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Review: The Time Machine
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.
A preview is available at UpcomingMovies.com
The official site is here.
I went and saw "The Time Machine" on Friday....the theatre (being UA) sucked...and the movie didn't really help it. I was a little worried about the movie when I first walked in the theater and found it practically empty. I liked the beginning of the movie (there was a beautifal continuous shot down a flight of steps and through some hallways), and even up to the first time travel. However, after Alexander reached the far future...the whole movie went down hill. First of all, the civilization looked EXACTLY like the communities in Riven, and the underground world looked exactly like Isengard in "The Fellowship of the Rings". The time travel was cool, but as Katz mentioned, there wasn't much. I expected a LOT more as far as character development and more of an actual story. So much was left unexplained and the ending didn't really help. So, I rate this movie fairly low. To see my full review, go to Peterswift.org/html
A quote from my review: "If they had added some monkeys and woodchucks in random places in the movie, it would have been far more interesting and entertaining.
The anti-salmon
I remember watching a movie when I was a kid about a time machine. The machine looked exactly like the one in this movie and travelling through time looked pretty much the same to. It also had those futuristic monsters. I forgot the name of the movie, does anyone know it? At the time, I was pretty impressed by it. Was this another remake of "The Time Machine" book?
No, he is talking about J.R. Tolkien the little known oil baron of Middle Earth.
Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece
Back home, people call ATMs Tyme Machines because that's the company that bought them all out. I get to college and ask where the nearest Tyme machine is in town, and I get some smack about this book, "we're not in London, sweetie," etc.
I'm about to jump in the shower and go catch a matinee of this flick, so I don't have time for a long, drawn-out reply. But I think it will be entertaining, though after reading several reviews I expect it to be inferior to the 1960 version in all aspects except effects.
I replied mostly to complain about this continuing trend of chopping scenes out of movies so as not to offend people still haunted by the terrorist attacks. Why do The Powers That Be think we'll all be reduced to sniveling wussies if we see a skyscraper blow up in a work of *fiction*? I had hoped this practice would've run out of steam by now, six months after the fact. Memo to Hollywood: If you're so concerned about offending me, leave the 'destruction of New York' scenes in your movies, and stop labeling me and the rest of your customers as potential thieves, chomping at the bit to steal movies and music from you.
~Philly
Anyone who who even caught a sidelong glimpse of the trailers could tell this was a lame 02's remake of the superior 60's "Time Machine."
It was instantly recognizable as a dead horse straight out of the gate.
Katz actually spent good money just so he could "First Post" a review on a shitty movie?
Dude, while I don't expect more, I certainly hope for it.
satire, n: 1) witty language used to convey insults or scorn; 2) a form of humor lost on most slashdot moderators.
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.
Ummmm, John? Jules Verne was French so how exactly was he influenced by the British social class system?
Actually, one of the comments I made to my buddies after watching the movie, was that I was impressed how _not_ slimy the Morlocks were.
They were downright creepy, a sort of cross between the "Grey Alien" look and neanderthal.
Slime is usually used to _hide_ poor costumes/effects for bad guys; it's hard to screw-up dripping. The only goo in Time Machine is the dart-poison, and the "pit".
Just like in the latest movie version of "The Count of Monte Cristo", I found they wrapped things up far too soon. Just as you start to really get into it - they realize they want to end in 5 minutes, and it's bang-bang-save-the-girl-THE-END-roll-credits.
Book adaptations should be required to be a minimum 3 hours.
Btw, it was a pretty good movie too!
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
If they had added some monkeys and woodchucks in random places in the movie, it would have been far more interesting and entertaining.
Except that would defeat the purpose of the whole story. The Morlocks have to eat the Eloi (who look way too 2002-human in the movie; I distinctly remember that the novel described the Eloi as looking closer to Precious Moments figurines) only because the Morlocks have run out of other animals to eat through over-hunting. (The Eloi are frugivores. We 2002-humans are designed to be frugivores too (sorry, the link has expired), but some people choose to ignore that and eat meat.)
But given the copyright industry's behavior over the last few decades, the copyright on this movie adaptation probably won't expire until the year 802701 ;-)
Will I retire or break 10K?
While I concur that many of the special effects were quite interesting and perhaps even breathtaking, I found myself asking the same questions I was asking while watching the Planet of the Apes remake:
And a final question: Why, oh why, didn't "they" show us anything about how Hartdegen came to the conclusion that a time machine was 1) possible, and 2) doable by him? Why not show us how he went about creating the machine? I don't know about anyone else, but my heart sunk when "they" unveiled the machine--I thought "wow. outta thin air. oh boy. that's hollywood, circa 2002."
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
I saw it at a Cinemark theater here last night. While not particularily deep, it was a satisfyingly consistent movie. It didn't insult the viewer's intelligence once, which is saying a lot for a movie these days. Certain plot twists, while unexpected, help the storyline along. I give it 2 thumbs up for being easy to watch and it didn't totally mangle the original concept!
It looked kinda cool, but I was very concerned when I walked into a near-empty theater on a Saturday night. I went about brushing that off, realizing that the main-stream America isn't into Sci-Fi films.
Turns out main stream America just isn't into films that stink. They took a long sordid tale and jammed it into almost exactly an hour and a half, and left the parts that should have been in there out and vice versa... Even for a Sci-Fi movie, the plot made absolutely no sense into the second half of the movie.
The acting was pretty good, Guy Pearce seemed like he might've been a little out of his league (I kept on having Memento flashbacks the entire movie - that's how bored I was).
All in all, at the end, I just wished that his time machine could somehow get that hour and a half of my life back, but no such luck.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Hey. At least I got to see the trailer for "Minority Report". I almost shit myself because I hadn't even HEARD about it.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
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. For the most part I believe that translating a book into a is almost impossible. My general rule of thumb is "good book=bad movie" and "good movie=bad book", there is simply too many differences between the genres. When it comes to FoTR and Peter Jackson I personally think he did an admirable job, and made quite a good movie(I havn't talked to someone who didn't like it yet). I heard the origional movie was 6 hr long, you can see the evidence all over the place, I don't remember Gandalf ever teling Sam to stay with Frodo in the movie (I could be wrong there) although Sam states it numerous times, and did you notice the three stone trolls in the background when they're camping at night when the only mention of them was made in the party at the begainning. Where would you of fitted all the extra depth that you claim is so lacking? I personally hope that when it comes out on DVD it will include the FULL 6hr movie also. Can you imagine all 3 of them together in uncut form, 18 straight hr of LOTR!!! (then again it might be better to watch them over a few days;)
I stole this Sig
I remember the story as one of the most haunting memories in my life. All of the science fiction I read after it with similar themes - the apocalyptic science fiction that is so popular today - depends on this story.
Goat sex free since 2001
Don't pick on Katz.
He applies the same mouldly old 'new left' interpretation on anything he writes about.
I strongly agree that he has no fucking business writing about Tolkein.
This is off topic, but this YYMMDD system date only back to the way where machine and Binder appeared to help sorting.
YYYY-MM-DD is also the native date format in Japan and some other cultures that have strongly head-final languages (subject-object-verb sentences; adjective-noun and adverb-verb modifier structures).
ObTopic: Too bad this movie doesn't touch on any language barrier; it would have been very appropriate and cute for the Eloi people to speak Toki Pona. Note to creative staff of future films: If a movie is PG-13 or higher, you can use subtitles, as most of your target demographic group can read. In PG and G movies, show a language barrier with obvious dubbing that represents foreign language by distorting lip synchronization. (This is common in kung fu films and in anime.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
The book and the movie are almost COMPLETELY different, his motivation is different in the book and in the movie (but god forbid scientific curiousity be a motivation in a Hollywood film), and the book contains nothing about changing the human race.
I mean, why would you say something like this, unless you've never read the book?
It is, however, an excellent book, the text of which is online in several places if anyone wants to read it.
I was going to get all defensive, but after reading your criticisms, I have to agree with you. Most of the stuff you mentioned could have been cut.
The irritating thing about LoTR was the changes he made were defended by "it would fit into Tolkien's universe if it happened this way". Of course, that's not much of an excuse; if Tolkien wanted Arwen to be involved at the Ford, he would have written it that way.
That being said, I thought it was a great movie (and I'm using "great" in the appropriate sense, not the mindless hype-ish "great" that everyone else tosses around), if not a great adaptation.
I enjoyed this movie right up to the goat-rodeo of an ending. If the director was here right now, I'd be feasting on his brain.
The story Time Machine was great in part because of the fantastic ending; but his moving totally choked it. If you havent read the book, or even seen the older movie, do so. The story is one of the better sci-fi's ever told, and this piece of trash does not do it justice.
The Time Machine strikes me as one of those "adventures beyond your imagination!" which is not only not "beyond" or an "adventure," but also contains no "imagination."
I don't mean to be snide, but I can't imagine how anyone could watch that trailer and think for one second that this movie would be any good. First is the opening scene with Orlando Jones (isn't he the "7-Up Yours" guy?) as Computerized Annoying Moron. Okay, singing computer guy! Jokes about recombining DNA! There's the red flag! Stop! Go no further!
One could lull themselves into a false sense of security by thinking it's just a gag made for the trailer, but he shows up again in the movie trying to be spooky ("the truth is beyond your wildest nightmares of CGI Rorscharch blots etc."), so, at that point, shouldn't huge warning bells be going off in your head? They sure were mine. I was only slightly more inclined to see this movie than Queen of the Damned with Liberace Alia.
As for the Morlocks, they look just like the animations in Planet of the Apes . I remember when the awful Roland Emmerich Godzilla came out in 1998, and all the "baby Godzillas" came out, tripping on gumballs, looking exactly like raptors from Jurassic Park -- I strongly suspect they just lifted the kinematic libraries wholesale. I wouldn't be surprised to learn The Time Machine did the same thing, ripping off Planet of the Apes instead.
I will probably see this on rental, just for grins (and I have a friend who works at a video store and gets all her rentals for free, so I'll bum it off her... there, no money to the MPAA, my Slashdot-social conscience is satisfied! Whew!)
In the meantime, all I want to know is, did Guy Pearce punch out Jeremy Irons, or knock him off a cliff, or impale him on a piece of broken machinery, then say, "Time's up, asshole!"? Because I have this bet going and I don't want to have to sit through the movie to know if I won.
We're approaching the third anniversity of the Columbine shootings. Right after they occured NBC aired the epic made-for-TV movie "Atomic Train" everywhere in the country except the Denver market.
It seems they were afraid that we would have such febble minds we couldn't distinguish between the reality of Columbine and a fictional account of a nuclear explosion near town.
My mother taped it for me, and I passed it around to my friends. I find it hard to imagine anyone taking the story seriously, and if you have any real technical knowledge the story was absolutely incomprehensible.
Hollywood movies can get it right, but it's extremely rare. For every Terminator 2 or True Lies, you have a hundred Armaggedons(sp).
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Jeremy Irons got only a few minutes of screen time, but managed to make far more of an impact on my mind than Pearce.
I wasn't expecting such a nuanced character, though I think that probably owes more to Irons than the screenwriter.
Orlando Jones' character was also highly interesting, and got very little screen time. Like Irons his attempts to communicate on a more interesting and philosophical level is ignored by Pearce's self-absorbed character, who's obsessed with saving his new chippie. Why is it that Hollywood scientists invariably are incredibly uncurious would-be action heroes who rarely do any actual science?
I really doubt we needed an review of these movie as it was pretty obvious it was a twisted, hollywoodified, piece of crap version of a great story. Just look at the poster alone, the main character looks like someone from a CK commercial, theres a scantily clad chick in the background... as soon as you try to sell sex in a scifi film, 100% maximal suckage garanteed. Then the previews: everything is super duper action packed, theres CG all over the place, everything is flashing by mad fast, etc... Action packed? WTF, no need to even say anything on this one, and the fact it has CG means exactly jackshit, after all ANY hollywood-class film will be able to scrape up some money to have CG. And the excuse "I just wanted to see it for the CG" is weak as hell; You could say that about FF, Mummy2, Monsters Inc, etc, but NOT for this steaming pill. If you actually spent $9 to see this for just CG, I'd say that was pretty dumb. Sorry for the ranting, but this movie's existance angers me, especially the fact they took a great story and blantantly butchered it hollywood style.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
My personal top-irritant about the justifications used were the slightly snide comments about the animated version and how this one would be the definitive adaptation. In fact, although there are many problems with the animated version, it actually covers Fellowship better that Jackson's, and does it in an hour. After that the film unravels, though. Yet another small change that shows how poor Jackson's direction is was the bit where the watcher in the lake blocks them into Moria. In the book and in Bakshi's version the watcher actually slams the doors behind them and barricades them in a sinister display of intelligence. Jackson makes it look like it did it by accident just so he can have a big cave-in.
Bakshi failed but it was an honest failure caused by aiming too high with too few resources. Jackson failed (as an adaptor), but through laziness and lack of understanding of the source material. I know who I'd rather got the Oscar.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
To see my full review, go to Peterswift.org/ html [peterswift.org]
Does Jon Katz post stuff on that web site that says "To see my full review, go to http://slashdot.org"? These are supposed to be Slashdot reader comments. If you want to advertise on Slashdot, go to this link. You will find all of the information on rates, ad types, etc.
For those interested in reading the original, the text is available online here (ASCII text) or here (same, zip'ed), courtesy of project Gutenberg.
Consider this the ultimate spoiler.
Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
Why is it that Hollywood scientists invariably are incredibly uncurious would-be action heroes who rarely do any actual science?
Generally, I agree. But, this is one of the reasons I liked Stargate. While Jackson ends up playing the hero role, it's his scientific curiousity that motivates him to inadvertantly strand the team in the first place.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Incredibly average movie, see at matinee price.
You can see a lot of time and money was spent and result is a so-so movie.
At least I got to see the trailer for "Minority Report".
Not the best trailer for the movie. There is a longer one available. The movie looks good, but two facts make me wonder if I should really see it:
1. It stars Tom Cruise.
2. It's directed by Spielberg (sp?) who, in my opinion, couldn't avoid ruining sci-fi to save his life.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Why does Katz bother...
While I'm sure you know, I'll volunteer the answer: He get's paid to see movies by virtue of writing about them afterward.
Unlike most of the Slashdot editorial staff, Katz is an actual writer/reporter type and a respected one (in other sectors.)
I take great pleasure in seeing a bad review from a paid reviewer. I'm not willing, generally, to defer to their judgement, mind. I just like to see them spend more time being forced to remember why they wasted two hours of their life.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Katz, check your data! Jules Verne was French!
It looks like they've turned the Morlocks into orcs. D'uh! In the book, they're pretty pathetic, lemur-like creatures. Devolved working-class folk.
I caught a few interesting things during my re-read. On his return journey to the future, the Time Traveller packs "a Kodak." Imagine, product placement, in 1898!
--Stefan
It's hard to believe, but at the time the book was written the world appeared both a lot younger, and with a comparitively short future. It won't be giving anything away to note that in one scene, the Time Traveller (he's never named) visits the Earth in 800,000 A.D. The sun is swollen and red, and things are starting to run down. The notions of radioactivity and fusion hadn't been concieved yet, and it was reasonable to guess that the sun only had a million or so years of life left!
This movie sucked.
I saw it last night with some friends.
Lets give it a run down.
1. That damn trailer for "Spirit" needs to be cut, it almost made me walk out of the theatre.
2. I did like the walking down the hallway scene, that was kinda cool.
3. I could understand how hollywood would want to make it a better plot by having the guy go back to save his gal, but the 4 years he was working on the machine, it gave no detail on how it was built, how it worked, etc. Which i guess is better than making something up though and making it sound stupid like "it works on the plank reaction of sub-atomic quarks in the 5th dimension" or something.
4. The Morlocks where freakin scary looking, I almost jumped out of my seat when the first one jumped in front of the screen.
5. The Eloi looked like mullato's, and thats it, in millions of years, alot more evolution should have happened, look at the morlocks!
6. I remember hearing about in the book (I haven't read it yet, but I am going to) that some eloi fasted because the Morlocks controlled them through their food. In the movie it just had that stupid dream, and thats it!
7. "Just follow the breathing" WTF!!! Ok, that iron face thing was in the dream, but how in the hell did the guy know how to get there?!
8. That computer, how the fuck was it powered for 30 million years, no less, how did it stay intact, etc.
Thats about it.
There was this woman in front of me I just about killed. She laughed at everything. "So help me I'll resequence your DNA" "HHAHAHAHAHAHAH, AHAHAHA, HAHAHHAHA, DNA!!! HAHAHA"
!!!!ARGHH!!!!!
She even laughed at the Eloi language. I hate freakin stupid people.
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. For the most part I believe that translating a book into a is almost impossible. My general rule of thumb is "good book=bad movie" and "good movie=bad book"
Typically translating even an average length novel into a movie results in many missing scenes. Quite a few "classic stories" are a lot longer than average, e.g. 20,000 leagues under the sea. That's before you get plots rewritten to conform with Hollywood stereotypes. When a novel is made from a movie often quite a bit extra has to go in to avoid having a very thin book.
Come on.
Why did you even bother writing all that when you could have summed up your opinion simply by:
"Tolkien's word is the word of God. Not a single scene, character or word in the dialogue should have been changed in any way. Jackson should be shot for this blasphemy".
Because that's not what I think. But if you're going to make changes, and you have to when making a film, don't make changes for the sake of it, or at least if you do try to make them work. In what way did any of Jackson's changes make the film better than sticking to the source? In what way did any of the changes for the screen cope with difficulties inherent in the adaption process?
One scene that Jackson managed to improve on, the only one, was the bit with Khamul sniffing at the edge of the road near the start. That bit worked really well with the earthworms and things. By the time we got to Rivendell and the silly bit of "Bug-Eyed Bilbo" it was obvious that it had been a fluke.
The issue is not the changes, it's the quality of the changes. As I've said before, the animated version did Fellowship in an hour and did a better job of it.
Especially showing the less serious side of Gandalf was excellently done.
Apart from jumping out on poor Frodo in the dark and trying to scare him to death, yes.
In fact, my only gripe is with Cate Blanchet's Galadriel who had been made to sound like a doped up hippie girl.
The whole of Loth Lorien was a waste of time, the film rushed through it not even bothering with continuity. Galadriel's spooky mind powers are an example of a change that I could have lived with, but even that wasn't used consistantly.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
The irritating thing about LoTR was the changes he made were defended by "it would fit into Tolkien's universe if it happened this way".
One problem with LoTR is that it's actually one book. Even though it has been published as 3 books and evem 7 books...
The best bit is the Nazgul stabbing the beds in Bree which was almost identical to the same scene in the cartoon, and which isn't described in the book!.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
As for "9/11" itself, that particular date will always be said that way since 911 is the emergency number in the US, similar to 991 in the UK.
More usefully 999 or 112...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This article focuses on Pearce and the problems with the movie. He's amazingly outspoken and critical of the movie and the whole process that created it -- something I think the studios would be all over him for, especially so close to the opening. But I guess, happily, it's not like the old days where studios owned stars.
Also interesting (to me, at least!): Director Simon Wells is the great-grandson of H.G. Wells.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
:::insert image of orcs chanting:
"Where there's a well, there's a way..."
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
You do realize that the book was only a short story, right?
In fact, if you read the book, that's kind of what it feels like when it ends (I haven't seen the movie yet). It feels like it should keep going to some other time, because he only visited one time (for very long) before going to the end of time and then heading home.
While I'm on the Time Machine subject, TECH HUBRIS??!!! Where's that in the book? He uses the machine to travel to a time when there is no technology, except to make clothing and food, and stays there for the entire book, until he goes on to see the earth's death as the sun dims, which also has little to do with technology (no technology caused that). I suppose the last sentence (ending which I won't give away) could be about that, but how can you say that the book is all about technological hubris based upon a single sentence?
I think someone is lumping all of their Victorian writers into the same category without reading very carefully. Its good if that's not in the movie, 'cause it sure ain't in the book.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
You know it's funny. I was watching the trailer and I heard that line and was like "This sounds familiar" and THEN the department of precrime logo came up and I almost wet myself. I had JUST finished reading "Minority Report" for the first time about a week ago and thought that it would make a good movie.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
"I should like to say something here with reference to the many opinions or guesses that I have received or have read concerning the motives and meaning of the tale. The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them....As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical." [emphasis added]
In short: Tolkien had no intentions whatsoever to make any fine points about war or about class. The story may be applicable to such things, but that is a very different thing from saying that it is "about" them.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Well the only other trailer I was apple to find was on the movie's website here.
I don't think Tom Cruise would be that bad. I AM worried about Spielberg fucking it up though.
From what I've been able to find out, the originally had the script based around a cop who found out his brother was scheduled to be arrested. I think the strongest point of the book is the fact that the DIRECTOR of the agency is the one who finds out.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Has anyone read "A Light in the Void", by Poul Anderson?
This was a similar story. The inventor created a time machine, but found that the farther he ventured into the future, the more energy was required to go back (it was exponential) After his third jump into the future he was unable to to his original time, so he continued to move forward - hoping technology would advance to the point that he could get back to where he started from. Along the way, there were at least 3 subplots that he was involved with in some way, even if he was just passing though.
I can't find much about it on the web. I guess it wasn't that popular?
I think the movie succeeded in doing what the book was meant to do - it sparks the imagination! What IS the world going to be like in 800,000 years? I can't even imagine the changes that will come in the next 50! ... Let's put aside our petty concerns for a minute and remember what an important time this is to the evolution of technology.
As regards technological evolution, I note that in Wells' original, it was the Morlock's love of machines and enslavement to the idea of "mechanical progress" that led them at last to cannibalism and moral degeneracy.
The film fails, as the Pal version did in the 1960s, by dropping the key theme of Well's book: the time traveller discovers the end result of class warfare. The proles won by letting the rich think they'd won because they enjoy a life of luxury, but instead they are just cattle being fattened.
Wells was a Fabian Socialist with a huge sense of irony and these influences informed all his work. But socialism and irony is apparently too dangerous for Hollywood. Instead, Pal's film changed it into a metaphor about nuclear warfare and survivalism, and Wells Jr changes it into a metaphor about the perils of leisure development. What a crock.
The Time Machine is here. The end-of-the-earth chapter, which seems to give Katz the willies, is a perfect little End-Of-Colonialism piece, very typical of the time. Hodgson's House on the Borderland , Night Land , and Stapledon's Last and First Men are more of the same, but with their own charms.
`I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes -- to come to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed.
`It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.
`So, as I see it, the Upper-world man had drifted towards his feeble prettiness, and the Under-world to mere mechanical industry. But that perfect state had lacked one thing even for mechanical perfection -- absolute permanency. Apparently as time went on, the feeding of the Under-world, however it was effected, had become disjointed. Mother Necessity, who had been staved off for a few thousand years, came back again, and she began below. The Under-world being in contact with machinery, which, however perfect, still needs some little thought outside habit, had probably retained perforce rather more initiative, if less of every other human character, than the Upper. And when other meat failed them, they turned to what old habit had hitherto forbidden.
Da Blog
No, use the standards when they exist. Don't try to "improve" them without understanding the analysis that went into those standards.
For your suggestions, the month name was explicitly rejected because 1) it's not the same worldwide, 2) it requires lookup tables to parse, 3) you can't sort on it, and 4) you can't represent all possible abbreviated months in the 7-bit ASCII, much less the 5- and 6-bit representations you might find in legacy hardware.
Taken to extremes, I'm not even sure that MMM is unique. Perhaps "Feb" means the second month of the year in English, but the fourth month of the year in Albanian. This is a well-known problem with time-zone abbreviations, which is why the standards now specify using the offtime in hours and minutes instead of the civil abbreviation.
More generally, ISO-8601 actually provides a number of additional formats. Specifically,
YY-MM-DD - usable if the century is unambiguous. All of the subsequent formats can drop the century, if desired. This format is largely indistinguisable from DD-MM-YY for years between 1 and 31 inclusive so DD-MM-YY is *not* acceptable. (Besides, it's hard to sort on this format.)
yyyy-mm-dd-Thh-mm-ss- the date and time, separated by a capital 'T' in the spec (but often dropped in practice). Minutes and seconds are optional. Again, the 'Thh-mm-ss' suffix can be added to any of the other formats where it makes sense.
2002-W23 - week 23 of year 2002 (common practice in Europe)
2002-W23-4 - day 4 (Thursday) of week 23 of year 2002.
2002-123 - 123rd day of year 2002
2002-02 - second month of year 2002
and while my synopsis doesn't cover, I'm sure few people would have a hard time understanding
2002-Q2 - second quarter of 2002
This is the long format for all dates - you can omit spaces where human legibility isn't a major concern (e.g., for filenames or within databases).
The final variant I've seen, which is highly unofficial, is to write the month as a single hex digit. This is a common format with files crunched into 8.3 format - you generally have a single type code, then month, day, hour and minute or month, day and sequence number. Many digital cameras use this format, with 'P' (for photo) as the leading character.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
This remake was far superior to any other version I've seen. The special effects were great. Morlocks hunting was a less ridiculous than a nuclear warning siren luring them in. Agreedly, it's not quite clear why his final action "changed the future" since every other part of the movie seemed rather coherent. My sister and brother and friends all enjoyed it. At least they could sit through this version, while they would never be able to appreciate any previous version, much less stay awake through them.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Mainly the fact that he was trying to do it right. The result is a failure and I doubt anyone from Bakshi down would argue with that but the first hour, which covers the Fellowship of the Ring, actually works quite well and does a much better job of telling the story than Jackson's attempt. After that it's a disaster with occasional good moments (mainly Gollum who's voiced very well).
Bakshi failed through lack of time and money, Jackson had both and failed through laziness, which is a lot more contemptible.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I'm not saying he didn't; I'm saying that it worked better in the film than in the book, although it was a good scene in the book.
BTW I'm assuming you mean the bit by the side of the road.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
... only because it in no way toouched on the fact that both races where dependant on each other. In fact it turned the Morlocks into a race of "bad guys". In the book, the eloia(sp?) could not survive without the morlocks.
There was a scene removed form the movie due to 9/11. In the original cut a pice of the moon hits the WTC and it look almost exactly like the lanes hitting it. However, since the scene take placew in the future, where there is no WTC, it really makes no sense. The only way it would make sense, owuld be if he went into a building, and there was a paque that said something like " Welcome to the New WTC: Dedicated to all those who where impacyed by the events of 9/11" then have THAT buildng hit by a piece of the moon, then they could of kept it.
They did a good job of portraying mans arrogance with technology. Remeber the moon bit, Jon? Also it was moved to new york because Great Britian is no longer the power hous it was 100 years ago, but the US is.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The monkier should have been "WHEN would you go?", since the time machine only travels in the 4th dimension (time), not in the other three!
That's why he drags the machine in the original film!
As for the '79 version, I didn't care for it becoming a "Tardis" (Time And Relative Dimensions in Space). San Franciso indeed. Hrumph!
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
When you watch the movie,
take note:
There is a part of the movie that takes place about 100 years ago - back when steam engine buggies were becoming popular. Apparently Mountain bikes were also popular because we noticed a nice set of shiny metal wheels with knobby mountain bike tires mounted to the steam buggy.
I'm not sure about the tires, but the wheels definitely metal spokes & Rims. Silly that geeks like myself notice stuff like that.