Review: The Time Machine

We should all be immensely grateful to the British social class system. It inspired some of the greatest fantasy and sci-fi writers in modern literature, from Mary Shelley and Jules Verne to H.G. Wells. In addition to sounding the alarm about life in England, these tales delivered powerful moral messages about technological hubris. Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings did great justice to J.R. Tolkien's war and class-conscious trilogy, but Simon Wells' new version of The Time Machine, while it offers some stunning special affects and shining moments, lacks heart, soul and coherence. Spoilage warning: plot is discussed, not ending, which everybody probably knows.

Everybody has his own favorite, but The Time Machine has to rank way up there as one of the best, darkest and most prescient futuristic yarns ever spun. But while Jackson was able to infuse his movie with the spirit of Tolkien's story, indiscriminate special effects and limpid, forgettable acting leach H.G. Wells and his eerily dark vision of the future out of this one. Reading A Time Machine, you always felt humanity would pay dearly for its arrogance one day. Seeing this movie, you just end up looking at your watch.

For some reason, the locale of this film has moved from London to New York. Why? You get the feeling the producers were trying to make this movie a bit of a cautionary nuclear tale. Then the movie was delayed by 9/11, because it originally contained (and still does) some destruction-of-Manhattan sequences, most removed. Film essayists will have a field day in a few years de-constructing post and pre-9/11 Hollywood.

Guy Pearce plays the brooding, tragic scientist Alexander Hartdegen, Jeremy Irons the Uber-Morlock. Irons is great. Pearce is strangely miscast here, alternately twitchy, sweaty, distracted and simply inarticulate. If you haven't read the book, you have no idea what his motivations are, who he's is involved with, or why he's making so many staggering decisions about the human race all by himself, in a mili-second. But it's Hollywood silly, so it's all about the girl, in this time or another. This profoundly trivializes the story. The ending of The Time Machine is one of the great closings in all sci-fi, but here it has all the punch of some wet paper towels.

Increasingly, from the Star Wars series to this movie, special effects are becoming a problem for sci-fi movies. All of the bad guys look alike (the Morlocks could slip easily into Lord of the Rings, Planet of the Apes, or Return of the Mummy). Hollywood's ideas about villains are less effective than Wells prose. Enough, already, with these special-effect monsters who are all alike: loud, bug-eyed, simian, fast-moving, cannibalistic, slimy.

In the novel, Hartdegen was brave, angry, philosophical and passionate. Here, Pearce mostly seems to have been clubbed in the head early on and remains largely insensate. Aside from taking on the class issues -- one species above ground, the other below -- Wells was joining Shelley and Verne in squaring off on tech arrogance, something very much alive, especially in America, at the opening of the 21st century. That theme is almost completely obscured here, apart from a lame cautionary alarm that one of Hartdegen's friends sounds about scientists' uncertainty about where they are going. Against a backdrop of growing hysteria about suitcase-sized dirty bombs being detonated in our major cities by enraged working class kids from foreign cultures, the themes of The Time Machine are more, not less, powerful.

The actual time travel is pretty neat -- fast and beautiful -- but that accounts for only about 15 minutes of this movie. When we're not zipping ahead in time, the movie becomes simplistic and soulless. Mostly, it's just flat. Sadly, you can give it a pass, and that's a pity, an opportunity squandered. We're not going to get another remake of this book anytime soon.

Comments

Misprint in story

[nagora]

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings did great justice to J.R. Tolkien's war and class-conscious trilogy

Should, I assume, read " Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings did great injustice to J.R. Tolkien's war and class-conscious trilogy by removing any and all characterisation and depicting the story as a dull plod through some nice scenery"

Simple mistake; probably had CAPS-LOCK on.

TWW

Re:Misprint in story

[nagora]

Oh, sorry, was there some subtle characterisation or plot that I missed amongst all the stupid fight scenes, moronic direction, and general inability to make a decent adaptation of a book even when you have a minute per page?

The idea that FotR had any depth at all to it, let alone carried some message about the British class system is laughable. I STILL maintain that Jackson never read the book at all and based his film on the animated version, from which he stole scenes and dialogue, and the BBC radio-play.

TWW

Re:Misprint in story

[nagora]

You try fitting in 400 (I forget the exact count and it depends on the version anyways) pages, 9+ fully developed charcters, numerous subplots and a heap of other stuff in a 3 hr movie.

Well, I would at least have tried! Given that Jackson didn't even want to cover the Old Forest and the Barrowdowns (too complex and no fight scenes I guess) he had over 1 min per page, which is a luxurious amount of time for an adaptation - don't forget how much paper is required to describe a scene which can be shown in a movie in 2 seconds flat.

When it comes to FoTR and Peter Jackson I personally think he did an admirable job, and made quite a good movie

It was an okay movie and a terrible adaptation.

Where would you of fitted all the extra depth that you claim is so lacking?

Most of it could have been done quickly and easily, for example the total mess Jackson made of the Ford scene simply should have been done as it was in the book with Frodo defying the Nazgul and showing why he was choosen by Gandalf, this would replace the bit where he's simply rescued by the token woman. Again, simply sticking to the book at the end and letting Frodo leave on his own initiative without having to consult Aragon would have been better and taken the same time. The fight with the CGI-Troll could have been cut to the length it was in the book and the idiotic scene on the steps ("Lean, lean!") after the Balrog rescues them from the orcs should never have been filmed. The fight on Weathertop should have depicted the Nazgul as described in the book which would have been more frightning and established that they are not just a bunch of idiots in highly-flamable coats. Radagast could have been used in a short scene to establish that the "order of wizards" is not just two old break-dancers (another scene that should never have been filmed!), and Saurman should have mentioned the bit about being "many colours" which is an important piece of symbolism which actually refers back to a bit of Gandalf's dialogue which did make it into the film.

The list goes on and on. Jackson should be shot for this travesty.

Can you imagine all 3 of them together in uncut form, 18 straight hr of LOTR!!!

If Baksi did it with the budget Jackson had it would be great. The idea of watching any more of Jackson's version does not appeal and I'll not be bothering to waste my time on the sequals or the DVD.

TWW

Re:suckage

[FFFish]

And yet as much suckage as this film has, I'll bet you dimes to donuts that fully three-quarters of Slashdot users piss away their ten bucks on it, once again rewarding Hollywood for making lowest-common-denominator crap.

I'm so glad I'm boycotting the theatre chains.

9/11 - 9/11 9/11 9/11 - 9/11

[SPiKe]

>Film essayists will have a field day in a few >years de-constructing post and pre-9/11 Hollywood.

On the same token, future Slashdot trolls will have a field lambasting both your pre and post 9/11 articles.