SPOILERS: How Your Favorite Time-Travel Movie Gets Time Travel All Wrong
by Adam Sullivan
As promised, here is the follow-up to the previous post on this topic, time-travel movies. Some of you will recall that I named six movies that I believe meet my two standards for the genre:
- The explanation of time travel in the movie has integrity, e. it is self-contained, consistent, and not subject to arbitrary “rules.”
- The use of time travel (TT) serves the story, e.g. it provides narrative drive, perhaps, or reveals something important about the main characters.
Meeting these two standards typically produces a movie that fully satisfies my love of the genre, and my obsessive need to believe that TT might just really be possible, not merely the stuff of fiction. Make me believe that, and your movie probably wound up on my list of six. If not, your movie is listed below, along with my reasons for why it failed. (I’m looking at you, Bob Zemeckis.)
Please note: I actually love most of the movies on this list. But that doesn’t mean I love them all as TT movies.
***SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!***
Back to the Future: I will not apologize, fans of this franchise, because I am one of you. BttF is mega-entertaining, and has done more since its 1985 release than any other movie to bring the concept of time travel squarely into the mainstream. If you’ve ever had a conversation with your mom about TT paradoxes or alternate timelines, you can thank the BttF series of films. So some of you will think I’m nitpicking when I point out my issues with the movie. Remember: I love these movies, too—especially the first one.
It’s the plot device of the McFly family photo that bugs me the most. Marty’s brother and sister are gradually disappearing from the photo, making the task of ensuring that Mom (Lea Thomson) and Dad (Crispin Glover) kiss at the “Enchantment Under the Sea” dance is a race-against-the-clock. I’m sorry, but was there not already a race against the clock, vis-à-vis the lightning strike at the clock tower? Is the possibility of being stuck in the past going to high school with your own parents not sufficiently suspenseful? The movie would have been plenty compelling without Marty starting to dissolve, somehow, out of existence while playing guitar. And let’s be real: if TT were not fictional, it just wouldn’t work like that. If his existence could be obliterated by paradox or alternate timeline, it would happen instantaneously or not at all.
The other thing that bugs me is the 88 miles-per-hour thingie. Tell me again why the plutonium isn’t enough to power the time machine? Obviously it should be enough. The movie makers no doubt thought it would be cool if the time machine were a fast car, and to be fair, they were right. But that doesn’t mean it makes sense.
Nope. Not how time travel works. Not even close.Back to the Future 2 & 3: The second film in the trilogy brings in the concept of alternate timelines, and hammers home the warning to time-travelers not to use knowledge of the future to alter the past. But it also introduces some inconsistencies, especially around the idea of meeting our younger/older selves. Apparently Biff can talk to his younger self with no problem, but Jennifer and her older self faint dead away on sight? (I happen to view this as one example of many incidents of misogyny, some subtle, others less so, on display in BttF2—something to write about in a future post, perhaps.) And of course there’s the continuation of the weird photograph device that bugged me in the first movie.
The third movie I love, mostly because of the romance between Doc and Clara (Mary Steenburgen, who is in more than one film on this list), and also because it just seemed like fun to see our heroes in a Western. So, why not, right? But as for TT, the entire movie revolves around the problem of getting the out-of-gas DeLorean up to 88mph. Yes, it’s fun. Lots of fun. But as I mentioned before, this 88mph thing is bulls**t to begin with. (See, I can love a TT movie, even as it’s getting TT all wrong.)
Be careful with time travel, or you might wind up in Hell.Time Bandits: SUCH a great movie. And the map of all the weak spots in the fabric of the universe as a means to travel through—and plunder—time is an terrific and inventive device. But the map also apparently leads into and out of places like Hell, and the “Time of Legends.” This makes this satirical flick more of a fantasy story than a TT story, strictly speaking. If you have not seen Time Bandits, by the way, go buy a copy. Seriously. You’re going to want to own it after you see it.
Looper: I’m of two minds about this movie. Some of the TT stuff is intriguing, and Joseph Gordon Levitt’s performance and make-up go a long way toward convincing me that he is indeed Young Bruce Willis. (Two actors playing different iterations of the same person is a trick which some TT movies either can’t get right, or don’t even try. So, you know, props.) But ultimately there is too much inconsistency for the requisite TT integrity.
Continuity error: Bruce Willis never had this much hair.If your younger self did something he had not done previously, yes, that would create a new memory or even a new scar. BUT, that memory (and/or scar) would NOT be surprising in the least, since it would be a memory you had for most of your life. Yet every time it happens, Bruce Willis makes a big show of the new memory “arriving.” This is not an unforgiveable TT sin, but it is nevertheless glaring. Ultimately, my real issue with Looper is the bonus sci-fi plot concerning telekinesis and a boy who seems to have a combination of Jean Grey’s and Storm’s mutant powers. Maybe they’d have got the TT stuff right if they’d spent less time on the “Rainmaker?”
Edge of Tomorrow: Use of TT to create super-soldier through a video-game-like scenario where death leads to automatic respawn at a certain point in the past (like Groundhog Day!) allowing our hero to keep fighting the same battles until he becomes better and better able to survive: points awarded. That getting splattered with alien blood and goop explains the TT somehow? Points taken away.
Hot Tub Time Machine: Many, many points awarded for Rob Corddry’s Lou using TT to insert himself into the life previously occupied by Vince Neil of Motley Crüe. The rest of the movie is a goof, where the TT device inserts the older characters into their younger bodies, but somehow their young companion looks the same…? No need to dissect this. The movie is hilarious, and actually does a decent job of grappling with the question of why they have found themselves in the past. Is it a chance to change the future, or not?
Clare has this expression through most of Time Traveler’s Wife, and with good reason: time travel has ruined pretty much her entire life.Time Traveler’s Wife: This movie (and I presume the book as well) earns points by being pretty consistent in terms of time loops and potential for paradox. In fact it’s kinda great in those terms. But it loses points for a biological-genetic explanation for TT, where somehow it’s like a seizure disorder (that runs in the family). Then it proceeds to lose all the points ever for presenting TT as a weird form of torment for Rachel McAdams’ Clare: her once-and-future husband Eric Bana shows up when she’s eight years old, or when she’s sixteen (always naked, by the way) to profess his very tortured love, or disappears on their wedding day, or shows up with a bullet in him to die in her arms. It’s never clear that Clare has much of a choice in anything that happens to her, and to me the whole thing feels gross.
Predestination: (see previous post, subhead on Donnie Darko.)
Timecop: This movie is fun. Van Damme kicks lots of ass, including one scene where he does so as both his younger self and older self. But the movie is also fun to watch and see how many TT inconsistencies you can pick up on. (Answer: LOTS) This is a great one for riffing.
Time After Time: So H.G. Wells, author of The Time Machine, has also invented a time machine. (*cough) Oh, and Jack the Ripper stole it so he could terrorize 1979 New York City, and only H.G. Wells—the author, apparent genius inventor, and Time Vigilante ™—can stop him… (*cough) …This is not a TT movie that comes even close to making significant sense. But hey, it’s got Malcolm McDowell being his usual awesome self, and Mary Steenburgen likewise being awesome.
Midnight in Paris: TT as an excuse to visit your favorite era of literature or art is interesting, at least. But this movie pretty much sucks in TT terms, in spite of a few terrific performances. (Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway, e.g.) Ultimately the TT’s only function is to show us Paris in its fabled past—which I admit is fun—and to teach Owen Wilson that he shouldn’t marry that girl. You know, the girl who is horrible and impatient and has terrible judgmental parents? Yeah, he needed TT to figure that out. Speaking of which, it’s really hard to make Rachel McAdams unlikeable, but somehow Woody Allen dug deep and pulled it off. Really, there’s quite a bit wrong here.
Peggy Sue’s BFF is Catherine Hicks (right) who will soon be doing a little traveling through time with Kirk and co., in Star Trek IVPeggy Sue Got Married: Not strictly speaking a time-travel movie, since Peggy’s flashback might all be happening in her head. But it gets a mention here for also grappling nicely with the question of whether one really could change the past, or whether certain things are predestined. You can catch a pre-stardom Jim Carrey in this flick, and a pre-insanity Nicolas Cage. And Kathleen Turner is really great in it. The very best of the “winds up in his/her own past/future body” sub-genre.
If there are no consequences to your actions, you’re probably not in a time-travel movie.Groundhog Day: There is nothing that Groundhog Day doesn’t get right. One of the best comedies ever. I just don’t view it, strictly speaking, as a TT movie. The very great Harold Ramis was inspired by his Buddhist practice to craft an allegory (or fable, or whatever) about a man stuck in a rut of his own devising. Yes, he keeps traveling back 24 hours to relive the worst day of his life again and again, so maybe it is a TT movie, but I just never saw it that way. It always seemed to me like a hilarious version of the stock Twilight Zone stuck-in-hell story device.
Safety Not Guaranteed: Again, not strictly speaking a time-travel movie. But a very good movie, sort of an indie-rom-com. Recommended, in part because it may actually be a time-travel movie.
Star Trek: IV, First Contact, and the Abrams Reboot: Over the years, the Star Trek series and movies have done some decent work with time travel tropes. (Check out ST:TOS’s “The City on the Edge of Forever” episode. Nice.) These three cinematic releases utilize TT as a major plot device, yet there are some lingering issues. The re-boot’s use might be my favorite, since the alternate timeline is a perfect excuse for a re-boot (so meta) and extra points for Spock Prime warning Young Kirk against TT-related universe-ending paradoxes, and later admitting to his younger self that it was bulls**t. But only the lame villain actually does the time-traveling. (Seriously, Eric Bana, what is wrong with you?)
Eric Bana has the worst luck with time travel.Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home gets a bit lost in the save-the-whales stuff, but they actually use relativity theory as the TT device, so that scores some points. And more points for Bones explaining away paradox in the scene where they drop transparent aluminum technology on the plastics manufacturer. “How do we know this guy didn’t invent it?” Pretty brilliant. And some great fun with having our heroes causing all kinds of mischief in 1980’s San Francisco. Points taken away for the super-artsy time-travel sequence with the characters’ 3D computer-rendered faces morphing into each other and unrelated to TT, more points lost for asserting that a cloaked Klingon ship would be essentially invisible to the eye.
First Contact has some good TT elements, but the actual device, the Borg-generated wormhole, is lame. Points for bringing Zefram Cochrane back, and for casting James Cromwell in the role. All those points taken away for Picard’s forced relationship with Alfre Woodard’s Lily. She was written, apparently, to teach him a “very important lesson” about Moby Dick, or something?
MIB3: Sigh…
Kate & Leopold: NO! You can’t make me watch this.
Timeline: Richard Donner ruins a Michael Crichton novel that wasn’t very good to begin with.
Oy. There are many more. Some day I’ll catch up on a few I’ve missed and revisit the topic. Thanks for sticking with me to the end, and don’t hesitate to leave a comment about how wrong I am about any of this.
Adam Sullivan is a marketing professional and a recovering actor. Find him on Twitter @adamsull. Be nice. He’s sensitive.