I had to vote Groundhog Day because it’s the greatest movie of all time, but I don’t think that really classifies as a time travel movie. Primer should have been on the list instead of Groundhog Day.
@The_Tim Second the motion. I also voted “Groudhog Day”, though I don’t think it qualifies. But was my favorite on the list, if not the “best”. Also quite liked the “Back to the Future” films.
Wondering why some of the classics weren’t mentioned, such as “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” with Bing Crosby (1949 film) – should be listed for sheer earlyness. Also, H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine” (1960) gave us the Morlocks and the Eloi. Speaking of HG Wells, I thought “Time After Time” (1979) was quite clever.
@katbyter Agreed. But (as far as time travel movies go) only the first one, none of those other ones that screw up the timeline continuity.
Also Looper and 12 Monkeys are good picks (haven’t seen Primer yet). I’ve also been enjoying Future Man on Hulu so far, and have soft spots for Bill & Ted and the whole BTTF trilogy.
Back to the Future 3, if just for all the callbacks. It is one of the rare thirds that is still good. It requires you to watch the first two, but it leaned into that hard right from the get-go, making it a true conclusion. {side note:I think Groundhog Day is the better movie, but not a better time travel movie. When I hear time travel movie, I expect sci-fi, maybe fantasy, but while the time travel is present as a driving force, it’s more of an environmental macguffin. The story isn’t really about time travel. I’m not very clear here, but I think most of you understand what I am going for}
“Before Butterflies Existed”
Release Date: Coming soon to a theater near you
Plot: A group of kids invent a time machine, but knowing that changing anything in the past can cause a huge butterfly effect, they decide to keep travelling back in time to track down the very first butterfly, and squish it, so the butterfly effect cannot exist.
@lichme I feel like I read a short story about a guy accidentally killing the first butterfly, but all it did when he got home was change who won the election. And sure the new winner was a communist, so he kills himself to fix the timeline or something, and you know what, I feel like I must be remembering wrong, or that story made no sense. Huh. I remember he wanted to hunt a dinosaur, and made sure he found one that was about to die anyway. Which was hilarious to me. As if it wouldn’t change things, ha. Hahaha. Ah well. May be it was a crap story.
@compunaut@lichme@SSteve yes, exactly. It makes a bit more sense, and definitely misremembered plenty. Still not great. Bradbury has far better writing out there.
@compunaut@lichme@simplersimon@SSteve Good short story, terrible movie. As I recall, they didn’t kill the first and only butterfly, just a really important one and by accident. They made a hash of shooting the T-Rex they were authorized to kill (one that was about to die of natural causes and was thus okay to shoot), it fell on their time safe pathway and scared them, one of them stepped off the path and killed a butterfly. That butterfly had an important role to play in the temporal chain of events. The mistake changed more than the election, words were spelled differently, and that was stuff they noticed immediately. The story ended on the implication that quite a lot had been changed by stepping on that single butterfly.
@compunaut@lichme@moondrake@SSteve yeah, I got a lot wrong. Still not a fan. Likely an example of something that was brilliant at the time because it was a fresh idea, but now it’s an avenue that has been explored to death, so we can find better examples.
It’s not a time travel movie, but this quote always pops up in my addled brain.
“Where is now?”
“We passed it.”
“When?”
“Just now.”
“When will then be now?”
“Soon.”
Although I don’t generally appreciate Bruce Willis, I thought 13 Monkeys was well done. And Looper turned out to be more entertaining than I anticipated. Though Willis’ was in more of a supporting role. Joe Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt polished that film.
I guess not strictly time travel per se, but Denzel in Deja Vu was a decent story as well.
Time travel is the worst sci-fi subgenre. There’re always these random plot points that’re nonsensical and even internally inconsistent “because time travel woooooo”.
I mean, maybe comedies are ok.
Oh, I know. William Gibson wrote a book, The Peripheral, that features divergent histories that run in a kind of synchronized time with a future present time (via handwavey black box “servers in China”, or so, providing information exchange over some future Internet). As far as I remember, he managed not to contradict himself for the entire novel. That was fun.
@Kidsandliz I have other objections to Dr. Who… along similar lines, but I’ve never scrutinized it for uh, call it internal rigor. It isn’t really my kind of thing. (Have you seen the episode with the traffic jam? Basically that is all I can see when I watch any Dr. Who.)
Maybe when I’m older, the raw sentimentalism will appeal to me in a way that makes it easier to ignore… the rest of the show. I’ve found that Star Trek kind of worked like that, for me.
@colinlord ditto. I ended up picking Back to the Future because well… it’s really an iconic blockbuster movie. But personally… I think I really enjoyed Groundhog Day more. Even tho I’m not a fan of either Bill Murray or Andie MacDowell. I almost had to just eenie meenie minee moe with those 2 movies.
Our priest actually gave a sermon about Groundhog Day! He said it was about getting it right.
Even though I worked with Chris Elliott before he was famous I love that movie.
(I’ve only known 2 people who were in films and with the other guy I couldn’t get pass the fact that is the guy I knew from work. Somehow it doesn’t happen with Chris.)
I’ll admit it. If Groundhog Day is on TV…I’ll stop everything and watch it.
(I also met Bill Murray but as a celebrity. After we met he would say hi to me if he saw me in the building, but it was a celebrity/fan thing, not a fellow worker thing.) btw…Bill is nuts in real life, just like on tv.
Our priest actually gave a sermon about Groundhog Day! He said it was about getting it right.
Even though I worked with Chris Elliott before he was famous I love that movie.
(I’ve only known 2 people who were in films and with the other guy I couldn’t get pass the fact that is the guy I knew from work. Somehow it doesn’t happen with Chris.)
I’ll admit it. If Groundhog Day is on TV…I’ll stop everything and watch it.
(I also met Bill Murray but as a celebrity. After we met he would say hi to me if he saw me in the building, but it was a celebrity/fan thing, not a fellow worker thing.) btw…Bill is nuts in real life, just like on tv.
Our priest actually gave a sermon about Groundhog Day! He said it was about getting it right.
Even though I worked with Chris Elliott before he was famous I love that movie.
(I’ve only known 2 people who were in films and with the other guy I couldn’t get pass the fact that is the guy I knew from work. Somehow it doesn’t happen with Chris.)
I’ll admit it. If Groundhog Day is on TV…I’ll stop everything and watch it.
(I also met Bill Murray but as a celebrity. After we met he would say hi to me if he saw me in the building, but it was a celebrity/fan thing, not a fellow worker thing.) btw…Bill is nuts in real life, just like on tv.
Our priest actually gave a sermon about Groundhog Day! He said it was about getting it right.
Even though I worked with Chris Elliott before he was famous I love that movie.
(I’ve only known 2 people who were in films and with the other guy I couldn’t get pass the fact that is the guy I knew from work. Somehow it doesn’t happen with Chris.)
I’ll admit it. If Groundhog Day is on TV…I’ll stop everything and watch it.
(I also met Bill Murray but as a celebrity. After we met he would say hi to me if he saw me in the building, but it was a celebrity/fan thing, not a fellow worker thing.) btw…Bill is nuts in real life, just like on tv.
There was a Champions role playing game module called Wings of the Valkyrie, named after the actual plan to kill Hitler during World War II. In the module a group of Jewish and Romni NPC metahumans go back in time to World War II and kill Hitler. Unfortunately their timing is poor, and it frees Goering and Rommel to win the war without a madman driving the war machine off course. The player characters are able to perceive the changes and must go back in time themselves to save Hitler. It ended up being a very controversial publication that was pulled off the shelves as I recall.
I’ve always said that I wouldn’t go back in time and kill Hitler, I’d just buy and promote his paintings and make him a successful artist.
@moondrake I’d go back and stop his “grandfather” from erroneously claiming Adolf’s dad as his son. Then his last name would’ve been Schickelgrueber. Imagine how that would affect him.
Primer - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/ - Very well thought out. You might, however, need a flowchart, but only use that after you’ve seen it once or twice. Oh, and stick with it to the end.
Great Scott!
Primer
Biggles: Adventures in Time
Time bandits. By far.
@evilstan60 is that the one with all the little people?
@moonhat Yes
/image Time Bandits
@evilstan60 I second that. And Groundhog Day isn’t about time travel.
Primer. For the folks who like high stakes hard sci fi time travel carried out in storage lockers.
@melonscoop That movie was a trip!
I had to vote Groundhog Day because it’s the greatest movie of all time, but I don’t think that really classifies as a time travel movie. Primer should have been on the list instead of Groundhog Day.
@The_Tim I totally agree. A time loop isn’t time travel.
@The_Tim Second the motion. I also voted “Groudhog Day”, though I don’t think it qualifies. But was my favorite on the list, if not the “best”. Also quite liked the “Back to the Future” films.
Wondering why some of the classics weren’t mentioned, such as “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” with Bing Crosby (1949 film) – should be listed for sheer earlyness. Also, H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine” (1960) gave us the Morlocks and the Eloi. Speaking of HG Wells, I thought “Time After Time” (1979) was quite clever.
@phendrick The Time Machine excerpt:
@evilstan60 @The_Tim But Primer was all about time loops (albeit looping to different points). One of the best conceived time loop movie plots, IMO.
Saving the Feds: release date 2020
No Terminator?
@katbyter Agreed. But (as far as time travel movies go) only the first one, none of those other ones that screw up the timeline continuity.
Also Looper and 12 Monkeys are good picks (haven’t seen Primer yet). I’ve also been enjoying Future Man on Hulu so far, and have soft spots for Bill & Ted and the whole BTTF trilogy.
You also forgot Timerider in the survey:
“Dave goes into the future for no good reason”
Release date: 8/01/2024
Back to the Future 3, if just for all the callbacks. It is one of the rare thirds that is still good. It requires you to watch the first two, but it leaned into that hard right from the get-go, making it a true conclusion. {side note:I think Groundhog Day is the better movie, but not a better time travel movie. When I hear time travel movie, I expect sci-fi, maybe fantasy, but while the time travel is present as a driving force, it’s more of an environmental macguffin. The story isn’t really about time travel. I’m not very clear here, but I think most of you understand what I am going for}
@simplersimon and my “not yet made” time travel movie:
Avengers 4: This time, I’m aiming for the head
Out April 26, 2019
“Before Butterflies Existed”
Release Date: Coming soon to a theater near you
Plot: A group of kids invent a time machine, but knowing that changing anything in the past can cause a huge butterfly effect, they decide to keep travelling back in time to track down the very first butterfly, and squish it, so the butterfly effect cannot exist.
@lichme I feel like I read a short story about a guy accidentally killing the first butterfly, but all it did when he got home was change who won the election. And sure the new winner was a communist, so he kills himself to fix the timeline or something, and you know what, I feel like I must be remembering wrong, or that story made no sense. Huh. I remember he wanted to hunt a dinosaur, and made sure he found one that was about to die anyway. Which was hilarious to me. As if it wouldn’t change things, ha. Hahaha. Ah well. May be it was a crap story.
@simplersimon As I read the description it sounded more and more familiar. I think it exists.
@lichme @simplersimon @SSteve
Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury?
@compunaut @simplersimon @SSteve I have no idea, I was just spewing words.
@lichme
But if they tracked down (and killed) the first butterfly, then they would never have heard of a butterfly, so they wouldn’t have killed it.
@compunaut @lichme @simplersimon @SSteve
@compunaut @lichme @simplersimon Yes. Sound of Thunder. Thanks.
@compunaut @lichme @SSteve yes, exactly. It makes a bit more sense, and definitely misremembered plenty. Still not great. Bradbury has far better writing out there.
@therealjrn best Treehouse of Horror, and possibly the best episode of the series.
@therealjrn Now that one I remember
@compunaut @lichme @simplersimon @SSteve Good short story, terrible movie. As I recall, they didn’t kill the first and only butterfly, just a really important one and by accident. They made a hash of shooting the T-Rex they were authorized to kill (one that was about to die of natural causes and was thus okay to shoot), it fell on their time safe pathway and scared them, one of them stepped off the path and killed a butterfly. That butterfly had an important role to play in the temporal chain of events. The mistake changed more than the election, words were spelled differently, and that was stuff they noticed immediately. The story ended on the implication that quite a lot had been changed by stepping on that single butterfly.
@compunaut @lichme @moondrake @SSteve yeah, I got a lot wrong. Still not a fan. Likely an example of something that was brilliant at the time because it was a fresh idea, but now it’s an avenue that has been explored to death, so we can find better examples.
Timeline. RIP Paul Walker.
/image paul walker movie timeline
/image I hate temporal mechanics
@2many2no @SSteve man i play any game with that title. They gave us grand theft horse, so why not try the final frontier.
Wait, don’t you mean “Already Not Yet Made”?
The Doctor said it will be released only before it already was. And don’t ask me Dr Who.
12 Monkeys
/giphy monkey
You are not going to let us tell our favorite pick, like Time Machine by H.G. Wells?
Well, anyway, my favorite time traveling movie is Adventures: Infinity War 2, released in May of 2019.
Not going to let you how? You just did.
It’s not a time travel movie, but this quote always pops up in my addled brain.
“Where is now?”
“We passed it.”
“When?”
“Just now.”
“When will then be now?”
“Soon.”
@mtb002
/image How soon is now
/youtube How soon is now
@SSteve Thanks for the memory of my teenaged angst.
@mtb002
Bill and Ted: Face the Music
June 9th, 2020
@RiotDemon It’s funny 'cuz it’s true.
@FightingMongoos
@dannybeans “ON VIDEOCASSETTE” That’s some time travel right there.
Although I don’t generally appreciate Bruce Willis, I thought 13 Monkeys was well done. And Looper turned out to be more entertaining than I anticipated. Though Willis’ was in more of a supporting role. Joe Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt polished that film.
I guess not strictly time travel per se, but Denzel in Deja Vu was a decent story as well.
Ya, I meant 12 monkeys. Even dozen.
Constipation… It hasn’t came out yet
@DavidChurchRN touche’ !
@DavidChurchRN More coffee, use double splenda
You left out Brigadoon.
@cranky1950 Thanks for the earworm. ‘Go Home With Bonnie Jean’ is stuck.
@OldCatLady You’re welcome. Whatever I can do!
Time travel is the worst sci-fi subgenre. There’re always these random plot points that’re nonsensical and even internally inconsistent “because time travel woooooo”.
I mean, maybe comedies are ok.
Oh, I know. William Gibson wrote a book, The Peripheral, that features divergent histories that run in a kind of synchronized time with a future present time (via handwavey black box “servers in China”, or so, providing information exchange over some future Internet). As far as I remember, he managed not to contradict himself for the entire novel. That was fun.
I’ve always enjoyed his books though.
@InnocuousFarmer So watch Dr. Who on TV. You might like that since some of the plot carries over between episodes.
@Kidsandliz I have other objections to Dr. Who… along similar lines, but I’ve never scrutinized it for uh, call it internal rigor. It isn’t really my kind of thing. (Have you seen the episode with the traffic jam? Basically that is all I can see when I watch any Dr. Who.)
Maybe when I’m older, the raw sentimentalism will appeal to me in a way that makes it easier to ignore… the rest of the show. I’ve found that Star Trek kind of worked like that, for me.
Forget one? It’s in the damn title!
@cinoclav forgot that one! Love it!
I voted for “Groundhog Day,” but my heart will always belong to “Army of Darkness.”
@dannybeans Bruce is the man.
I reeeeaalllly struggled with picking between Back to the Future and Groundhog Day
@colinlord ditto. I ended up picking Back to the Future because well… it’s really an iconic blockbuster movie. But personally… I think I really enjoyed Groundhog Day more. Even tho I’m not a fan of either Bill Murray or Andie MacDowell. I almost had to just eenie meenie minee moe with those 2 movies.
Our priest actually gave a sermon about Groundhog Day! He said it was about getting it right.
Even though I worked with Chris Elliott before he was famous I love that movie.
(I’ve only known 2 people who were in films and with the other guy I couldn’t get pass the fact that is the guy I knew from work. Somehow it doesn’t happen with Chris.)
I’ll admit it. If Groundhog Day is on TV…I’ll stop everything and watch it.
(I also met Bill Murray but as a celebrity. After we met he would say hi to me if he saw me in the building, but it was a celebrity/fan thing, not a fellow worker thing.) btw…Bill is nuts in real life, just like on tv.
Our priest actually gave a sermon about Groundhog Day! He said it was about getting it right.
Even though I worked with Chris Elliott before he was famous I love that movie.
(I’ve only known 2 people who were in films and with the other guy I couldn’t get pass the fact that is the guy I knew from work. Somehow it doesn’t happen with Chris.)
I’ll admit it. If Groundhog Day is on TV…I’ll stop everything and watch it.
(I also met Bill Murray but as a celebrity. After we met he would say hi to me if he saw me in the building, but it was a celebrity/fan thing, not a fellow worker thing.) btw…Bill is nuts in real life, just like on tv.
Our priest actually gave a sermon about Groundhog Day! He said it was about getting it right.
Even though I worked with Chris Elliott before he was famous I love that movie.
(I’ve only known 2 people who were in films and with the other guy I couldn’t get pass the fact that is the guy I knew from work. Somehow it doesn’t happen with Chris.)
I’ll admit it. If Groundhog Day is on TV…I’ll stop everything and watch it.
(I also met Bill Murray but as a celebrity. After we met he would say hi to me if he saw me in the building, but it was a celebrity/fan thing, not a fellow worker thing.) btw…Bill is nuts in real life, just like on tv.
@cranky1950
@smilingjack copied your comment and travelled back in time to post it before you could, right?
@RedOak @smilingjack actually I was reliving the post over and over.
Our priest actually gave a sermon about Groundhog Day! He said it was about getting it right.
Even though I worked with Chris Elliott before he was famous I love that movie.
(I’ve only known 2 people who were in films and with the other guy I couldn’t get pass the fact that is the guy I knew from work. Somehow it doesn’t happen with Chris.)
I’ll admit it. If Groundhog Day is on TV…I’ll stop everything and watch it.
(I also met Bill Murray but as a celebrity. After we met he would say hi to me if he saw me in the building, but it was a celebrity/fan thing, not a fellow worker thing.) btw…Bill is nuts in real life, just like on tv.
@cranky1950 I see what you did there… but it took a sec… lol.
Somewhere in Time.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day. (Admittedly, the time travel was kind of peripheral to the main action.)
The Butterfly Effect. Really hammered in the potential consequences of time travel, even with the best of intentions.
Included the Black Knight. Well done, poll writer. Well done.
There was a Champions role playing game module called Wings of the Valkyrie, named after the actual plan to kill Hitler during World War II. In the module a group of Jewish and Romni NPC metahumans go back in time to World War II and kill Hitler. Unfortunately their timing is poor, and it frees Goering and Rommel to win the war without a madman driving the war machine off course. The player characters are able to perceive the changes and must go back in time themselves to save Hitler. It ended up being a very controversial publication that was pulled off the shelves as I recall.
I’ve always said that I wouldn’t go back in time and kill Hitler, I’d just buy and promote his paintings and make him a successful artist.
@moondrake I’d go back and stop his “grandfather” from erroneously claiming Adolf’s dad as his son. Then his last name would’ve been Schickelgrueber. Imagine how that would affect him.
Good to see some love for Interstellar. As movies go, it’s the best one on this list. But it’s hard to go up against classics.
How could H.G. Wells’ 1960 The Time Machine be left off the list?
Primer - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/ - Very well thought out. You might, however, need a flowchart, but only use that after you’ve seen it once or twice. Oh, and stick with it to the end.
/image X-Men: Days of Future Past
Not really, though. That move wasn’t very good.
Am I the only one who remembers The Final Countdown? (No, not the song. Same decade though.)
But really, Star Trek always did it best.
Just remembered Timerider. Another fun movie.