Starring: Guy Pearce, Samantha Mumba, Jeremy Irons    Directed by: Simon Wells    Written by: H.G. Wells, David Duncan, John Logan

The Story: Time travel. A really hard concept to swallow if you think about it. Paradoxes and all that.

I don't want to compare this review to the book. I read it once and to be honest I'd have to travel back in time myself to really remember that. I remember enjoying it, but that's about it except for bits and pieces of long ago thoughts. I don't even want to compare it to the earlier movie, since this one will have to do battle with it in the Infernal Grudge Match.

1899, New York City....um, why NYC? The original story was about a guy in London. I sincerely wish this movie was supposed to take place there. Not that I don't love NYC. Ok, I don't love NYC. Been there. The people were rude and I  got claustrophobic. A guy chased me. But I don't hate NYC....I'm sure there are plenty of good people there and it is a great city. Not my type of place, but then I'm strange. (Maybe I would fit in there!) Its just that the story wouldn't have to be any different if it took place in England. Making it take place in NYC is rather Ego-centric of America. Oh, well, back to the movie....1899, NYC....Prof. Alexander Hartdegen is off to see his lady friend, Emma, on a frosty winter night. he proposes to her in the park gives her a ring and then they both get mugged. Good news: Alex lives. Bad news: Emma catches a bullet and dies.

Distraught over his loss, Alex does what any man in love would do. He hides out in his house for 4 years building a time machine so he can go back and save Emma. Oops. did I say what any man would do? I meant what any CRAZY man would do if he could actually build a time machine. Here's the real scary part...Alex succeeds in building the machine! And he really is crazy! A working time travel machine and all he wants to do is save the life of a woman that's been dead for four years? That's noble, of course, but think about all of the other things you could do! Well, you can think about 'em but in this particular universe changing history ain't one of 'em. Alex goes back to the day Emma dies and avoids the mugging that caused her death...only to have her killed by a carriage on the street at the same time she would have been shot. Bummer. Alex then figures he needs to go to the future to see if scientists of a more advanced era can tell him how to change history. This makes little sense for these reasons:

A. Alex only made one attempt to save Emma. Maybe it was just a freak accident that she died the 2nd time.

B. If scientists of the future know how to change history wouldn't history, causality and all that be all screwed up? Did Alex even consider that?

C. Perhaps its just plain FATE.

Alex doesn't bother with these niggling little thoughts of mine, however and goes off to the future stopping in the year 2030. I got to hand it to him. He leaves his time machine in an alley, unguarded in New York City. I wouldn't leave my car unguarded and unlocked in Baltimore, let alone NYC. Next thing you know there could be homies shakin' down George Washington at Valley Forge. Good thinkin' there, Alex. Leavin' a potentially dangerous machine to the hands of FATE! Anyway, Alex finds a public library that has an interactive holographic computer "Vox". Vox tells Alex that time travel is impossible, confirming that his work was never discovered. When Alex asks about time travel Vox brings up H.G. Wells and references the earlier movie. Its a nod-wink thing, but at this point I'm willing to roll with it. What I'm not willing to roll with is that Alex figures he should go further into the future to find his answer. Did I miss something? Alex, Vox just told you No one thinks time travel is possible! Hell, by the records Alex, you, yourself vanished and was pronounced dead in 1903! What's the point in going further into the future? Oh. I get it. to conclude the foreshadowing we just saw. You see, when Alex arrives in 2030 he sees an ad for a Lunar retirement Colony. Nuclear bombs are being used on the moon as part of the construction.

Alex goes into the future once again, but is stopped by the violent rocking of his machine in 2037. emerging from the machine Alex finds NYC in ruins. The Lunar colony construction has shifted the moon's orbit (Shades of Moonbase Alpha!) and split it apart. Big moon chunks are raining on the earth and the changed orbit is causing mass destruction. Here's a question though, before we go on....Why would anyone set a nuke off on the moon to build something? I mean, what the hell is there to need clearing? Could someone explain that to me, because out of everything, that's the part of this movie that bugs me the most.

Escaping some soldiers in engaged in an evacuation effort, Alex travels further to the future. He's knocked out in transit and the machine takes him further than he perhaps wanted. To the year 80,000 something. There he meets the Eloi, the descendents of the human race. At first Alex can only communicate with Mara, because she understands the "Stone Language". Yeah, these guys understand English from What's left of the ruins in NYC. Right. You know if you went back in time to say, the year 1000, you wouldn't understand the English speaking people there. So, I had to take this with a rather large piece of salt. Anyway, just like the other movie, the Eloi are wimps. They're basically cattle for the aggressive other descendents of the human race, the Morlocks. The Morlocks live underground and look a lot like the Orcs in the Fellowship of The Ring. They capture Mara and cart her off after one of the most ungripping action sequences. Really. I started petting Banshee, my cat during this and found her purring more interesting than the movie. Perhaps it was because I knew that Alex wouldn't be hurt, him being the hero and everything.

So, lets keep going...Alex finds that Vox is still functioning in some ruins.....Christ, those Duracell's are bad as hell, ain't they? And he goes on a rescue mission to save Mara and the other captured Eloi. Still I was bored. Banshee wanted me to rub her ears...she loves that...but wait.....yes, Jeremy Irons shows up as the Master Morlock! you see, Jeremy explains (called MM henceforth) after the moon cracked (shades of Thundarr the Barbarian!) some humans made it underground. they evolved into the Morlocks, and couldn't reclaim the surface. But some stayed on the surface and evolved into the Eloi. The Morlocks are brutal and nearly mindless, but a caste system evolved also. MM is one of the ruling class and controls the other Morlocks by telepathy. They use the Eloi as breeding stock and food. Alex is appalled. He makes a wimpy ass speech about how inhuman it all is without taking it into context. Not that I like the Morlocks, but he's using 19th century morality 80 thousand years out of date! Does he think this guy is going to care? The MM gives Alex a chance to leave via his Time Machine....with the captive Mara helplessly watching. Alex seems to acquiesce, but at the last minute starts the machine and drags the MM into the "time sphere" to fight to the finish. which, to be honest was a bad idea. The MM almost kicks his can but good. Alex wins the fight by the luck of Indiana Jones. But the machine has carried him thousands  of more years into the future! There he spots a barren landscape where the Morlocks rule. Determined to stop this future, Alex returns to the time where he just left, sets the time machine to explode and rescues Mara, escaping just before the big blow up destroys the Morlocks.

Alex, you boob. First of all, haven't you figured that you can't change time? That's what your whole expedition was about! So you marooned yourself for nothing! Killing all of those Morlocks shouldn't change anything! Secondly The MM told you there are many Morlock colonies. So you only wiped out one. Which again means you really didn't change anything. Thirdly, Alex, you dickhead, you could have traveled back to say 2025 and convinced them to not try nukes on the moon! It might not have worked but at least you could go back to 1899 and start from there. Bozo.

And what the hell powered that time machine anyway, Dilithium crystals? how the hell did it blow up with such force. Einstein would have been proud...or sickened.

Visually TTM2002 looks great. I can't deny that. But the story is lacking. I can't help but feel if they kept a little more closely to the original story that it might have been better. The whole things gets kind of boring with Alex trying to change Emma's fate. I'm sorry, but watching an obsessed guy toil at changing the fate of someone he should have gotten over isn't that much fun. Alex's foray into 2030 isn't that interesting only because the idea of Vox was....well, a bad idea. In a better story it might have been cool, but Vox's attitude...which he shouldn't have had since he's a computer...was out of place. The Eloi didn't add much. Their introduction was the most boring part of the movie. Things didn't pick up until Jeremy Irons popped in, and his part was way too short. Perhaps if the movie had spent more time developing MM as a villain I might have liked it more. And we'll be here all night if I start pickin' on the paradox /time travel stuff.

As stated Jeremy Irons was the Master Morlock. You can see him in The Inferno by seeking out Dungeons and Dragons. Guy Pearce was Alex. and the beautiful Samantha Mumba was Mara.

Best Lines: "I fear the moment is rather dying here." - Emma, when Alex fumbles about to find the ring after asking her to marry him.

"I told them that you hit your head and that you are a wandering idiot." - Mara describes Alex, and the best thing is she wasn't lying.

"You're a man haunted by those two most terrible words....'What if?'" - The master Morlock to Alex.

 Are you kidding me?

1.) One of my dearest, oldest friends, Iron Annie once told me that "No one is irreplaceable". She said this in answer to a question of what would it be like if the person you loved most were taken away? You'd weep, you'd feel the loss, but life would go on. Eventually and god willing, you'd find someone else. I bow to her wisdom. Too bad Alex didn't. FOUR YEARS later he's still mourning the loss of Emma? Are you kidding me?! 4 Years! I've been married twice that long and Heaven forbid it, if I lost my wife I don't think I'd be all crazy and trying to make a f***ing TARDIS four years later!

2.) Why would anyone build a library computer as smarmy and condescending as Vox? It rolls its eyes, makes smart ass comments and basically treats Alex like a nutcase. Yeah, from a human you'd expect that kind of reaction, but we're talking about a computer built to give information. I suppose the "Live long and prosper" thing was meant as a joke for sci-fi fans, but even it came out as condescending and wise-ass.

3.) If you wanna think about it, Alex is a real asshole. He could have used the time machine to travel back in time before 2037 and told someone how the detonations on the moon would destroy earth. Yeah, they probably would call him mad, but he could have tried and saved a planet full of people! (And it ain't like he didn't have proof! He's got a functioning time machine!)

4.) I'm just about sick of "ancient wisdom" or any variation thereof. Well, at least when its in dumb movies. Alex asks why there aren't any older people in the community and Mara gives one of those lame-ass cryptic responses like "we don't dwell on the past...we remember them." Huh? Why not just tell him the Morlocks ate them?

5.) Mara seems mighty calm for someone in a cage with her captor talking about eating her or using her for breeding stock.

6.) Wait a second. Vox must have an inexhaustible energy supply! I wish my laptop could last that long without being plugged in. Vox functioned for centuries and through a friggin' ice age without maintenance! Microsoft must really have improved in the year 2030!

Nudity and Sex: None

Huh?:

At our last anniversary I gave my wife a rather expensive diamond necklace. If we got mugged while celebrating and the thief demanded it I'd give it to him. Emma should have done so with the ring. For Pete's sake a ring or a necklace is just a thing...it can be replaced. And the urgency to give it up is compounded when someone is pointing a gun at you! what did she think this guy would do if she refused to give him the ring? He'd pull the trigger and a little flag that said "BANG" would come out?

I read a review of this movie once that complained about the fact that Alex gave up trying to save Emma after one attempt at time travel. I agree. If all geniuses shared his level of tenacity we'd all be dancing around fires wondering where fire came from. But amazingly he doesn't try again and use a better plan...like simply taking Emma home, and saying screw the goddamned flowers.

Of all the ways I've seen Earth destroyed in the movies, the atomic detonations to make a lunar colony is the lamest crap I've had the displeasure of seeing. Its such a stupid concept that I can't think of the words to describe my displeasure...short of foul language that is! I challenge you to name a movie with a stupider way to destroy civilization. Even the hokey TV series Space 1999 was better.

I'm too much of a grim, fatalist, pessimistic guy for this movie....'cuz when the Master Morlock asked Alex "Who are you to question 80,000 years of evolution?" I thought to myself "Yeah, who the f*** are you? F*** you and the time machine you rode in on!". The Morlocks, though repugnant to our standards today, are in the movie what evolution brought about. I don't see to many people crying about the Cro-Magnons nowadays.

The Final Judgment: My only hope is that kids nowadays will at least read the book by H.G. Wells before they see this movie. which is a futile hope nowadays I suppose. Still, the infernal demons rule that this movie gets 3 devil heads, saving it from the first level of torture in the Flaming depths. While it could have been better, it wasn't bad. and I can't travel back in time to improve it,. Where's Dr. Who when ya need him?