![]() One problem with time-travel movies is that the rules always need to be explained upfront. Swiping Abraham Lincoln and Napoleon from their respective eras has no bearing on world history whatsoever, which is probably quite lucky. Extra points are awarded thanks to the film’s total lack of interest in consequences. The lead characters are initially reluctant to embark on their time-travel adventure, until they’re visited by versions of themselves from the near future who compel them to do it a beautiful and hilarious example of predestination in action. But that’s a deliberate ploy, a way to camouflage all the careful rigour that underpins the script. ![]() There are times when Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure feels like it was written by a toddler off his face on pop. George Carlin, Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) But it gets a pass, largely because McConaughey sells the agony of the moment so beautifully. Is the trip important enough for him to miss seeing the wonder of his children grow into adults? Technically, if you want to be fussy about this, Interstellar is a time dilation movie rather than a time-travel movie. The problem is that every hour he spends there is equal to seven years on Earth. But at its core is a simple ethical quandary: would you try to save the world if it meant missing your children’s entire lives? Matthew McConaughey has to touch down on a planet during a space trip. The Battle of New York is the obvious highlight, with Captain America fighting Captain America and the Hulk embarrassed by his unreconstructed former self, but the heart of the film really comes when Tony meets his father as a man and learns to let go of the past. Nevertheless, when they get to it, the film nails it. And, yes, it takes a lot of liberties with time-travel, from Tony Stark’s “Huh, I did it” invention to the lazy referencing of other time-travel movies as a shorthand for what the characters can do. Avengers: Endgame (2019)Įndgame is a lot, so much so that it is effectively a time-travel movie bookended by two entirely separate movies. That new Adam Driver movie probably could have achieved something similar, if it hadn’t blabbed its big secret in the trailer. But what a reveal this is – what seems at first like a silly movie about Charlton Heston being persecuted by some monkeys quickly becomes something darker and much more sinister. If you haven’t seen Planet of the Apes, then the fact that I’ve put it on a list of time-travel movies is probably quite a heavy spoiler, and for that I’m sorry. Photograph: 20th Century Fox/Sportsphoto/Allstar Sinister … Maurice Evans and Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes. I have only done this once before” – and the respondents slowly come to realise that all is not quite as it seems. A man places an ad in a magazine asking for a time-travel companion – “Must bring your own weapons. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)Ī time-travel movie that may or may not have any actual time-travel in it, Colin Trevorrow’s Safety Not Guaranteed is a delicate wonder of a thing. Almost entirely unwilling to explain itself, for years Primer fans have come to rely on a series of graphs and charts to figure out what the film actually is. ![]() ![]() It’s the sort of movie that seems unnervingly realistic, from the down-at-heel engineers to the unshowy nature of time travel itself, where people in effect just get in and out of some boxes. Some see Shane Carruth’s Primer as the gold standard of what a time-travel film should be. There are UFOs and rubbery little creatures and whatnot, but there’s a real emotional wallop to the moment when the boy realises that the world has moved on without him, right down to the scene (that plays out like a horror movie) where the boy realises that his parents have become unrecognisably ancient, even though they are probably only in their early 40s. This family film involves a young boy who goes missing in a Fort Lauderdale ravine, only to show up eight years later having not aged. Seek out the director’s cut if you can, because it ends with Kutcher’s character deliberately strangling himself in the womb with his umbilical cord. But in doing so, he unleashes a world of unintended consequences. In summary: Ashton Kutcher plays a man who experiences blackouts, only to learn some years later that he can travel back in time and inhabit his younger self’s mind during the blackouts. That makes it a time-travel movie, right? 16. That all fell apart for the sequel, where Powers was sent back to the 60s to shout his catchphrases at people who actually appreciated them. Weird to think that Austin Powers was originally a fish-out-of-water comedy, in which the promiscuous titular character had to navigate the (then) uptight world of the 1990s. Photograph: Kimberly Wright/New Line Cinema/Allstar Back in the 60s … Heather Graham and Mike Myers in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. ![]()
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