Home
Alien t-shirts
Movies: The Time Machine
The following is a movie I've watched and reviewed. Contrary to popular belief, I'm not selling DVDs. This is not a list of movies that tell you "the truth about UFOs". Simply said, I like movies. Each review is as simple and non technical as possible.
By Michele Bugliaro Goggia - last modified: March 31, 2006 0:34 AM
Full title: The Time Machine.
Year: 2002.
Director: Simon Wells, Gore Verbinski.
Starring: Guy Pearce, Jeremy Irons, Mark Addy, Orlando Jones, Philip Bosco, Samantha Mumba, Omero Mumba.
Language: English.
Price: 12.99 €
Rating: 
Description: this adaptation of the classic sci-fi adventure tale by H.G. Wells, directed by Simon Wells (the great-grandson of the author), stars Guy Pearce as Alex Hartdegen, an absent-minded New York professor preoccupied with what passes for technology at the turn of the 20th century. However, the one thing that can distract him from his calculations is his love for Emma (Sienna Guillory), his bride-to-be. When tragedy strikes and he loses Emma, Alex uses the time-travelling machine that he's built in secret to change the present by going into the past. When that fails to alter fate, he leaps forward in time, eventually landing 800,000 years in the future, an era where humanity has splintered into two races; the docile Eloi and the ferocious Morlocks. There Alex befriends two of the Eloi (Samantha and Omero Mumba) and attempts to help them resist almost certain death at the hands of the Morlocks...
Well, this is yet another remake of a classic movie. Was it ever needed? No, sorry. While the visual effects remain good, demonstrating CGI has evolved, the story has weaknesses. The Eloi should be a community without culture, yet in this remake they speak one language, are learning English and work (remember the 1960 Eloi?). Hey, they even build houses, while the original Time Machine had just ruins! Shortly, in the 1960 Time Machine, the Eloi were displayed as a lot more realistically lost. The Morlocks aren't badly imagined, but I think the originals look wilder (teeth).
There is a tribal pattern in this movie, more violence and it is a lot more evident to consider Morlocks as the dominant race: they hunt people like predators, while the original version needed only a sound to call the Eloi. Furthermore, clothes are better chosen in the 1960 movie. Not to talk about the machine: c'mon, we're in 1899 and there is a laser?
I'm not fully convinced by this remake.
© Michele Bugliaro Goggia. All rights reserved. All content on the Ufopsi website, including texts and graphics, is property of Michele Bugliaro Goggia. Some content may be protected by other copyrights and other restrictions as well. Site designed for 1024x768 resolution.
