With Daylight Savings Time set to kick in Sunday, March 9th, its time to consider some of the best time travel movies for an appropriate Sunday marathon screening complete with popcorn and soda. It is by now means a complete list ...I've left out such films as Timecop, Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, and The Three Stooges Meet Hercules...and does not include TV movies or series. You can make whatever substitutions you want. There are certainly numerous movies with time travel themes.
THE TIME MACHINE. A must-see. Rod Taylor in the classic tale adapted from H.G. Wells' novel as the Victorian time traveler who moves forward into time, stopping during World War One, pausing during the World War Two blitz, stopping to puzzle out the air raid sirens denoting a nuclear attack, and then shooting forward, encased briefly in volcanic ash to hundreds of thousands of years in the future where he encounters Weena and the Eloi as well as the cannibalistic Morlocks. He returns to relate his tale to disbelieving friends, and departs with a few books from his library leaving viewers to wonder what he took.
THE TIME MACHINE. Guy Pearce appears in this version of the Wells classic as a man desperately trying to reverse circumstances that lead to the death of his fiancee. When his efforts at tinkering with the recent past fail, he goes forward in time where he learns why he can't change her fate and confronts the Morlocks. Alan Young, who was the time traveler's friend, Filbert, in the 1960 George Pal version, has an eyeblink cameo as a flower shop owner.
TERMINATOR. In the Terminator film trio, cyborg Arnold Schwarzenegger travels back to the present day to kill John Connor, who one day will defeat the mechanized enemy of mankind and is defeated, then human-controlled cyborgs of the same model come back to protect Connor from a second last-ditch attempt to kill Connor and finally to assure he survives the war to lead the resistance.
BACK TO THE FUTURE. Marty McFly travels back and forth through time DeLorian in this trilogy to mend his family and, in the final movie, to save Doc, his mentor from being killed in the Old West.
TWELVE MONKEYS. In this grim movie, Bruce Willis comes back from the future where disease is rampant to find the origin and stop the disease in its tracks.
ARMY OF DARKNESS. An entertaining flick. Propelled back through a time rift to an Arthurian-style castle, Ashe and his "boomstick" take on an army of the undead led by his evil medieval clone. He created his evil double in a botched attempt to return home, but instead mangling the words used to safely access the Necronomicron.
STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME. As the SciFi Channel says, even-numbered Star Trek movies don't suck. The Enterprise uses the slingshot effect to propel itself into the present day to rescue George and Gracie, a couple of whales facing death when released in the open sea, and bring them back to the future where whales are extinct. If unsuccessful, an irresistible alien force that is keying its actions to the presence of whales will destroy the Earth.
TIME AFTER TIME. Michael McDowell plays H.G. Wells, who uses his time machine to chase Jack the Ripper into present day San Francisco. The time travel sequence is nicely handled. Wells lands in modern-day San Francisco, falls for Mary Steenbergen, experiences McDonalds, and confronts Jack.
BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE. A couple of dopes named Bill and Ted get help from the future in the form of George Carlin and his time machine. In Carlin's future they are revered, history-altering musicians but at this critical juncture, they must pass their History final. The time machine allows them to bring Lincoln, Napoleon, Joan of Arc, and others to their high school as their big show-and-tell. One cringes hearing Lincoln exclaim "Party on, dude!" but it is a terrific fun movie.
THE FINAL COUNTDOWN. Navy Captain Kirk Douglas's aircraft carrier encounters a time rift that returns it to the hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. Does he attack the Japanese Imperial Navy or not? Obviously not, because time hasn't changed...the same problem they kept repeating to Gene Roddenberry who wanted a movie about the Enterprise trying to stop the Kennedy assassination. Eeven with the predictable ending, there's an interesting subplot or two and a lot of excellent footage courtesy of the US Navy that carries the movie forward.
MILLENIUM. The movie starts great with Kris Kristofferson investigating an airline crash, then encountering ex-Charlie's Angel Cheryl Ladd who is an agent from the future. She and her mates are swapping mindless clones for modern-day plane crash victims just before impact to be returned to future which is threatened by time disturbances. The plan is to further dispatch the rescuees to her own future to ensure the world's survival. Written by John Varley, who wrote the story it was based on, the movie's ending strangely mimics that of the 1964 low budget Time Travelers with Preston Foster and Phil Carey. Certainly the quality is worlds apart. In any event, it is very watchable.
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