Time-travel movies

[Rogue 3]

I had a recommendation on Twitter to watch “Safety not guaranteed” the other day and I really enjoyed it. Nice film.

Got me thinking as to what others are out there where it forms a key part of the plot. Being a Dr Who fan since the early ‘80’s, all films with a time-travel element get a bonus mark for me!

So we have the obvious ones:

BTTF trilogy
Star Trek IV (and it’s lesser buddy, First Contact)
Avengers Endgame
Terminator series 
Bill & Ted trilogy
Twelve Monkeys
X-Men: Days of Futures Past
Austin Powers trilogy
Deadpool 2
Harry Potter : The Prisoner of Azkaban 
The Time Machine (2 versions)
Men in Black 3
Flight of the Navigator

(plus a certain big name film this year from a franchise that I’ll skip naming as the disks aren’t out yet. Spoilers! Ha ha!)

 

Then the indie / cult films:

The Butterfly Effect
Donnie Darko
Evil Dead 3
Looper
The Time Travellers Wife (awesome book, average film)
Hot Tub Time Machine
Time after Time
About Time
Time Bandits

And then lesser known ones:

Primer
Time Crimes
The Girl who leapt through time (manga)
Les Maitres du Temps (French animation dubbed in English as “Time Masters”)
Safety not guaranteed
Idiocracy
Predestination (mad one!)
Biggles Adventures in Time (awful, but can’t take my eyes off it!)

 

Then the “Are they Time Travel movies?” category:

Tenet (yes and I love it so there)
Interstellar (iffy - mostly going forward in time, but a connection to the past is there, so yes! And I also love this one!)
Groundhog Day (yes - moving back in time is the impossible thing, so has to count)
Edge of Tomorrow / Live, Die, Repeat (yes - see Groundhog Day)
Run Lola, Run (no as she is not fully aware but in the style of the 2 above and definitely worthy of mention)
Palm Springs (yep, timeloop)
Next (yep, loop)
Source Code (yep, loop)
Deja Vu (yep, loop)

 

Tons of others I will have watched, but just going by what’s on my shelf or in my head at the mo!

[captainbleh]

The Final Countdown is another lesser known one

Somewhere in Time too

The faceless angels and their enslaver in Les Maitres du Temps are nightmare fuel

The Biggles movie was just called Biggles in the UK. I watched it a lot.

[Darth Krawlie]

Die Hard

no wait that’s not one

[Tank]

I love Final Countdown. It's a bit clunky by today's standards, but fun.

Great list too. I've been trying to crack time travel horror in my head for awhile. Writing time travel is super hard. It's just came out, but Totally Killer is basically Slashback to the Future.

I'd say too that it's always a huge risk for me when an existing series suddenly adds time travel to the mix. For example, did not like Dial of Destiny making Indy a time traveller.

[Lord Darth Hunter]

I agree, but at least with Indy we knew this was the last film. I hate when a series adds time travel as a plot device for just that one episode and then it's completely forgotten about. Because when things go to crap in every subsequent episode, it begs the question, why don't they just go back in time to fix this? Good example is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. 

[Rogue 3]

Final Countdown - good call! I remember seeing that a long time back, so will have to get hold of that one to refresh myself.

Yes, I liked what they did with TT in Azkaban (and later on in the stage play which is superb), but it does hang over the other films. “You had that thing, but no good guys or bad guys can use it again as it’s very naughty!” 

15 hours ago, captainbleh said:

The faceless angels and their enslaver in Les Maitres du Temps are nightmare fuel

Big style! And the ending blew my mind as a young kid!
Same thing happened for 2001 weirdly. Too young maybe, but that final “beyond the stargate section” where he see’s himself age swiftly messed me up! Horror films never really bothered me, so why did that?? Mad!

[Jedigoat]

Nobody listed Time Cop??!!

[CoLA]

There's also Click with Adam Sandler. More of a going forward in time one but I think it still counts. Also, it has one of the most depressing scenes in a comedy movie for me, the flashback to the last time he spoke to his dad part.

Timerider! I haven't watched it yet but I know it involves a guy going back to the old west from the description.

Maybe someone can help me with an older one, my uncle says he swears there was a movie that came out in the late 80's/early 90s that was a Bill & Ted rip-off, he thinks it was called Norm's Awesome Adventure or something like that. It involved vikings, maybe? Google fails me here. He insists he saw a trailer for it back then but it does not sound familiar at all.

 

Aren't the Planet of the Apes movies about time travel? Never saw the originals.

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things is a time loop movie.

[Tank]

Timerider! Hahaha-- such a weird 8p0s movie I watched a bunch as a kid. Planet of the Apes aren't really time travel, more of a Buck Rogers style astronauts waking up in a dark future from suspended animation.

Time Bandits is one a lot of people my age swear by and I liked it okay as a kid, but I actually don't care for it as an adult. There's something about it that gives me the ick.

Time After Time is one that doesn't get enough credit.

[Cerina]

On 10/30/2023 at 6:33 PM, Lord Darth Hunter said:

I agree, but at least with Indy we knew this was the last film. I hate when a series adds time travel as a plot device for just that one episode and then it's completely forgotten about. Because when things go to crap in every subsequent episode, it begs the question, why don't they just go back in time to fix this? Good example is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. 

The movies don't cover this very well, but there's fairly simple explanations for the time turner thing in the books. They used it in PoA because Hermione had one already. The time turners are all held at the ministry and it takes a LOT of convincing to get them to let anyone use one which is what makes it remarkable that Hermione even got one. By the end of GoF, when they realize they'd need one, the Minister was firmly anti-Dumbledore and anti-Potter and any of their known allies, so getting their hands on a time turner would have required stealing from the ministry, which would have been possible but not something Dumbledore would have been willing to do and he was the only one who knew how to actually kill Voldemort and was beginning to formulate a plan for it (however flawed that was). And then at the end of OotP, they're all destroyed. 

 

Also wanted to add Meet the Robinsons and Mr. Peabody and Sherman. 

[Lord Darth Hunter]

I figured the answer to the Harry Potter one would be, "read the book," but you figure there would at least be something in the movies to explain this. Maybe that sideplot you mentioned about having to steal one and all that is too much to add to the movies and you don't want to get bogged down with those details. But we don't even get a single line explaining what happened to the one Hermione had in the 3rd movie, unless I completely missed it? After using it to save the day in that entry, they all chuckle along at the end when things are back to normal and then we never see it again. For all we know she put it in her closet and forgot all about it.  

[R.CAllen]

just going through the list on Wikipedia and seeing what sticks out for me and hasn’t been mentioned yet; some of these are kind of edge cases but whatever:

 

Detention (2011)

The Final Girls (2015)

Frequency (2000)

Kate & Leopold (2001)

A Kid in King Arthur’s Court (1995)

Last Night in Soho (2021)

Unidentified Flying Oddball (1979) – I always think of that movie as being called ‘A Spaceman In King Arthur’s Court’ ... I think that was maybe the title on the Betamax tape I watched it on when I was a kid?

 

Wait they include Star Trek Generations (1994) as a time travel movie; yeah, it is!

Same deal with Superman (1978)!

[Cerina]

2 hours ago, Lord Darth Hunter said:

I figured the answer to the Harry Potter one would be, "read the book," but you figure there would at least be something in the movies to explain this. Maybe that sideplot you mentioned about having to steal one and all that is too much to add to the movies and you don't want to get bogged down with those details. But we don't even get a single line explaining what happened to the one Hermione had in the 3rd movie, unless I completely missed it? After using it to save the day in that entry, they all chuckle along at the end when things are back to normal and then we never see it again. For all we know she put it in her closet and forgot all about it.  

They don't actually mention it again in the books either. She turns it in because she doesn't want to take that many classes anymore, then they aren't mentioned again until a later book when I believe Ron suggests one for a different solution and Hermione mentions that they were all destroyed at the end of the 5th book. The rest is just supposition from knowing the plot and characters. 

They left a lot of little details out of the movies, as one would expect, but they also left out some pretty major things that were big oversights. 

[Cerina]

And also 13 Going On 30

[Quetzalcoatl]

I've become so critical of time travel films that I'm always afraid to watch one, because if it isn't well thought out or breaks it's own rules, it'll put me in an extremely grumpy state.

An example is Deja Vu.  Spoilers if you haven't seen it.  He goes back in time to prevent a woman's murder, and in the process leaves messages for his future self, messages that he saw prior to traveling back in time.  There were other things too to suggest that his actions were already part of the film's originally established past.  This suggests a loop.  Because he's in a loop, there's no reason to think he should save the woman, because her murder is what motivated him to time travel in the first place.  But somehow he saves her.  So was he in a loop or an alternate timeline?  The movie couldn't decide, so it tried to have it both ways.  Ruined the whole movie for me.  

It's been a while sinse I saw Looper, but I seem to recall something similar happening in that film too.  

[Quetzalcoatl]

Just to add one more movie to the list, didn't one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle films from the 90's involve them going back to the medieval period or something?  

[Rogue 3]

Semi off topic, but if you get a chance, try the TV series “The Lazarus Project”. 
Just finished a rewatch in prep for the 2nd series/season (whichever you prefer).

Excellent concept, and handles time travel really well - both the good and bad sides of it. 

[CoLA]

On 11/3/2023 at 4:07 PM, Quetzalcoatl said:

Just to add one more movie to the list, didn't one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle films from the 90's involve them going back to the medieval period or something?  

That was the third one!