Edited by Robert Beach
Welcome back to Movie Monthly where we spend a whole month looking at movies of one particular theme. To celebrate the return of Doctor Who later this week, we’re dedicating September exclusively to time travel flicks. Even though this genre seems broad, there are actually very few worthwhile entries in it. We’ll be looking at the weirder portions of that spectrum starting with the time travel story that started it all…sort of. In 1895, H.G. Wells penned what is arguably the first major pop cultural time travel story with The Time Machine.
It’s an interesting speculative future story that’s honestly more of a fantasy adventure tale than a sci-fi story, especially when compared to the heavy social commentary inherent to the works of Wells’ contemporary Jules Verne. Wells’ novel was a pop smash at the time that influenced a lot of future tales through its unique blend of sci-fi affectations with Victorian fantasy adventure. That was the same basic blend that would eventually inform Doctor Who. Given that pedigree, The Time Machine has been adapted multiple times including an excellent B-movie version from 1960 and today’s subject: a 2002 feature film starring Guy Pierce.
