Only one aspect of science fiction still has potential, infinite potential, and that's time travel.

Time Bandits

Whether a character shifts through time by only an hour or centuries, it opens up endless possibilities for stories. The smallest effort can create multiple realities. New time travel movies appear on the horizon frequently, and even though they may be simply divided into categories, the variations within are endlessly fascinating.

Purists might argue that Charles Dickens first utilized time travel in the 1843 publication of A Christmas Carol. In that tale, of course, the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future take Ebeneezer Scrooge on a journey through time, although the images he sees are described as "shadows," and Scrooge is unable to interact with any of these figures. At the same time, there's never any doubt that he will eventually return to his own time; the time travel itself does not drive the story. (A Christmas Carol has been made into many, many films, most notably the 1951 version with Alastair Sim.)

Fictional time travel was more or less properly invented by Mark Twain a few decades later in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), even though Twain never bothers to scientifically explain his time-shift. Our hero, Hank, is transported back to the sixth century after a bonk on the head. He uses his knowledge of a coming solar eclipse to convince the locals of his great "powers," and begins setting up the modern conveniences he has grown used to in his future life. He thereby brings about hilarious and heroic changes to the time of Camelot. In the end, he is returned to his own time by Merlin, who puts him to sleep for 1300 years. This story - pretty well explained by its title - has been adapted multiple times for movies, TV shows and cartoons, but the most famous version has to be Tay Garnett's 1949 version with Bing Crosby as the Yank and Cedric Hardwicke as King Arthur. (A 1931 Will Rogers version has yet to be released on DVD, and the less said about Martin Lawrence's modern variation, Black Knight, the better.)

Six years after Twain's book, H.G. Wells' novel The Time Machine featured a scientific gizmo that could transport its occupant into the future and back again. (He never travels into the past.) Our hero begins by traveling just a few minutes, hours and days into the future, watching as small things change around him (flowers, cobwebs, etc.). Finally, to escape some kind of volcanic disaster, he must travel thousands of years, waiting for the rocks around him to erode. (This time machine can only travel through time, not space.) When he emerges, he finds himself in an Edenic society, where peaceful beings feast and relax. Only later does he learn that they are terrorized by a group of underground dwellers. As with Yankee, The Time Machine saw many filmic adaptations, but the definitive edition remains George Pal's 1960 film with Rod Taylor. It's a bit campy today, but the time-lapse visual effects are still quite stunning. Wells' grandson Simon Wells directed a remake in 2002, but the less said about that dud the better.

Interestingly, both A Connecticut Yankee and The Time Machine were intended as social commentary, but each of a different order; the former criticized right-wing megalomania and the latter left-wing passivity. Fortunately, 20th century authors and filmmakers also began to use time travel to tell stories about interesting and/or funny characters.

One more important thing to note about time travel is that, for all its possibility, one can only move two ways in time, forward or backward. This allows for four main time travel stories: Present Man in Past, Past Man in Present, Future Man in Present and Future Man in Past. And, of course, there are tinier variations within these stories: Time Jumpers and Minor Shifts.

Present Man in Past

In honor of Twain, we'll start with the first time-traveler's preferred method of travel, Present Man in Past. This subgenre allows audiences to recognize clues planted in the past that survive in the present day, and it allows for the flow of history to be changed, or improved, if necessary.

The most carefully crafted, critically acclaimed and universally popular entry in this category has to be Back to the Future (1985). In this story, a frizzy-haired scientist, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), builds a time machine out of a D'Lorean, and Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) inadvertently travels backward 30 years, to 1955. The car out of juice, he looks up the younger version of Doc Brown to help send him home. Meanwhile, Marty has accidentally muddled in the chain of events that would eventually lead to his parents' marriage and his own birth. So he must correct this before his time runs out.

Written by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, Back to the Future does a remarkable job of unobtrusively setting up certain details in 1985 that we will need to know in 1955 and then following through. In one of the best lines, Doc reacts with mocking disbelief when he learns that Ronald Reagan will be president in 30 years. Each plot thread is brilliantly worked out, and magically, all this imagination actually fits nicely into a blockbuster template, with last-minute chases, romance, and an earned happy ending.

Not knowing how the movie would play, Gale and Zemeckis closed it with a joke in which Doc whizzes off into the future, and returns with a new garbage-powered engine. He grabs Marty and Marty's girlfriend Jennifer (Claudia Wells) and frantically explains that he needs their help; their children are in trouble. Essentially, this line merely lets us know that Marty and Jennifer will live happily ever after.

But when it came time for a sequel four years later, the team found themselves stuck with this joke as an actual scenario. And so Back to the Future Part II (1989) begins with the flimsiest of setups: Marty must stand in for his clueless future son in the year 2015 to prevent some kind of costly mistake. But the movie quickly evolves into one of the most complicated time travel movies ever made, and one of the cleverest sequels.

The plot revolves around the evil Biff (Thomas F. Wilson) hitching a ride and stealing a book that reveals the outcome of every sporting event from 1950 to 2000. When Marty and Jennifer (now played by Elizabeth Shue, a much more reliable actress), return to 1985, they find a completely different world. Apparently Biff went back to 1955 and gave the book to his younger self, changing history. Now Marty must once again go back to 1955 and get the book back, but at the same time, avoid running into his past self - the other 1985 Marty - and undoing any of the valuable work he did in the first movie. If that's not enough, Back to the Future Part II ends with a cliffhanger, and with Doc, back in 1885, sending Marty a Western Union telegram telling him what to do.

Filmed back to back with Part II and opening 6 months later in theaters, Back to the Future Part III (1990) begins with Marty digging up the time machine where Doc buried it in 1885. He travels back to the Old West to rescue Doc. From there, the film becomes less a time travel film and more a traditional Western, with an earlier version of Biff as the bad guy and Mary Steenburgen as Doc's love interest.

Lean, smart, funny and polished, these films remain the high water mark of the time travel genre.

Another popular example of the "Present Man in Past" category are Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II (1987) [special edition] and Army of Darkness (1993) [director's cut; U.S. theatrical version]. The slick, hilarious cult classic Evil Dead II plays out like an ordinary horror film - an evil force attacks innocent campers in a remote cabin - but ends with a shocking surprise. The hero, Ash (Bruce Campbell) finds himself suddenly transported to medieval times.

Army of Darkness

Five years later, Raimi and Campbell followed up on this cliffhanger ending with Army, a full-on adventure story. When Ash bungles an incantation designed to return him home, he accidentally releases more "evil dead" beasties upon the world. He must then stay and help defend the natives against the army of the dead, using modern-day equipment that made the time-trip with him (his chainsaw, his car, etc.). Though it's a fairly low-budget effort made without the benefit of digital effects or hoards of extras, Raimi pulls off a wild, clever film. (Incidentally, Universal Pictures released a butchered, 81-minute version in theaters, but Raimi's 98-minute director's cut -- with a much more sinister ending -- is now available on DVD.)

A third "Present Man in Past" film has just as passionate a cult following, but from an entirely different audience. Based on a novel by Richard Matheson, Somewhere in Time (1980) stars Christopher Reeve as a present-day playwright who becomes obsessed with a woman's portrait hanging in a hotel. He uses self-hypnosis, clearing the room of all modern-day artifacts, to transport himself back in time to meet the real-life woman (played by Jane Seymour). A villain (Christopher Plummer) tries to keep them apart. Directed by the clumsy, spendthrift Jeannot Szwarc, the film relies on huge, over-the-top emotions but fans seem to love it all the same. John Barry's score (incorporating bits of Rachmaninov) is equally popular.

Francis Ford Coppola directed a similar time-travel romance that scored fairly well both with critics and at the box office, but has lately been forgotten. In Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), the title character (Kathleen Turner) attends her 25th high school reunion, passes out and wakes up in her own 17 year-old body, though with all her memories intact. In the present day, she is married to her high school sweetheart (Nicolas Cage) and now -- meeting him in the past -- wonders whether she can rekindle that flame, or even if she wants to. This was an unusual step for Coppola, who at that time was producing more expensive, highly technical, and rather cold films like One from the Heart (1982) and The Cotton Club (1984).

More recently, an ambitious film called Frequency (2000) told the story of a grown son (Jim Caviezel) living in the year 1999 who suddenly finds that he can communicate with his late father (Dennis Quaid), living in 1969, through an old radio and with help from the Northern Lights. They begin to pass information back and forth, which disrupts the time continuum and makes weird things happen. Unfortunately, their talking brings back a serial killer, who then must be caught. This subplot takes away from the meat of the film, and it spirals into a brain-dead ending, but it's still an interesting idea.

Another recent film, Richard Donner's Timeline (2003) was roundly trashed by critics and virtually ignored by moviegoers, but it has a slick, fanciful innocence to it, and it's an easy-going matinee-style adventure story. Based on a Michael Crichton novel, the story involves a group of archeological students who discover artifacts from 14th century France. When their professor (Billy Connolly) suddenly disappears, they step into a giant machine and travel back to rescue him, inadvertently plunging themselves in the middle of a war. (Of course, the artifacts come to make more sense when the story ends.) Perhaps the movie's biggest drawback is the casting of the perpetually uninteresting Paul Walker as the hero, but the adorable Frances O'Connor almost makes up for him.

These titles only scratch the surface of "Present Man in Past." Other titles include: Frank Lloyd's Berkeley Square (1933, n/a on DVD), in which a man enters a 150 year-old house and suddenly finds himself transported backward in time. In The Final Countdown (1980), an entire aircraft carrier is suddenly transported back to 1941, and the crew must decide whether or not to prevent the December 7th Pearl Harbor attack. And in A Sound of Thunder (2005), Ben Kingsley stars as hunter from the year 2055 who leads expeditions in the past -- hunting dinosaurs. Unfortunately, one false step can cause a chain-reaction that will wipe out humanity. Based on a story by Ray Bradbury, this was one of 2005's biggest flops.

Small budgets do not prevent time travel stories from being told. Roger Corman's The Undead (1957) tells the story of a woman who is hypnotized and sent back to medieval times where she is to be tried as a witch! In Timerider (1982), a motorcyclist is accidentally zapped and sent back to the old West, where his bike becomes the source of great trouble. Even the old Sid and Marty Krofft Saturday morning TV series, "Land of the Lost" (1974), is available on DVD. In it, a family of explorers falls through a tunnel and winds up in prehistoric times.

Two imports, Alain Resnais' Je t'aime, je t'aime (1968; n/a on DVD) and Peter Chan's He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother (1993; ditto) round out the "Past Man in Present" category -- and we return to the present. Continued >>