The Time Machine (2002 film)
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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 based on the 1895 novel The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.
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 and often gets into trouble for his free-thinking, radical theories (it is also stated that he often wrote to Albert Einstein). One night, after Alexander proposes to his girlfriend, Emma, a mugger attempts to take her engagement ring and she is shot to death in the struggle. 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.Finally ready, Alexander goes back in time to prevent Emma's murder, being careful to avoid meeting himself and encountering the mugger. He escorts her home only to have her run over by a horse-drawn carriage. After many attempts, Alexander realizes that every time he goes back in time to prevent Emma's death, she will die in a different way. He decides to go forward in time to find out if there are any answers to this problem in the future.
Alexander stops in the year 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. Vox has information on H. G. Wells' novel The Time Machine (and the adaptation by George Pal), but does not have any information on time travel theory, stating that it is impossible. Finding nothing of use, Alexander moves on another seven years 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. After a brief struggle with military personnel, he makes it into the time machine, 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 in the year 802,701 AD, and finds that human civilization has degraded 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 Traveller's obsolete language.
While they are out foraging for food, 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.
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 is waiting. Attempting to explain his actions, the Über-Morlock, the leader of the Morlocks, reasons that he and his people are not evil; 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.
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.
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 uses his pocket watch to jam the time machine, causing it to malfunction and explode. The explosion results in the death of the entire Morlock race.
Realizing 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 Eloi civilization. He shows Mara where his laboratory used to stand. The scene morphs into the year 1904, Alexander's original time, where Alexander's friend, David Philby, chats with the housekeeper before leaving and throwing away his bowler hat.
Trivia
- Director Simon Wells is actually the great-grandson of H. G. Wells, who wrote the original novel.
External links
- [}}}] at Rotten Tomatoes
- [}}}] at Box Office Mojo
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