Last Saturday, we saw that the time traveler had begun his journey into the future and discovered some of the cruel events that await the world. He was eventually encased in lava and forced to speed through thousands of years as the volcanic rock erodes. When it finally erodes, he stops the machine too quickly, and it tips over, throwing him from his seat. The time traveler rights his machine and looks around.

Behind him, there is a sphinx-like construction with two large doors at the base of it. In front of him is a variety of strange plants and fruits. Someone has obviously been cultivating the land, and the weather conditions are ideal. In the movie, the time traveler roams this garden in a sort of whimsical fog until he begins to feel disoriented. Ominous music plays as he panics. Then he finds the earth’s future inhabitants.

The Eloi — the book vs. the movie

In the book, the traveler has a little more sense. He doesn’t wander off and lose sight of his only way back home, and the earth’s future inhabitants find him.

And not only does the introduction of Earth’s future inhabitants differ in the movie from the book, so does their appearance. Earth is populated by two different groups, but for the present, I’ll focus on the first group, which is the Eloi. In the movie, these people are depicted as beautiful, petite, blonde-haired, and blue-eyed; however, in the book, the Eloi are shorter, thinner, and androgynous, more akin to Santa’s elves than their picturesque counterfeits from the film.

I believe the reason for this difference in appearance is that the movie and the book were trying to accomplish two disparate goals. The film was trying to subvert the audiences’ expectations by making the scenery and people remind them of the Garden of Eden. That way, the audience is more likely to be shocked and horrified when Earth’s second group, the Morlocks, appear.

However, the book is trying to create a scenario where evolution has advanced to the point that things are — in a sense — moving backwards. In Wells’s scenario, rather than evolution continuously adding more and more improvements to a species, there will come a point when the neo-Darwinian process reaches a sort of zenith. From then on, a type of divergence will take place. A narrowing of traits will begin, where one aspect of a species — in the case of the Eloi, a desire for leisure — will start to override all the other characteristics.

The Eloi start out as humanity at the peak of intellect, but that intellect focuses on making life easier and easier. Over time, the human body degrades to the point that it is little more developed than the body of a child. The same goes for the general temperament of the Eloi. Thus, in the book, the Eloi act the way Wells perceives children to behave; they are very playful and interested but only for a brief period of time. Then they lose interest and move on to the next thing that grabs their attention.

But the movie avoids Wells’s scenario altogether, instead choosing to portray the Eloi as generally apathetic. Whereas the book portrays the Eloi as apathetic at times, for the reasons I just described, the movie gives no explanation for their apathy beyond laziness.

When the time traveler at last finds the Eloi in the film, he hears one of them screaming. A girl has been caught up in a river current, and the Eloi are not trying to save her. They watch the poor woman struggling to stay afloat without the faintest hint of concern. The time traveler saves her, and she simply stands up and walks away without so much as a thank you. The time traveler is puzzled by this, but he follows the Eloi as they all head toward an abandoned building for dinner. When he sits down on the steps in front of the large auditorium, the girl he saved comes back down the stairs to speak with him.

No language issue?

One thing I should briefly point out is that there is no attempt to address the language issues that would probably arise if someone were to travel into the far future. The movie simply refuses to mention the problem, while the book spends quite a bit of time describing how the traveler works around the language barrier. It’s not impossible that the language would remain the same since the traveler is technically still near his house, so this isn’t exactly a plot hole. But I still felt the film would’ve done well to explain how the English language survived.

Anyway, the girl asks the traveler why he saved her and doesn’t seem to understand his explanation. However, he does learn from her that the people call themselves the Eloi and that the girl’s own name is Weena. Weena takes him inside the building, telling him that it isn’t safe to be outside after dark.

The fate of the books

He begins asking the other Eloi questions as they eat. He doesn’t learn anything interesting until he brings up the subject of books. Then one of them says that they have books and takes the traveler to them.

However, when he tries to read the records of Earth’s past, which, in his mind, is the future, the books fall apart. The time traveler takes this very hard because all the knowledge and achievements of man have been lost. He leaves the Eloi in a rage, resolved to return to his machine and go back to his time.

The dangerous world outside

For some reason, he has no trouble finding his machine — which makes the previous scene, where the writers implied he was lost, pointless. But the moment he returns, he finds that his machine has been dragged behind the doors of the strange sphinx-like building. He tries to open the doors but is unsuccessful.

Then he hears something rustling in the bushes. He sees something white moving behind the leaves and strikes a match, which scares the creature away. However, then he hears something else rustling in the foliage and lunges after it. He pulls out Weena.

Weena tells him that the reason he shouldn’t be outside is the Morlocks. They make the Eloi’s clothing and basically take care of all their needs. However, the monsters are violent and only come out at night. Thus the Eloi stay indoors after dark.

The time traveler is surprised to find that this human, who seemed so nonchalant before, risked the dark and the Morlocks to find him. From this, he concludes that man’s better nature is not dead; it only needs to be reawakened. The time traveler decides to stay and help the Eloi rediscover their humanity.

Here’s Part 1 of my 4-part review: The Time Machine (1960): Two meetings and one big flashback. In my review of this time travel classic, I look at the 19th century novel that started the genre and the 20th century movie that followed. The movie, coming 65 years after the film, could portray some events that were well known as past events to the audience as future ones to the characters.

Here are parts 3 and 4:

The Time Machine (1960): The history of the Eloi and the Morlocks. In Part 3 of my four-part review, we look at the difference the Cold War made to how the Eloi and the Morlocks are portrayed.
In the 1895 novel, Wells was working out a Communist-inspired theory of evolution but the 1960 film’s screenwriters chose an anti-war narrative instead.

Time Machine (1960): Back to the past, and then fast forward again. In Part 4, we look at why the movie was, in many ways, better than the book. The film demonstrates that time travel captivates audiences if writers avoid goofy paradoxes and focus on story premises that offer believable emotional stakes.