Review: Time Machine 2002 — Hold On. Someone’s Destroyed the Moon
Part 2: The Eloi we meet in this film are radically different from H.G. Wells’s Eloi and that of the 1960 film version
Last time, we saw that the time traveler had decided to travel into the future to figure out why his fiancé keeps dying whenever he tries to save her in the past. (It’s worth noting that he only tried to save her once in the past but never mind. The traveler returns to his time machine and begins his journey into the future.
The 2002 film offers a couple of nods to the 1960 film adaptation of H.G. Wells’s story (1895) — the crystal-headed lever that propels the machine forward, and a trio of manikins showing the changing styles over time.
When he stops, the traveler finds himself in an alleyway. In front of him is a large television screen, promoting a luxurious lifestyle in subterranean chambers on the moon, currently under construction. He briefly speaks to a woman, then he walks to a museum where he encounters an AI clerk called Vox. This AI is a repository of all human knowledge, a holographic internet. The traveler begins asking Vox about time travel but the AI becomes annoyed, insisting that time travel is impossible, and it directs the traveler to science fiction.
Why a snarky AI?
I don’t know why the writers chose to make the AI snarky. For one thing, an AI hologram can’t understand sarcasm. For another, why would a customer service-oriented hologram roll its eyes at a customer? The AI does recommend H.G. Wells at one point, which I suppose the writers intend as a tribute, though their version of the time machine isn’t close to the original.
Further into the future
Realizing that he isn’t going to make any progress talking to the hologram, the traveler returns to his machine and travels further into the future. But then something jolts him around. He stops the time machine.
This was ridiculous for two reasons. First: the one rule that is firmly established in both the book and the 1960 film adaptation is that nothing can affect the machine while it is traveling. This must be the case because the environment around the machine is rapidly changing. If the machine doesn’t remain suspended in its time bubble, then for all the traveler knows, he could fall off a cliff at some point.
Second: if something jolts the traveler while he’s in his machine, why would he stop it? For all he knows, a volcano could be erupting and destroying everything around him! At any rate, the traveler stops and finds that he is surrounded by debris.
Some cops conveniently pull up and explain to him that the moon is falling apart because the greedy humans dug too deep or something. Remember that advertisement about the subterranean chambers in the moon? Apparently, this project was enough to destroy Earth’s satellite. The time traveler tries to escape but the machine is again jostled around by all the explosions which is again ridiculous because it is supposed to be in an impervious time bubble. Anyway, the traveler is knocked out. He eventually wakes up long enough to turn the machine off, then passes back out.
We finally meet the Eloi… or do we?
The next time the traveler wakes up, he is in an unknown village. Now, here is where the film departs from the book entirely. In the book, the Eloi are androgynous, childlike creatures who are little smarter than cattle. They are playful, innocent, but at the same time apathetic. The 1960s film does something similar, making the Eloi delicate, blond-haired, blue-eyed forest people, who are not nearly as playful but just as apathetic.
The point of both interpretations is to make it clear that these new humans are incapable of taking care of themselves — so someone or something else must be taking care of them. The question is who or what. This adds an element of mystery, possibly a sinister mystery, to the story, increasing the tension. The traveler’s new world is, in either case, a perverted paradise. So, the delicate nature of these beings is important to the development of the story. The writers of the 2002 film must not have realized this.
Here, the Eloi are basically a new kind of native. They have a village. They have boats. They make food. They make their own clothes. These people are independent and have an entire culture. They even build windmills that are basically memorials!
Smarter Eloi radically change the picture
At this point, the original story is dead. The writers should’ve given their movie a different title. Did they think that the idea of a blond-haired, blue-eyed people was racist, so they went with a more typical ethnic culture? If that was their issue, they completely missed what the novella and the 1960s film adaptation were trying to communicate: The blond hair, blue eyes, and pale skin were meant to demonstrate that the Eloi were like children, incapable of surviving any sort of conflict. They are not Adam and Eve archetypes. And their world is not an archetype of a paradise either.
By making the Eloi more hearty and capable of surviving on their own, the writers destroy the seriousness of the threat the Morlocks represent. It’s simply unbelievable that this version of the Eloi wouldn’t try to fight the Morlocks or at least sail to a new territory on their boats. The Eloi can’t be both resourceful and passive. That’s not a believable setup.
In fairness, the writers try to get around this by making the Morlocks large and intimidating. Even so, this version of the Eloi would try to escape. This change in how they are interpreted made no sense, and it ruined the believability of the rest of the movie.
The writers employ a clever strategy for the language difficulty
One Eloi is responsible for nursing the traveler back to health. Her name is Mara. These writers, it seems, couldn’t even let Weena keep her original name. She translates for the traveler because she is the only one in the village who can still speak English.
Here is the one compliment I’ll offer the writers. Despite their other shenanigans, they try to account for the language problem in a believable way. There are some ruins left over from New York City and, following a tradition, everyone is required to learn the words on the signs.
Most forget the language, but the Eloi always keep at least one teacher, and surprise, surprise, Mara is that teacher. Is this lazy? Yes. Does it make any sense? No. How can anyone understand a language based on the signs alone? But it was an honest attempt to address the language issue, which is more than can be said for the 1960s version. I’ll cover what happens then next time.
