The Time Machine: Rod's Take
01/07/2002 . Source: Rod MacDonald 

Film: Dreamworks. 92 minutes. Rating: PG. Released May 2002. Director: Simon Wells. Stars: Guy Pearce, Samantha Mumba and Jeremy Irons.

Buy The Time Machine in the USA - or Buy The Time Machine in the UK

This movie is loosely based on HG's 1898 novelette of the same name and is directed by the author's great-grandson.

Given the additional dimension of modern computer effects, hopes were high for something potentially very good but, sad to say, on leaving the cinema a feeling of great loss was evident - loss of a £5 admission fee and the loss of a couple of hours time.

I must confess to being a bit of a party pooper in that I don't believe travelling into the past is possible. Time enough for paradoxical quantum mechanical discussion later except to say that, irrespective of my feelings on the matter, time travel has been a pillar of Science Fiction for ages.

Even if it is indeed total nonsense, the possibilities for story telling are tremendous and shouldn't be judged on science alone.

The first thing to be noticed about this film was the giant poster outside the cinema which gave three names - Guy Pearce, Samantha Mumba and Jeremy Irons. With no disrespect to the first two, Irons is a well-known and accomplished actor.

His presence added a touch of class and quality but the poster didn't say that he was only appearing in a short cameo role towards the end of the film. A bit of a cheat perhaps but it's been done so many times before, Marlon Brando in 'Apocalypse Now' coming to mind, that we should be well used this marketing strategy.

The film opens in a New York winter and not London where the book and previous film are set. At least, being set a century ago, it has the old HG atmosphere to help it along. Pearce plays the time traveller Hartdegan, an absent-minded experimenter who delves into all matters electrical, mechanical, biological and theological.

It's surprising he's had time for a love interest but there she is, Emma, an attractive blonde played by Sienna Guillory. All he has to do is rush out to Central Park and propose to the young lady. It must have been one of the shortest engagements of all time because no sooner was the ring on her finger than she was lying dead, her heart pierced by a mugger's bullet.

Naturally, Hartdegan is upset. Despite everyone saying to him that though immensely regrettable, the incident was just one of these things over which poor mortals have no control, he spends the next four years in anti-social isolation making his antiquated looking time machine. Going back in time, he tries to change the past but had he only asked Scotty he'd have been told, 'Ye canny change the laws o' physics, laddie'. Emma is killed again, this time in a different way!

One thing I couldn't understand though was why he didn't meet himself in Central Park? Emma would have two confusing proposals to cope with. If not that, why didn't the second Hartdegan stop the mugger before he mugged the newly engaged couple?

Had he done so, maybe the first Hartdegan wouldn't have made the time machine and, this being the case, it's unlikely he'd bother travelling back to the past, so creating a time travel paradox that scuppers everything.

Anyway, returning to the story, seeing that the past can't be changed, many of us would give up at this point but no...not our time traveller. Using logic that's dubious, he reasons people in the future may have a better idea as to the nature of time and, employing their knowledge, he would have another attempted engagement with Emma. So, it's back to the future for him, but this time, a future long after his own time.

Hartdegan stops off in the 21st century. Someone comments on his mode of attire which seems a piece of cheek considering the way they were dressed themselves. We learn that people are moving to the Moon and to make living space, twenty megaton nuclear bombs are being employed to excavate real estate. On trying to discover more about the nature of time, he consults a holographic library - an interesting and entertaining touch.

A further hop in time reveals that they've overdone the nukes, the Moon is falling apart and the Earth is being bombarded with the rubbish. (The idea of this happening is rubbish too - breaking the Moon apart would take energy far in excess of even a thousand bombs) Hartdegan only just makes it back to his time machine but is injured, rendered unconscious and sends himself flying away almost a million years into the distant future.

This is a film of two halves. Some folk have all the luck. Had it been me, I'd have ended up with the Morlocks but Hartdegan somehow gets rescued by Mara (Samantha Mumba) and resides with her, her brother and the other Eloi in a bamboo village, stuck to the sides of a canyon. This seems quite an idyllic life but there always has to be trouble in paradise. The Morlocks attack!

A slight diversion: - why does all literature, and not necessary only Science Fiction, portray mankind as foolish idiots trying to aspire to the heights of the gods only to be brought crashing back to earth as a result of their own greed and folly?

Why do seemingly perfect situations and scenarios always have papered-over cracks or some deadly flaw which comes out under closer examination? Answer - makes good stories and keeps people in their place but bit detrimental to humanity's confidence! Maybe life isn't really like that but then I think of the Millennium Dome! Enough said!

‘The Time Machine’ makes extensive use of computer animation and graphics, some of which appears very spectacular, but is this at the expense of the script? (see article in June edition by Jane Palmer). There are instances when the dialogue is tedious but the Morlocks themselves don't possess an ability for after-dinner conversation either.

That's probably because their dinners are humdrum - nothing but Eloi on the menu. Poor Hartdegan, he sees his new girlfriend taken away before he'd the chance for a nibble himself. Not very good at keeping his women, is he?

Concerning the Morlocks, I thought an important point about their physiology was that they were underground dwellers for whom light is painful and damaging to their grey eyes and skin but here they are, running about upstairs without even sunglasses or factor 25. These Morlocks could just as easily live on the surface, albeit with some protection.

There's also no mention of the relationship between the two species, as portrayed in the book and earlier film, where the Morlocks provided clothing, shoes and other material goods to the Eloi, allowing them an indolent existence of eating and frolicking in the sunshine.

In return, the Morlocks ate excess Eloi, so preventing over-population, old age and the necessity for health services, pension plans or social security. (Don't tell Gordon Brown)

After running around the Morlocks’ underground industrial underworld, Hartdegan comes across his girlfriend and also Jeremy Irons, but that's a different story which seems oddly unconnected with the rest of the plot. Irons is the chief Morlock but his part seems to be an appendix-like appendage that plays no real functioning part in the body of the film.

It's a difficult task to remake a film where preconceived notions of the book and a previous film exist. It would also be a mistake to make a carbon copy of the last film or even a slavish account of a book which, as events have shown since 1898, is not a true account of the shape of things that came. Even making something in the spirit of the earlier work isn't wrong or necessarily a bad idea.

In fact, there's no reason why a really good film could not have been made but this version isn't that. It has too many holes in the plot, the acting isn't good throughout, the story it's trying to tell is far from clear and the beginning is too long. Although entertaining enough in parts, taken as a whole this effort must be sadly condemned.

Rod MacDonald