Line #38 Film/TheTimeMachine2002


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5	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/timemachine.png]]
6	[[caption-width-right:350:[[{{Tagline}} The Future Awaits]]]]
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9	''The Time Machine'' is a 2002 science fiction film directed by Simon Wells, loosely adapted from the classic [[Literature/TheTimeMachine novel of the same name]] by his great-grandfather Creator/HGWells. More precisely, it's adapted from the [[Film/TheTimeMachine1960 1960 film adaptation]] (whose rights had been owned by Creator/WarnerBros, the international distributor of the 2002 version, [[UsefulNotes/TedTurner since 1996]]), with the writer of that version, David Duncan, even receiving a "based on the screenplay by" credit.
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11	The Time-Traveler is Dr. Alexander Hartdegen (Creator/GuyPearce), scientist and inventor. Alex sometimes comes off as overly optimistic and absent minded to his friend David Philby (Creator/MarkAddy) and his doting housekeeper Mrs. Watchit (Phyllida Law). The plot is set in motion when just after proposing to his girlfriend Emma (Creator/SiennaGuillory) the pair is mugged, and being unwilling to surrender the engagement ring she is shot and killed. Alex becomes a shut-in devoting all of his time and energy into making his theoretical time-machine into a reality. However YouCantFightFate comes into play, and his attempts to save her only result in death employing other means to find her.
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13	Reasoning that if he discovered the secret to time-travel someone else eventually would, Alex decides to skip the years of maturation of the technology and travels forward in time, hoping to find an answer to why he cannot change the past. He arrives in the year 2037, where human efforts to colonize the moon have ended in disaster causing the moon itself to breakup and pelt the Earth with meteors. While attempting to flee this time line he is wounded and knocked out while his time machine continues forward. By the time he comes to the machine has spirited him to the year 802,701.
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15	Here the Eloi are portrayed as Magical Native Americans, and lean very hard on AcceptableBreaksFromReality to be able to understand his language. Alex begins to make friends among the Eloi, including Mara (Samantha Mumba). Shortly thereafter Mara is kidnapped by the Morlocks, and with the Eloi too frightened to attempt a rescue he resolves to do so himself.
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17	In the lair of the Morlocks, Alex meets the Über-Morlock (Creator/JeremyIrons), who controls the Morlocks (and spies on the Eloi) through telepathy. Knowing who and what Alexander is, the Über-Morlock shows him a vision wherein his wife never dies, and as a result he chooses to spend his time with her and with his family rather than on building his time-machine. Now having given him the answer to the question of why he couldn't change the past, the Über-Morlock chooses to direct Alexander to return to his own time. But with nothing to return home to, Alexander chooses to fight the Über-Morlock and converts his time machine into a bomb to destroy the Morlocks, hopefully freeing the Eloi from their predation. The movie ends with Alexander finally coming to terms with the events he cannot change, and moving on to live in the new time in which he has found himself.
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19	----
20	!!Tropes from the 2002 film version which weren't in the book:
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22	* AdaptationalBadass: The Eloi are great architects, and retain survival techniques as well as actually trying to flee the Morlocks as opposed to the mindless livestock they were in the novel and 1960 movie. The Morlocks themselves are significantly tougher, and in the case of the Über-Morlock, far more intelligent.
23	* AdaptationalLocationChange: Both Creator/HGWells' 1895 novel ''Literature/TheTimeMachine'' and its [[Film/TheTimeMachine1960 1960 film adaptation]] were set in London. The 2002 version, however, is set in New York City instead.
24	* AdaptationExpansion: Our hero now has a BackStory in which he invents the time machine in order to go back and prevent his fiancée's untimely death.
25	* AdaptationNameChange:
26	** The time traveler was unnamed in the original story and named George in the 1960 adaptation. Here he is named Alexander Hartdegen.
27	** Weena has been renamed Mara. Granted, Weena and Mara don't have much in common other than being the Time-Traveler's Eloi companion, so Mara can also be thought of as a separate character rather than the same character with a different name.
28	* AffablyEvil: The Uber-Morlock. He's polite and answers Alexander's questions. Only, he becomes violent when Alexander becomes obstinate and hypocritical.
29	* AlienSky: In 802701, half of the moon and a cloud of smaller rocks are visible in the sky, as a result of men destroying it in the past.
30	* AllMusicalsAreAdaptations: Parodied when Vox references a fictional Creator/AndrewLloydWebber musical version of ''The Time Machine''.
31	* AmbiguouslyBrown: The Eloi this time around are portrayed as having a somewhat dark, relatively even tan. This was presumably the result of thousands of years of constant intermingling, in contrast to the white Eloi in the 1960 version.
32	* AnachronismStew: In the opening, it's passingly mentioned that Alex is corresponding with a German patent clerk named Einstein. The film opens in 1899. Albert Einstein, while a brilliant university student, didn't get his job as a patent clerk until 1902. (Then again, was there ever really a time-traveller named Alexander Hartdegen?)
33	* AndIMustScream: The Über-Morlock ends up [[https://youtu.be/nd3MVcbnfAc?t=1m24s hanging onto the Time Machine but outside the bubble;]] he's forced to basically age to death ''in normal time'', unable to either let go of the machine or stop the process. (On the other hand, stuck as he was, he presumably couldn't eat or drink normally either, so he'd die a whole lot sooner.)
34	* AndStarring: "With Creator/OrlandoJones and Creator/JeremyIrons."
35	* AntiVillain: The Morlocks to a degree, though this loses in translation both the anti-war symbolism of the 1960 film and the class commentary in the original novel. As the Über-Morlock explains, they were forced by circumstance to breed themselves into castes when it became apparent to their distant ancestors (i.e. the ones who went underground) that they couldn't return topside. The Über-Morlock, in particular, answers Alexander's question and returns his time machine to him, asking only that he leaves. The only time he actually acts hostile towards Alexander is after Alexander attacks ''him''.
36	* ApocalypseHow: The DetonationMoon in 2037 apparently devastated the Earth with natural disasters which caused a ApocalypseHow/Class2, leading to humans evolving into the Eloi and Morlocks respectively. If there was [[ApocalypseHow/Class4 any devastation to the Earth's biosphere]], it seems to have fully recovered within 800,000 years.
37	* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Alex briefly ends up in a very, very, ''very'' far future—''635 million years'' ahead—in which Morlocks have conquered the Eloi valley. Although neither they nor any surviving Eloi or any other species are shown up close, the strong implication is that they stayed largely the same (even their spiky skull-shaped outposts haven't changed). 635 million years is a ''vast'' geological TimeSkip; it's farther away from ThePresentDay than ThePresentDay is from the Cambrian, when all life was small, underwater and spineless. It is highly unlikely that so little biological evolution would've occurred in that vast timespan (hell, the Über-Morlock evolved from human ancestors to have his brain grow out of his head and down his back in the space of just the prior 800,000 years).
38	* ArtisticLicenseGeology: 800,000 years is not enough time for the Hudson River to erode into a canyon. That would take millions of years.
39	* ArtisticLicensePhysics: Nuclear weapons detonated on or in the moon would cause a huge spray of debris, a massive earthquake (well, ''moonquake''), contaminate its surface with radioactive material and leave behind a huge crater. That's it. There's no chance it would be thrown out of orbit or start breaking up even if you used the entire world's nuclear arsenal ''combined.''
40	* ArtisticLicenseSpace: An explosion on the Moon rains debris upon the Earth and leaves the Moon itself split into two large broken halves and a cloud of smaller rocks over a period of almost a million years, rather than either gravitationally attracting each other back into a single body or spreading themselves out into a ring system as they actually would have over that long an interval.
41	* AwesomeAnachronisticApparel: When the doctor stops in the (relatively) near future, a girl passing by admires his "retro" outfit.
42	* BeneathTheEarth: Where the Morlocks live, naturally. Some pop out directly from sand traps to kidnap the Eloi.
43	* BishonenLine: The normal castes of Morlock look like burly troglodytes with reddish animalistic eyes, and [[SkullForAHead vaguely skull-like faces]] with the snipers being only slightly less burly and slightly more humanoid, communicating through animalistic shots. The Über- Morlock in comparison resembles a human completely outside of having pale-white skin, IcyBlueEyes and having his brain being large enough to reach his lower back- as well as hold sophisticated arguments with Alex.
44	* BlessedWithSuck: When Alex asks why he considers the Eloi "lucky" to have no knowledge of the past or ambition for the future, Vox replies, in an almost teary voice: "Can you even imagine what it's like to remember ''everything''?"
45	* BlueAndOrangeMorality: For Alex, the "status quo" between the Eloi and Morlocks is utterly brutal and inhumane. For the Über-Morlock, it's just the way of things, and briefly finds Alex's revulsion genuinely baffling.
46	-->'''Über-Morlock''': Who are you to question 800,000 years of evolution?
47	* BrainCriticalMass: The Über-Morlock has a massive brain that extends down his back and uses it to control the Morlocks.
48	* BrainMonster: The Über-Morlock is of a caste in which the brain has become so enlarged that it's not only visibly exposed on the back of his head, but its lobes extend halfway down his back as well.
49	* CallBack: At the start of the film, in a seemingly throwaway conversation, Alexander tells David he gets into a philosophical rant about how generic everyone's look is, with endless bowler hats, Alexander wanting to just get rid of them. In the closing seconds of the film, David looks like he's about to tip his hat to his missing friend... when he outright throws it away, showing his respect for Alexander's radical ideas.
50	* CelebrityParadox: The AI Librarian mentions H.G. Wells' ''The Time Machine,'' whose story this is an adaptation of.
51	* ChekhovsGun: Alex reaching out of the time bubble to catch his dropped pendant and his hand rapidly aging while outside the bubble's protection. [[spoiler:The Über-Morlock is killed when Alex manages to shove him outside the bubble and sends the machine forward, aging him to dust.]]
52	* ColdHam: The Über-Morlock is much more composed and subdued compared to his underlings, and hardly raises his voice. Yet he easily steals every scene he's in.
53	* CosmicPlaything: Try as he might, [[spoiler: Alexander cannot [[YouCantFightFate prevent his beloved Emma's death]]. Any attempt to alter history simply results in her getting killed by another unforeseen event. Turns out there's a very good reason for this. If he achieved the impossible there would be no reason for him to build the time machine in the first place, [[TimeCrash creating an unresolvable paradox]].]]
54	* CulturalTranslation: The film moves the setting from London to New York.
55	* DayHurtsDarkAdjustedEyes: After centuries of living underground, the Morlocks' ancestors eventually tried to live outside their underground caves, but were unable to adjust to the sunlight. This is what drove them to become a hunting species to feed off of the Eloi above.
56	* DeadlyDeferredConversation: Nonlethal example. Alexander is arguing with his friend after the death of his fiance. They agree to continue the discussion in a week, during which Alex intends to change history and fix things. Instead, by that time Alexander is stuck in the future.
57	* DeadlyForceField: Relatively speaking. The time machine's force field is still permeable, so if you're halfway inside or outside, ''your body will age at the same rate as whichever side of the field it's on''. Alex finds this out the hard way when his hand rapidly ages when he sticks it out by accident. Later he uses it to good effect by literally "fast-forwarding" while fighting with the Über-Morlock whose hands are the only part of him inside the time bubble. Unable to let go, this either means most of the Über-Morlock ''ages and dies in normal time'' (or possibly starves to death and then decays in real time) outside, while his hands don't age inside, and logically break off (or rather the rest of him breaks off).
58	* DeadpanSnarker: Vox is just about the only snarky character in the whole movie. Eventually, Alex becomes a bit of one as well.
59	--> '''Vox''': Whether the truth is so horrible it will haunt your dreams for all time?\
60	'''Alex''': Well, I think I'm used to that.
61	* DetonationMoon: In the year 2037, the moon breaks up due to attempts to demolish the lunar colony going horribly awry, causing an ApocalypseHow. In the year 802,701 AD, the moon's remains are still orbiting the Earth, visible in the night sky.
62	* DisposableWoman: Emma. Alex spent ''four years'' building his time machine to change history and save her from dying. When this fails, he contemplates how he could try ''a thousand times'' without success. She really does have no further CharacterDevelopment than being destined to die.
63	* EmergencyTemporalShift: After the cataclysm of the moon breaking up in 2037, Alex scrambles back into his machine and just keeps going forward to evade it, but as he's immediately knocked out he didn't get to stop it again until he comes to and pauses it in 802,701. He later also does this to escape from or get rid of the Über-Morlock—apparently there he'd floored the time lever so hard he's flung 635 million years forward in the space of minutes.
64	* EternalEnglish: This time, the Eloi have their own language, but they still speak "the Stone Language" found on pieces of ruins of U.S. buildings. And Vox the AI librarian (see WhoWantsToLiveForever below) likely fills the same role in maintaining early 21st-century American English pronunciation as the talking rings did in the 1960 film.
65	* EvilOverlooker: [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/6f/Time_machine.jpg/220px-Time_machine.jpg The poster]].
66	* FamousFamousFictional:
67	** Vox brings up the writings of Creator/IsaacAsimov, Creator/HGWells, Creator/HarlanEllison, and...[[TheHero Alexander Hardegan]].
68	** The original ''Time Machine'' novel, the 1960 version, and a fictional Creator/AndrewLloydWebber musical adaptation, when Vox the virtual librarian lists iterations of the original time-travel plot this movie is taken from.
69	* {{Fictionary}}: The Eloi have their own language that, oddly, sounds rather limited. The word ''tamquen'' seems to have several different connotations, as it's used several times in rapid succession at one point.
70	* {{Foreshadowing}}:
71	** A flatscreen advertisement in 2030 is shown promoting an ambitious [[DetonationMoon lunar engineering project]], which in 2037 is shown to have backfired horribly, eventually resulting in humanity's evolution into the Eloi and Morlocks.
72	** In the year 802,701, Vox sardonically makes a bleating sound to Mara's brother after explaining to him and Alex what happened to the world. Giving away the Eloi's purpose as livestock to the Morlocks well before the Über-Morlock spells it out.
73	* FunnyBackgroundEvent: In the New York Public Library in 2030, a teacher says to one of her students, "Tommy, do that again and I'll resequence your DNA. Now, march!"
74	* GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke: Downplayed. Genetics are hinted to have become a sophisticated science by 2030, while the Über-Morlock later on mentions how his ancestors (those who went underground after the [[DetonationMoon lunar disaster]] in 2037), bred themselves into castes over the course of 800,000 years. David Duncan's original screenplay, meanwhile, would made the genetic engineering angle even more explicit, with the Über-Morlock using various machines to help create more like themselves.
75	* GeniusBruiser: The Uber-Morlock. PsychicPowers combined with a very strong body.
76	* GodivaHair: Mara wears a [[VaporWear largely transparent net top]] [[{{Fanservice}} that leaves little of her upper body to imagination]] for much of the movie, yet her naughty bits are always obscured by either shadows or her long, strategically draped hair.
77	* GoingNative: In the end, Alex must learn to live with and like the Eloi. Not like he really has much of a choice after his machine self-destructs and he's stranded in the future.
78	* GrewBeyondTheirProgramming: In 802,701, Vox not only claims to remember ''everything'' but is noticeably much more expressive, with a hint of contempt towards to his creators, than he lets on, compared to back in 2030.
79	* AHandfulForAnEye: In the final fight, Alexander breaks open a pipe on the time machine so that it sprays steam in the Über-Morlock's face.
80	* HiveCasteSystem: The Morlocks have not only evolved to live underground and prey on the surface-dwelling Eloi, but also into at least two different castes, one of them the more muscular drones/warriors, and another one possessing greater cognitive abilities and psychic powers to control the other.
81	* IChooseToStay: Alex at the end. Though it's partly also because [[YouCantGoHomeAgain he can't go home again]].
82	* InTheFutureHumansWillBeOneRace: The Eloi, the surface-dwelling offshoot of modern humans in the future, all seem to be AmbiguouslyBrown (played by mixed race actors in many cases, appropriately enough).
83	** Oddly enough, also averted by virtue of there also being Morlocks … in this future, humans from either species will be one race, but they're still ''two species''.
84	* {{Irony}}: Because Alex created the machine for the purpose of saving his fiancee, that's the one thing that he can't use it to do.[[note]]The very nature of a predestinational paradox is that you'll always need to have the reason that you made the time machine to time travel in the first place.[[/note]]
85	* IWantMyJetPack: While 2030 has some impressive technology, Alexander is disappointed that no one even tried to expand on his time travel technology.
86	* JitterCam: Used briefly during the escape scene in the finale.
87	* LampshadeHanging: The Vox's remark that time travel is impossible; e.g. the sort of time travel from earlier adaptations of ''The Time Machine''.
88	%%* LargeHam: See OneSceneWonder.
89	* LivingRelic: Vox survives 800,000 years, after which he's reduced to a few broken, barely functioning screens, and briefs Alex on what happened in all the time in between.
90	* LostInImitation: Despite being directed by Wells' own great-grandson, this film ultimately seems to be a loose [[TheRemake remake]] of the 1960 film, which itself was a somewhat loose adaptation of the novel. The ending credits outright admit it with the (buried) credit, "based on the screenplay by David Duncan," who was the writer of the 1960 version. Most tellingly, the film includes numerous elements from the 1960 film, even hitting most of the same story beats, but doesn't really include anything from the book unless it's via the 1960 film. For instance, the DetonationMoon disaster is not taken from anything in the novel, but it does fill the same plot function as WorldWarIII in the 1960 film. Likewise, Vox has no book counterpart, but he is clearly equivalent to the talking rings from the 1960 version. Also, Weena/Mara having a brother might have been borrowed from the [[Film/TheTimeMachine1978 1978 TV version]].
91	* TheLostLenore: The protagonist is now entirely motivated by the loss of his love Emma.
92	* MightyWhitey: The film (probably inadvertently) has this effect by the Eloi all being AmbiguouslyBrown with Alex being the lead, him rescuing them from the evil Morlocks who prey upon them, which they can't do (having been culled to stop any resistance). Sure enough, he's soon getting close with one of their women, Mara, and sacrifices his time machine to protect them, happily staying with the Eloi.
93	* {{Mordor}}: Particularly the far, far, 635-million-year-far BadFuture where the Morlocks completely succeeded in enslaving the Eloi, but even in the nearer far future the "milder" underground Morlock colony is a pretty good example: it's dark, dank, and evokes a lot of creepy, morbid and hellish imagery (at least from the human/Eloi perspective).
94	* TheMorlocks: Well, duh. Here, however, they're made more powerful and sophisticated than in the novel and 1960 film, with intricate if primitive-looking underground machinery and distinct Eloi-hunting methods and weapons (such as ambushes from sand traps and poison blowdarts), and even have highly intelligent mind-control castes this time around.
95	* MsFanservice: Mara is very pretty and wears a [[VaporWear virtually see-through]] top which shows her large breasts (barely [[GodivaHair covered by her long hair]]).
96	* MusicalisInterruptus: In 2030 New York, when Alex cuts off Vox's singing of a selection from a musical it also cuts off the majestic background music.
97	* MyBrainIsBig: The Über-Morlock. Rather than have the usual huge head, his brain extended down the neck and lower back.
98	* MyNaymeIs: Filby is Philby.
99	* MythologyGag: Alexander first watches time progressing into the future by seeing clothes evolve on a mannequin, just like in the 1960's movie.
100	* NamedByTheAdaptation: Alexander Hartdegen, the time traveler.
101	* NatureVersusTechnology: A TropeCodifier where Nature pulls double duties as TimeMaster against the protagonist, Alexander, preventing him from saving his love from dying. Later, as Alex attempts to seek answers in order to learn, resource exploitation on the Moon end up [[GoneHorriblyWrong destroying it]] and with it, the [[FromBadToWorse the human civilization]]. After some time though, shown to be several thousands of years, what remains of humans, the Eloi, live in [[TheFutureWillBeBetter harmony with their surroundings]] if not for their antagonism by [[TheMorlocks the Morlocks]], who have evolved underground. Ultimately, Alexander repurposes his time machine as a bomb in order to destroy the Morlocks' threat to the Eloi.
102	* NeverMyFault: The mugger that ends up killing Emma is visibly shocked by the act, and has the gall to ask Alex "Why did you [resist]? It was only a ring!" when ''he'' was the one that was mugging two people that were in the middle of a ''wedding proposal'', [[EvilIsPetty even demanding the ring]] even after they had willingly gave him everything else of value.
103	* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Alexander killing the Über-Morlock leaves the more feral Morlock without a leader, bringing about an apocalypse since the feral Morlock have nothing keeping them in check. Alexander fixes this by turning his time machine into a temporal bomb, wiping out the entire colony. It's not revealed what happened to the other colonies.
104	* TheNoseless: Most Morlocks have greatly receded noses that look just like nostrils opening straight into their faces, instead of upward from below. The effect is rather like nasal cavities on skulls, or like zombies whose noses decayed or were eaten away, which adds to the creep factor of their appearance. Their telepathic leader has a more "ancestrally human" nose though.
105	* NubileSavage: Mara is certainly very pretty. Living a rough life with stone-age technology doesn't stop her from sporting perfect hair, flawless skin and a very flattering outfit which [[VaporWear leaves almost nothing]] to the imagination.
106	* OurTimeTravelIsDifferent: The Video Cassette variety, as with the novel and the 1960 version.
107	* OntologicalInertia: No matter what Alex tries, his fiancée's death cannot be changed.
108	* PerfectPacifistPeople: Arguably, the Eloi are these, though {{deconstructed}} since it makes them easy prey for the Morlocks. The 1960 version had an anti-war sentiment that was lost in this version, shown when an Eloi male says "It is all clear," a phrase which (it is implied ) has become part of the Eloi's genetic memory. In THIS version, however, the Eloi are pacifists because of the Über-Morlock's "psychic filter," which makes them forget about their dead and keeps them pacifistic. (Warning: this may have gotten lost in the cutting-room.) It's also mentioned that any Eloi who fights back simply are the one the Morlocks come for ''first''. Which is part of why the Eloi have been beaten down into submission and completely refuse to fight back.
109	* PetTheDog: The Über-Morlock catches a glowing cave-fish and releases it back into its pool unharmed.
110	* PlotHole: The film establishes there are no [[TemporalParadox temporal paradoxes]], Alex cannot prevent [[YouCantFightFate Emma's death]]. Any attempt to alter history simply results in her getting killed by another unforeseen event. She was his reason for building the time machine. [[note]]Even though ''technically'' he could've [[ScrewDestiny had his cake and eat it]], by ''using his brain'' - [[MalevolentMaskedMen wearing a disguise]], pretending to [[TheKindnapper kidnap Emma to the future]], and telling his past-self he'll never save her, [[SelfFulfillingProphecy UNLESS he builds]] a time machine.[[/note]] The film later overlooks this fact, when the protagonist later travels into a BadFuture where the Morlocks have ravaged the Eloi valley. He goes back and turns his machine into a "temporal bomb" to kill all of them. Now that future presumably no longer exists, yet Alex is still around. It suggests Alex maybe a CosmicPlaything, but it's never explained.
111	** Although it could simply be common time-travel fiction logic: you cannot change the past, but you CAN change the future.
112	* PrimeTimeline: {{enforced}} by the "YouCantFightFate" situation mentioned in the previous trope heading. All roads lead back to Emma's death.
113	* PromotedToLoveInterest: The film goes further than the older movie adaptation: not only was Weena replaced with a love interest named Mara and the Eloi made even less childlike, but the Time Traveler was given an entire backstory of building the machine as a way to save his girlfriend from being killed by a mugger.
114	* PunchPunchPunchUhOh: The Über-Morlock effortlessly shrugs off Alexander's punches.
115	* PsychicDreamsForEveryone: Literally. Though, as it turns out, it's a side effect of the aforementioned [[LaserGuidedAmnesia psychic filter]].
116	* RagnarokProofing:
117	** Averted with Earth in general. After the lunar disaster, any traces of civilization were pretty much obliterated over almost a million years.
118	** Played straight with the photonic library computer. His main processing unit survives orbital bombardment, the resulting thousands of centuries of neglect, and somehow ends up ''underground'' on top of that. He even still has numerous functioning projection screens. He mentions he's the last remaining Vox, because the rest of the library, including the original books, is fossilized or worse. It also only turns on when someone is nearby, so keeping the batteries running indefinitely.
119	** Also played straight with US structures. According to the now-defunct official website, those cliffs that the Eloi use to build their homes are actually old New York skyscrapers.
120	* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Given to the hero by the ''villain'' of all people.
121	-->'''Alex:''' This is a perversion of every natural law!\
122	'''Über-Morlock:''' ''[strangles Alex]'' [[ArmourPiercingQuestion And what is time travel?!]] But your pathetic attempt to control the entire world around '''you'''!
123	* RecursiveCanon: Vox begins telling Alex about Creator/HGWells' novel ''The Time Machine'' and the 1960 film adaptation directed by George Pal in the library in 2030.
124	* ReleasedToElsewhere: A strange case here: when Hartdegen asks Mara about her parents, she says only that "They have gone from this place", which Hartdegen interprets as a gentle euphemism for death. However, thanks to the manipulations of the Über-Morlock making people forget, it's possible that she genuinely does not know or remember what happens to the Eloi the Morlocks harvest.
125	* RemakeCameo: Besides the 1960 ''[[Film/TheTimeMachine1960 The Time Machine]]'', there had been two made-for-television movies based on Creator/HGWells' novella and Creator/AlanYoung is the only actor from any of the other three ''The Time Machine'' incarnations to appear.
126	* RidiculouslyHumanRobots: Vox, the photonic library computer. He speaks slowly to get his point across to Alexander, and even gets visibly irritated at what he regards as stupid questions, when a real computer would simply and happily attempt to answer any of his inquiries regardless of what was asked. This means that for whatever reason his creators gave him the same flaws as a human librarian would have, even though there was no reason for it and would actually hinder his performance as a library computer. On the other hand, Vox is described in the commentary as effectively being an Internet Search Engine with a Personality. Now imagine if you were a sentient compendium of all human knowledge, whose entire reason for existence was to be asked the ''same'' inane questions by people, ''over and over again?'' Can you really blame Vox for having developed into a passive-aggressive DeadpanSnarker to cope with the monotony? When he's turned on in the distant future, he's picked up even more quirks, being effectively a library computer without a library.
127	* RippleEffectProofMemory: Alex changes history, but doesn't change his memory of history, even though his original impetus for using the time machine was altered when he first used it.
128	* RuinsOfTheModernAge: In the year 802701, the library that the protagonist previously visited TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture has deteriorated quite a bit, although the A.I. is still active. Also, Word of God is that the cliffs used by the Eloi to build their villages are remains of New York skyscrapers, [[RagnarokProofing apparently able to withstand 800,000 years of erosion and an Ice Age but covered in dirt]].
129	* ScienceIsBad: "We went too far." The irony is that Alex has drawings in his lab that perfectly mirror the 2030's New York. Despite the fact that Alex is a visionary, it was ultimately men like him that doomed the world.
130	* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfSclae: After [[spoiler:killing the Uber-Morlock]], Alexander travels all the way to the year 635,427,810. Apparently in that time, the Morlocks [[spoiler: have run wild and enslaved the Eloi as a direct consequence of his actions.]] 635 million years is a huge amount of time—roughly equal to how long it took for protists to evolve into humans—making it doubtful that the Morlocks or Eloi would have persisted that long—especially since in the first place they evolved into separate species (or at least subspecies) from humans in the first "mere" 800,000 years.
131	* ShoutOut:
132	** The first time Vox encounters Alex, he parts from the strange fellow with a snarky "[[Franchise/StarTrek Live long and prosper]]", complete with the mandatory gesture.
133	** When Alex asks Vox about time travel, the posters for ''Film/{{Metropolis}}'', ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill1951'' and ''Film/ForbiddenPlanet'' are seen on one of his screens.
134	* SkepticNoLonger: After living hundreds of thousands of years and happening to run into the same yokel who was babbling about impossible time travel, Vox seems to have accepted that Alex was telling the truth on that count. Not much else is made of it, as both have bigger concerns at this point.
135	%%* SlobsVersusSnobs: Morlocks and Eloi.
136	* SpinningClockHands: The first sign Alex is traveling into the past is when the hands on his collection of pocket watches slow down, then reverse, speeding up as he travels further back.
137	* SquishyWizard: Averted as anyone who expected the Über-Morlock to be physically weak because his caste had focused on developing their psychic powers was in for a surprise.
138	* StableTimeLoop: A heart-wrenching example. [[spoiler:Alex ''can't'' stop Emma from dying, because her dying is the catalyst of him building his time machine, so time will come up with a way to kill her so that he ''has'' to go invent the time machine, trapping himself in the loop.]]
139	* {{Steampunk}}: The machine itself is a stunningly-designed example (and even emits steam at one point). Then there's possibly any number of other devices in Alex' lab, as well as more realistic cases like the new steam car driving around in the streets.
140	* TemporalParadox: In the climax, [[spoiler:Alex travels into a BadFuture where the Morlocks have ravaged the Eloi valley. He goes back and turns his time machine into a bomb to kill all of them. Now that future presumably no longer exists, yet Alex is still around]].
141	* TimeIsDangerous: The titular device creates a spherical bubble to protect the occupant. Reach outside, that protection no long applies. Alex hurts, or rather rapid-ages, his hand when he instinctively grabs at an item he dropped. The Über-Morlock, while wrestling with him on the machine, ends up hanging outside the bubble and ages into dust. Logically, any attempt to reach outside the bubble should have violently scattered their atoms across dozens of years of history, or cut the Über-Morlock's hands off when Alex started going forward, but the RapidAging looked cooler, presumably.
142	%%* TimeyWimeyBall: Inevitably.
143	* TooDumbToLive: In 2030, someone apparently thought using nukes on the moon to make caves for future habitats was a good idea. Cue, a few years later, ApocalypseHow. Even if it had worked, they'd have ended up with a radioactive pit.
144	* TragicTimeTraveler: Physician Alexander Hartdegen creates a time machine in order to save his fiancée from being killed by a mugger. He succeeds... but then she still ends up dying by being run over by an horse carriage. Alex considers the possibility that he could try multiple times to save her, only for her to die in another, unforeseen way. To add insult to injury, the Uber-Morlock explains that this is because she was the basis for him creating the time machine, ergo, if he ended up saving her, then he wouldn't have the need to build the time machine, and the edited past would be erased.
145	* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: Alex stops off in the 2030s on his way to 802,701.
146	* UndeathlyPallor: The Morlocks, though not undead, have become pale from living underground and fear the light.
147	* UndergroundCity: The Morlock colony, whose only aboveground entrances are in the form of scary spiky skull-shaped bases. It's a veritable warren of dark, roughly-hewn tunnels and caverns with sparse and very "primitive"-looking machinery (and gruesome sharp tools presumably used for Eloi-butchering). Its great extent is implied when the glowing fallout from the time machine's final explosion lights up the entire underground base to the point of filtering aboveground, where Alex and all the Eloi can see it.
148	* VaporWear: Mara wears a practically see-through shirt in much of her screentime which very clearly outlines her breasts, but it's partly obscured by her [[GodivaHair long hair]].
149	* VillainHasAPoint: The Über-Morlock may control the monstrous-looking Morlocks preying on the more conventionally human Eloi, but he comes off as the smartest character in the film and he logically explains why Alexander can't prevent Emma's death (his entire motive for time-traveling in the first place), and after giving him the answer, permits him to leave without a fight. In fact, it's Alexander who attacks him first. Of course, the fact that he's an elitist justifying eugenics, cannibalism, and rape takes some sympathy points from him.
150	* VoodooShark: In the original film, it's never explained how the time traveller can understand what people are saying 800,000 years into the future. (In the novel, he had to learn the Eloi's language, but film versions don't seem to have the time for that.) This film does try to explain it by saying that the people speak a different language and that the 'stone language', or English, they learned from comes from broken signs and whatnot in Manhattan. Unfortunately that just raises questions on the logistics of how since a) only a tiny portion of all English vocabulary would be found on signs; b) knowing just the words won't help you in learning the language, you also need to know grammar, structure, etc. to form sentences. However, Mara does mention in dialogue that she was taught English, the "Stones" merely serve as learning aids as to what the letters look like.
151	* WhatTheHellHero:
152	** Four years after Emma's death, Philby tells Alex about how his frequent visits to Alex lessened until he stopped coming completely, and asks him if he even noticed.
153	** The mugger who accidentally shoots and kills Emma actually berates Alex for being unwilling to give up Emma's engagement ring, which is really pretty rich.
154	** After the Morlocks capture Mara, Alex calls out the tribe leader for wishing to abandon her and all other captured Eloi.
155	* WhoWantsToLiveForever: Vox, the photonic library computer AI from 2030, manages to survive the apocalypse in an above-ground building which presumably has absolutely no protection from that sort of thing. His power and memory unit last literally hundreds of thousands of years. The fact that he remembers ''everything'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61xq5Kja1Uo doesn't help.]]. It leads to a bit of PetTheDog when he's given the opportunity to do the one thing he wants to do: teach. As a handwave, he mentions he's the only Vox left, and there's only one corridor of the entire library shown to be intact.
156	* TheWorldIsJustAwesome: Goes into full effect when Alex [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9SemYK9HEw travels forward]] for the first time, making the coming destruction all the more tragic.
157	* YearOutsideHourInside: How the time machine time-travels; since it can only go forward or backward at variable speeds on the sole "time stream", akin to rewinding or fast-forwarding a tape, years can pass outside in a matter of seconds inside—sometimes as fast as half a billion years in a few seconds.
158	* YouCantFightFate: Played straight and then possibly averted. Alex tries to save Emma but every time she gets killed. The Über-Morlock later explains that the time machine cannot change the past in a way that prevents it from being built in the first place. Later in the movie, Alex goes to a BadFuture where the Morlocks have wiped out the Eloi, and then he goes back in time and wipes out the Morlocks. Either this means he successfully averted that bad future, or in the intervening several million years, the Morlocks from other areas will invade and wipe out the Eloi.
159	* YouCantGoHomeAgain: Alex is stuck in 802701 after he rigs his machine to destroy all the Morlocks and the BadFuture they unleash.
160	* YoungFutureFamousPeople: Referenced. Alex is in touch with a bright young man from a Swiss patent office, one [[UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein Mr. Einstein]].

Context Film / TheTimeMachine2002