The 1960 version by George Pal has stop-motion effects that seem dated now, especially compared to the dazzling images we see on the screen here, and yet I kind of prefer the earlier version. It was dated, pedantic, and simple -- or simple minded, if you like. But that very simplicity made it easier to follow the plot and to understand the points that Wells was eager to make. This version is longer, better acted, but is filled with action, some of it gory, that Pal's version wasn't very concerned with.
Neither version, I gather, was that close to Wells' original. Pal's was closer in depicting the Eloi as an air-headed white-bread society with pink skins. This one is more realistic. The Eloi seem to be a mixed race. They look vaguely Polynesian -- what with body tattoos, pareus, and cowrie shells. In fact their culture looks like that of the Samoans and so do many of the Eloi themselves. If you took a sample of genes from all three major racial stocks, put them in a blender, and dumped them out on a table, they'd look like Samoans, which is not the worst fate in the world. Mara (whatever happened to Weena?) doesn't look quite as corruptly innocent as Yvette Mimieux but we can live with that.
Guy Pearce is pretty good. He has a commanding face, prognathous and full of masculine bone structure, and his performance is quite different from that in "L.A. Confidential," the only other work of his that I've seen. Jeremy Irons has a bit part as the Uber-Morlock, the brains of the hypogeal gang, so to speak. He's given what I guess are philosophical points to make in his brief appearance but I must be slow because I didn't get them.
The problem with these films is that they both throw away Well's reasons for why things turned out the way they did. Capitalism has led to a two-tier society (the eaten and the eaters), and evolution (still a controversial idea) had its way for reasons that Wells spelled out. All of that is missing. We don't get any reasons for the lack of sexual bifurcation in the Eloi, nor any reason for their empty-headedness. Instead, we are given the Eloi as is -- "Here they are, folks!" No hint whatever that they are the descendants of the worn-out wealthy class of earlier days.
I don't mean that this film should have been a series of lectures on the future physical and cultural evolution of our society. Just that certain questions and answers could easily have been built into the story itself, particularly if some of the violent scenes, unnecessarily long, had been elided. And what the hell is the black, stinky, gooey stuff on those blowgun darts anyway? It can knock down a full-grown man but it only frightens a little girl.
Overall impression: Not bad, not insulting, but it looks as if it were the consequence of a meeting of a board of MBAs who began by asking, "What NEW story is there that we can juice up with modern computer-generated images? The Time Machine? Great! Cannibalism and a destroyed earth -- a bonanza of fireworks!"
Neither version, I gather, was that close to Wells' original. Pal's was closer in depicting the Eloi as an air-headed white-bread society with pink skins. This one is more realistic. The Eloi seem to be a mixed race. They look vaguely Polynesian -- what with body tattoos, pareus, and cowrie shells. In fact their culture looks like that of the Samoans and so do many of the Eloi themselves. If you took a sample of genes from all three major racial stocks, put them in a blender, and dumped them out on a table, they'd look like Samoans, which is not the worst fate in the world. Mara (whatever happened to Weena?) doesn't look quite as corruptly innocent as Yvette Mimieux but we can live with that.
Guy Pearce is pretty good. He has a commanding face, prognathous and full of masculine bone structure, and his performance is quite different from that in "L.A. Confidential," the only other work of his that I've seen. Jeremy Irons has a bit part as the Uber-Morlock, the brains of the hypogeal gang, so to speak. He's given what I guess are philosophical points to make in his brief appearance but I must be slow because I didn't get them.
The problem with these films is that they both throw away Well's reasons for why things turned out the way they did. Capitalism has led to a two-tier society (the eaten and the eaters), and evolution (still a controversial idea) had its way for reasons that Wells spelled out. All of that is missing. We don't get any reasons for the lack of sexual bifurcation in the Eloi, nor any reason for their empty-headedness. Instead, we are given the Eloi as is -- "Here they are, folks!" No hint whatever that they are the descendants of the worn-out wealthy class of earlier days.
I don't mean that this film should have been a series of lectures on the future physical and cultural evolution of our society. Just that certain questions and answers could easily have been built into the story itself, particularly if some of the violent scenes, unnecessarily long, had been elided. And what the hell is the black, stinky, gooey stuff on those blowgun darts anyway? It can knock down a full-grown man but it only frightens a little girl.
Overall impression: Not bad, not insulting, but it looks as if it were the consequence of a meeting of a board of MBAs who began by asking, "What NEW story is there that we can juice up with modern computer-generated images? The Time Machine? Great! Cannibalism and a destroyed earth -- a bonanza of fireworks!"