Cain S. Latrani

I am a huge fan of H. G. Wells. As in, I have his greatest works in a collected leather bound edition kind of fan. I think I’ve read almost, if not everything he ever wrote before I even turned sixteen.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say he was an influence on me as a writer, as I deal largely in fantasy over science fiction, but there were a lot of things he did in his work that I think I learned from, and in some ways, do attempt to emulate in some of my own stuff.

For example, in War of the Worlds, he keeps the focus of the narrative on a single character, something I often do as well. While I rarely write in first person, there’s a certain fun to be had in keeping the narrative tightly focused, and allowing events to transpire out of the protagonists, and thus the readers sight.

My introduction to Wells work came with a double feature during my childhood of the 1953 War of the Worlds movie, and the 1960 version of The Time Machine. I forget now just how this particular double feature came to pass, but I remember being mesmerized, and slightly terrified, which naturally sparked an intense curiosity about the original works upon which these movies were based.

This lead to me reading anything I could get my hands on by Wells, and a deeper appreciation for science fiction, which at that point, was pretty limited to reruns of Star Trek, and frankly, I think we all know the third season of the Original Series was kind of crap. I mean, Spock’s Brain. Come on.

That was crap.

Of course, this fascination continued for many years, and I was a huge fan of the really awful 1990 War of the Worlds tv series, that was a continuation of the 1953 film. Terrible that it was, I watched every damn episode, including the ones that made not a lick of damn sense.

Was still better than that 2005 version from Spielberg, though. That thing made less than no sense.

Now, time travel has become a staple of science fiction since then, and we’ve had everything from police boxes, to DeLoreans skipping about time. So, what makes the concept of Wells Time Machine so enduring?

Steampunk. The answer is Steampunk.

Okay, fine, it’s actually the whole concept of the story, but we all know it’s really Steampunk.

The Time Machine is a 2002 feature film from Dreamworks, Warner Bros, and Parkes/MacDonald, that tries to take both the original 1895 novel, and the 1960 film, and give them a more relatable twist.

This sort of succeeds, but sort of doesn’t.

Set in 1899, at first, the story follows Dr. Alexander Hartdegen, a teacher at Columbia University in New York, known for his wacky inventions, and love of pure science, over business related innovations. He’s also absent minded, just so we get the idea that he’s a goofy science nerd.

Despite being a goofy science nerd who makes wacky inventions, Alexander has a super hot girlfriend named Emma, who thinks he’s adorable. Despite being a complete goober, Alex does get that he’s lucky, and proposes to Emma, who eagerly accepts.

Then she gets shot, like two minutes later, by a mugger.

It’s very sad, I think. I mean, I get that Alex is pretty bummed, but we got like ten minutes with Emma, and outside her being hot, and Alex’s girlfriend, we don’t really know much about her, so… yeah.

Anyway, Alex is bummed, so I guess that means she was cool and stuff. In fact, he’s so bummed he spends the next four years locked in his lab at home, building the time machine of the film’s title, so he can go back and save her. His best friend Philby is a little worried, as Alex pretty much looks like he’s gone bonkers.

Except he hasn’t. He really has invented a time machine, and he does go back, and he does save Emma. Who then dies a few minutes later, because causality hates a paradox.

Okay, this is basic Back to the Future stuff here, guys. Alex can’t save Emma, because if she lives, he has no reason to build a time machine, so he can save her, which means he wont save her, and she’ll die, which means he’ll build a time machine, and round and round we go.

Despite being smart enough to build a steampunk time machine, Alex can’t figure this out. So, he goes into the future to see if science ever solves this problem, and soon finds himself visiting the year 2030, which looks pretty high tech, and full of bicycles. And luxury resorts on the moon.

Alex decides to visit the library, like ya do in the future, and meets a holographic librarian, who figures out pretty quick that Alex is an idiot, and shoos him away. While I love Orlando Jones in this role immensely, I can’t help feeling that the movie missed a fun opportunity to cast Robert Picardo in this role.

Probably just me.

Anyway, Alex hops forward a little more, and finds the Moon is breaking up from an over-saturation of luxury living, and the Earth is immanent danger of being smashed by giant moon rocks. Kinds like what happened in the Umbrella Academy, only cause of lazy rich people instead of half assed superheroes.

Alex gets knocked around a bit as he hops back aboard his time machine, and falls unconscious from the resulting catastrophe, making him fall on the control lever, and catapulting him forward in time to the early eight thousands.

He’s really after them frequent flyer miles.

He comes to long enough to stop the time machine, but then goes back to nap nap land, cause he’s got a concussion. When he wakes up, he’s in the care of some very pretty people called the Eloi, who just so happen to be able to speak English, despite that language having been dead for a few thousand years.

There’s also some awkward Native American stuff here. We’ll just gloss right over that, though, cause… yeah.

Alex is very taken with the nice Eloi woman who is caring for him, named Mara, despite being in grief over the death of Emma, but hey, she’s been gone for thousands of years, and a guy needs to move on when a new hot chick shows up, ya know?

All is not paradise in the far future, however, as there exists another race of humans living below the ground, called Morlocks, and guess what they eat? If you said Eloi, then you’ve probably read the novel, or seem either of the movies at some point in your life. Or run across this in some episode of Futurama, or know about Solient Green, or any of the many ways this particular plot twist has been borrowed in science fiction since Wells casually dropped cannibalism on late 19th century readers.

Then Mara gets taken, and somehow goofy absent minded inventor of wacky science gadgets Alex turns into a full blown action hero, with Solid Snake levels of stealth. I mean, really, if he had a cardboard box, he probably could have kicked even more ass than he already does.

Alex slips into the Morlock lair, finds Mara, and meets the Morlock Leader, albino Jeremy Irons, who explains the obvious nature of temporal paradoxes to him, and then politely sends him on his way. Like ya do when you’re a polite cannibal.

Alex ain’t having none of that, though. Not now that his blood has gotten all angried up by some two fisted action. He kills the Morlock leader with TIME MAGIC, saves Mara, and blows all the Morlocks to oblivion by sacrificing his time machine… somehow?

Look, never mind that. Alex is over Emma, has a new hotty, and committed genocide. Heroically.

Think we can all agree that makes it totally okay.

With the plot out of the way, let’s look at what works, and what doesn’t.

First off, the changes made to the main character from both the original novel and the classic film do make some sense. In the old versions, the lead created his time machine purely out of scientific interest. Here, it’s to save the arm candy he loves.

I mean, yeah, if I could have a time machine, I’d totally save the woman I love, so I get it, and it does make him a somewhat more relatable character. Right up until he meets another hot chick, and totally forgets why he invented the time machine in the first place, cause new nookie is always better.

Yeah, okay, he’s actually had four years to deal with his lose and grief, and was probably more ready to move on than even he thought. The idea of saving Emma became an obsession at some point, rather than a practical idea. Odds are, Alex himself knew he couldn’t actually do it, but focusing on trying kept her alive in some way for him.

By the time Mara came along, some few thousand years alter, he was ready to try love again.

Okay, there’s no way I can really make this viable. Dude straight up jumped on the next hot piece of tail that came along. It undercuts the emotional angle of the movie rather badly, and doesn’t exactly make Alex out to be the most noble of characters.

Still, the initial reason for him making the time machine, and his attempt to save Emma, are good drama, and solid fiction. It’s when he gets to the distant future that everything kinds gets wonky. Not just in how his personality suddenly changes from fumbling nerd to action hero, but in how he’s straight up over Emma, and onto Mara.

So, the alteration to the main character works for part of the movie, and doesn’t for the rest.

Alex’s visit to 2030 is pretty cool, or at least, was back in 2002. With 2030 only ten years away now, it’s a lot more fantastical than it was seventeen years ago. I mean, we’re nowhere near having Orlando Jones being the snarky holographic librarian we all love to annoy. Nor are we anywhere near luxury moon living.

However, I will call the break up of the moon to be a sufficiently impressive catastrophe to cause all the devastation and reset of humanity that the second half of the movie needs. I mean, if the moon did break up like it does in this, we’d all be pretty well boned, no matter what Assassination Classroom would have us believe about a giant octopus teaching us to believe in ourselves.

Also, I would totally eat all of you to live. I’d feel bad about it, but I’d do it.

This may be why nobody ever invites me skiing.

Another major change from the novel and classic film is the Morlock leader. A powerful psychic who controls the rest of the Morlocks to keep them from rampaging about unchecked, it’s an interesting twist, that only really works cause it’s Jeremy Irons giving the truly evil monster a sense of calm objective honesty. Also, he’s super polite.

Like, British polite. It’s very menacing.

It’s also a complete waste of Jeremy Irons, cause the character literally only exists for a single scene, then has an absurd fight sequence aboard the running time machine, before getting rapidly aged and turning to dust.

The concept of the character is interesting, and Irons does a fantastic job of giving him menace, and gravitas, but ultimately it’s an idea that doesn’t really do anything, or go anywhere, and a waste of a really amazing actor.

Speaking of wasted talent, Sienna Guillory is utterly wasted in the role of Emma, who basically gets to be breathless, then dead. Granted, this was one of her earlier roles, but still. She’s actually really talented, and this was just not a role that lived up to her skill. That said, she does manage to make us like Emma in her entire ten minutes of screen time, so that’s something.

Less wasted is Guy Peace as Alex, who gets to be both fumbling and absent minded, as well as hard boiled and a two fisted man of action. How he makes that leap is kind of hard to follow, as it makes no sense at all, but Peace is a good enough actor that you are pretty willing to roll with it, and he does make Alex a much more compelling character than the script would otherwise achieve.

Samantha Mumba stars as Mara, and despite this being her first film role, the Irish singer and songwriter does one hell of a good job making us all fall in love with her. And not just because of that see through shirt she wore.

Okay, that helped, but still.

Actually, it’s because Mumba made Mara a really great character, with tons of sass, humor, and emotion. She emotes incredibly well, and really, was just amazing. You wouldn’t know this was her first film role, because she did that good of a job.

Mark Addy also appears as Alex’s friend Philby, though it’s a small role, and if your trying to figure out where you know his name from, go watch A Knight’s Tale again.

Orlando Jones was the best, though. Really. I love him. He makes me happy.

Yes, yes, I know he’s had a lot of controversy. I don’t care. He’s a funny dude.

The movie was directed by Simon Wells, the great grandson of H. G. Wells, and no that was not just a publicity stunt. Simon Wells also directed An American Tail: Fivel Goes West, We’re Back: A Dinosaur Story, Balto, The Prince of Egypt, ad Mars Needs Moms.

Okay, it was a publicity stunt, and the movie was actually directed by Gore Verbinski, who went unaccredited for the sake of the publicity stunt.

Overall, the movie is pretty well directed. Visually, anyway. It’s a very pretty movie to look at. Some of the special effects haven’t aged very well, and weren’t really that impressive at the time, but in general, it’s competently directed, and delivers the story it wants to tell more or less decently.

Mostly less. At least in the second half. The first half is really good, though.

Honestly, I’m not giving Simon the credit he deserves here. He was the animation supervisor on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the action sequence supervisor on Kung Fu Panda, as well as being a story artist on a number of animated films such as Madagascar, and The Road to El Dorado.

He’s a perfectly capable director, as well, and I kind of wonder what this movie would have been had he actually been allowed to direct it, instead of being the publicity stunt director.

Th script was from John Logon, who was the screenwriter for movies like Gladiator, Star Trek: Nemesis, The Last Samurai, The Aviator, Hugo, Skyfall, Spectre, and Alien: Covenant.

Kind of a mixed bag there. I mean, some of those are great, but some of them are Star Trek: Nemesis. Others are Alien: Covenant. Those are pretty bad movies, with utterly nonsense plots.

To be fair, that’s not really Logon’s fault as a lot of what made those movies terrible was constraints put in by actors and directors. Gladiator, The Aviator, and Skyfall are all really good movies, with really good scripts, so I think Logon has been more the victim of interference than he is a hit and miss writer.

That said, the sudden transition in this movie from thoughtful science fiction to action story is kind of faithful to the original novel, but is also kind of not, as the main character of the novel, and classic film, is never presented as an absent minded goofball before becoming a man of action. He’s more presented as both a scientist, and heroic figure from the start.

Here, the scientist part is saddled with a lot of stereotypes that keep the later action part from being believable. Had they not done that, the whole character arc probably would have made more sense, and to me, it smacks of studio interference more than poor writing on Logon’s part.

The music is from Klaus Badlet, who I have raved about before when I reviewed Equilibrium, another movie he scored. Like the music there, here it really is one of the stronger elements, building the sense of wonder that the time machine grants, as well as the danger, and all the emotional beats. It does more to present those things than the script, or even the actors can really manage.

Badlet is a great composer, who knows his business, and this movie is a great example of that, as most of the heavy lifting is done by his music. Kinda sums the whole film up really.

Of course, I’m gonna give it an overall sum up anyway, cause that’s how this works, dammit! I didn’t write the rules, I just make them up and live by them for your entertainment.

Overall, this re-imagining of the classic story has a few things that make it better, and a lot that don’t. It’s not an improvement on the classic 1960 film, really, or even on the original novel, but it at least does try to do something new, rather than be a complete retread, so I’ve got to give it marks for that.

The actors are all good, if somewhat wasted in their roles, and the visuals are okay, if a bit clunky. The music is good, and while this movie is not anything to get excited about, it at least does try to do something interesting, even if it kind of fumbles it.

I think we are all often a little too keen to criticize a piece of media when it tries to be innovative and fails. For all that we cry and moan about retreading the same ground over and over with endless remakes, we tend to ignore when they attempt to be more, or better. Not succeeding at trying to interesting is better, in my mind, at failing to try at all.

So, while it’s a bit nonsense, and disjointed, I do like that this movie at least attempts to do something different and interesting with the premise. That should count a lot more than it does.

But, that’s just me, and we all know, I’d eat people if I had to. Probably best not to take my advice. It’ll just land you in the cooking pot faster when the apocalypse comes.