What's new

*** Official "THE TIME MACHINE" Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

Norm

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Dec 1, 1998
Messages
2,017
Real Name
Norm
I just saw it, Thumbs Down. I'm dying to like it, but I can't. All they had to do was follow the book or Pal movie and they would have had a winner, but they didn't. Casting O.Jones in that part, what were they thinking! Hollywood just can't get Sci-Fantasy right anymore!

I hated the Moorlocks! If they were all more like J. Irons the Uber-Moorlock,
I would have liked them better.
 

Frank Anderson

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jun 7, 1999
Messages
2,667
The wife, daughter and I just came from seeing it.
Wife :emoji_thumbsup:
Daughter :emoji_thumbsup:
Me :emoji_thumbsup:
Great popcorn flick. Turn off brain... enjoy.
 

Peter Kline

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 9, 1999
Messages
2,393
I went, I saw, I left (before it ended.) Hollow, shallow, awful:

From ShowBiz Data:

Critics have generally agreed that the latest remake of H.G. Wells' sci-fi classic The Time Machine is pretty much a waste of time. Peter Howell in the Toronto Star says it's really like "a very bad remake of Planet of the Apes. No, it's worse than that. It's Beneath the Planet of the Apes." Elvis Mitchell in the New York Times calls it "a drab, mostly colorless film." Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times describes it as "a witless recycling of the H.G. Wells story." But while most critics are simply dismissive, Michael Wilmington in the Chicago Tribune imagines what it might have been like had Wells been transported by his own time machine to the present and had seen the film himself. "My guess is that he'd be overwhelmed, but not pleasantly so," Wilmington writes. "This new DreamWorks production is one of those staggeringly well-produced, joylessly extravagant pictures that keep whooshing you from one visual marvel to the next, hastily, emptily. It's a shallow picture, dazzlingly elaborated, all decked out in Industrial Light and Magic finery but stripped of social thought, the meat-and-potatoes of H.G. Wells' vision." And, noting that the film was directed by Wells' great grandson, Simon, Joel Siegel remarked on Good Morning America this morning that it was too bad it hadn't been directed by the great grandson of Orson Welles. "If it had been Orson Welles' great grandson, we might have had a shot," Siegel quipped.
 

Steve_AA

Agent
Joined
Jan 24, 2002
Messages
45
The 1960 version is more true to the book, although it took a few liberties also. I have no problem with the depiction of the Morlocks other than they 'hunted' during the day. And the book never had any 'supreme-controller' Morlock....but he WAS rather nasty looking.


The only other part of the movie I wish they had been more true to is having the time traveller return to his own time and then go back. I didn't care for having the time machine destroyed.


Neither version of the book had the time traveller going waaaaaay into the future(millions of years) seeing the end of humans, aging of the sun, and witnessing the evolution of strange lifeforms. CGI could have easily handled that part of the book and it wouldn't have had to be a long sequence.


The 'Old NY' scenery/scenes were nice and the time travel sequences were top-notch.

Don't be so harsh. Movies are for entertainment. This was a quite entertaining visual movie. You didn't need your brain for the 1960 version either and the book wasn't all that full of social commentary either. Give us all a break!

I give it a 7 out of 10 on my own personal scale.
 

Scott Weinberg

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Oct 3, 2000
Messages
7,477
Any movie that expects me to "turn off my brain" is a self-defeating entity, as if I turn off my brain - I'd be dead.
I'm all for a good loud "popcorn flick", but poor storytelling, massive plot holes and scattershot editing isn't a "fun movie" - it's someone else's very expensive mess.
As always, if you enjoyed it - that's cool. To me, this one's just another pointless sequel/remake that exists for only two reasons: Name Recognition and Special Effects.
 

Mark Pfeiffer

Screenwriter
Joined
Jun 27, 1999
Messages
1,339
Scott,
Not to mention that it is boring! Near the end I kept wondering what the point of the movie was. As much as I could ascertain, there isn't any. This is a movie that darts from one place to another without any idea of what it's trying to say or where it's going. Plus, the reason Pearce's character develops the time machine in the first place is almost immediately discarded. Then he starts going on some search to find why you can't change the past, but this gets lost too. Yuck.
 

Brian Ford

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Jun 16, 1999
Messages
72
Oh, I tried to turn my brain off, that’s for sure. However, with the terrible pacing and Alex's terrible decisions (I just don't think he realized he had a TIME MACHINE, able to go back and forth in TIME), even shutting down my common thought process didn't save this turkey. When Alex leaps into the future only to see a sign that confirms the fact that "The future is NOW!" I gave up. Then the "tribal" music kicked in later and actually fried whatever was left of my poor brain.

Too many questions came up like

Why didn't he try to save his future wife more than once? True it would be painful to see her die again and again, but I mean he took FOUR years to build a machine in order to stop this. Give it another go man!


His only friend starts to worry about him after FOUR years of seclusion?


Why were all the students afraid of Alex at the beginning? At least I believe that was a first-person shot at the beginning...

Why did he decide to stay in the future with a girl he barely knew instead of the woman he desired for over FOUR years?

How can a computer still be functioning after 800,000 years?

Why did the computer have a snobbish personality?

Why did Alex bother going to the Morlock death lair if he could just go back in time and stop the attack and even creation of the Morlocks?

Why did Alex attack the head Morlock even though he was letting him go?

How did Alex know the machine was going to explode and what the blast radius was going to be like?

What WAS the reason the Eloi didn't fight back? The explanation was muddled beyond belief.

Essentially I disliked the ending on the fact that

The moon is going to destroy civilization, but Alex doesn't care and throws away his chance to stop this tragedy.

There are movies that are dumb fun, but this one forgot the fun. Guy needs to be more careful on choosing projects and not just go for one with an unorganized narrative and Simon needs to stick with animated films.
 

Chris

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jul 4, 1997
Messages
6,788
This movie, the more I think about it, not only is far worse then the 1960s movie- who's ending was better filled and more reasoned - it was just plain bad. I originally gave this 2 1/2 stars out of 4. My thoughts afterwords say, despite the pretty effects, this is a far worse remake then even POTA.
 

Steve_AA

Agent
Joined
Jan 24, 2002
Messages
45
From reading some of the earlier posts, I get the feeling some of you were bound and determined to dislike this movie. I sense a lot of overanalyzing. If you wanted, you could plot-nitpick and rip apart every movie that's existed.

Yah, this movie has a bunch of holes, but I think some of you are still being way too harsh. Having said that, I prefer the 1960 version myself. It was one of the first DVD's I bought(along with Forbidden Planet). I'm not usually a fan of remakes and this one, along with most others, falls short of the original.

If I started a rumour that Forbidden Planet was going to be remade, how many of you would hate it before it was even made? I'd watch it and give it a chance, but I wouldn't bet against me preferring the original.

Cheers.
 

Brian Ford

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Jun 16, 1999
Messages
72
I actually walked in hoping for a good ride, maybe a *few* holes here and there (I mean that kind of goes hand in hand with any time travel movie anyways) but this one didn't even try. There was just no reasoning to some of the actions the main character made. It is like watching a nice romantic movie, only to see the main protagonist jump off a cliff after a great date. It is just not logical.

I mean with lousy attempts like this, why would I be thrilled to hear of a Forbidden Planet remake? Guilty until proven innocent is a bad way to look at upcoming movies, true, but when it comes to my $5.50 and 90 minutes that I want back, I don't think I will be rushing out only to be burned again.
 

Chris

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jul 4, 1997
Messages
6,788
Honestly, with two toddlers, I seldom get to the theater.. I didn't see LOTR until two weeks ago, for pete sake! But I really wanted to like The Time Machine; and there was a lot -to- like. But a lot of the changes that were made were serious flaws that the more I thought about them, the less I liked the film.

There have been several films that have been very good remakes.. this isn't one of them.
 

Terrell

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Dec 11, 2001
Messages
3,216
Hmm, I was gonna go see this film today, but just felt like laying around like a slob instead. Now with all the negative press, I'm less inclined to go. I haven't gotten off to a good start with films this year. I've only seen BHD.
 

Craig P

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Jan 9, 2000
Messages
124
First of all, since this is the discussion thread, I'm not going to protect spoilers. Read past the next paragraph your own risk.
I guess I was lucky to live in one of the few cities where the critics were OK with the movie (Eric Harrison's review was lukewarm, and the independent paper liked it). If they'd savaged it like everyone else was doing, I would have missed out on a movie I enjoyed thoroughly. IMO, there's far more to this movie than Burton's Planet of the Apes remake, which I didn't consider a waste of money but also didn't find particularly compelling.
(I have not seen the original version of either movie.)
Oh, and I'm quite sure my brain was operating through the entire viewing.
On to questions / discussion...
If said:
Eh, he didn't exactly learn that there were others around the world, since after all, he never left the spot from which he started. All he saw was that the Morlocks he was visiting were still around however many years in the future.
I would agree, though, that it would be reasonable to expect that there would be other Morlocks around the world. It seems unlikely to me that his group of Eloi would be able to deal with them.
 

Peter Apruzzese

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Dec 20, 1999
Messages
4,894
Real Name
Peter Apruzzese
Random thoughts on The Time Machine (it doesn't even deserve the courtesy of full sentences):

Perfectly dreadful. A witless, joyless, charmless movie. Guy Pearce sleep-walking through the role. Dumb character motivation. Shaky, barely acceptable special effects (the Morlocks running was a particularly bad effect). Dull time-travel scenes - no sense of the journey. Bad, bad music (by Hans Zimmer clone Klaus Badelt). Abrupt, senseless ending. Best thing - only 94 minutes long.

If HG Wells had a real time machine, he'd come to 2002 and bitch-slap his great-grandson for ruining his book. And if I ever had a minute alone with Simon Wells (and screenwriter John Logan), I'd ask them if they'd ever actually READ the original book...
 

Nick

Second Unit
Joined
Jun 30, 1997
Messages
251
I was so disppointed. The movie started out real good then it fell apart 45 minutes later. I was like.. what *&%^$#
I thought it was gonna be like " Time After Time " the one with Malcom Mcdowell and Mary steenburgen.
Thank god I didn't have to pay for the movie.
 

Jeff Kleist

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Dec 4, 1999
Messages
11,266
Why can't people learn?

THE BOOK IS YOUR GOD THE BOOK IS YOUR BIBLE. THOU SHALT NOT BLASPHEME THE BOOK! FOLLOW BOOK=GOOD MOVIE!

There's a REASON why these books are still read 100 years later!
 

Nelson Au

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Mar 16, 1999
Messages
19,040
I saw this film last night. I had the lowest of expectations going in. I was way curious to see it as the Rod Taylor/Geaorge Pal version is a favorite of mine.

I agree, it's a bad movie. It looked terrific and the production values and technical aspects of the making of the film are superb. Too bad the content was empty. I really want to read the book now.

I am curious, how much of the movie was John Logan and how much was H.G. Wells and how much was it Well's great grandson's, the director. I am the few who disliked Gladiator. I do not own the DVD. I felt it was heartless and I had no empathy for the characters.

I have been reading the hype in the Trek magazines and Logan paints himself as a real true fan of the Original Star Trek series. He knows the series, so I have a serious concern he'll kill the Trek franchise if the Time Machine and Gladiator are any indication. (I'm sure many already feel the Trek franchise is dead, but that's for another thread)

Back to the Time Machine, on the whole, I was actually entertained for a brief time in the first half and I was momentarily sucked into the plot and worried that Guy Pierce would not have defeated the Irons character. But how come he became this great defender of the Eloi all of the sudden? The Rod Taylor version at least prepared you for the character's motivations. I didn't buy the second half of the film. The movie is a forgetful digression and a minor point in filmed H.G. Wells history. I will find the book now and read it.

Nelson
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top