Everyone talks about traveling through time. Whenever we screw something up, we wish we could go back in time and fix it. Or maybe we want to move ahead and see our futures. There’s big business in psychics who say they can predict the future. These movies are about traveling in time. Someone builds a time machine, or someone discovers a way to use their mind to go into the past or future. Time travel movies are motivational movies, because they give us hope that we can find out what will happen in our future or go back and fix our pasts. This article explores ten time travel movies.
1. The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009). Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana star in this movie about a guy that has a genetic disorder that causes him to travel through time. Rachel McAdams is the woman who has been in love with him her whole life, as he drifts in and out of her life when he travels through time. Can the two get married and have a wonderful life despite the fact that Eric Bana has to disappear all the time and travel through time?
2. Back to the Future (1985). Everyone remembers this popular time travel movie starring Michael J. Fox, one of our favorite teen heartthrobs. In Back to the Future, Christopher Lloyd’s character, the scieintist, builds a time machine in a DeLorean DMC-12 car, powered by plutonium. Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), is the teenager who accidentally ends up in the car traveling through time, back to the time when his parents were teenagers and about to fall in love. Can Marty repair the damage he has done by meeting his parents, and becoming entangled in the process of when they fell in love? Can he then get back to the future?
3. Time Crimes (2007). This was never a big box office hit, but it gives a very unique look at time travel. Hector, played by Nacho Vigalondo, ends up traveling through time. As the story unfolds, we find out more and more about how Hector travels back in time, meeting himself and setting off a series of events that end up horrifying.
4. The Butterfly Effect (2004). This time travel movie is about a guy who started losing track of time with blackouts from a young age. By writing things down in a diary, he learns how to travel back in time to certain crucial events, and tries to fix things that went awry in the past. However, he then ends up messing up something else. Can he ever make everything right?
5. Kate and Leopold (2001). Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman star in this time travel movie where Leopold (Hugh Jackman) finds himself in the future, and he meets Kate (Meg Ryan). So what do you do when you fall for someone who lives in another century? This is more than just a battle about whose house you will live in or which town you will take up as your residence, for sure! And, can you even get to the year in which your lover has returned? How do you get there?
6. The Fountain (2006). The Fountain stars Hugh Jackman as well, and explores a man who is alive in three different periods of time. He learns about life, loss and love as he goes through these periods in time. The movie is odd, but very well worth watching. It offers a unique view of time travel.
7. The Time Machine (1960). I had to read this book by H. G. Wells in middle school, and then was able to watch the movie. The Time Machine is a movie about a guy building a time machine in his home, and then traveling in time to different periods. At one point in his time travels to the future, he reaches a time where humans are above ground, and another group of underground creatures called Morlocks. Disease is a thing of the past, and there are no laws. However, the Morlocks have the right to claim the lives of the Eloi, the humans above ground, and the Eloi don’t fight against it. The main character in this movie seeks to save the future, and then to go back to his own time in the past. What will the future make of him?
9. Somewhere in Time (1980). This is a romantic time travel movie where a guy attempts to will himself into the past, where this beautiful woman he saw in a picture will be. He is successful, but then he has to convince the woman that she herself invited him back to this time when she was an old woman in the future.
10. 12 Monkeys (1995). In this movie, Bruce Willis travels to the past to collect information about a deadly virus that has forced everyone on earth to live underground. The movie also stars Madeline Stowe and Brad Pitt.
