Is there ever a bad time to watch a time travel movie? Some of the best sci-fi movies in history have tackled this frequently explored topic, and new wrinkles in the fabric of the concept have made the subject more exciting over time. So why don’t we take a look at the different rules these flights of fancy have introduced? Should you be stuck in a time loop, we apologize if this list is starting to get old.
Back To The Future
Everyone loves to talk about how Back to the Future’s time travel works, but there’s one aspect we take for granted throughout the whole trilogy. Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) may have given Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) the keys to travel through the past, present, and future; but you seriously need to consider the exact spot you’re traveling to. Otherwise, you might find yourself altering history in some intriguing ways. R.I.P. Twin Pines Mall.
Time After Time
A novel adventure starring the father of time travel H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell), Time After Time actually introduced an interesting mechanic to temporal transport. Let’s just say that if you don’t use the Time Machine properly, you could find yourself stuck in your final destination. Or worse, falling through the time-space continuum, without a way back home.
The Terminator
The Terminator's time travel will forever be a head-scratcher, as the existence of John Connor is the ultimate ontological paradox. How else can you explain Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) being sent back to the 1980s to save the world…and make sure the person who sent him is born in the first place?
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
The oldest method of time travel in the Star Trek movies, 1986’s The Voyage Home saw Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew trying to save the whales through a time heist. This wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for the Enterprise crew using a Klingon Bird of Prey, a slingshot orbit around the sun, and a lot of engineering power to do it.
Primer
2004’s Primer is still hotly discussed among time travel aficionados, and it’s not hard to see why. The shenanigans in this test case involve multiple versions of a singular traveler (Shane Carruth) existing in a single timeline, which creates one of the most chaotic timelines ever depicted.
The Adam Project
Story-wise, The Adam Project is pretty cozy when it comes to how it handles time travel. But when it comes to traveling in style, the older Adam Reed (Ryan Reynolds) has a Time Jet that’s specifically coded to his DNA! Not many temporal travelers HAVE that, and it prevents so many mistakes other adventures of this sort use for story purposes.
Avengers: Endgame
How Avengers: Endgame’s time travel works is rather unorthodox, to be honest. Instead of overwriting the past into a more pleasing result, the MCU’s finest are only allowed to use it in the name of stealing/returning the Infinity Stones. Timelines can still create tangent histories, and 2014 Gamora takes over for her slain variant in the films, but you can’t stop “The Snap.”
Lost In Space
If all time travelers had the device Older Will Robinson (Jared Harris) built in 1998’s Lost in Space, they’d have it made. While only one person can travel at a time, exact coordinates in time and space are required; so you can go to a very specific spatial location on the timeline.
The Butterfly Effect
The Butterfly Effect's time travel works on rules similar to that of Quantum Leap. Evan (Ashton Kutcher) can indeed change history, but it’s only within his own life’s timeline. Unfortunately, thanks to the multiple trips leading to continued alterations to the fabric of events, it all adds up in terms of severe physical wear and tear.
Hot Tub Time Machine
Hot Tub Time Machine is a very special case when it comes to time travel. To be fair, the comedy ensemble franchise gets points for having its protagonists travel only within their own bodies. As for how one can actually travel with said titular device, apparently you need an energy drink, the right hot tub with the right temperature, and some convenient writing.
Looper
Real-time bodily damage. That’s probably one of the most unique additions to Looper’s usage of time travel, as we see people incur damage in the past, only for it to show up on their future selves. Poor Seth (Paul Dano) demonstrated that lesson the hard way in Rian Johnson’s sci-fi masterpiece.
Star Trek: Generations
What if you could wish really hard to create an alternate timeline? Or what if you could send yourself back to your best memory, and never leave? That’s what The Nexus from Star Trek: Generations could do, and both Captains Kirk (William Shatner) and Picard (Patrick Stewart) got a taste of that sweet life, before ultimately using their new power to stop the villainous Dr. Soren (Malcolm McDowell).
Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure
If you ever want to bring a figure from history home for dinner in the present, do it in the universe of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. There are little to no consequences, especially when it comes to our heroes (Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves) whisking away two medieval princesses to become betrothed in the 1980s. Seriously, how did that not start a war?
The Time Traveler's Wife
“Chrono Impairment” is a seriously rare affliction, but it’s enough of a headache that it prevents Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana’s clock-crossed lovers from ever enjoying a normal life. Such is the nature of The Time Traveler's Wife, which invented that affliction to send Bana’s character Henry on unpredictable trips at unforeseeable intervals throughout his life.
Indiana Jones And Dial Of Destiny
For Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny's time travel to actually happen, the world of Harrison Ford’s iconic archeologist needed specific hardware. Aided by some very precise calculations to try and take the Nazis to where they were trying to go, it wasn't as simple as jumping into a car and gunning it to 88 miles per hour.
Star Trek: First Contact
For a franchise that uses temporal transit as much as the Star Trek series does, there sure are a lot of different ways to go back in time. And if you’re not satisfied with The Voyage Home’s method of a slingshot orbit around the Sun, then you can always do what Star Trek: First Contact did. While I wouldn’t personally recommend waiting for a Borg invasion to cause a temporal wake you can just hitch a ride on; you do you.
Tenet
Ok, so technically Tenet’s shenanigans involving time is “time inversion,” rather than time travel. Which only makes the journey, and the resulting reality The Protagonist (John David Washington) lives in all the more complicated. It also makes for some classic Christopher Nolan mind melts.
Timeline
Would this really be a sci-fi party if author Michael Crichton didn’t show up? Timeline’s time travel is a lot of fun, if you consider using a “human fax machine” to send yourself to medieval times “fun.” In which case, try not to abuse it too much, as every trip has the chance to leave you with transcription errors in your reassembled DNA. Again, we’re working with a fax machine here.
Somewhere In Time
It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for Christopher Reeve fans! Somewhere in Time just had to be on this list, as it's pretty unique in how it sends a person back through the ages. In the case of Reeve’s playwright Richard, all he needs is a really powerful hypnotic focus to zoom back to 1912.
Star Trek (2009)
It’s kind of fitting that the 2009 Star Trek reboot would use time travel, given that the series has continually danced with that concept on TV and in movies. For this J.J. Abrams-directed venture, the destructive and inexact force of a black hole is what’s used to accidentally alter time so vastly that William Shatner turns into Chris Pine.
Déjà Vu
Tony Scott’s 2006 action-thriller Déjà Vu is a big movie with a relatively limited scope. With intelligence gathering, and ultimately one human transport, that can only go as far back as four and a half days, Denzel Washington’s work was kind of cut out for him on this caper.
The Tomorrow War
The Chris Pratt-starring time travel ensemble adventure The Tomorrow War has some pretty huge stipulations when it comes to recruiting an army for the future. The largest among them was, of course, you had to be dead according to the records of the future hellscape that pitted humanity against some very nasty creatures.
X-Men: Days Of Future Past
Going from here to there in the then and now in X-Men: Days of Future Past requires a serious amount of power. With Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) going back to his past body, the key to how it all happens lies in the phasing abilities of Kitty Pryde (Elliot Page). So this story uses a very physical, and incredibly vulnerable, method to execute its vision.
12 Monkeys
Out of all the time travel universes we’ve seen on screen, perhaps the one I feel the most sorry for is the one shown in 12 Monkeys. The basic rule of this Bruce Willis epic’s temporal transit is “hope for the best,” thanks to the method of being shot through time and intending to land in the right place going wrong more often than you think.
Midnight In Paris
Reminiscent of many other vehicular-based time travel films like Back to the Future, any character that travels through time in Midnight In Paris just needs to catch the right ride, at just about Midnight. The experience is bespoke to whoever is traveling, as the period of time that suits them best also dictates the method of transportation provided.
The Final Countdown
Dropping an aircraft carrier from the 1980s into the moments before Pearl Harbor, The Final Countdown delivers a moral dilemma plenty of time travelers have tangled with. But the real difference with this underrated sci-fi movie is the fact that the time-traveling storm that is responsible for the trip is inescapable. You’re going home, whether you want to or not.
About Time
Sharing a similarity with the romantic classic Somewhere In Time, Richard Curtis’ About Time allows any potential traveler to jump into the past with merely intense concentration. However, certain caveats are in play, like the recommendation of not traveling past certain life milestones, or the fact that only the men of the Lake family can actually use this gift.
Donnie Darko
Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) can’t exactly travel through time in Donnie Darko, but he does have a special temporal ability that’s kind of funny and kind of sad. With the ability to open a wormhole between the present and the past, Mr. Darko can send objects through time; the skill that gives Richard Kelly’s movie its bittersweet ending.
Kate & Leopold
Kate & Leopold’s usage of a localized time portal is a method as old as time. However, the big difference with this Meg Ryan/Hugh Jackman rom-com is that the journey Leopold (Jackman) takes to the “future” of 2001 robs us all of elevators. Also, there’s a ticking clock on this specific portal’s usage, which only complicates things further.
Groundhog Day
Perhaps the movie that nailed the time loop into the consciousness of the world, Groundhog Day brought us a charming Bill Murray rom-com mixed with a time travel story. Its misanthropic lead needed to change, even as the world around him stayed the same. The rest was sci-fi history in the making.
Happy Death Day
What happens if you make a Groundhog Day-style time loop into a deadly game? You get a movie like Happy Death Day, in which our initially unlikable lead Tree (Jessica Rothe) is being stalked through a single-day time loop. The big kicker in this variant is that, unlike your standard time loop, Tree has a finite number of cycles before she possibly dies for good.
Detention
Where does one start with director Joseph Kahn’s Detention? Well, how about the fact that the teenagers in play (including a pre-Hunger Games Josh Hutcherson) use a stuffed bear as a time travel capsule? Or the fact that a mother/daughter pair can body swap on a permanent basis, and with no consequences?
And with that, our supreme sampling of time travel trips has come to a close. Which more than likely has left you with a want to watch some of these movies again, or for the first time. That's totally natural, because this is a subgenre that always leaves us with one question: is there ever a bad time to watch a time travel movie?
