Poor H.G. Wells.. he must be wearing grooves in his grave from all the spinning by now.
About the only thing this film (yet another attempt at an updated remake of George Pal's timeless 1960 feature) has in common with his novel of the same name is tht there's a time machine in it, the destination year of 802,701, a race of people called Eloi, another called Morlocks, and hmm.. can't think of anything else!
Pal's film is one of my favorites, and as such, this new one was a gross disappointment to me, except for some very good effects sequences - the time travel and Moon shots.. in fact with a nice sharp pair of scissors, I think I could edit this film down to about ten worthwhile minutes out of over two hours of padding and dreck.
Wells' entire premise for his protagonist's time travel adventures is summarily thrown in the dumpster, in favor of turning his driving motivation into a love story. Fine, make another movie out of that, but it's not Wells' vision.
** SPOILERS AHEAD **
In Pal's 1960 classic, Rod Taylor as Wells, the time traveller, was always VERY careful to lock his machine, or remove its stick shift before leaving it.. here we have Guy Pearce getting out of his machine in 2030, and wandering through the NY Public Library for who knows how long, leaving his machine in an alley way for anyone to stumble on and mess with.
The device used to destroy humanity as we know it in the new film _was_ a stunning idea, but still, it stretches the imagination to think that a 20 megaton bomb could split the Moon apart..
Flash forward 800,000 years and the Eloi this time around are a dark skinned race of shaved head, tattooed jungle people whose most beautiful inhabitant is a Janet Jackson lookalike. Throw in a child actor for no good reason at all.
And someone really has to explain to me how crumbled remains of New York could survive erosion, winds, the sands of time, and glaciers for 8000 centuries, while we watch rivers carve out entire valleys, and mountains of rock blow away as so much dust.. if that isn't enough of a stretch, explain to me how a holographic library docent could survive for 800,000 years. Who was oiling his gears all that time? What was the power source that lasted that long?
Even in the beautiful time-travel effects sequences, nothing much makes sense.. as the scale of time keeps changing depending, apparently, on what the director wants you to dwell on.. if you're going into the future at such a rapid speed that you can see mountains erode in seconds, you are _not_ going to see individual trees spring up in a meadow.
Okay, so forget all that. Chalk it up to Hollywood not expecting its audience to ask such questions. But why pollute Wells' classic story with new elements cut out of whole cloth and inserted for reasons we can only guess at? There was no "Uber Morlock" in the book or the original film.
And riddle me this - how did Pearce know what effect throwing his pocket watch into the gears of his time machine would have? Did he build a bunch of them and figure out ways he could make them explode back in 1900 first? The effects shot of him and Samba or Mumbo or whatever her name is, jumping out of the blast field is nearly a direct ripoff of Arnold jumping out of the Predator's blast field at the end of that fine film.. Watch the bad guys get vaporized while the hero and his playmate barely escape.. sigh.. how many times have we seen this schtick?
Some films are simply classics that do NOT need to be remade, and 1960's The Time Machine was one of them. Or if you're going to remake it, at least be honest to the original, like the 1980s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers was.
Otherwise, please, don't waste our time.
Read the book and see the 1960 film if you really want to know what The Time Machine was about.
About the only thing this film (yet another attempt at an updated remake of George Pal's timeless 1960 feature) has in common with his novel of the same name is tht there's a time machine in it, the destination year of 802,701, a race of people called Eloi, another called Morlocks, and hmm.. can't think of anything else!
Pal's film is one of my favorites, and as such, this new one was a gross disappointment to me, except for some very good effects sequences - the time travel and Moon shots.. in fact with a nice sharp pair of scissors, I think I could edit this film down to about ten worthwhile minutes out of over two hours of padding and dreck.
Wells' entire premise for his protagonist's time travel adventures is summarily thrown in the dumpster, in favor of turning his driving motivation into a love story. Fine, make another movie out of that, but it's not Wells' vision.
** SPOILERS AHEAD **
In Pal's 1960 classic, Rod Taylor as Wells, the time traveller, was always VERY careful to lock his machine, or remove its stick shift before leaving it.. here we have Guy Pearce getting out of his machine in 2030, and wandering through the NY Public Library for who knows how long, leaving his machine in an alley way for anyone to stumble on and mess with.
The device used to destroy humanity as we know it in the new film _was_ a stunning idea, but still, it stretches the imagination to think that a 20 megaton bomb could split the Moon apart..
Flash forward 800,000 years and the Eloi this time around are a dark skinned race of shaved head, tattooed jungle people whose most beautiful inhabitant is a Janet Jackson lookalike. Throw in a child actor for no good reason at all.
And someone really has to explain to me how crumbled remains of New York could survive erosion, winds, the sands of time, and glaciers for 8000 centuries, while we watch rivers carve out entire valleys, and mountains of rock blow away as so much dust.. if that isn't enough of a stretch, explain to me how a holographic library docent could survive for 800,000 years. Who was oiling his gears all that time? What was the power source that lasted that long?
Even in the beautiful time-travel effects sequences, nothing much makes sense.. as the scale of time keeps changing depending, apparently, on what the director wants you to dwell on.. if you're going into the future at such a rapid speed that you can see mountains erode in seconds, you are _not_ going to see individual trees spring up in a meadow.
Okay, so forget all that. Chalk it up to Hollywood not expecting its audience to ask such questions. But why pollute Wells' classic story with new elements cut out of whole cloth and inserted for reasons we can only guess at? There was no "Uber Morlock" in the book or the original film.
And riddle me this - how did Pearce know what effect throwing his pocket watch into the gears of his time machine would have? Did he build a bunch of them and figure out ways he could make them explode back in 1900 first? The effects shot of him and Samba or Mumbo or whatever her name is, jumping out of the blast field is nearly a direct ripoff of Arnold jumping out of the Predator's blast field at the end of that fine film.. Watch the bad guys get vaporized while the hero and his playmate barely escape.. sigh.. how many times have we seen this schtick?
Some films are simply classics that do NOT need to be remade, and 1960's The Time Machine was one of them. Or if you're going to remake it, at least be honest to the original, like the 1980s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers was.
Otherwise, please, don't waste our time.
Read the book and see the 1960 film if you really want to know what The Time Machine was about.