I’m not altogether a fan of H.G. Wells’s short novel, The Time Machine (1895). But what this movie does to the original tale is just offensive. It is a prime example of writers taking somebody else’s idea and using the recognizable title to pull a bait and switch on the viewer.

The only thing this film has in common with H.G. Wells’s work is that there is a time machine and both the Eloi and Morlocks appear. Beyond these three details, it’s a completely different story.

The mad scientist cliché

The movie starts with our time traveler writing on a chalkboard, forgetting about his date. One annoying cliché that has, for some reason, grown up around the mad scientist trope over time is that he can’t even have a social life; he forgets that his girlfriend exists. There is no mention of a girlfriend in Wells’s original story. Anyway, this time traveler also has the annoying characteristic of finding trends repulsive for no apparent reason.

In the 1960 film version, the time traveler was concerned about war and the state of the modern world, and these were reasons he’d built the time machine in the first place. Well, forget such nuanced motivations. This time traveler hates bowler hats. Not really sure why. He just finds them lame. Perhaps the writers want us to believe that our new time traveler is hip.

Also, this time traveler is living in New York. Apparently, the writers felt that American audiences in 2002 wouldn’t care about our hero if he lived in Britain. These changes to the character and his setting communicate a certain contempt for the source material. H.G. Wells’s story — playing on the fears of the future or warning the reader of deadly fates unless humanity changes its ways — isn’t timeless? No. So the story needs a makeover. New York is cooler than Britain, and bowler hats are out of fashion. Who could possibly care about a character wearing an out-of-fashion hat!

Anyway, loyal friend Filby reminds our traveler of his tedious social obligation, so the traveler rushes home to prepare for his date. Oh, by the way, it comes out that he plans to propose during this date. Yet our absent-minded hero forgets about this outing entirely — because proposals are so common?

On the way to meet his girlfriend, our traveler is distracted by an old-fashioned car. After he spends a few minutes gawking at the machine, he remembers what he’s supposed to do. Finally, the traveler meets Emma. Instead of being furious or even annoyed, she seems bemused by the protagonist’s mistaken priorities. Ahe quickly forgets about his delay which, in my view, chewed far too much screen time.

The traveler takes Emma to a secluded area of a park and makes his proposal. Emma accepts, and then a mugger appears. He asks for the couple’s belongings, including the ring the traveler has just given his new fiancé. She resists the mugger and is killed. The time traveler is devastated. Or at least, he acts devastated. Honestly, given what we saw earlier, it’s surprising he remembered the incident the following day.

Back to the equations…

An unknown period of time passes, and, eventually, Filby shows up at the traveler’s apartment to check on his friend. The chalkboard is already filled with equations. Filby expresses his concern, and the traveler tells him to return next week. Filby agrees, but then the traveler mutters that in a week they will not have even had this conversation. Then he reveals his machine.

If it isn’t already apparent, in this film, the traveler hasn’t built his machine to see what the future holds, or to invent something that will change the destiny of humanity, or to escape his modern world. He’s built the machine to save the woman he loves. The problem with this is that anyone who’s read the source material already knows that his plan cannot work. So, from the audience’s perspective, they’re just waiting for this plot point to drop so the real story can begin.

To make matters worse, there is also the promise of yet another annoying time paradox to wade through. The time traveler cannot simply save Emma because then why would he travel into the future and meet the Eloi and Morlocks? But if Emma cannot be saved, how are the writers going to explain that? Their eventual explanation is as lazy as it is infuriating.

The whole scenario plays out as the viewer would expect. The time traveler returns to the past, meets Emma, takes her into the city instead of a secluded area of the park, and everything looks like it’s going well . . . until Emma is inexplicably hit by a carriage. That’s right! She was just randomly run over!

What’s even more bizarre about this sequence is that the traveler doesn’t bother trying again. He doesn’t even bother trying to show up on time! There’s just something awfully ironic about a time traveler who’s always late. Perhaps, this whole thing was the Almighty’s way of teaching him punctuality, but the audience will never know.

A domino effect?

Had the writers been clever, or at least, less lazy, they might’ve tried showing how the traveler’s presence always created a domino effect that led to Emma’s death. This was the premise of a far better time travel story called The Butterfly Effect (2004), starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart. The whole movie revolves around a man trying different things to save the woman he loves, and he ends up realizing that the only way he can save the girl is by refusing to be in her life. It’s a tragic tale, but the domino effects of his various decisions are explored in detail, and this makes for a very interesting film:

But the writers make no such effort here. The traveler instantly recognizes the problem with trying to prevent her death. While his realization saves time, this is one of the rare occasions where saving time diminishes the urgency of the story. The audience doesn’t become emotionally involved with the character’s desperation, which grows as his various attempts fail. Two or three attempts would’ve been enough. But one simply wasn’t.

And the reason I believe the writers did this is even more infuriating. I believe they portrayed only one attempt because they wanted the audience to forget about the inciting incident as fast as possible. These writers not only had the gall to ignore the original character’s motivations, but they also didn’t care enough about their own character’s new motivations to spend any time with them!

Someone smarter?

This time traveler’s solution to Emma’s recurring death is to travel further into the future to see if someone smarter has solved his paradox.  

Here’s Part 2: Review: Time Machine 2002 — Hold on. Someone’s destroyed the Moon. Part 2: The Eloi we meet in this film are radically different from H.G. Wells’s Eloi and that of the 1960 film version. By making the Eloi more hearty and capable of surviving on their own, the writers destroy the seriousness of the threat the Morlocks represent.