The Time Machine

2002 "The greatest adventure THROUGH all time!"
6| 1h36m| PG-13| en| More Info
Released: 04 March 2002 Released
Producted By: DreamWorks Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://timemachine.countingdown.com/
Info

Hoping to alter the events of the past, a 19th century inventor instead travels 800,000 years into the future, where he finds mankind divided into two warring races.

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Director

Simon Wells

Production Companies

DreamWorks Pictures

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The Time Machine Audience Reviews

Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!
Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.
InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.
wtmerrett If I had a choice to give this a zero I would. It is so badly flawed I almost don't know where to start. It appears that someone thought it would be a good idea to have the Grandson of HG Wells direct this nag. He obviously has no idea how to direct. It is as bad a job as when Stephan King directed Maximum Overdrive and did not understand screen direction. Great writer...bad director. Same here. This movie was so disjointed and had so many story ideas running through it that you had to have a road map to find your way around. The original story line was lost along the way as the plot meandered seemingly aimlessly from one inane sequence to the next. So many holes.....and the audience is without shovels.
weejockxxx Well, that was a waste of time. Having finally got to see the Guy Pearce version of The Time Machine I can honestly say I wish I hadn't bothered. The Rod Taylor original didn't follow the book totally but this one just seemed to throw the book in the bin. Instead of a man tired of the inevitability of war we have a 'hero' who is obsessed by his failure to save his girlfriend from dying. Having travelled into the past several times to try and save her he now decides to travel to the future where he finds the beautiful Eloi menaced by the dreadful Morlocks and that's where the similarities end. For a film that was made 42 years after its illustrious predecessor, it seems even less scientifically accurate. If the Moon had broken up lie was shown in the book, it would have exceeded Roche's limit and most probably hit the Earth with catastrophic effects. The Morloks were shown to be mindless beasts ruled by a man who wouldn't have been out of place in a Die Hard movie. Jeremy Irons should have been ashamed to appear in this film. Just how was the Uber Morlock supposed to have come into being? I won't even dwell upon the overt racism in this film but just suppose they had done it the other way? Put all that together with Pearce's totally characterless performance and this film is nothing more than a sombre mess. The only saving grace was Samantha Mumba who at least tried to inject some humanity into her role.
jameswardtemporary The time machine is an exceptionally...OK film, when it exists purely as a standalone movie, that is.. As a standalone film its a vague adventure/action flick with (the impression of)a mediocre budget and not-quite-professional writers and producers. The concept is novel and has some great scenes but overall is not completely coherent and lacks direction as to what it wants to be. A reasonable family film that's worth a rental at least one time if you're out of things to watch....But as a remake, the film is on the disappointing side of the 'ok' spectrum. The movie seeks to improve on the original 1960 version, and where as it does so with good special effects (albeit it few and far between)good characters and some interesting scenes, in every other case it either doesn't improve at all or exacerbates the issues of the original 2-fold.The films main issues is that it tries to add to the original films foundations with poorly thought out ideas, and this makes the whole thing incoherent. For example, Where as in the original the travelling through time was done because...why not? and Maybe the future holds new possibilities (the actions of an inquisitive mind), the remake unnecessarily creates a love-interest who's objectively nothing more than 1. Filler 2. A shallow vessel for reasons to travel in time.The love interest is brought in 10 minutes into the film, they share a 3 minute scene and then the dies. Cut to several months in the future. Now that he built the time machine he goes backwards *exactly once*, meets her again and she soon dies a second time. Based on that, he travels forwards in time with the question of 'why can't I change the past?' and that question is asked exactly once and shes never thought of again. End of love interest.One might think that the above was an 'in a nutshell' detailing, but unfortunately it isn't. It may well have been a word-for-word from the creators storyboard. There was literally no reason for this character to exist, nor this need for a reason to time-travel, and this is an example of what the remake 'adds' to the original..Also for a film about time travel, we see very little 'legitimate' time travel at all. The main character stops in the future exactly twice before the final half. Once for 5 minutes and once for 50 seconds, before landing in a time where the world has reverted to greenery and tribe people..So wheres the artistic and scientific concepts of the future? Wheres the ideas of future technology? society? buildings? language? The only science-fictiony and star-trek-ish examples we see are within 3 meager scenes. Its incredibly disappointing how little of the 'future' we really got to see.Instead we're treated to a second half of a film based around technologically illiterate forest dwellers who use fire as light and branches as building materials.. Don't get me wrong, I understand that both this and the original are attempting to follow the book, but the creativity opportunities for film were greatly lacking..The last major issue was the second half of the film, almost in its entirety. As said earlier, the film lacks direction and this is where it occurs the most. At some point the film devolves into a cheesy action flick with fighting and choreographed action scenes against generic cgi. The 'bad guy' and his minions were equally generic and their agendas were simplistic. The film ends on an attempted high-note, but the generic standards of the whole second half leave you uncaring with its predictable resulting character accomplishments and new love interest. The end. All very straight forward and lacking imagination. Not much else to say without giving up all of the remaining plot.In a nutshell: The good points:-1. Actors were both believable and were well suited for their respective parts. 2. The Special effects for the time travelling were excellent. 3. The idea(s) behind the few future scenes were interesting 4. When they're not trying to 'add' to the film, it is a reasonable homage to the original and worth a watch at least one time. 5. As a stand-a-lone, its not terrible, and there are great scenes at times.The bad points:- 1. What it adds is pointless, genetic and makes the film feel rushed and unguided. 2. Creative opportunities were missed in plenty of obvious places. 3. The second half of the film turned into a generic action flick, almost as if the two halves were different films. 4. Its just an 'ok' remake, it could have been a lot better.5/10
mjdarling1117 The summary of the storyline that is listed at the top of the IMDb page for the 2002 movie, "The Time Machine" states, "Hoping to alter the events of the past, a 19th century inventor instead travels 800,000 years into the future, where he finds humankind divided into two warring races."The Eloi are an extraordinarily peaceful people. Their friends and family members disappear, but they don't even try to find out why. The Eloi would never even think of uttering a bad word, never mind warring.Shouldn't the IMDb writers that summarize movie story lines have to actually WATCH the movie before rewriting/summarizing the story lines other writers, who have watched the movies, write...or at least use the same words? The storyline writer watched it, and called the two races the hunters and the hunted, which is accurate.