The Time Machine (2002)

While the 1960 version of The Time Machine remains a science fiction classic, this adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel benefits from a dazzling CGI facelift. Digital wizardry shows us the awesome splendor of eons passing in an eye blink, while Wells's heroic time traveler--played with appealing conviction by Memento's Guy Pearce--is given a stronger motivation for piloting his time machine 800,000 years into the future. Long after New York City has crumbled and the moon shattered by a nuclear accident, Pearce finds a new home with the peacefully primitive Eloi, after confronting the subterranean Morlocks (courtesy of Stan Winson's monster shop) and their evil overlord (Jeremy Irons in wicked, pigmentless makeup). Trading Wells's social commentary for pure adventure, director Simon Wells (the author's great-grandson) maintains the story's legacy of wonder, despite a few hokey embellishments. Catering to a younger audience, this Time Machine is fun without being particularly distinguished--a treat for the eyes, if not the brain. --Jeff Shannon Amazon.com

 Loved The Book, & Love The Movie
The novel "The Time Machine" is my favorite book, which I have probably read about 7 times by now. I was never a fan of the original movie. While it stays somewhat closer to the story in the novel, the changed parts make it totally ridiculous. This film, however, changed quite a bit. The result? An absolutely fantastic movie! This film and the novel are so different that they can both be appreciated for the unique qualities in each. This movie deals with new philosophical issues and opens your mind to new ideas. Just because it doesn't play out like the novel doesn't mean it's a bad movie. After all, it's only BASED on the book. I find this movie an absolute must-have. April 21, 2008

 Never Again
The movie was great. I will never regret things ever again, well maybe a few more times. April 5, 2008

 Good CGI - OK plot
This movie had some good CGI effects. The plot idea sounded promising but the movie is alittle disappointing. Most of the movie takes place in what is supposed to be the future. The problem is, the future looks like the dinasour age with cave-people. I really expected the future to be HIGH-TECH but instead it's CAVE-MEN in huts. So the premise is the ice-age, an astroid or some event completely kills off most of the people and cities on Earth and then everything starts evolving over again. The main character ends up surrounded by primitive people with spears. He later falls in love with one of them. The time machine is lost and he doesn't care because he wants to stay there with his new love anyway. Even the time-travel machine he builds in the beginning is a little silly looking. February 17, 2008

 Rod Taylor Goes to Reeducation Camp
The 1960 version of "The Time Machine" was a very entertaining movie, even if (or perhaps because) it didn't adhere entirely to socialist H.G. Wells' book. The special effects were excellent for their time, and are still enjoyable.

I recently had the misfortune of watching the 2002 version. I continued to watch it even after I realized it was cheap, racist propaganda because I wondered how the movie maker would resolve the situation he created.

In the 1960 version, the Eloi, the surface inhabitants in the year 802701, were blonde, passive, attractive, juvenile white folk (Rod Taylor's love object was the very white and blonde Yvette Mimieux), who were fed and bred like cattle by the Morlocks, vicious blonde cannibals who worked and lived below the surface, and who were apparently also a species of white folk (even though their skin was green - people of color!). Economics, freedom, class struggle (Wells' socialist leanings creeping through), societal progress, and responsibility, not race, were addressed in this version, in the sometimes indirect manner Hollywood addressed them then.

The Eloi in the 2002 version (including Samantha Mumba, the love object of white Guy Pearce after his consciousness is raised), however, are wonderful, responsible, peace-loving, self-sufficient, agricultural, dreamy, third world people of color. "Vox" is a cool, wacky, hip cat hologram (the "compendium of all human knowledge") who, coincidentally...is black! The Morlocks? They're blonde vicious animals that must be...the descendants of white folk? That suspicion is confirmed when we finally meet, toward the end of the movie, the most "evolved" of the Morlocks, a very blonde and very white Jeremy Irons, who speaks the King's English with a British accent JUST IN CASE THE VIEWER DOESN'T GET THE POINT. In the end, the white Pearce, who gave up his dream of reuniting in the past with his beautiful white beloved, destroys the white underground civilization, and destroys his time machine in the process, thereby preventing him from returning to 1895, and the predominantly white culture in which he dwelled.

Imagine the opinion mafia's outrage had the situation been reversed, with Pearce (or...Denzel Washington!) pulling the plug on the vicious underground civilization of color (hah!), so that the munificent white civilization on the surface could survive and thrive.

Unlike the movie maker, let us make reasonable extrapolations. The starting point would be...persons of color throughout the world reproducing themselves at a rate far in excess of the 2.1 replacement rate (although the "2.1" rate is itself an anachronism, based on the premise of two parents living together raising their offspring; in the U.S., about 70% of black children and about 45% of Hispanic children are born outside of marriage, and these births alone exceed, or nearly do, the "2.1" rate). By contrast, the white reproduction rate throughout the world is less, and often far less, than 2.1. The demographics in Eurabia, following two world wars and the rise of nihilism among the "indigenous" people (whites), are even more gloomy with respect to the survival of the white race than in the U.S. (see, for example Mark Steyn's "America Alone").

In light of clear demographic trends, why would anyone conclude a generally devolved white race would be powerful enough to prey on a third world utopia in Future World? The makers of this puerile nonsense are either Stockholm Syndrome sufferers whose creation of this product was an exercise in self-criticism (oh sweet and blessed annihilation of my wretched white race), or they merely created racist propaganda to attempt to appeal to their "useful idiot" friends in the most idiotic place on earth - Hollywood, which shot its creative wad at least 30 years ago. January 17, 2008

 The Time Machine ( REMAKE )
While having more advanced Special Effects, it is not as true to the original H.G.Wells story vision as the ORIGINAL (Rod Taylor) The Time Machine. October 30, 2007

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