Plot synopsis
In 1899, George builds a time machine and invites some learned colleagues over for dinner to explain to them how it works.
He says, “The difficulty in explaining a fourth dimension is that it cannot be seen or felt…. [but it] is as real and as true as the other three … in fact they couldn’t exist without it. … Why is it that we usually ignore the fourth dimension? Because we have no freedom of movement within it. We can move within the other three: up-down, forwards-backwards, sideways … but when it comes to time, we are prisoners.”
He explains more, “The larger model of the time machine can be used to carry a passenger on a journey through time – not through space, mind you, but through time … the future is already there; it is irrevocable and cannot be changed.”
George says, “I wonder. That is the most important question to which I hope to find the answer. Can man control his destiny? Can you change the shape of things to come?”
He agrees to meet them again in a week and then travels into the near future. George continues on and visits several world wars until he lands in 802,701 A.D. He finds a primitive land inhabited by the Eloi and he falls in love with Weena, a female Eloi.
He decides to leave her to travel back to tell his colleagues that his time machine works. But they are not convinced, so he takes off again into the future to be with his Eloi lover.
My comments
Time is the fourth dimension of a spacetime continuum in this movie. It is interesting to note that the H.G. Wells novel of the same title, on which this movie is based, was written before Einstein formulated his Special Theory of Relativity.
George is able to move with ease backwards and forwards through the fourth dimension. But it is hard to say whether he finds out if man can change his destiny because he does not travel back before the time he invented his time machine to change anything.
He only changes things in the future, and because he did not know what the future would have been without his changes, he has nothing to compare it to.
Therefore, maybe it was always his destiny to build the time machine and be part of that future. Maybe there never was another future before he went there.
When George comes back to see his colleagues at the end of the 19th Century, he could have done something drastic to try to change the future and then when he went back to the future, he could have seen if it had made any difference.
But he did not do that because as he said, “The future is already there; it is irrevocable and cannot be changed.” This is the model of time that he believes in.
Summary of time travel
This movie uses a block universe model of time in which the past and future are fixed dimensions of a spacetime continuum. Although no time travel takes place to the past, George clearly states that he believes in a fixed timeline.
Category of time travel
Science fiction: a time-travel vehicle.
Model of time
Closed past, closed future with a fixed timeline.
