The Time Machine (2002 film)
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| The Time Machine | |
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 Promotional poster for The Time Machine |
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| Directed by | Simon Wells |
| Produced by | Walter F. Parkes David Valdes |
| Written by | H. G. Wells (novel) David Duncan (earlier screenplay) John Logan (screenplay) |
| Starring | Guy Pearce Jeremy Irons Orlando Jones Samantha Mumba Mark Addy Phyllida Law Sienna Guillory |
| Music by | Klaus Badelt |
| Editing by | Wayne Wahrman |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | March 8, 2002 |
| Running time | 96 min |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The Time Machine is a 2002 science fiction film directed by Simon Wells as a remake of The Time Machine (1960), and starring Guy Pearce, Jeremy Irons, Orlando Jones, Samantha Mumba, Mark Addy, Sienna Guillory, and Phyllida Law with a cameo by Alan Young from the earlier film. Like the original film, this movie is loosely based on the 1895 novel The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, however without the (social) moral of the story in the original novel.
Tagline: Where would you go?
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[edit] Plot
Alexander Hartdegen is a young scientist who lives in late 19th century New York City. Obsessed with the idea of time travel and convinced that it is theoretically possible, he teaches at Columbia University as a professor of "Applied Mechanics and Engineering" and often gets into trouble for his free-thinking, radical theories (it is also stated that he was a pen pal of Albert Einstein). As Alexander rushes to the park to meet with his girlfriend Emma, he pauses to buy flowers; however, this notion is soon lost when he becomes embroiled and excited about an early motor car which has pulled up beside the park gates. He puts himself in immediate good fortune with the driver who, while refueling, forgot to activate the parking brake – something Alexander does quickly when it threatens to shoot off, out of control.
Forgetting the flowers, he travels on and meets Emma at the skating rink; they talk and walk through the park for several minutes until they pause in a small clearing where Alexander proposes to Emma. However, the romantic moment is short-lived: a robber emerges from nearby bushes and holds a gun on them, stealing Alexander's gloves and pocket watch. As the thug attempts to take Emma's engagement ring, Alexander tries to intervene; during the struggle, the gun goes off and Emma is fatally wounded, dying in Alexander's arms as the robber flees. For the next four years, Alexander spends every waking hour in his laboratory working on his time travel calculations. Eventually, he succeeds in building a working time machine.
His self-imposed exile has led to him being ostracised from his oldest friend David Philby, who eventually arrives at the lab to confront Alexander who in turn flies into a rage. Philby invites Alexander to dinner in a week's time in the hope it would cause him to leave the lab and eventually return to a normal life; after Philby has left Alexander remarks that in a week they "wouldn't have had this conversation".
With the time machine finished, he is ready to travel into the past. Having smartened his appearance, he travels back to that night four years ago and intercepts with Emma before she was destined to meet his 1899 counterpart. Escorting her away from the park, they journey into the city where he leaves her out in the street to purchase some flowers. However, despite Alexander having removed her from the danger of the robber, Emma is knocked down and killed by a horse and carriage. The bitter irony is that the horses were spooked by the early motor car that Alexander had stopped the first time he'd encountered it.
Alexander realises bitterly that if he prevents one means of Emma's death, another will take its place; she is destined to die no matter what he does. Disenchanted with the prospect, he decides to go forward in time to find out if there are any answers to this problem in the future.
Alexander stops on May 24th 2030 and learns that the Moon is being prepared for colonization. He visits the New York Public Library where he talks with Vox, the library's holographic, artificially intelligent librarian. When posed the question of time travel and later its practical applications, Alexander is given information on H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov and even one of his own papers, but the library does not have any information on time travel theory; Vox states that such a thing is impossible.
Frustrated, Alexander asks about the time machine itself and is given information on H.G. Wells's novel The Time Machine and the 1960 movie adaptation by George Pal, as well as a stage production by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Finding nothing of use, Alexander moves on to the future, until he hit a 'bump' seven years into the future at August 26th 2037, where he finds the Moon mining operation has disrupted the lunar orbit. As a result, the Moon is breaking apart and showering Earth with massive chunks of rock. His presence outside of a shelter leads to an attempt by two military personnel to arrest him, but after they draw his attention to the shattered Moon and give him a brief explanation behind its present state, there is a scuffle and he escapes. He makes it into the time machine just as the city is being destroyed, but is knocked out and fails to witness the catastrophic destruction of human civilization. Alexander and his time machine speed through hundreds of millennia, with the landscape ever changing and evolving.
Regaining consciousness, Alexander brings the machine to a halt on July 16th, 802,701 AD, and finds that human civilization has devolved to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Calling themselves the Eloi, these survivors have built their homes into the side of a cliff above an ocean inlet. Alexander begins to develop a relationship with a woman named Mara, one of few who recall some of the Time Traveler's now obsolete language. He also realizes the Moon is no longer what it once was; it is now several large pieces of rock suspended in orbit.
As Alexander is introduced to Eloi society, he is shown a collection of stone fragments and signs from what was once New York – including a sign from Tiffany and Co, the Empire State Building and a section of tiled panels from Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall Subway Station.
While Alex is inspecting the machine after seeing an Eloi memorial for their parents, Mara tells him to go back to his own time and take her younger brother Kalen with him. Suddenly, the Eloi are attacked by Morlocks, monstrous, pale, and hairless ape-like creatures that hunt the Eloi for food. The Morlocks capture Mara and carry her off. Trying to find out where she has been taken, Alexander is told that "the Ghost" might know. As it turns out, the Eloi are speaking about Vox, the holographic librarian that Alexander talked to before the destruction of the Moon, who is still functioning after all these years where the New York Public Library once stood.
With Vox's help, Alexander finds a way into the underground realm of the Morlocks. He discovers that they have a caste-like society, with each caste (nearly a different species in itself) fulfilling a different role in Morlock society. The ruling caste of this society are super-intelligent telepaths. Eventually, Alexander is captured by the Morlocks who take him to an underground chamber where Mara is kept in a cage, and where the Morlocks' leader, the Über-Morlock, is waiting. Attempting to explain his actions, the Über-Morlock reasons that he and his people are not mischievous; they are simply the result of millennia of evolution. He also indicates that there are other clans similar to his, each ruled by a different psychic overlord.
The Über-Morlock then reveals the reason why Alexander cannot alter Emma's fate: he is caught in a temporal paradox. Since Emma's death was the prime factor that drove him to build the time machine, he cannot use the machine without her death being incorporated into the timeline. The Über-Morlock also states that the Morlocks would not exist without Alexander, but doesn't explain why. This is possibly a reference to men like Alexander as a whole, as opposed to Alexander as an individual, implying that humans' advancing technology caused the fall of the moon and the resulting evolution of Morlocks.
Alexander learns that the Morlocks were people who chose to stay underground after the Moon collapsed and the Eloi were those who chose to brave the fallout. His time machine has been found by the Morlocks and taken underground. To escape, Alexander jumps into the machine and sends it hurtling forward in time, taking the Über-Morlock with him. The two of them fight until Alexander pushes him outside of the time sphere. He watches as the Über-Morlock ages and dies outside of the time bubble, while still clinging to the time machine.
Still rapidly moving forward through time, Alexander slows the machine as the sky appears overhead. He has traveled to the year 635,427,810 AD, and the landscape is now a desolate wasteland, completely dominated by the Morlocks.
Finally accepting that he can never save Emma, Alexander travels back in time to rescue the trapped Mara. After setting her free and before escaping, he set the time machine to travel to the future and uses his pocket watch to jam the controls, causing it to malfunction and explode, creating a time distortion stream. The explosion results in the death of the entire Morlock race; the time distortion aging the race to extinction.
As he is now trapped in the future, Alexander resolves to build a new life for himself with Mara, and with the help of Vox, he begins to rebuild the human civilization along with the Eloi. He shows Mara and Kalen the spot where his laboratory used to stand. This closing scene is shown side by side with a sequence in the year 1903, where David Philby chats with Alexander's elderly housekeeper, Mrs. Watchit, before leaving and throwing away his bowler hat as a small tribute to a conversation they had had before the accident, wherein Alexander had wanted his students to be free thinkers and to "knock off every bowler they saw."
[edit] Cast
(in order of appearance)
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with:
- Richard Cetrone, Eddie Conna, Christopher Sayour, Jeremy Fitzgerald, Craig Davis, Grady Holder, Bryan Friday, Clint Lilley, Mark Kubr, Jeff Podgurski, Dan McCann, Bryon Weiss, Steve Upton .... Hunter Morlocks
- Doug Jones, Joey Anaya, Jacob Chambers, Dorian Kingi, Kevin McTurk .... Spy Morlocks
- Michael Chaturantabut, Jonathan Eusebio, Roel Failma, Yoshio Iizuka, Diana Lee Inosanto, Malaea Chona Jason, Hiro Koda, John Koyama, Gail Monian, R.C. Ormond, Maro Uo Richmond, Petra Sprecher, Gary Toy, Jonathan Valera .... Eloi
[edit] Deleted scenes
- A scene was removed from the opening of the film, showing a practical experiment by Alexander Hartdegen explaining thermals; the scene led to a brief conversation between Hartdegen and the Dean of Columbia University. Evidence of the removed scene can be seen in cast members looking directly at the camera (originally intended to represent the point of view of the Dean) and a collection of coats left in Hartdegen's classroom.
- A scene that was scripted, but abandoned as it was considered inappropriate in light of the recent events of September 11th 2001, was to have shown sections of the shattered moon crashing into the futuristic skyscrapers of 2037 New York City.
[edit] Alternate sequences
A selection of scenes and sequences are shown in the trailers to have notable differences from those seen in the final film. These include:
- An alternate cloud pattern and fewer futuristic skyscrapers in the establishing pan sequence of the 2030 New York Public Library.
- Alternate identification and menu graphics appear on the transparent display screens of the Vox hologram system within the library.
- A possible 'alternate future' depicts Hartdegen and the time machine, standing on a hillside before a futuristic settlement, set within the changed landscape of what was once New York. This could suggest that an alternate ending or series of events was planned to show that the Eloi would regain an 'ambition for the future'. If this was intended as the 'positive' future for the Eloi compared to one where they are overruled by the Morlocks, then Hartdegen witnessing and visiting it with the time machine contradicts the sequence in the film where he destroys it to defeat the Morlocks. It is possible, however, that this was intended to 'tease' the audience with the stereotypical idea of a futuristic landscape.
[edit] Trivia
- Director Simon Wells is actually the great-grandson of H. G. Wells, who wrote the original novel.
- A picture of H.G. Wells can be seen in the hallway of Alexander's house near the end of the movie in the background.
- Vassar College doubled as 19th century Columbia University.
- The scene depicting the dress shop references a similar scene in the 1960 Time Machine motion picture.
- Mark Addy's character, David Philby, directly references the character of the same name, – as played by Alan Young – from the 1960 motion picture, who also owned the clothes shop seen in the 1960 time travel sequence.
- Another direct reference to the 1960 motion picture is the name of Alexander's housekeeper, Mrs. Watchit (Phyllida Law); a variation on the spelling of Mrs. Watchett, as played by Doris Lloyd in the 1960 motion picture.
- Alan Young, who played David Philby in the original motion picture, makes a cameo appearance as the flower shop worker.
- After making the famous hand signal associated with the Vulcans, and quoting the line "Live long, and prosper", Vox (Orlando Jones) exits the hologramatic display to the sound effect of the Starship Enterprise doors from the original series of Star Trek.
- An initial plan was to have Vox be a robot instead of a computer-generated hologram.
- Additional music was provided by Alan Zachary (song "There's a Place Called Tomorrow"), Maude Jerome (song "Sweet Rosie O'Grady") and Geoff Zanelli.
- Guy Pearce and Samantha Mumba expressed dissatisfaction over a final shot in the film that shows their characters holding hands, a suggestion of romance. They both strongly expressed that the hands were not theirs, but were of other actors who were filmed in post-production because producers felt audiences wanted indication that the two fell in love.
- The destroyed Moon is shown as still being in separate pieces after over 800,000 years; in reality, after such a span of time the fragments would have either been pulled together to form a new Moon (if outside the Roche limit) or broken up further to form a planetary ring (if within the Roche limit).
- The wooden chair of Alexander's time machine is a nearly exact copy of that used for George's time machine in the 1960 film.
