time to save Emma is due to the grief of her death causing him to create the time machine in the first place. Therefore, if he time travels to save her, his grief will no longer exist, and he will have not built the time machine. Thus he could not travel back to save her. The circular logic (or illogic) where the effect precedes the cause was not imagined as a plot device in 1960 when Pal made his film. Thus both heroes choose to stay in the future, for similar reasons. George finds love with Weena, the Eloi maiden, and similarly Alex becomes attached to Mara. The only other change in their paths becomes the action moment at the end of this version, where Alex detonates the machine destroying the Morlocks and changing the future he has seen–proving that not all things in the timeline are destined.

This version of the film also updates the characters of the Morlocks. In the original they are horrific brutes used to scare the audience, and provide a foil against the peaceful Eloi. And while both films utilize the Eloi as food for the Morlocks, the modern version eschews any reciprocal work where the Eloi also farm for the Morlocks, presenting them with tributes and gifts. It also seems to ignore (or forget) that Morlocks are sensitive to sunlight. The Über-Morlock mentions his races’ sensitivity to light later in the film, after audiences witness the Morlock raiding party in the Eloi village. Perhaps with the breeding of Morlocks into castes, some of that light sensitivity has been bred out. This seems a little unlikely, given that even the effects technicians who designed the Morlock costumes asked that they be shown in low-light situations, and complained about the filming of the creatures in well lit situations.

Societal Commentary

Grief and loss are a part of being human. Alex’s emotional journey is no different from many others who have lost a loved one. The only difference being that he has the ability to create a time machine. He wants to buck convention, as he explains to Philby, and not turn out like the identical bowler hat-wearing individuals he sees around him daily. He wants to do unexpected and fantastical things. But he also seeks to control the uncontrollable. He wants to tell the faculty at his school what to think. He wants to bring Emma back. He wants things to work out for himself. However his fate does not meet with those expectations. Unlike George in the original film who has “all the time in the world,” according to Philby, Alex is destined to not get what he wants. But he finds something as enriching, and where he least expected it as well.

This theme of control is also seen in the Morlocks. The Über-Morlock explains that this species has dominion over the Eloi, using them essentially as cattle. But his caste, the telepaths, also have control over the Morlock hunter caste–lest they exhaust the food supply. This is a social control, where the leadership exercises their power over the working class in order to benefit the greater good. In the end, it’s all about individuals controlling the world around themselves. Alex takes this to extremes when he discovers that the Morlocks will eventually dominate the Earth, and he decides to eradicate them all with his technology. The genocide of the Morlocks is not addressed by the film, other than the Über-Morlock citing the similarities between he and Alex. They both are characters whose destinies are entwined. The Morlocks are the results of humanity as is Alex, yet he takes the next step severing their bloodline from the world to make things (presumably) better than they had been.

This brings the discussion around to the time machines we all have. The Über-Morlock mentions that everyone has time machines, they are called dreams and memories. An astute observation for what Alex characterizes as a vicious and primitive being. But it’s an interesting take within the time travel genre. Each person has the ability to ask “what if,” about both their past and their future. That’s what time travel stories afford society. That ability to see alternate pathways we might have taken and imagine the possibilities of the future roads untraveled.

The Science in The Fiction

Paradoxes are the staple of modern time travel narratives. Ever since Marty McFly accidentally saved his father from being hit by a car, characters in time travel films have been creating and evading paradoxes. In current parlance, Emma’s death is a fixed point in time. It may not happen at the hand of a mugger, but it is ordained to happen in some fashion at that time. The film makes things slightly more streamlined by introducing the idea that Alex’s grief was influenced by Emma’s death and the time machine came as a result. Some point to this unyielding point in the film to describe the idea of fate as the guiding principle of this world. This is the idea that everything happens for a reason, as preordained by some higher power. This is seemingly echoed by the Über-Morlock when he claims that he is an inescapable result of Alex. But this doesn’t appear to be the case.

Alex is able to change things about the future, just not this one moment in his past. After seeing a moment 635 million Millennia in the future where the Morlocks are fully in control of the planet, he makes the choice to end their timeline and save Mara in the process. This is not a mistake by the filmmakers, but a conscious choice of the way they perceive events. However, this is not as clear as it could be, with the explanation of Alex’s paradox being slightly subtle in its revelation.

The Final Frontier

How does that past influence the future? VOX mentions to Alex that he has information on The Time Machine, a film by George Pal or a musical by Andrew Lloyd Weber. In 2002, this was a funny moment, since Weber had not created a musical based on the HG Wells novel. But as of 2017, there is now a time machine musical (not by Weber, still). It may not be a popular or well known piece of theater, but yet it is something that exists. Another interesting tidbit about The Time Machine films is they were both helmed by Australian actors: Rod Taylor in 1960 and Guy Pearce in 2002. That was probably just a stroke of coincidence, rather than any sort of predestined moment. What was pre-decided was a cameo by Alan Young. He played Philby in the original film, and here he has a small part as the man who attempts to sell flowers to Alex while Emma is trampled just outside his window.

Neither version of The Time Machine is perfect. There are plenty of moments to take issue with in this remake. But there are a lot of interesting techniques learned from decades of other popular films that this 2002 version capitalizes on. By creating a story with more emotional connection for the protagonist, it allows the audiences to better connect with the character.

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