In these films the time machine is quite a mysterious device and in no way is it portrayed as a technology that is easily accessible to anyone in the future. It is constructed, in both Back to the Future and The Time Machine by the odd ball scientists and done in a very do it yourself fashion, not some sort of marketable futuristic product from a company. Because there is no known existence of a physical time machine its form is up for interpretation by the films. The designs of both time machines are a product of the times they are built in, in the films. In The Time Machine it took on a sled like look with a large rotating dish, a Victorian chair for the pilot and brass railings around the chair as described in the H.G. Wells novel, which the film is based on. Being that the film took place in 1900s they could not yet use the idea of the time machine being powered through any sort of atomic or nuclear power and again went back to
the novel and used a crystal as the machine’s source of power. The crystal sat at the top of a lever, which was attached to a console that displayed the dates that the machine was traveling through. Back to the Future takes place in the 80s, so now, not only can they take advantage of the idea that time travel is achieved through something more mechanical, but also through the use of plutonium all packaged within a DeLorean car. Zemeckis and Gale imagined Doc Brown to have the knowledge of time travel through working on the Manhattan Project. So you can imagine the kinds of secret technology Doc Brown might have access to, or knowledge of, to create a machine that travels through time.Both films abided by a similar principle: you can travel through time, not space. Both machines never moved spatially upon arriving in the past or future, they arrived on the exact spot that they occupied in the present time. However, both films chose to display the act of time travel quite differently. Back to the Future had Marty cruising at 88mph then sparks whirled out from the car and it appeared to almost instantaneously explode and reappear in another time period. Another difference from The Time Machine is that the DeLorean has to be set a to a specific date to travel to, whereas H. George Wells simply pulls a lever where time passes faster the more he pulls the lever. Time-lapse photography and stop motion animation were used in The Time Machine to show George
traveling through time. The strongest image to portray the passing of time was the time-lapse of the clouds rolling past and the sun rising and setting and then having it gradually speed up and George applied more pressure on the lever. It seems like a natural choice to display time travel in this manner due to the technology being used. Although a crystal could perhaps have some kind of fire and spark inducing effect that would trigger time travel, a mysterious acceleration of time seems like a much more believable and natural way to handle time travel through the power of a crystal. With the DeLorean, a large blast and a set of flaming car tracks seems very believable, being that it is coming from a steel machine with all kinds of flickering lights and gadgets going off. Bob Gale, writer of Back to the Future, says that using a machine to travel through time makes sense because it is proven that machines can “do things”, where as the possibility of a person magically traveling through time seems far less likely. Then to bring the possibility that in someway harnessing natural power such as a lightning bolt to project through time is quite a fantastic and somehow making time travel almost tangible. Neither films in anyway technically describe how the machine can travel through time is, but the visual does enough to make you believe that machine can in fact travel through time.Time travel has yet to be proven possible but no one has proven it impossible either. We currently cannot travel through time in the same sense that Marty or George did in the films. In our measurements of time there have small ways one could technically travel into the future. Through suspended animation the organs of the body are slowed and in a sense frozen in time while everything else continues. Of course this can only be done for a short amount of time before damaging the body but it technically brings one forward in time without aging for that amount of time. There are also various other theories on the possibility of traveling back in time using a wormhole, which appears to be possible in comparison to Einstein’s ten equations of general relativity. There are many theories of time travel but we have yet to be able to harness the power needed to do so. Even if we have the power to travel through time, we would have to be cautious as to what the repercussions of traveling through time might do to our present time. Paradoxes such as the Grandfather Paradox, in which say a man travels back in time and kills his grandfather before meeting the traveler’s grandmother and in turn never being able to create the traveler. This would mean that the traveler could have never traveled in time to kill his grandfather. These paradoxes could be explained away by the theory that in traveling back in time you instantly create a parallel universe as suggested by Hugh Everett’s many worlds interpretation. His thoughts were that “there is a very large, perhaps infinite, number of universes and that everything that could possibly happen, or could possibly have happened, in our universe (but doesn't) does happen in some other universe(s).”
Back to the Future clearly addresses the issues of time travel and the possibility tearing the fabric of time and space. One of the main struggles in the film is for Marty to make sure his father gets back with his mother after intervening in how his mom and dad were supposed to meet. As the film progresses and the further the younger versions of his parents drift apart he sees a photo of his brother and sister and him begin to disappear. This would happen because if his parents don’t get together there is no way Marty can exist. It also proposes the notion that
the future is not unchangeable, if you were to travel back in time and in anyway interact with the past you will have changed the course of time. In the film when Marty returns to 1985 he finds that his family is no longer “in the dumps” and his father just had his first novel published and the rest of his family is doing great. Kind of a storybook ending to this tale, but later in the series you see how taking things from the future and bringing them into the past can lead to a drastically different present time. Also in The Time Machine, George raises the question, “Can man control his destiny? Can he change the shape of things to come?” George goes into the future only to find very bleak conditions every time he slows down to assess the situation. His curiosity drives him further into the future past the point that all human civilization appears to have been destroyed. Finally he stops in a place that seems promising only to find the human race has become a bunch of mindless drones being treated as cattle and food for the underground dwellers: the Morlocks. Once George has defeated the Morlocks he returns back to 1900 only to return back to the people of the future to help build a better society for them. It’s as though he feels there is no way to change his immediate future with the time machine, so he goes all the way into the future and tries to start a new civilization the way he believes it should be run.Although the reality is that we may never experience time travel; these films help us realize that we need to make the best of the time we are in now. Knowing the possibility that our world could be a dark decrepit place can only inspire people to become better with the environment and with others. While we wait for the most intelligent minds in the world to discover the possibilities of traveling through time, we will be immersed in fantasy films like these that help us visualize what time travel could possibly be like and let our imaginations do the rest.
1. Back to the Future. Robert Zemeckis. Perf. Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, and Crispin Glover. 1985. DVD, Universal
2. The Time Machine. George Pal. Perf. Rod Taylor, Alan Young, and Yvette Mimieux. 1960. DVD, Galaxy Films Inc.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Everett
