6. The Time Machine (dir. George Pal, 1960)
No Top 10 of time travel films would be complete without the original and best adaptation of H. G. Wells seminal novel. Helmed by George Pal, who previously directed
The War of the Worlds, it follows a man called George (unnamed in the novel) who creates a time machine and travels forward in time through the two world wars. Having barely escaped a nuclear holocaust, he ends up thousands of years in the future in the futuristic utopia of the Eloi only to find that their civilisation has a dark and sinister underbelly Like
The War of the Worlds,
The Time Machine is a product of its time. Changes are made to incorporate the threat of nuclear war, and Wells social analysis is reversed; the bourgeois Eloi are now the victims of the proletarian Morlocks, rather than the other way around. But the main beats of the story are still preserved, and the film still holds up as a cautionary tale about humanity, warning about an embittered underclass rising up against a civilisation built on mindless escapism. The film won an Oscar for its special effects, including its early use of time-lapse photography as the machine speeds forward through time. The degeneration of the Morlocks in this fashion is every bit as creepy as Walter Donovans death in
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Time Travel Trivia: The 2002 remake of this film was directed by Simon Wells the great-grandson of H. G. Wells. Early on in his career he served as a story consultant on
Back to the Future Parts II &
III.