The Time Machine (2002)

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Fri, 2002-06-07 10:41

In the hope that this board is also about stuff like films and what people think about them:

I saw this at the pictures yesterday, and I would say that it is nothing like the 1960 film version, which I watched later on after feeling cheated by the latest version.

There is no Weena.

The Morlochs are too over the top, particularly the brain morloch.

80% of the film is stuck in Eloi land.

The Eloi in contrast to the 1960 version are not Midwich Cuckoos grown up, but escapees from last of the mohicans without the mohawk hair.

What absolutely infuriated me was that the time machine was only built for the most cliche time travel reason ever, and not for the reason given in the earlier version of the film.

The best sequence was the 2030 / 2037 interlude which I cannot repeat here for reasons of really spoiling the film.

The fundamental error of the film is that it lays a trail right at the beginning (viz the girl) but never ever follows up.

It makes the 1960 version look brilliant in terms of story line, characters and plot.

Fri, 2002-06-07 11:49

muzz

Yep a let down.

Fri, 2002-06-07 16:31

ely whitley

awwwwwww. That's a shame, I like guy pierce since Memento, I'll still watch it though

Fri, 2002-06-07 16:31

markbrown

It seems that the film and adaptation of 'The Time Machine' always miss out the most effecting part of the original book, the part where the time traveller travels to the end of earth time, where the sun is on it's last legs and all life is gone apart from a few unrecognisable life forms. The Morlochs and Eloi are interesting too, representing the working class (morlochs) and aristocracy (eloi). The Time Traveller hates both, the debased Morlochs tending machines that they no longer remember the purpose of, and the eloi who have slipped into decadence, letting all the books rot and the knowledge of history disappear. we aren't meant to be on the side of either, as both represent a worst case scenario. It's odd that this came so early in Wells career, because it seems to go against his socialist ideas as expressed later. I suppose that we are meant to see the need for a new kind of humanity which marries the two threads, knowledge and industry, as the Time Traveller does. There's a despair about 'The Time Machine' that didn't surface again until the end of Well's life, most famously in his essay 'Mind at the End of it's Tether. I suppose we're meant to believe in the Time Traveller as fair and decent technocrat. Doesn't sound like much of an adventure when you put it like that...

Fri, 2002-06-07 21:09

iceman

In 2030, (he looks carefully about him in case there are some who have not seen the film yet...) Alex meets a girl with a bike. She looks very similar to his dead fiancee. I had hoped that he would find Weena in Eloi land and she would look just like his former girlfriend, and yet, would that be too naff a plot turn? Alex seemed to quickly go modern when he arrived in Eloi land, surely a Victorian would have had some very conservative ideas about people's dress, manners and demeanour. I think it's important that characters stay in character. Or at least try to. Would he really have blown up his time machine when all he had to do was free Mara and escape?

Fri, 2002-06-07 10:46

Ari

I'm quite eager to see the new film, although I've been told that it's stuffed full of references to other great sci-fi films and series, like Star Trek, which worries me. I've never seen the original version, so I'll be able to see it with unprejudiced eyes. Iceman - you can talk about whatever you like here. Everyone else does!

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