Originally released March 8, 2002:

The Time Machine is one of the most famous works of fiction in history. It was writen long long ago by the great H.G. Wells. It presents a fantasy glimpse into our future, but in it Wells also gave readers the opportunity to ponder what would happen if they could go back and change their own lives. People have used the story as a cautionary allegory to our own times, like the 1960 film version of The Time Machine. Now, a bigger budget Hollywood remake attempts to put another spin on the Wells classic.

Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce) is an absent-minded professor interested in cracking down the physics of time. He’s chided by some of his peers for crackpot theories and his fascination with any new gadget. He’s supposed to meet Emma (Sienna Guillory) at Central Park and tonight’s the big night he plans to propose to her. He eventually catches up to Emma and the two go strolling off into the park. Shortly after popping the question the two become victims of a mugging and in the fray Emma is left dead. The death drives Alex to create his fanciful time machine, which only happens to take four years time.

Alex gives his big brass LA-Z-Boy looking machine a try and travels back to that fateful night to avoid Emma’s death. Alex avoids the mugger all right, but while purchasing flowers his fiancé gets plowed over by a runaway carriage instead. It seems that one cannot change the past. Alex decides to give the future a chance and travels to a very Back to the Future 2 looking 2037. Someone astutely asks Alex if his time traveling machine makes a good cappuccino.

When Alex hops a little further into the future the moon is breaking up because of ill-fated lunar construction. Moon rocks are hurtling toward the surface and disrupting everyone’s day. (It was in this moment that a scene of rocks smashing into the World Trade Center was cut for taste) Alex jumps back into his machine but is konked out by some lunar cheese and falls asleep at the wheel. The next thing you know Alex is in a mysterious future world.

The place where The Time Machine really bogs down is once Alex arrives in 80,000 something or other. The child-like thrills and adventure of Alex zipping between the past and near future are buried underneath the standard post-apocalyptic movie world. The people dress in loin cloths and rags (though some of the female natives wear revealing tops that look like see-through chain mail) but still have perfect teeth. When Alex doesn’t understand the linguistics of 80,000 AD the next words that he hears are English from Mara (pop star Samantha Mumba). It’s amazing that English survived 81,000 years when Latin didn’t last a mere 2,000 and change.

It turns out these people who live in huts resembling hot air balloons along the faces of cliffs are called Eloi. The Eloi don’t have anyone looking old enough to carry an AARP membership and are apprehensive to speak of why. Perhaps it’s because creatures resembling something that would belong in The Mummy Returns pop up from the sand to capture whatever slow moving prey they can and return to for an underground feast.

The creatures, called Morlocks, are the offshoots of evolution. Seems after the whole moon destruction thing (whoops!) those who took refuge below the surface have evolved into dusty hunchbacked cannibals. Their rowdy ranks are controlled by Uber-Morlock (I’m not making up that name) who resembles an albino bassist for Poison or Skid Row. It’s actually acclaimed actor Jeremy Irons under all that pancake makeup and fleshy spine-showing prosthetic. The less said about Irons the better.

It’s during this part that The Time Machine reverts into a half-baked Stargate. Alex encourages the Eloi race to stand up to their oppressors and fight for their freedom. He becomes part of the Eloi community, rallies the troops into rebellion, and also has to save the damsel in distress.

The Time Machine remake isn’t the political statement the 1960 film was on man’s folly with technology, particularly nuclear weapons. What this suped-up version is all about is special effects and plenty of them. The effects are for the most part dazzling, especially the scene where Alex travels to 2037 and we see the development of New York City with skyscrapers assembling themselves.

Simon Wells (The Prince of Egypt) directed this remake and is actually the great-grandson of the famous adventure’s author, H. G. Wells. Trivial Pursuit fans everywhere rejoice. Wells had to sit out the last 18 days of shooting due to “exhaustion” and Gore Verbinsky came off the bench to finish the directorial duties. The film clocks in at a scant 90 minutes but there are definite moments of drag.

Pearce (Memento) is a hunky hero and for the most part is admirably gung-ho with the role. Samantha Mumba’s motivation must have been to stand and look pretty the entire film. To think that Mumba might be the most talented of the recent singers-come-actors (Mandy Moore and Britney Spears) is a distressing thought all its own.

As The Time Machine kept dragging into its Mumba-filled period, I began day dreaming of an alternate, darkly comic version. In my head, Pearce’s character keeps traveling back again and again to save his beloved only to lose her a different way each time. I could picture a humorous montage of his girlfriend dying an assortment of colorful deaths and Pearce just getting more frustrated and jaded. I could picture them skating only to have her plunge below the ice. I could picture the couple dining at a fine restaurant only to have her choke and Pearce just throw his napkin onto the table and sigh loudly. I was enjoying my alternate take on The Time Machine so much that I didn’t want to return to the one that was playing.

The Time Machine has its moments of thrills and excitement but they are mostly condensed to the opening third. This remake doesn’t have the political edge or wow-factor the original did. It plays more to the rules of conventional Hollywood than the wide open possibilities Wells wrote about. Pearce tries valiantly and the special effects are really something, but more often than not The Time Machine is not worth your time.

Nate’s Grade: C

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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER

The 2002 Time Machine is fanciful schlock on the verge of being populist spectacle. It’s not just another adaptation of the famous H.G. Wells sci-fi novel, it’s also emerging from the shadow of the 1960 movie that broke ground in the realm of special effects. Storytellers will often find new relevant meaning to be mined from the resources of old, and literature with classic stories can still be compelling decades and centuries hence as long as they are served with care and empathy. In theory, another Time Machine movie could be a worthy venture especially in a realm of modern special effects marvels and a more socially conscious viewpoint. If the 1960 film was a cautionary tale about mankind’s impending doom from nuclear arms and technological hubris, you would think a movie born from the ashes of the Cold War would follow a different approach, perhaps something more in line with the colonialism critiques from Wells. It’s surprising then that the 2002 movie also follows the “be careful with your machines, mankind” thematic warning of the earlier version. It made me think of Tim Burton’s maligned 2001 Planet of the Apes remake where they could have gone with ANY ending possible except one, the original’s famous twist ending, one of the most famous endings ever, and what did the new movie do? The same ending. Re-watching the 2002 Time Machine, it’s more fun than it has any right to be and there are aspects worth celebrating, but much like its hero, it’s a victim of unmet potential.

Firstly, this is a pretty entertaining studio movie that blows by quickly at only 96 minutes. The screenplay is by John Logan, the same writer with credits like Gladiator, The Aviator, Rango, Hugo, Skyfall, and other quite successful, quite large studio hits. And yet this movie doesn’t just feel like another paycheck for the man. The opening half of this relatively brief movie definitely feels like the favorite half. It’s here where the movie introduces the protagonist’s personal loss being the motivating force that drives him to make a time machine, something absent from the 1960 original and an exciting and emotional way to separate itself. Watching Alexander (Guy Pearce) go back to save his love has an immediate appeal, and watching him fail again brings forth the idea of being unable to change the past. Even twenty years later, I still think about the darkly comic version of this story, just as I did in my initial review in 2002, where Alexander tries again and again to save his beloved only to lose her to some new calamity. It would have a lighter approach even while dealing with darker humor, and it would certainly contribute to the film’s central thesis that man is unable to change the miscues of the past.

You would think The Time Machine would follow a theme about correcting the mistakes of the past to prevent future danger; many time travel tales follow a hero trying to thwart a terrible future, although sometimes they inadvertently cause that same terrible future in grand ironic tradition. This movie doesn’t really dwell on fixing the past but more so upon learning from it. During its post-apocalyptic second half, the focus isn’t on preventing it or going back to warn mankind of the folly of its ways. It’s about adapting to change, which can be viewed as defeatist or pragmatic. The future world of 800,000 years ahead is messed up because of the actions of mankind’s past, namely the lunar collision thanks to bad condo construction (thanks, capitalism!). It’s none too difficult to place a general ecological/climate change message in place, the exploitation of the present spoiling the future for generations yet to come. However, the movie isn’t about Alexander going back to teach mankind how to avoid its own mistakes. Unlike the 1960 original, he stays put in this uncertain future world with his new Eloi family and Eloi girlfriend (Samantha Mumba). He’s content to remain in this new time and live his life, ignoring the foresight of a time machine. There’s a message there about looking ahead in one’s life, not dwelling on the past at the expense of the future, but it’s also unexpected for a time travel action adventure. It’s usually about preventing the horrible future, not learning to live with it and make a better tomorrow. This also could be read as the present giving up on avoiding the mistakes of contemporary excess.

You can probably tell what kind of person that you are depending upon which half of The Time Machine you prefer. For me, the first half has all the surprises and time jumping and fun, and the second half settles into standard post-apocalyptic rally-the-masses formula. It’s not bad but it honestly feels like an entire second act is missing from the development of the plot. In quick succession, Alexander learns he’s in a far-flung future, the customs of the Eloi, the danger of the Morlocks, their hunting practices, their cannibalistic impulses, what caused them, and then who their leader is, and how there are multiple Eloi-Morlock colonies throughout the world. It’s a lot of absurdly fast exposition that just unfolds to the convenience of our hero, and so little of it occurs from the virtual A.I. figure (Orlando Jones) that seems entirely designed to be an exposition device. It’s during the second half that the playfulness and ideas give way to a grungy future with efficient if unspectacular chase scenes from monsters. I am convinced that the Morlock leader played by Jeremy Irons was originally intended to be the older, more evolved, and more callous ends-justify-the-means version of Alexander. That kind of twist would have brought things back to the personal realm of those first minutes traveling through time. Alas, he’s just another monster with bad hair. It seems like wasted potential for the last twenty minutes of this movie to just be another climax involving blowing up the monsters and rescuing the damsel.

Apparently there was significant contention behind the scenes over the look of the Morlocks. The creatures were designed by the famous Stan Winston studios and then director Simon Wells and the producers wanted to change their look, making them more humanoid and recognizable. This infuriated the effects team who strongly disapproved of this creative direction. I appreciate that the production went to the trouble of expensive prosthetics and costumes rather than just making all of the Morlocks ugly CGI monstrosities. I was worried that twenty-year-old humanoid CGI would not age well, but thankfully I didn’t have to bother with that fear.

This was the first live-action movie for Wells as director. He spent over a decade in the world of animation and helmed An American Tale: Fievel Goes West, Balto, and The Prince of Egypt. After the mediocre reception to The Time Machine, Wells didn’t direct another movie until almost ten years later, 2011’s Mars Needs Moms, a film that reportedly cost the studio over $200 million in losses. It was one of the biggest box-office bombs ever. It’s not much of a surprise then that Wells hasn’t been able to direct another studio movie until just this year, and even that is a small-scale adaptation of a children’s TV show, to the best of my knowledge. The man has directed two movies in the last two decades. On a more fortunate note, Wells has had steady work in his old field of animation as a consultant and storyboard artist for just about every Dreamworks cartoon (Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, The Croods, etc).

Re-reading my old review, there’s not much more to extrapolate. I agree with just about every word I wrote back in 2002. It’s fun for me when I watch these films twenty years later and have the same remarks in my head only to discover my younger self had the exact same response.

While not breaking new ground or even attaining its own creative potential, the 2002 Time Machine is a perfectly reasonable genre movie that you could put on and kill 90 minutes. It’s relatively fun, has some bigger ideas, and some surprising moments where it appears on the verge of poignancy. One of those is when the A.I., who has survived 800,000 years of isolation, talks about the misery of remembering every face he ever interacted with, cataloging every detail, and how this is tearing him apart and how valued having a lone friend was for him. It’s such a thoughtful and empathetic moment that seems to come out of nowhere and leave just as fast before you can really dig into it for genuine pathos. The Time Machine feels this way, like whenever it presents something intriguing, intelligent, or emotive, it then it has to veer sharply back to the bigger, dumber lane of blockbuster filmmaking for the masses.

Re-View Grade: C+