The Time Machine, based on H.G. Wells

The Time Machine, based on H.G. Wells

There are two ways to look at this motion picture, like at anything else indeed, just as John Milton said:

'The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven....’

Only this adaptation of The Time Machine is neither hell nor heaven, therefore a smaller effort is needed to dismiss or accept it.

Critics have not been impressed, giving it an average, Metascore of just 42 out of 100 – although it did receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Make Up – and the audiences have not been thrilled either, considering their average evaluation of 5.9 on a scale from one to ten.

Guy Pearce – the outstanding performer of Memento, L.A. Confidential, The King’s Speech and the classic The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert – portrays Alexander Hartdegen, the hero of the film.

The protagonist is an inventor who creates…The Time Machine.

This will enable him to travel in time, in spite of the problems associated with this notion, which have been exposed before, even in the archetypal Back to the Future, a comedy with science credentials…up to a point.

Some scenes are obviously amusing:

In one, the hero meets a young, sophisticated looking; modern, environmentally friendly woman – she travels with a bike – which is looking at the scientist and his century old clothes and says

Retro outfit…trendy….or something of the kind

Alexander Hartdegen then reaches the distant future and the public is invited to mediate on the fate that human kind is facing.

This is a serious, fundamental issue, even if Trump voters and other fools dismiss the Climate Change, the tremendous dangers posed by a lunatic in control of the free world and other critical challenges.

For various reasons, the world might end.

It does not help to be pessimistic, or even worse, catastrophic.

Positive people live longer, more successful lives, fall ill more rarely and they stay so for fewer days than negative ones, as positive psychology studies testify.

On the other hand, more and more wild fires, of an extent and frequency never experienced before, record temperature in Japan, Sweden and elsewhere, cataclysmic droughts have demonstrated the perils of ignoring Climate Change.

For this or another reason, the world that the hero travels too is more or less destroyed and humans are reduced to living in destitution, waiting to be hunted.

Alexander Hartdegen proves to be a role model when he stands out against the creatures, monsters really, who attack the remaining people and kidnap them taking the victims to a mysterious location.

The remainder live in terror, traumatized by the chase, the victims that are ever more numerous, but too afraid to do anything.

When the protagonist challenges these men and women, asking why they allow this to carry on, they respond that whoever opposes the beats is taken down first and there is nothing they can do about it.

The depression, hopelessness, cowardice, inevitable extinction are confronted by the Travelling Superman.

He takes on the creatures and their nefarious, vicious leader, Uber – Morlock, who drives a Lyft car in a remote hell.

The confrontation is won by…

Never mind that aspect.

As stated in the debut of the note, you either look for the good aspects of this science fiction story and enjoy it to some – granted, li9mited – extent, or you just skip it and look for something more gratifying…

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” - Hamlet

This quote is worth keeping in mind too.