The Time Machine (2002)

This is a movie based on a Novel by H. G. Wells, though I heart it's not a very accurate adaptation. I'm not going to compare it to the book in this review because I haven't read the book (and honestly I don't find myself that interested in attempting it).

World-Building: Decent, some visually pleasing elements
Characterizations: Shoddy, condescending portrayals of some characters
Plot: Transparent and predictable

Overall, the movie is a brief and mildly entertaining Sci-Fi movie that can be enjoyed if you don't let yourself think about it too much. The visuals are nice with some great scenes, especially involving the time machine. It borrows a lot from other things so that it didn't feel very original when I watched it, but this is hardly the most annoying thing. I found myself most irritated by the portrayals of the Eloi and Morlocks closer to the end of the movie, which defied basic logic in various instances. The plot is weak and see-through and the characterizations aren't given enough depth.

I can't say any more without SPOILERS, you have been warned.

The movie starts off with a university professor and inventor in New York in the year 1899. He proposes to his sweetheart, Emma, and they are immediately attacked by a robber who ends up shooting and killing her after a scuffle over the ring. This gives him motivation to build the time machine and try to go back to the past and save her from being killed. He attempts this, but, of course, he doesn't succeed and only manages to change the way she gets killed. This prompts him to use his time machine to go into the future to find out why he is unable to change the past. Because presumably in the future people will have figured this out.

Not so much.

He ends up going to 2030 where he encounters a hologram-type AI unit that "contains all the knowledge in every book every written" or something to that effect. The AI dude, a black guy, lets him know that time travel is strictly SF so he decides to go forward even further only to find that the moon is breaking up and the world is in disaster as people attempt to find safety. He almost gets caught by the police - who are trying to help him evacuate, supposedly, but then manages to get back to his time machine and travel millions of years into the future.

At this point there are some cool shots showing geological transformation - I actually thought he was traveling back in time here, but no, apparently he travels forward and, after getting a head injury, gets rescued by some natives who learn "The Stone Language" (English) when they're very young. Predictably, the only adult who can still speak English fluently is a young woman wearing skimpy clothes - and he happens to be staying at her house even though she's the teacher not the healer. So of course, at this point, the plot becomes transparent. You know they're somehow to end up together and, because the tribe people are brown you know that the white time traveler is going to end up showing them how to fix their lives somehow. This is exactly what occurs, after several episodes showing that these tribe people are kind of stupid and that they never fight back against the problems in their world and so on and so forth.

The bad guys are finally revealed at this point in a very fast-paced action sequence. Through the entire sequence this is what was going through my mind: Orcs! No - Zombies! No - Trolls! Or Orc-Zombie-Trolls! they looked so much like the Orcs and trolls from LOTR it was annoying. And again, it left me wondering why the bag guys always have to look so different in movies like this. Also copied from LOTR was their lair, which had the same grinding wheels and machinery that we saw in LOTR.

It is soon revealed that the Orc-Zombie-Trolls actually eat their victims, because supposedly they can't find any other food source. Also, these creatures supposedly evolved from human beings as did the Eloi (the stupid tribe people). Why they couldn't hunt and eat some other type of animal is a mystery. Also, in a long monologue by the overlord of these troll people, who has a gigantic brain and can control things with his mind, it is revealed that these people supposedly evolved consciously or purposefully, which is just plain stupid. He also says that they have to eat the Eloi because they can't survive above ground/in the sun, but we saw them snatch several victims in broad daylight.

The main character (Alexander) tries to appeal to this bad guy's better nature, or whatever, by telling him that what they're doing is wrong and asking him if he's ever thought about the "human cost". It doesn't work and there's a stupid action sequence and the main character goes into the future even further to see a mordor-like wasteland. He returns and decides to set his machine to self-destruct somehow causing a huge explosion - thereby wiping out the entire underground race of the Morlocks without flinching or once considering the "human cost" of this action.

And then he lives happily ever after with the tribe people and the somehow resurrected AI dude who is reading Tom Sawyer to all the little children. There's actually an interesting sequence here that shows the professor's friends back in his own time side by side with him in his new life with the Eloi. It reminded me a little bit of a stage-production when they were walking and talking side by side.

The music and main plotline were very similar to those in Avatar. Since this movie came out many years before Avatar, one would have to acknowledge that Avatar must have ripped this movie off and not the other way around. Although both of them followed the same basic white-guy-saves-natives story line there was one significant difference. In Avatar the Na'vi were portrayed as majestic people whose way of life was in harmony with nature and made a lot of sense and was in some ways better than that of the greedy corporate people who were attacking them. Yes, they were backward technologically, but they weren't really portrayed as being deficient in the way that the Eloi were in The Time Machine. Yes, the Na'vi also had a white guy save them and were for some reason incapable of saving themselves or finding a leader from within themselves, but I found the Eloi portrayal much more condescending.

Which brings me to my final point. This movie, with it's many faults, did manage to do one positive thing for me. It gave me a new plot bunny and got me back into the mood for writing fiction.