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 The Time Machine |
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The Time Machine (2002) by Simon Wells The classic story by H.G. Wells is filmed before. This movie from 2001 was released at about the same time as Moulin Rouge! and From Hell, causing a short revival of Victorian influences. The novel is a classic and I guess a lot of people already knew what the story is about when seeing this version. The movie is not much different from the novel, and surprisingly doesn’t dive into an extraordinary lot of special effects to keep the attention of the viewer. Instead, it focuses more on romance. Doing so, the gruesome truth of the future Wells gave us, is a bit put to the background. The story is about Alexander Hartdegen who is in love with a girl. The instant she is killed, he turns from absent-minded professor to crazy scientist. He builds a time machine, in order to change the past and have his love back alive. This doesn’t work, she is killed again... Now Hartdegen sets out to find an answer to his question why he can’t change the past. He jumps into the future of 2037, where he is knocked unconscious and travels to a much further future. Upon entering this very much changed world, the crazy scientists slips immediately into the role of the adventurous hero without blinking an eye. In this future, the actual adventure takes place. What was before was just a prelude and what comes after is just an epilogue to end some other plot lines. The society of Morlocks and Eloi, both descendants from humankind, is what our society has become. One people living in fear for the others, the hunters and the hunted. Now it’s Hartdegen who disturbs the balance in this society... What I most remembered from the novel is the horror in it, the doom filled future, the future that our society builds. This idea was in my opinion not really there in the movie; it never got scary or terrifying, and doom is far away. It was gothic horror, the novel, humankind being the evil hat will destroy itself. It is however not in the movie Hartdegen realises this, not even as he talks to the old mind that remembers all - a bit of useless information in the adventure as told by the movie. The people who designed the actual time machine in the movie tell in the extra’s on the DVD the machine should me a character in the movie - if not the main character. After all, the movie is named after it. And is is very beautiful in it’s design. A brass and glass artifact, looking rather difficult to operate, build in Victorian elegance. A dream to every steampunker. When the time machine is time travelling, the special effects make it believable that, and how, the world changes around the machine. Another hi-tech artifact is VOX. This is an avatar system on screens, filled with all earthly knowledge, used in a museum to provide information. When VOX first appears, is just science-fiction, but later, when it returns in the far future, it looks almost steampunk, being dirty and broken and functioning with flaws. For those who love to see scenes from Victorian times, the first part of the movie is the most interesting (set around the turn of the century), even though it doesn’t really dive deep into the era. The future parts are more like The Lost World. The Time Machine is a good movie, not bad, not excellent. It’s well worth seeing it, and steampunkers should get the “Building the time machine” extra on the DVD. Those who do not know the novel might be surprised, others might just see the novel visualised. © Yaghish 2004 |
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