Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today on Weird House Cinema, we're going to be talking
Speaker 3: about the nineteen sixty film adaptation of The Time Machine,
Speaker 3: based on the novel by H. G. Wells, directed by
Speaker 3: George Pale, starring Rod Taylor and a Vet Me Me You.
Speaker 3: We've gotten many requests to cover this on the on
Speaker 3: the show before. I think it came up recently, maybe
Speaker 3: in the last Listener Male episode or the one before that.
Speaker 3: Somebody was asking us to do the time Machine, either
Speaker 3: this one or I think also that there was one
Speaker 3: in the early two thousands that is famous or infamous.
Speaker 3: It has Guy Pierce, I think, and has a lot
Speaker 3: of weird changes to the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are some definitely weird changes made to it.
Speaker 2: We'll come back to the two thousand and two time Machine.
Speaker 2: I have not watched it since it originally came out,
Speaker 2: but I remember enjoying it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as Jeremy Irons as something called an uber morlock.
Speaker 4: M m.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's the more lock they can talk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great, I've never seen it, but I'd be willing
Speaker 3: to explore. But this version of the time Machine is
Speaker 3: so I just want to put my cards on the
Speaker 3: table at the beginning and say it is so great.
Speaker 3: We can discuss a few drawbacks to it, but overall
Speaker 3: this is just like great mid century cinema, an amazing
Speaker 3: visual spectacle. It's got excellent time laps and stop motion effects.
Speaker 3: It has that wonderful film grain and color palette that
Speaker 3: it's like what people have in mind when they think
Speaker 3: about the gorgeous color films of the mid century.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's gorgeous to look at. The effects, which were
Speaker 2: Academy Award winners at the time, still hold up really
Speaker 2: well and are a lot of fun to watch. The
Speaker 2: performances are effective, but it's just a fun ride and
Speaker 2: it does a great great job. There's not a dull moment.
Speaker 2: They do a great job unpacking the concepts that are
Speaker 2: essential for the adventure and then delivering on that adventure. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think it is, while not a perfectly faithful adaptation
Speaker 3: of the novel, I think a very good way to
Speaker 3: take it onto film. In fact, we could talk here
Speaker 3: at the beginning about some of the ways that it
Speaker 3: departs from the novel. Some of them are less interesting,
Speaker 3: but some more so. Like I guess, one thing I
Speaker 3: will say that I think doesn't work quite as well
Speaker 3: in the movie is that you remember, in the novel
Speaker 3: there's no love story or romantic element at all, like
Speaker 3: there is. The time traveler in the novel meets a
Speaker 3: woman in the future named Weena. He befriends her, he
Speaker 3: sort of protects her, but in the novel there's no
Speaker 3: romance between them. In the movie, unsurprisingly, you've got Rod
Speaker 3: Taylor and here and they fall in love. And I'm
Speaker 3: not one of those people who is opposed to this
Speaker 3: kind of thing in principle. Some people just always hate
Speaker 3: it when you add a romantic subplot to literary material
Speaker 3: where it wasn't there to begin with. I'm not always
Speaker 3: opposed to that, but given particular features of the narrative
Speaker 3: in the Time Machine, like how both the time traveler
Speaker 3: and the eloy are depicted, I think it does not
Speaker 3: work super well in this story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she is as we'll discuss a dull person, you know.
Speaker 2: Is we see this in various forms and different works
Speaker 2: of fiction, where you'll have someone like maybe they're a clone,
Speaker 2: maybe they are indeed a far future human, but for
Speaker 2: some reason or another, they have a They're naive, they
Speaker 2: are innocent despite being like biologically grown people played biologically
Speaker 2: grown actors, And yeah, it can make for some odd
Speaker 2: space for a love story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's not the best. However, there are some
Speaker 3: things this movie does to change the story from the
Speaker 3: novel that I think are fantastic. Like one interesting plot
Speaker 3: device I would single out in this regard is the
Speaker 3: way that and if you're not familiar with the story,
Speaker 3: this will make more sense later on. But the way
Speaker 3: that the Morlocks use air raid sirens to hypnotize the
Speaker 3: eloy and lure them into the Sphinx to their doom.
Speaker 3: I guess we can talk about that more in the
Speaker 3: plot section. But this is both a harrowing sensory spectacle
Speaker 3: in the scene where it happens, and it also provides
Speaker 3: an interesting twist on the movie's anti war themes.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I think the film's anti war themes hold
Speaker 2: up really well. I think that they are in large
Speaker 2: part very true to the spirit of a lot of
Speaker 2: the ideals that HG. Wells held for the majority of
Speaker 2: his life. So I think these were all a great
Speaker 2: addition then there are plenty of other like small changes,
Speaker 2: many necessary changes, like for instance, in the original book,
Speaker 2: which is essentially a novella, the time Traveler has no
Speaker 2: given name. He is just the time Traveler, which I
Speaker 2: always quite liked because it made him feel more mythic,
Speaker 2: you know, and more mysterious, and maybe in a way
Speaker 2: he doesn't have an identity anymore because he is like
Speaker 2: a man removed from time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's just he's the Earth rim Roamer or something
Speaker 3: like that. Yeah, But here they give him a name,
Speaker 3: and they give him the name H. G. Wells. Basically
Speaker 3: the other characters call him George H. Or the you know,
Speaker 3: his middle initial there. So it's doing the same thing. Actually,
Speaker 3: that is done in the later film Time after Time,
Speaker 3: which we've featured on the show nineteen, which is a
Speaker 3: fun combination of the time machine and the story of
Speaker 3: Jack the Ripper. But they make the time Traveler in
Speaker 3: that also HG. Wells himself. Here it's a weird thing,
Speaker 3: so they give him the name HG. Wells, but they
Speaker 3: don't make him like a science fiction novelist in the
Speaker 3: eighteen nineties. He's just the character from the book. But
Speaker 3: they gave him the author's name.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so it's a little They treat it softly here.
Speaker 2: It's not like a a hard like Hey, m HG. Wells,
Speaker 2: the successful writer and that time Machine book I wrote, Well,
Speaker 2: I actually made one. It's in the basement. Well, I'm
Speaker 2: really excited to talk about this one. I had not
Speaker 2: seen this film in quite a long time. I think
Speaker 2: I possibly watched it on I don't know, Turner Classic
Speaker 2: Movies or American movie classics back in the day. It
Speaker 2: certainly is an American movie classic, and I think the
Speaker 2: movie holds up quite well. And for that matter, I
Speaker 2: would argue that the HG. Wells book itself holds up
Speaker 2: quite well. I read that more recently than i'd seen
Speaker 2: this film, and you know, it moves right along at
Speaker 2: a great click. Very readable ideas speak to us today,
Speaker 2: you know, as well as they did back at it
Speaker 2: in its original publication year. You know, Wells was a
Speaker 2: great writer with a lot of tremendous ideas. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's been a while since I've read the novel
Speaker 3: in full, though, I just recently reread a chapter from
Speaker 3: it because I remember way back when I first read
Speaker 3: this book in high school. One of the parts that
Speaker 3: really stuck with me was after the main action of
Speaker 3: the story, after the encounter with the eloy and the
Speaker 3: Moorlocks and all of that, there is a chapter called
Speaker 3: a Further Vision where the time traveler goes on and
Speaker 3: on further and further millions.
Speaker 2: Of earths, million years, I think you.
Speaker 3: Millions of years into the future to see the final
Speaker 3: fate of the planet Earth. And so he comes upon
Speaker 3: this landscape where the Earth has become finally tidally locked
Speaker 3: with the sun, so that the sun no longer rises
Speaker 3: and sets, and the part of the Earth he is
Speaker 3: on just happens to be within sort of the ring
Speaker 3: around the horizon, like the part of the Earth that
Speaker 3: is always in perpetual twilight with the sun kind of
Speaker 3: sitting just above the horizon to the west. And so
Speaker 3: he describes this giant red sun there and this twilight
Speaker 3: landscape that is filled with giant crabs and butterflies, and
Speaker 3: the crabs like start caressing his face with their antennae,
Speaker 3: and it's a super super creepy vision that really left
Speaker 3: an impression on me. And every now and then I
Speaker 3: think I've read the book in full more than once,
Speaker 3: I believe, but I've gone back and read that chapter
Speaker 3: many times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very doomy in almost I would say, a
Speaker 2: cosmic horror sense. It's not quite the cord that Wells
Speaker 2: is striking there, but you can easily imagine how this
Speaker 2: chapter of the book may have been one of the
Speaker 2: influences on many of the cosmic horror writers in the
Speaker 2: decades to come.
Speaker 3: It also it provides an interesting perspective because so often,
Speaker 3: especially genre stories, they really you want to get a
Speaker 3: sense that there is a happily ever after, that there
Speaker 3: is some kind of paradisical state that everything is moving toward,
Speaker 3: and once the conflict of the story is resolved, everything
Speaker 3: will be okay now. But the Time Traveler really it
Speaker 3: kind of upsets that narrative because there are conflicts to
Speaker 3: resolve in the story. It's not like nothing matters, but
Speaker 3: you do get to see, well, in the end there
Speaker 3: are no people here anymore anyway, It's all just crabs
Speaker 3: in the end, and eventually not even any crabs will
Speaker 3: be left.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's a great chapter. It is not depicted
Speaker 2: in this adaptation, But then I don't think it really
Speaker 2: I don't think it would have fit. I like the
Speaker 2: way this film ends this film ends the way it
Speaker 2: needed to end, and we'll discuss that towards the final
Speaker 2: minutes of this episode.
Speaker 3: If instead of a love story between Rod Taylor and
Speaker 3: Vetti Mu, you had a love story between Rod Taylor
Speaker 3: and the crab from attack of the Crab Monsters, that
Speaker 3: would really be a way to wrap this up. What
Speaker 3: do you think?
Speaker 2: Possibly? Yeah, and yeah, if you wanted to end it
Speaker 2: on a much more contemplative and doomy note, that would
Speaker 2: be the way to go.
Speaker 3: All right, let's see, should we listen to some trailer audio.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's hear a bit from the old trade.
Speaker 4: Today man is successfully drobing deep into the mysteries of
Speaker 4: the universe. Can he penetrate the greatest mystery of all
Speaker 4: time itself?
Speaker 3: Why is it that we usually ignore the fourth dimension?
Speaker 3: You see, we can move in.
Speaker 4: The other three, as the doctor said, up, down, forwards, backward, sideways,
Speaker 4: But when it comes to time.
Speaker 2: You have prisoners can bender.
Speaker 4: Rod Taylor's breakthrough into the realm of the fourth dimension
Speaker 4: is defied by his friend Alan Young.
Speaker 2: If that machine can do what you see, it gone
Speaker 2: destroy it, George before it destroys you.
Speaker 4: Every moment is a year hurtling through the atomic wars
Speaker 4: of the future on an incredible excursion into the unknown.
Speaker 4: And what happens when boy meets girl thousands of years hence,
Speaker 4: how do they wear their hair?
Speaker 2: Who the women of your time.
Speaker 3: Up Black Herd show me?
Speaker 4: Is this the human race of the future? Or is
Speaker 4: this the Morlocks fiendish creatures who live in a weird
Speaker 4: underground's world and the Eloi the tranqu will sunshine people.
Speaker 4: The Morlocks dominate and maintain like cattle, luring them below
Speaker 4: with the hypnotic wail of the sirens to feed upon
Speaker 4: them in cannibalistic chori.
Speaker 2: All right, well, if you would like to watch nineteen
Speaker 2: sixties The Time Machine, absolutely we encourage you to go
Speaker 2: out and watch it for the first time, or or
Speaker 2: revisit it before proceeding with the rest of the episode,
Speaker 2: or just go ahead and listen to the rest of
Speaker 2: the episode. You know, we are going to spoil some things,
Speaker 2: but it's the time Machine. I feel like this is
Speaker 2: one that you've probably absorbed culturally to a certain extent
Speaker 2: at this point, and if you do want to watch
Speaker 2: it, it is widely available, and I think all formats that
Speaker 2: have ever existed due to time constraints. I just streamed it,
Speaker 2: but there are some nice DVDs and Blu rays out
Speaker 2: there as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and as you alluded to, as always a spoiler
Speaker 3: warning for the rest of the episode, this is a
Speaker 3: pretty old story at this point. But yeah, we are
Speaker 3: going to talk about the whole thing in granular detail.
Speaker 3: So if somehow this story is new to you and
Speaker 3: you're not familiar, go read the novel or watch the
Speaker 3: movie before continuing.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. All right, well, let's get into some of the
Speaker 2: people behind this picture, this big special effects picture of
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty. So we can't reference everybody, but the director
Speaker 2: and the producer on this was George Powell lived nineteen
Speaker 2: oh eight through nineteen eighty Hungarian American animator, film director
Speaker 2: and producer who initially worked on films in his native
Speaker 2: Hungary before moving to Berlin and then to Prague in
Speaker 2: the early thirties, creating short films and commercials before immigrating
Speaker 2: to the United States and I believe nineteen thirty nine. Now,
Speaker 2: during this period, both in Europe and then in the
Speaker 2: United States, he made a series of puppet tunes, So
Speaker 2: that's puppet and tunes smashed together into one word. These
Speaker 2: were short films, the first being I believe a dancing
Speaker 2: cigarette commercial from nineteen thirty two. Okay, so it's kind
Speaker 2: of I guess maybe we're even alluding to that in
Speaker 2: this picture when we have a scene with a cigar
Speaker 2: where we have a model of the time machine and
Speaker 2: they fold up a cigar and stick it in there.
Speaker 2: Though it doesn't dance or move around.
Speaker 3: There's more cigar action than you would expect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe seven puppetoun I assume that's how one
Speaker 2: would pronounce it. Puppet Tune shorts received Academy Award nominations.
Speaker 2: Puppetoon animation is essentially a type of replacement animation, which
Speaker 2: is itself a type of stop motion animation, but it
Speaker 2: requires a vast number of near duplicate puppets to pull
Speaker 2: off the effect. So my understanding diving into this a
Speaker 2: little bit, is that it's kind of like cell animation
Speaker 2: where or trip or traditional cell animation, where you would
Speaker 2: have to have like a separate drawing of say Daffy
Speaker 2: Duck every time Daffy Duck made the slightest movement, and
Speaker 2: in this case, you would have to have a physical
Speaker 2: representation a doll or puppet of Daffy Duck for each
Speaker 2: each tiny movement that would take place. So you know,
Speaker 2: this is not quite what we see with stop motion today. Generally,
Speaker 2: when you see stop motion today, they're articulating some sort
Speaker 2: of a movable puppet or model each time, and not
Speaker 2: just replacing it with an entirely different model. Puppet tune
Speaker 2: shorts included, let's see there is the adaptations of Doctor
Speaker 2: Seuss's The Five Hundred Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, as well
Speaker 2: as an adaptation of and to and to Think that
Speaker 2: I Saw It on Mulberry Street, also an adaptation of
Speaker 2: Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, and also a series of
Speaker 2: shorts featuring the character Jasper that was already seen as
Speaker 2: racist in the nineteen forties so obviously does not hold
Speaker 2: up well today. Now in nineteen fifty power, I'll switch
Speaker 2: to live action film with the comedy The Great Rupert.
Speaker 2: I think that's aid Jimmy Duranty picture, which he produced only.
Speaker 2: But then in nineteen fifty eight he directed a Tom
Speaker 2: Thumb movie that made use of puppatoon effects, and then
Speaker 2: of course The Time Machine in nineteen sixty, which doesn't
Speaker 2: use puppatoon per se, but certainly makes great use of
Speaker 2: stop motion effects.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I believe it was the stop motion effects
Speaker 3: and the and the time lapse effects for which this
Speaker 3: movie got an Academy Award.
Speaker 2: I'd write about that. Yeah, though it's in general, this
Speaker 2: is just a great special effects picture, you know. It's
Speaker 2: like this is that the production designs here are amazing,
Speaker 2: and yeah, we get some great uses of stop motion
Speaker 2: throughout the picture, but main but essentially whenever there's time traveling,
Speaker 2: because there's always stuff in the background that's rotting or
Speaker 2: growing and so forth. Yeah, melting exploding into lava.
Speaker 3: Man, I got some things to say about that lava.
Speaker 3: Did you read about that effects? Yeah, Okay, we'll get there.
Speaker 2: So subsequently he directed sixty one's Atlantis the Lost Continent,
Speaker 2: sixty two's The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grim the
Speaker 2: fairy Tale segments only, and finally Seven Faces of Doctor
Speaker 2: Looe in nineteen sixty four. I've never seen that one,
Speaker 2: but of note to MST three K fans, that's the
Speaker 2: movie that Joel quotes in the final moments of his
Speaker 2: original run on Mystery Science Theater three thousand. This is
Speaker 2: a bit where it's every time you stop and think
Speaker 2: I'm alive and being alive is fantastic. Every time such
Speaker 2: a thing happens. You're part of the circus of Doctor Lao,
Speaker 2: which is fun. Though that movie is I believe sadly
Speaker 2: built around a yellow face performance by Tony Randall, but
Speaker 2: still the quote I like, all right. Moving on to
Speaker 2: the screenwriter here. David Duncan has the screenplay credit nineteen
Speaker 2: thirteen through nineteen ninety nine American screenwriter and novelist, best
Speaker 2: known for his adapted screenplays for This and nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: six Is Fantastic Voyage not an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's novel,
Speaker 2: which was itself an adaptation of that film, but rather
Speaker 2: an adaptation of an earlier script or treatment. Wow.
Speaker 3: His other scripts when got around huh, yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, that was a big picture. That was I
Speaker 2: think when that one was coming out, and that would
Speaker 2: be a fun one to do on Weird House. Eventually,
Speaker 2: that was I think marketed is the most expensive science
Speaker 2: fiction picture, science fiction picture of all time. So there
Speaker 2: were a lot of cooks in that kitchen. Yeah. But
Speaker 2: Duncan's other scripts include the English version of nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: six is Rodin fifty sevens The Monster that Challenged the
Speaker 2: World nineteen fifty sevens The Black Scorpion fifty eight's the
Speaker 2: Thing that Couldn't Die fifty eighth, Monster on the Campus
Speaker 2: six nineteen sixties. The Leech Woman. That's the one you were,
Speaker 2: the one in My Dreams of Blood. This one was
Speaker 2: featured on Mystery Science Theater three thousand as well, and
Speaker 2: he also wrote the Human Factor episode of the original
Speaker 2: Outer Limits.
Speaker 3: Sorry, Rob, I was just looking up because the title
Speaker 3: got the Monster that Challenged the World. I was trying
Speaker 3: to remember what that one was, and oh, that's the
Speaker 3: one about like a caterpillar that comes up out of
Speaker 3: the out of the water.
Speaker 2: It challenged the world. It didn't conquer, it just challenged.
Speaker 2: Duncan also wrote a series of novels, though some of
Speaker 2: which look quite interesting. But I think these have all
Speaker 2: been out of print for a while and are I
Speaker 2: think largely only available as very old to use paperbacks.
Speaker 2: But if anyone out there has read a David Duncan
Speaker 2: novel write in, I would love to hear about it now.
Speaker 2: As we mentioned, this is of course an adaptation of
Speaker 2: the original book by H. G. Wells, who lived eighteen
Speaker 2: sixty six through nineteen forty six. He was active from
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety five until his death, and he is generally
Speaker 2: considered the grandfather of science fiction. He wasn't the first
Speaker 2: to craft sci fi, and it certainly would have gone
Speaker 2: on without him, but his influence is undeniable, given such
Speaker 2: works as The Time Machine eighteen ninety five, The Island
Speaker 2: of Doctor Moreau from eighteen ninety six, The Invisible Man
Speaker 2: from eighteen ninety seven, and of course The War of
Speaker 2: the World's from eighteen ninety eight. He was a progressive
Speaker 2: social critic and futurist, which certainly contributes to the continued
Speaker 2: readability of his work.
Speaker 3: A lot of science fiction story types that recur with
Speaker 3: variation throughout the twentieth century. I think you could essentially say,
Speaker 3: what was the first version of this story? And often
Speaker 3: it's argued that Wells Wells is the first version.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and certainly in cases where there's some sort of
Speaker 2: a predecessor, like he cemented the idea, you know, like
Speaker 2: his is the story that casts the long shadow, and
Speaker 2: so yeah, his works are highly readable today. They're always
Speaker 2: interesting in terms of like what did he seem to
Speaker 2: accurately predict as a sort of futurist. What social commentaries
Speaker 2: did he make that are still very valid today? And
Speaker 2: so his work is largely full of that sort of thing. Now,
Speaker 2: as far as adaptations of the time Machine go, this
Speaker 2: was not the first adaptation. There was a nineteen forty
Speaker 2: nine BBC teleplay during Russell Napier. I have not seen it,
Speaker 2: but Joe I included a couple of screenshots here for you.
Speaker 2: The time machine looks like some sort of high tech toilet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, sitting on the throne there, it's got lights
Speaker 3: over it.
Speaker 2: So there you go.
Speaker 3: You know, in the version we have in this movie,
Speaker 3: it's still essentially is a big chair.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but the version we see here, and we'll
Speaker 2: describe it a bit more in a little bit here,
Speaker 2: it is the iconic time machine. It has become the
Speaker 2: iconic iconic time machine. It's reasonably accurate to what was
Speaker 2: described in the story, and it is the one that
Speaker 2: is inevitably drawn or depicted in derivative works.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, no, I love the design in this movie.
Speaker 3: But it is a chair. It's a chair on Santa's sleigh.
Speaker 2: Basically.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about that more as we go on. But
Speaker 3: this one is a little more compact and a little
Speaker 3: bit yeah, less impressive. It does look like a toilet.
Speaker 3: And then you've got another picture from a nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: eight adaptation, which is more like a toilet with a
Speaker 3: computer in front of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one looks like a nineteen seventy eight space
Speaker 2: toilet for sure. This one starred John Beck. I also
Speaker 2: have not seen it. I do not think it has
Speaker 2: a very strong reputation. And then, as we previously mentioned,
Speaker 2: there is the two thousand and two adaptations starring Guy
Speaker 2: Pearce and Jeremy Irons, directed notably by H. G. Wells's
Speaker 2: great grandson Simon Wells. How often do you get to
Speaker 2: have a case like that? You know?
Speaker 3: That is unusual? By the way, before this, I looked
Speaker 3: up Simon Wells. I was like, what else did he direct?
Speaker 3: He made a number of animated movies, some involving time travel.
Speaker 3: He directed We're Back a Dinosaur Story. Oh remember that one?
Speaker 2: Vaguely, vaguely.
Speaker 3: Maybe one day on Weird House. Well, we'll have to
Speaker 3: check that out, see how it holds up. I associate
Speaker 3: that one with being a kid and maybe like getting
Speaker 3: a babysitter and having pizza or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds like a good time. Yeah, yeah, two
Speaker 2: thousand and two. That was the last time I saw.
Speaker 2: Two thousand and two is the time Machine, But I
Speaker 2: remember enjoying it. You know, Guy Peers is great, Jeremy
Speaker 2: Irons is great. It had more locks in it, Like
Speaker 2: those are kind of just the basic things I need
Speaker 2: for a good film experience. There are some good actors
Speaker 2: in there, and some reasonably effective monsters that live underground,
Speaker 2: and I'm generally on board, But I do not remember
Speaker 2: any of like the real broad Strokes. I think there's
Speaker 2: some sort of subplot about the moon getting split in half.
Speaker 3: Like there are moon colonists and they screw something up
Speaker 3: and blow up the moon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that also happens in the opening to Thunder the
Speaker 2: Barbarian from back in the day. The moon gets like
Speaker 2: torn in half by something.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Oh, and then, just for comparison's sake, here Joe I
Speaker 2: included a screenshot from Time after Time, which again we've
Speaker 2: previously discussed on Weird House Cinema. They use a different
Speaker 2: design for the time Machine. It's more like a canopied
Speaker 2: little deal, but it also looked fittingly late Victorian.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Time after Time looks more like an insectoid helicopter
Speaker 3: without a rotor.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's interesting because clearly in all versions, the time
Speaker 2: Traveler didn't really think about all of the features you
Speaker 2: might really want on this thing, you know. Definitely a
Speaker 2: canopy to keep subterranean monsters from pulling you off the chair.
Speaker 2: Air Conditioning, yeah, air conditioning.
Speaker 3: Which comes up in this film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, so let's get let's get to the
Speaker 2: cast here playing the time Traveler h George Wells is
Speaker 2: Rod Taylor, who lived nineteen thirty through twenty fifteen. Taylor
Speaker 2: was an Australian born actor, best remembered for this film,
Speaker 2: Hitchcock's The Birds in nineteen sixty three, and the Disney
Speaker 2: animated film one hundred and one Dalmatians, in which he
Speaker 2: plays the lead Dalmatian Pogo.
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Other credits include fifty six's World Without End, sixty
Speaker 2: eight's Dark of the Sun, and a nineteen eighty five
Speaker 2: Christopher Lee film titled Mask of Oh and then very
Speaker 2: late I think this might actually be his last film credit.
Speaker 2: He shows up in Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards in two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine, playing Winston Churchill.
Speaker 3: Never would have made this connection. It's basically a cameo.
Speaker 3: He has like one or two lines. He sits in
Speaker 3: the background while while what's his name is getting briefed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I have to say Taylor, I think is
Speaker 2: pretty great in this. He brings a lot of charm
Speaker 2: to the to a character that would have they could
Speaker 2: have at least certainly come off a good bit more
Speaker 2: wooden and preachy in the hands of another actor.
Speaker 3: No, they make him passionate. He's Yeah, he's likable in
Speaker 3: this role because I mean, he does have to do
Speaker 3: a bit of sermonizing in the film about the woes
Speaker 3: of humankind and the you know, the devious stupidity of
Speaker 3: war and all that, which if they had gone with
Speaker 3: a different kind of like I think I read somewhere
Speaker 3: that they were maybe thinking about getting like an older
Speaker 3: actor looking at David Niven or something, and I don't know,
Speaker 3: could have gone a different way. But Rod Taylor, he
Speaker 3: just feels it like he's expressing his feelings and you're
Speaker 3: sort of there on the ground with him instead of
Speaker 3: being preached down at by him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I don't think I've seen any other
Speaker 2: film that he was I mean, I guess I've seen
Speaker 2: the birds, but it's been a long time, and I've
Speaker 2: seen one hundred and one Dalmatians. But maybe that's not
Speaker 2: the best way to really a praise an actor's ability,
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think he's really good in this one,
Speaker 2: all right. Now. Of note, mostly the main characters in
Speaker 2: this film are going to be the time traveler Wells
Speaker 2: and then the character Weena, who is a far future Eloy.
Speaker 2: But there are some contemporary late Victorian characters that are
Speaker 2: encountered early on, and then we have some like some
Speaker 2: descendants of one of those characters. The main character here
Speaker 2: that is one of the time traveler's friends is the
Speaker 2: character David Philby and then later James Philby his descendant,
Speaker 2: and they are both played by Alan Young who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen nineteen through twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: Our protagonist has a group of several friends when the
Speaker 3: action begins in eighteen ninety nine or nineteen hundred, who
Speaker 3: are like three of the four guys are just like
Speaker 3: cigar eating machines, but the fourth guy, the fourth guy
Speaker 3: has more of a heart. He has a soft Scottish accent,
Speaker 3: and he's a nice, thoughtful guy. That's the Allan Young
Speaker 3: character here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. The soft Scottish accent is especially present in
Speaker 2: the elder Philby character, and many of you, if you're
Speaker 2: rewatching this film, you might be like, man, that Scottish
Speaker 2: accent sounds familiar. It sounds a little bit like Scrooge McDuck.
Speaker 2: It is absolutely Scrooge McDuck. Because Alan Young played Scrooge McDuck.
Speaker 2: It provided Scrooge McDuck's voice for four decades, beginning with
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventy four Disneyland Records album an adaptation of
Speaker 2: Dickens's Christmas Carol performed by the Walt Disney Players, and
Speaker 2: this eventually became, in my opinion, x Mickey's Christmas Carol
Speaker 2: from nineteen eighty three like if you want a Christmas
Speaker 2: Carol boiled down to like what thirty minutes with some
Speaker 2: genuine laughs, but still retaining the spirit of a Christmas Carol,
Speaker 2: you can't go wrong with with Mickey's Christmas Carol?
Speaker 3: Is it better than the Mister Magoo Christmas Carrol?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't. I think I've only seen that one once,
Speaker 2: but I'm gonna go and say absolutely yes.
Speaker 3: Yes, I don't remember that much either, but I'm sure
Speaker 3: I saw this when I was a kid, but I
Speaker 3: don't recall much all.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I recommend potentially revisiting it. I think it
Speaker 2: holds up really well. I think it's one of those
Speaker 2: that I inevitably end up watching every Christmas, in part
Speaker 2: because it's such a it's so short, like how can
Speaker 2: you not sit down and watch it? But anyway, Alan
Speaker 2: Young played Scrooge McDuck so many times, like he's Scrooge
Speaker 2: McDuck on the duck Tails TV series and the Kingdom
Speaker 2: Heart video games and so much more like he was
Speaker 2: Scrooge McDuck.
Speaker 3: Also, there were some great duck Tails at uptates to
Speaker 3: like the eight and sixteen bit video game Eras.
Speaker 2: Oh that's right, Yeah, there was a great.
Speaker 3: Duct Tails game for the nes And then do you
Speaker 3: remember there was there was a ducktails game for the
Speaker 3: Sega Genesis called quack Shot. Did you ever play that one?
Speaker 2: I don't know that I did, But I've noticed that
Speaker 2: the Ducktails games have been some of the ones over
Speaker 2: the years that have been like revisited and put back
Speaker 2: out there that you know, people were really fond of,
Speaker 2: So I'm to understand they were quality.
Speaker 3: Games, just great side scrollers. Though there was one thing
Speaker 3: I recall about Quackshot that was really funny, which is
Speaker 3: it's one of these games where you can you can
Speaker 3: get life back by picking up power ups like food,
Speaker 3: so you can like pick up an ice cream cone
Speaker 3: to heal yourself. But one of the things Scrooge McDuck
Speaker 3: can pick up to heal himself is a roast chicken.
Speaker 3: Something seems a little wrong there, but yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, let's see. Alan Young also did other voice
Speaker 2: acting gigs and appeared in such films as Tom Thumb
Speaker 2: in fifty eight, seventy eight's The Cat from Outer Space
Speaker 2: and nineteen ninety Wars Beverly Hills Cop. I think Beverly
Speaker 2: Hills Cop Three is the one that came out in
Speaker 2: ninety four. And then he was also a cast member
Speaker 2: on the nineteen sixties talking horse TV show Mister Ed.
Speaker 2: At any rate, of all of the Time Traveler's friends,
Speaker 2: this character David Philby and then later James Philbey, this
Speaker 2: is the only one that really matters. This is the
Speaker 2: one that actually has a little more character to him.
Speaker 2: He cares about the time Traveler and plays a more
Speaker 2: important part in the plot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, with these other three guys, it really is a
Speaker 3: case of like, it's like the slasher movie question, why
Speaker 3: are these people friends?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I guess they just attend the same club.
Speaker 2: It's just how it worked, right, Yeah, all right, Now
Speaker 2: let's come back to Wiena, played by Yavette Mimeeux. We've
Speaker 2: talked about her before because she was in nineteen six
Speaker 2: seventy nine's The Black Hole, which we discussed in a
Speaker 2: Weird House.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: She is the Elloy love interest, though again not a
Speaker 2: love interest in the original book. Later credits include nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three's The Neptune Factor, nineteen seventy five's Journey into Fear,
Speaker 2: and of course nineteen seventy eight's Devil Dog The Hound
Speaker 2: of Hell, along with other various TV appearances.
Speaker 3: Now, Rob, did you notice in her filmography that she's
Speaker 3: in two not quite back to back, but almost back
Speaker 3: to back Factor movies. You said The Neptune Factor from
Speaker 3: seventy three, but in nineteen seventy she was also in
Speaker 3: The Delta Factor.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, A lot of factors to consider there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Delta Factor appears to be a Mickey Spillane adaptation.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, the Disney voice acting credits continue here. Though,
Speaker 2: because the more rotund bearded member of the crew here
Speaker 2: that's hanging out. Doctor Philip Hillier is played by Sebastian Cabot,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen eighteen through nineteen seventy seven. He is
Speaker 2: a repeat Disney voice actor. He narrated the Winnie the
Speaker 2: Pooh series in the original films. He narrated nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: threes The Sword and the Stone and did the voice
Speaker 2: of Lord actor in that, and he played the panther
Speaker 2: Bagheira in nineteen sixty seven's The Jungle Book.
Speaker 3: That makes sense. I'm familiar with these voices, but I
Speaker 3: wouldn't have pegged them to him, but now I can
Speaker 3: hear it.
Speaker 2: Another one of the friends is the character Walter Kemp,
Speaker 2: played by Wit Dissel. He lived nineteen oh nine through
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six. Prolific TV and film actor, initially notable
Speaker 2: to me because he was a nineteen fifty four creature
Speaker 2: from the Black Lagoon, as well as nineteen seventy three
Speaker 2: Soylent Green. Other credits include fifty one's Lost Continent, fifty
Speaker 2: six's Invasion of the Body Snatchers nineteen sixties. The Magnificent
Speaker 2: seven sixty two is the Manchurian candidate plus in a
Speaker 2: crowning achievement. Dissel was in all three fifty seven and
Speaker 2: fifty eight films. I was a teenage wear Wolf, I
Speaker 2: was a teenage Frankenstein, and Monster on the Campus. He
Speaker 2: also pops up in that nineteen seventy eight Time Machine
Speaker 2: TV film. So this guy just has a lot of credits.
Speaker 3: Now, I assume for the late fifties films he was
Speaker 3: not himself the teenage were Wolf, the teenage Frankenstein, or
Speaker 3: the Monster on Campus.
Speaker 2: No, I think he's a professor or a teacher in
Speaker 2: all of them. Yeah, this was like your staple professor
Speaker 2: teacher actor during that period. I get it, Okay. Paul
Speaker 2: Freese is in this one as well. He provides the
Speaker 2: voice of the Rings, which will be explained in a
Speaker 2: bit here. With nineteen twenty through nineteen eighty six prolific
Speaker 2: actor and voice actor who isn't actually always credited, but
Speaker 2: if you look at the episode stats for Weird House
Speaker 2: Cinema on Letterbox, for example, he's currently right up there
Speaker 2: behind Christopher Lee, Dick Miller, Vincent Price, and Peter Cushing
Speaker 2: for actors with the most films that we've covered. Because
Speaker 2: he or his voice pop up in The Thing from
Speaker 2: Another World, The Abominable Doctor Fivees, The Flight of Dragons,
Speaker 2: the Magic Sword, and now the Time Machine. It was
Speaker 2: pretty prolific. He has I think three hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: credits on IMDb. Wow. All right, let's get into some
Speaker 2: of the behind the scenes folks. Here there will again
Speaker 2: we can't cover everybody, but cinematography here was by Paul C. Vogel,
Speaker 2: who lived eighteen ninety nine through nineteen seventy five. Oscar
Speaker 2: winner for nineteen fifties Battleground and nominated for sixty threes
Speaker 2: The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grim. He also worked
Speaker 2: on The Magic Sword.
Speaker 3: I was reading a bit about the look of this
Speaker 3: film in a twenty twenty two historical review for The
Speaker 3: American Cinematographer magazine by Darren Scott, and it mentions the
Speaker 3: contributions of several people we'll talk about in a bit,
Speaker 3: Geene Davis or sorry, George Davis and William Ferrari, Gene Warren,
Speaker 3: and Wa Cheng, and the color cinematography by Paul Vogel.
Speaker 3: It mentions a few things about Vogel's approach. One was
Speaker 3: trying to find a and otherworldly look for the film
Speaker 3: that did not make it look like fantasy, because you
Speaker 3: would have a lot of cues that might have been
Speaker 3: associated with fantasy films of the time, such as the
Speaker 3: article mentions fog filters or other devices that people would
Speaker 3: think gave it a kind of magical look. And he
Speaker 3: wanted it to look strange and not like our world,
Speaker 3: but also grounded in science and reality, not magical, and
Speaker 3: I think that is absolutely well achieved by what we
Speaker 3: have it.
Speaker 2: Has.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not our world, but it's also reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think this is a great point. This is
Speaker 2: one of those things that it's so effective that it
Speaker 2: can be pretty much invisible to the viewer because you
Speaker 2: just you buy into the whole thing. But yeah, when
Speaker 2: we travel into the far future of the Morlocks, it
Speaker 2: feels real. It feels like we are still on Earth.
Speaker 2: It doesn't feel like we're on another planet. It feels
Speaker 2: like we were just in a distant time. Yea. So
Speaker 2: it's perfectly executed.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of great visual stylistic choices in
Speaker 3: the film. To read one thing from this article talking
Speaker 3: about the look of the Morlocks caverns underground, I mean,
Speaker 3: which is one of the best spectacles in the movie.
Speaker 3: Scott writes, quote. Theoretically, there was no light at all
Speaker 3: in the underground caverns, and yet the action had to
Speaker 3: be visible. Vogel gained the desired visual effect by using
Speaker 3: almost no front lighting, rimming the Morlocks with back light,
Speaker 3: and employing cross light of a greenish hue that seemed
Speaker 3: to emanate from odd machines that bubbled and sputtered in
Speaker 3: the background. And Rob, I've got a screen shot for
Speaker 3: you to look at here that shows off that effect.
Speaker 3: I see exactly what he's talking about. It's like these
Speaker 3: creatures in a way, it helps keep their features kind
Speaker 3: of obscure and make them a little more mysterious because
Speaker 3: there's no light hitting them from the front, it's coming
Speaker 3: from behind, and then this colored green blue light coming
Speaker 3: from the sides.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, the Morlocks look incredible. We'll discuss some more
Speaker 2: when we get into the plot. But as always, a
Speaker 2: huge part of any monster in a film is not
Speaker 2: only what the costume consists of, but how is it shot,
Speaker 2: how is it lit? And they did a great job
Speaker 2: with these guys.
Speaker 3: Though there are a bunch of people I think who
Speaker 3: should get partial credit for the look of the Morlocks
Speaker 3: as well, including like William Tuttle and Wachang.
Speaker 2: That's right, Wa Ming Cheng Visual Effects. He lived nineteen
Speaker 2: seventeen through two thousand and three. Hawaiian born Chinese American designer, sculptor,
Speaker 2: and artist, who we previously discussed on our episode concerning
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty five's Tarantula because he built the titular tarantula
Speaker 2: in that picture. He was later responsible for key prop
Speaker 2: design on Star Trek the original series, including the tricorder
Speaker 2: and communicator. He also did a lot of costumes on
Speaker 2: some key track episodes.
Speaker 3: Including he did some work on a costume for a
Speaker 3: Star Trek alien that we may be talking about in
Speaker 3: a core episode next week.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. And in addition to what we
Speaker 2: may be talking about next week, he created the tribles.
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe we'll talk about the triples next week.
Speaker 2: I think I've maybe done the triples on Monster Fact before.
Speaker 2: But yeah. He also worked on the original Outer Limits,
Speaker 2: the original Planet of the Apes, and the TV series
Speaker 2: Land of the Lost. His adoptive father was James Blanding, Sloan,
Speaker 2: an American etcher, printmaker, theatrical designer, educator, painter, and puppeteer.
Speaker 3: I went down the rabbit hole earlier this week of
Speaker 3: looking just at a bunch of different things that Chang
Speaker 3: designed for Star Trek, the original series, and one of
Speaker 3: the things that caught my eye is what I just
Speaker 3: alluded to, this thing we might be talking about next week,
Speaker 3: which is the salt vampire creature from the original series
Speaker 3: episode Man Trap actually season one, episode one, the first
Speaker 3: ever episode of Star Trek, I guess, apart from the pilot,
Speaker 3: and this caught my eye because this costume slightly reminds
Speaker 3: me of something, doesn't It look a bit like a warlock,
Speaker 3: not entirely, but it's got a kind of sad, drooping
Speaker 3: monster face, long white silver hair, both kind of features
Speaker 3: we see again in the Morlock design, or I guess beforehand,
Speaker 3: in the Morlock design.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, the design is similar in ways for sure,
Speaker 2: as some of the same, like that the shaggy hair
Speaker 2: and all. Yeah, different different mouth parts, which makes sense.
Speaker 2: One sucks salt and the other. As we'll discuss, eats
Speaker 2: exclusively man meat, exclusively human flesh yum yo. All right,
Speaker 2: a few other It's worth noting that this film, again
Speaker 2: was an Academy Award winner for its Special Effects or
Speaker 2: its Visual Effects, and the two individuals like named on
Speaker 2: the award, though of course you know, it's always a
Speaker 2: huge team making any of the things. Any of these
Speaker 2: things happen. Happened to be Gene Warren and Tim Barr.
Speaker 2: Gene Warren lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen ninety seven. His
Speaker 2: other credits include fifty seven's Chronos, sixty one's Master of
Speaker 2: the World, and the TV series Land of the Lost.
Speaker 2: He worked on some other pal pictures as well well.
Speaker 2: And then Tim Barr lived nineteen twelve through nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2: Academy Award winner again for this film and his other
Speaker 2: special effects credits, though sometimes uncredit, include forty two's The
Speaker 2: Mummy's Tomb, forty three's Phantom of the Opera, fifty six
Speaker 2: is The Ten Commandments, and the TV series hr puff
Speaker 2: and Stuff.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, I don't know what that is, but there's a
Speaker 3: song about it somewhere in my head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don know hr puffin Stuff. I don't think
Speaker 2: I've ever actually watched it, but I'm just familiar with
Speaker 2: it from the people sharing weird clips and images. And
Speaker 2: then finally, William Tuttle is credited as makeup creator, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen twelve through two thousand and seven. His other
Speaker 2: makeup special effects are otherwise. Films include thirty five's Mark
Speaker 2: of the Vampire, thirty nine is The Wizard of Oz,
Speaker 2: fifty six is Forbidden Planet, sixty one's Atlantis, The Lost Continent,
Speaker 2: The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grim twelve episodes of
Speaker 2: the original Twilight Zone, seventy four is Young Frankenstein in
Speaker 2: seventy eight's The Fury, and then finally, the composer here
Speaker 2: for the score Russell Garcia, who nineteen sixteen through twenty
Speaker 2: eleven American composer whose other scores include Atlantis, the Lost Continent,
Speaker 2: and he was a composer for NBC Studios and worked
Speaker 2: on such shows as Rawhide in sixty two and Laredo
Speaker 2: from sixty five through sixty seven. I think it's a
Speaker 2: fun score here. It has some nice creepy notes, a
Speaker 2: little bit of futuristic intrigue at times. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's able to action, and I think especially the
Speaker 3: scenes of horror quite well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the action, because you know, we do
Speaker 2: we don't quite buckle some swash or anything, but we
Speaker 2: do get a lot of fun action. Well, there's a
Speaker 2: big mor Lock battle Royale late in the picture. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Uh okay, are you ready to talk about the plot?
Speaker 3: Let's jump in so we get a pre credit sequence
Speaker 3: that is just a cannonade of clocks flying through black space.
Speaker 3: This type of imagery I know I've seen used in
Speaker 3: other time travel stories. I wonder does it originally come
Speaker 3: from this film or did it appear earlier? Is this
Speaker 3: film reusing the convention?
Speaker 2: I'm not sure either, but you certainly see allusions to
Speaker 2: it a lot, and including to a certain extent the
Speaker 2: Treehouse of Horror episode where Homer Simpson travels through time,
Speaker 2: and in traveling through time, he kind of like falls
Speaker 2: through an infinite space filled with clocks.
Speaker 3: You know, I think we reference the Treehouse of Horror,
Speaker 3: Short Time and Punishment more than any other piece of
Speaker 3: media that exists. Do you think it comes up on
Speaker 3: the show more than anything?
Speaker 2: I mean, it might. It comes up in my life
Speaker 2: a lot. It's up there with Willy Wank and the
Speaker 2: Chocolate Factory is something that I probably think about every day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so rich. It's like the Iliad or something anyway.
Speaker 3: The action opens for this film on a street in
Speaker 3: London around the turn of the twentieth century, where there's
Speaker 3: a large manor house on one side of the street
Speaker 3: and on the other a row of stores, notably a
Speaker 3: department store with a women's fashion display in the window.
Speaker 3: This will have more plot relevance than you might guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Out of the store comes the owner, David Philby, played
Speaker 3: by Alan Young. He's dressed in a bowler hat, a
Speaker 3: scarf and a heavy overcoat. He locks up for the
Speaker 3: night and runs across the street to the house of
Speaker 3: his friend, our protagonist, who is referred to by the
Speaker 3: other characters as George, but in the credits he is
Speaker 3: h George Wells. So Philby is let inside by the
Speaker 3: housekeeper mis Watchett played by Doris Lloyd, and once inside,
Speaker 3: Philby reaches the sitting room and we meet three other
Speaker 3: characters already nestled into high backed armchairs, and they're just
Speaker 3: peeling through the house stash of cigars and brandy, issuing
Speaker 3: the occasional harumph. These guys are doctor Hillier, Bridewell or Bridy,
Speaker 3: and Kemp. It is not terribly important to distinguish these
Speaker 3: other three guys. They're your standard late nineteenth century gold
Speaker 3: pocket watch creatures. They love to suck cigars and they're
Speaker 3: yammering about the price of a bushel of They're basically
Speaker 3: picture like that dude from Titanic who talks about how
Speaker 3: God could not sink the ship. They're all kind of
Speaker 3: that guy. The main thing is that Philby is not
Speaker 3: like the other three. He is more sensitive, thoughtful, and
Speaker 3: open minded, and he's a better friend to our protagonist George.
Speaker 3: So anyway, these guys have clearly been sitting here for
Speaker 3: some time. When Philby joins them, the room is filled
Speaker 3: with clocks, so they're all ticking away, not in perfect unison,
Speaker 3: and all of the disorganized ticking summed up amounts to
Speaker 3: this ambient clatter, almost kind of a cranking sound in
Speaker 3: the background.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of clocks. But as we're
Speaker 2: gonna learn here, George is big on time. He's a
Speaker 2: researcher of time, and you've got to buy a lot
Speaker 2: of clocks if you can study it properly.
Speaker 3: They don't seem like research instruments to me. I mean,
Speaker 3: it seems like he's just like they're all like, they're
Speaker 3: not scientific time pieces. It's just like grandfather clocks and
Speaker 3: wall clocks and weird little cook two clocks everywhere.
Speaker 2: I mean, he could be a situation where friends and
Speaker 2: family know that he's really into potentially developing a time machine,
Speaker 2: and they're like, what should we get him for a Christmas? Oh,
Speaker 2: that dude loves time. Let's get him another clock.
Speaker 3: That's right, socks and clocks every year. Yeah. So the
Speaker 3: other three cigar guys are annoyed because their host has
Speaker 3: kept them waiting. He invited the four of them over
Speaker 3: to dinner several days ago, but now they are here
Speaker 3: at the appointed time and he is nowhere to be found.
Speaker 3: The housekeeper has made excuses for him and said that
Speaker 3: he'll be along shortly, and the cigar guys are irritated
Speaker 3: and they are taking offense. These guys are having a
Speaker 3: lot of fun getting offended. Eventually, miswatch It comes in
Speaker 3: with a note saying that if he is not here
Speaker 3: on time, the four of them should begin dinner without him.
Speaker 3: So they proceed into the dining room and Philby tries
Speaker 3: to make excuses for his friends, saying that George is
Speaker 3: usually prompt, precise, and punctual. Now you know, I love
Speaker 3: a good freeze frame to get a look at the
Speaker 3: spread food in a movie. So I did one. Here
Speaker 3: looks like we have got a big blackened meat roast
Speaker 3: of some kind in the center of the table. There's
Speaker 3: a little plate of something white next to it. I
Speaker 3: couldn't tell what that is. Maybe hard boiled eggs.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Each man has a yeast roll on a dish next
Speaker 3: to his plate, and then, apart from the green, let
Speaker 3: us garnish underneath the meat, I see not a single
Speaker 3: identifiable vegetable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I guess maybe tobacco is the vegetable.
Speaker 3: For there you go. That's how you get your fiber. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and plenty of wine. Of course, we're told that the host, George,
Speaker 3: has the best wine cellar in the South of England.
Speaker 3: So while George is presented as a bit of a
Speaker 3: dreamer and an idealist, he is not above appreciating some luxuries.
Speaker 3: He loves a good wine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and maybe he values wine because it also sort
Speaker 2: of travels in time in the basement. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 3: So suddenly, while the four men are about to tuck
Speaker 3: into their meal, the door to the dining room flies
Speaker 3: open and install stumbles the figure of their host George.
Speaker 3: This is Rod Taylor again. He is not dressed for dinner. Instead,
Speaker 3: he is filthy in tattered clothing, bleeding from some superficial wounds,
Speaker 3: and trembling with exhaustion. He collapses into a chair and
Speaker 3: he calls out some food a drink, and then one
Speaker 3: of the guys, Bridewell, I think, he quickly gives George
Speaker 3: a glass of medicinal wine, which he slams down, and
Speaker 3: then Bridewell has a drink too, Because I don't know,
Speaker 3: I guess what he's seeing is so disturbing, and he's
Speaker 3: got to tell them his tail while he still remembers
Speaker 3: it all clearly. Philby tries to get George to relax.
Speaker 3: He says, don't worry, you have all the time in
Speaker 3: the world, and George gets a good ironic moment here.
Speaker 3: He's like, yes, that's right, that's exactly what I have.
Speaker 3: So to tell his tale, we start five days earlier,
Speaker 3: when George was meeting with the same four men in
Speaker 3: his living room on New Year's Eve, eighteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3: George is giving a demonstration inside a box. On the
Speaker 3: table before them is the culmination of years of work
Speaker 3: in his laboratory. He wanted to unveil it to them
Speaker 3: before the New century began, and he finished just in time.
Speaker 3: What is it, well, George says, his invention has to
Speaker 3: do with time and doctor hill Doctor Hillier, here this
Speaker 3: is the kind of harrumphing guy with the beard who
Speaker 3: loves the scars. He's like, ah, wonderful. What our country
Speaker 3: needs now more than anything, is a more accurate time
Speaker 3: piece to be used by the Army and the Royal Navy,
Speaker 3: especially important for coordinating artillery brigades. And George smiles a
Speaker 3: little smile. He says, no, no, no, it's not a
Speaker 3: time piece. He says, when he speaks of time, he
Speaker 3: is referring to the fourth dimension. Hillier is immediately dismissive.
Speaker 3: He says, oh, that's mere theory. No one knows if
Speaker 3: it really exists. And then we get a little scene
Speaker 3: where George gives us a lecture on the three dimensions
Speaker 3: of space and how time can be imagined as an
Speaker 3: visible fourth dimension, the only one along which we cannot
Speaker 3: travel at will.
Speaker 2: The film really takes its time in a good way,
Speaker 2: presenting some of the concepts of time and time travel here,
Speaker 2: which again I think is pretty admirable. Because you know,
Speaker 2: time travel films were not new at this point, but
Speaker 2: a lot of time travel films prior to nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: dependent on more dependent on more mystical time travel techniques,
Speaker 2: you know, like hypnosis or falling asleep, that sort of thing,
Speaker 2: and falling to sleep is kind of like time travel.
Speaker 2: But so on one hand, maybe Christmas ghost Yeah, Christmas ghosts,
Speaker 2: So maybe it was more essential at this time. But
Speaker 2: also it's worth noting that the particulars of the time
Speaker 2: machine here are also rather distinct, namely in the way
Speaker 2: that it travels through time but not space though don't
Speaker 2: nitpick that concept too closely either, But still essentially, as
Speaker 2: far as we're concerned, to travel through time, not space,
Speaker 2: and it's it's it's very important that that be cemented
Speaker 2: in the viewer's.
Speaker 3: Head, that's right. And it's also this lecture is good
Speaker 3: because of the interesting way the script uses the lecture
Speaker 3: to further characterize George. Like when he speaks of time
Speaker 3: in this scene, he uses a lot of vocabulary having
Speaker 3: to do with constraint and the lack of freedom. He says,
Speaker 3: when it comes to the other three dimensions, we are free.
Speaker 3: But when it comes to the fourth dimension, we are prisoners,
Speaker 3: and you get this feeling of George as a man
Speaker 3: of action, a man who breaks through barriers and feels
Speaker 3: a kind of access and mastery over many domains due
Speaker 3: to his strength and his economic privilege and his will power.
Speaker 3: George's He's strong, handsome, brilliant, rich and bold. So in
Speaker 3: a way, it's like anything feels possible to him, except
Speaker 3: for time. There's nothing we can do about time. We
Speaker 3: live in bondage in one part of it, and it
Speaker 3: moves at its own pace rather than us moving through
Speaker 3: it at ours right right.
Speaker 2: And then also this this larger sense too right, that
Speaker 2: that human destiny is like is a track leading into
Speaker 2: an unknown future, and therefore we just have we have
Speaker 2: limited vision of what's to come and of and as
Speaker 2: we've been saying, like a complete inability to like shift
Speaker 2: from that path.
Speaker 3: This is a bit of a tangent, but I found
Speaker 3: this part of the movie really interesting in the way
Speaker 3: it's revealing George's personality. It made me think about tendencies
Speaker 3: I've observed in reality of like once people reach a
Speaker 3: certain level of power and freedom. I'm thinking specifically of
Speaker 3: like a lot of tech billionaires. If you listen to
Speaker 3: them talk. It's it seems very often like the next
Speaker 3: thing that develops in their mind is a desire to
Speaker 3: escape the circumstances of reality. They find it like, I
Speaker 3: want to escape this world. You know, I've already like
Speaker 3: mastered a kind of freedom within this world, and now
Speaker 3: the problem is that I'm stuck in this world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, what do we hear? Yeah, some of our
Speaker 2: billionaires talking about it's about going to other planets or
Speaker 2: digitizing consciousness, or if you happen to be like a
Speaker 2: leader of a powerful nation, you may you maybe chatting
Speaker 2: about ways to replace all your organs and live to
Speaker 2: be one hundred and fifty years old. That, of course,
Speaker 2: was in the news cycle recently. So yeah, I think
Speaker 2: it's a very accurate rate.
Speaker 3: To escape mortality, to escape morality, to escape the planet,
Speaker 3: to escape whatever, or the limitations of Yeah. Anyway, So
Speaker 3: after this, George he stages a demonstration of quote the
Speaker 3: possibility of movement within the fourth dimension. So he opens
Speaker 3: the box up on the before them, which contains a
Speaker 3: tiny model of the film's famous time machine. So this
Speaker 3: is just a toy size thing.
Speaker 2: Fight as well, learn this is a working model.
Speaker 3: Correct, Yes, yes, it worked. Yeah, So imagine Santa's sleigh
Speaker 3: with a giant dish antenna on the back of it.
Speaker 3: The seat for the passenger is a polished wooden arm
Speaker 3: chair with dark red upholstery. And of course this is
Speaker 3: only a toy sized replica. I was reading that the
Speaker 3: resemblance to Santa's sleigh is not an accident. George Powell
Speaker 3: allegedly modeled this design on a horse drawn sleigh because
Speaker 3: he rode in horse drawn sleighs a lot when he
Speaker 3: was young and he had fond memories of that. It
Speaker 3: was created by the designers Bill Ferrari and Wacheng And
Speaker 3: I remember I read somewhere that the chair here was
Speaker 3: a barber's chair. I don't know, or either the chair
Speaker 3: in the toy version or in the full size version
Speaker 3: was a barber's chair, which doesn't quite look like to me,
Speaker 3: but that's funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, again, this becomes the iconic time machine. This
Speaker 2: is like the primary vision of the late Victorian time machine,
Speaker 2: and it's pretty accurate to the book, I believe. In
Speaker 2: the book it's described as having rails, levers and also
Speaker 2: a saddle. I think we're fine to get away from
Speaker 2: the idea of it being more of a saddle and
Speaker 2: more of a chair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So George, he's gazing at this thing with excitement
Speaker 3: and pride, and the revelation of this machine gives way
Speaker 3: to a discussion. Bridewell says, hey, you know, don't go
Speaker 3: messing around with the future, because George, of course says
Speaker 3: you can travel to the future with it. He says,
Speaker 3: don't go messing around with the future. You could screw
Speaker 3: it up for the rest of us. And then Hillier says, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: the future cannot be changed. Even if you could travel
Speaker 3: through time, you couldn't change the course of history because
Speaker 3: what happens will happen either way. And George says, this
Speaker 3: is the question he wants to answer. Can man control
Speaker 3: his destiny? Can he change the shape of things to come?
Speaker 3: That latter phrase, I believe would become the title of
Speaker 3: a Wells associated film later on.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 3: So to prove he has not lost his mind to George,
Speaker 3: stage's a demonstration with the four gentlemen as witnesses. He
Speaker 3: takes a cigar from doctor Hillier's pocket, and then he
Speaker 3: bends the cigar into the shape of a seated man,
Speaker 3: and then he puts it in the seat, and he
Speaker 3: sends the machine off. The dish starts whirling, and the
Speaker 3: room rattles around them like the champagne and the ice
Speaker 3: bucket is rattling. And then suddenly the toy time machine disappears,
Speaker 3: leaving only this fading yellow glow on the table where
Speaker 3: it was. Where has it gone? Not anywhere in space,
Speaker 3: but somewhere through time. George says it could be one
Speaker 3: hundred years away by now.
Speaker 2: We never see it again, right, never again.
Speaker 3: When he tells us we're not going to he's just like,
Speaker 3: it's not coming back because there's no operator in it.
Speaker 2: In the future. This thing's just going to appear and
Speaker 2: deliver a late Victorian cigar to somebody, but also deliver
Speaker 2: to them I miniaturized working replica of time travel seems
Speaker 2: kind of reckless in many respects.
Speaker 3: There you go, Yeah, you don't know who's going to
Speaker 3: get hold of that thing though, presumably because there's nobody
Speaker 3: inside to turn the lever back and make it stop,
Speaker 3: it's just going to keep speeding through time forever.
Speaker 2: Oh goodness all that. I don't know that that sounds
Speaker 2: safe either. I'm not sure what happens when something kind
Speaker 2: of accelerates endlessly through time.
Speaker 3: In the heat death of the universe. Suddenly this thing
Speaker 3: pops out.
Speaker 2: This is maybe this is why the universe ultimately is destroyed.
Speaker 2: Who knows.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's see after the demonstration, the guests funny thing,
Speaker 3: they're not very impressed, Like they don't believe that his
Speaker 3: disappearing toy actually traveled through time. But even if he
Speaker 3: had invented a time machine, of what use would it be? Yeah,
Speaker 3: which is an insight that's is both incredibly thick headed,
Speaker 3: Like if it were real, wouldn't that be the most
Speaker 3: important invention of all time? Could apply knowledge of the
Speaker 3: future to the past. You could fix any mistake or
Speaker 3: revert any disaster. But on the other hand, when you
Speaker 3: think about it, it might also be accidentally profound. Since
Speaker 3: you know, we've talked about this on the show with
Speaker 3: like time travel stories before, you can imagine scenarios where essentially,
Speaker 3: as soon as time travel is invented, it becomes catastrophically weaponized.
Speaker 3: Like the parties who possess time travel would have so
Speaker 3: much power over those that don't they would become living
Speaker 3: gods among mortals. So anyway, the friends here are not
Speaker 3: impressed with the time machine, doctor Hillier says, He says,
Speaker 3: why don't you do something useful like make weapons. You
Speaker 3: know we're at war right now in South Africa. The
Speaker 3: country needs brilliant inventors like you to design things that
Speaker 3: can help us win the fight. And he promises to
Speaker 3: put George in touch with his contacts in the war office.
Speaker 3: And then Hillier, Bridewell, and Kemp all depart, all with
Speaker 3: their own plans for New Year's Eve, and George looks
Speaker 3: mighty depressed. But Philby remember he's the good friend. He's
Speaker 3: a sensitive friend with a soft Scottish accent. He stays
Speaker 3: behind to counsel his friend. Philby asks why this preoccupation
Speaker 3: with time, and George resists talking about this at first,
Speaker 3: but eventually he's persuaded to explain. He says, if you
Speaker 3: want to know the truth, I don't much care for
Speaker 3: the time I was born into. He explains that he
Speaker 3: finds the world of the present intolerably cruel and shortsighted,
Speaker 3: where even the most marvelous discoveries of the new science
Speaker 3: are captured and perverted by evil men who care only
Speaker 3: about the destruction of their enemies, and the quest for power,
Speaker 3: and George wants to escape this bloodthirsty time, to find
Speaker 3: a world without all of this hatred and stupidity and warmongering,
Speaker 3: when humankind can build and learn and live in peace.
Speaker 3: It's a powerful sentiment that I think the audience is
Speaker 3: tempted to have mixed feelings about, because on one hand
Speaker 3: it is an insightful and moral indictment of human of
Speaker 3: humankind and the way we are and of our ills.
Speaker 3: But also it is it's a he has a sense
Speaker 3: of resignation that he can't stop it, like he can't
Speaker 3: change it. All he can do is escape it to
Speaker 3: like take him to remove himself away to a time
Speaker 3: when humankind has become better.
Speaker 2: It's like he goes even beyond the privilege that he
Speaker 2: already has in life. Yeah, to like to distance himself
Speaker 2: economically and geographically from a lot of the problems in
Speaker 2: the world now potentially traveling through time to do so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So George and Philby argue. Philby says he agrees
Speaker 3: with his friend. He says, you know you're you're right,
Speaker 3: You're right about the age we live in. But this
Speaker 3: obsession with escape is unhealthy, he says, destroy that machine
Speaker 3: before it destroys you. So I think Philby is in
Speaker 3: a way seen as the voice of sanity here, like
Speaker 3: he's you know, he's there's some wisdom in what he's saying.
Speaker 3: And then Philby tries to invite George to his home
Speaker 3: for New Year's Eve to spend it with him and
Speaker 3: his wife and his young son, Jamie. So this is
Speaker 3: almost kind of the alternative, you know, the alternative to
Speaker 3: the escape that George is suggesting is his love and
Speaker 3: brotherhood that Philby is suggesting. But George refuses. Philby asks
Speaker 3: him to promise that he won't go anywhere else tonight,
Speaker 3: and George, before Philby leave, says, I promise I won't
Speaker 3: walk out the door.
Speaker 2: Don't say anything about traveling through time.
Speaker 3: That's right. So George sits down and he writes an
Speaker 3: invitation for Philby and the other three men to come
Speaker 3: back to the house for dinner the following Friday, five days.
Speaker 3: Hence we hear people on the street outside the blowing
Speaker 3: party horns and yelling Happy New Year. And after this,
Speaker 3: George retires to his laboratory where the full sized time
Speaker 3: machine awaits, and we get a sharp music sting when
Speaker 3: it's revealed the laboratory is in George's conservatory, which is
Speaker 3: full of plants and work benches and tools. The windows
Speaker 3: are frosted over with ice, and outside it is dark.
Speaker 3: George he hastily makes a few mechanical preparations, like sharpening
Speaker 3: the He's sort of got a car key for his
Speaker 3: time machine. It's this lever that he has to insert
Speaker 3: to make the machine go. He does something to it
Speaker 3: and he hops in. Now the next thing. People who
Speaker 3: remember the broad outline of the story might think he
Speaker 3: is about to flip a switch and then PLoP down
Speaker 3: in the year eight hundred thousand in the land of
Speaker 3: the Eloy and the Morlocks. But there is actually a
Speaker 3: long and I think quite interesting middle section of the
Speaker 3: story here, where the time traveler is experimenting with the machine,
Speaker 3: taking it slow at first, and seeing what happens in
Speaker 3: the century after his departure. This part of the movie
Speaker 3: involves a lot of time laps and stop motion effects,
Speaker 3: which again I believe these are the main parts that
Speaker 3: won this film and Oscar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they're incredible. They hold up quite well. I
Speaker 2: also want to quickly throw in that is it is.
Speaker 2: It always amuses me that the time machine like really
Speaker 2: like the centerpiece of so much time travel fiction. It
Speaker 2: sets its sites eight hundred thousand years in the future
Speaker 2: like such a safe distance when it comes to depicting
Speaker 2: what the future will be like, when pretty much everything
Speaker 2: else decides to look at the far future of nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty seven, yeah, or the you know, apocalyptic hell scape
Speaker 2: of two thousand and three and so forth. But you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe people will have a good laugh
Speaker 2: eight hundred thousand years from now.
Speaker 3: I think it's easier to feel emotionally involved with a
Speaker 3: story that is within a generation or two of your own,
Speaker 3: of your own time.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like, once you start getting further out from that,
Speaker 3: you can still have drama take place in the place
Speaker 3: you go to, but it just it almost starts to
Speaker 3: feel like a fantasy world that's just not connected to
Speaker 3: your present reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, as humans, we have a difficult
Speaker 2: time really viewing things beyond our own personal horizon. Maybe
Speaker 2: we can see it one generation out, so yeah, it
Speaker 2: makes sense that we tend to limit our storytelling to
Speaker 2: that time frame.
Speaker 3: So anyway, he first goes slow, making sure the machine works.
Speaker 3: He like skips ahead several hours, and he sees a
Speaker 3: candle burned down several inches in an instant, and then
Speaker 3: he goes faster, and he sees the environment change quickly
Speaker 3: in these cyclical ways, like the hands on the clocks
Speaker 3: spinning round and round, and the sun rising and setting quickly,
Speaker 3: frost growing on the windows and then receding. He sees
Speaker 3: the flowers in his greenhouse opening and closing, their little
Speaker 3: their blossoms, like these leapping mouths. There's a great part.
Speaker 3: We sees a snail racing across the floor, going fast,
Speaker 3: and then through the glass window he sees the department
Speaker 3: store across the street, and in the window of the
Speaker 3: store there is a mannequin displaying a fancy dress. And
Speaker 3: there's this whole little subplot here where we see years
Speaker 3: flit by through the changes in women's fashion, and the
Speaker 3: time traveler is like, good, heavens, that's a dress. This
Speaker 3: was intriguing. I wonder just how far women would permit
Speaker 3: this to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's legitimately a hilarious line.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he says, I began to grow very fond of
Speaker 3: that mannequin, maybe because like me, she didn't age. So
Speaker 3: we see the fashions change. He stops briefly in the
Speaker 3: year nineteen seventeen, when he discovers the lights have gone
Speaker 3: out in his house. His home is now filled with
Speaker 3: cobwebs and dust, and there's sheets over all the furniture.
Speaker 3: He leaves the lab and wanders out into the street,
Speaker 3: where going into the department store, he sees a man
Speaker 3: in a military uniform who looks exactly like his friend
Speaker 3: David Philby. He thinks it is Philby, but when he
Speaker 3: greets him, the man is confused. We learn this is
Speaker 3: not David Philby, but his young son, Jamie, now grown
Speaker 3: up to the age his father was when George left.
Speaker 2: Yeah, same act, but now without the distinct scooge McDuck accent.
Speaker 3: That's right. Jamie tells George that his father was killed
Speaker 3: in the war a year earlier. Just sad moment. And
Speaker 3: then we also learned the story of the inventor Chap
Speaker 3: who lived across the street. He apparently disappeared in the
Speaker 3: year nineteen hundred and left the house in the care
Speaker 3: of Jamie's father, and Jamie always wanted his father to
Speaker 3: sell it, but David forbade it, believing his friend would
Speaker 3: come back someday, and he says, people hereabouts think it's
Speaker 3: haunted anyway. Have you been at the front? And George
Speaker 3: is quite confused. He's like, what front? And Jamie says
Speaker 3: why the war, of course, and George smiles, but with
Speaker 3: a clear sadness. This time seems no better than his own.
Speaker 3: Everywhere live's wrecked by violence again and again. So he
Speaker 3: goes back to the time machine.
Speaker 2: That's right. Time to jump back in and fast forward
Speaker 2: to the part where we solve this whole war thing.
Speaker 3: That's right. So he's going to go faster now. The
Speaker 3: months fly by. Suddenly in nineteen forty something rattles the
Speaker 3: world around him and he stops. He comes out and
Speaker 3: we get this nightmarish glimpse of the Blitz of London.
Speaker 3: There are fires raging, there's anti aircraft fire going up
Speaker 3: into the dark, and it's like the god of war
Speaker 3: still rules this cursed planet. So he pushes on in
Speaker 3: the machine. His house is destroyed, I guess, in the blitz,
Speaker 3: and the machine is speeding through time just now out
Speaker 3: in the open in a grassy field, and he has
Speaker 3: a view all around of buildings being rebuilt quickly with
Speaker 3: time laps and stop motion effects. The mannequin. Time lapse
Speaker 3: also continues. We get to see more modern fashions, including
Speaker 3: a bikini, and he stops again in the mid sixties
Speaker 3: because he hears high pitched sounds all around, and so
Speaker 3: the years stop racing by. The sounds come into focus
Speaker 3: and we realize these sounds are air raid sirens. Now
Speaker 3: we are in the era of the Cold War, with
Speaker 3: the threat of nuclear weapons always looming over us. But
Speaker 3: George doesn't know about this yet. Of course, he doesn't
Speaker 3: know what the sounds are. He sees crowds of people
Speaker 3: running somewhere, being ushered by civil defencemen in gray jumpsuits
Speaker 3: with white helmets, and people are trying to get him
Speaker 3: to hurry along with them, but he resists. He's like,
Speaker 3: what's the rush. He's like checking out a outside the
Speaker 3: department story. He is checking out a shaving kit display
Speaker 3: that has a nuclear civil defense sign right above it
Speaker 3: with the picture of a mushroom cloud.
Speaker 2: And but by your clean shave razor. Today, Yes, people
Speaker 2: still had the moxy to be like, you know, people
Speaker 2: were heading off to the bomb shelters, but diagnam it.
Speaker 2: They still need a shave, They still need a quality
Speaker 2: shaving device.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he eventually meets a now aged version of
Speaker 3: the once young Jamie Philby. George wants to speak with
Speaker 3: him about the splendid technological achievements he sees all around them.
Speaker 3: You know, it's now the sixties. There's technology everywhere. But
Speaker 3: Jamie does not have time to chat. He's like, I
Speaker 3: can't talk to you about flat screen TVs.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 3: We're all going down to the bomb shelters because a
Speaker 3: nuclear strike is imminent. He says, we got a hurry,
Speaker 3: or the mushrooms will be sprouting, and he points to
Speaker 3: a thing in the sky that he calls the atomic satellite.
Speaker 3: He says it's zeroing in, and George gets back into
Speaker 3: his time machine just in time to avoid being destroyed.
Speaker 3: He sees in fast motion how the fire of war
Speaker 3: destroys everything. The labor of centuries gone in an instant,
Speaker 3: he says. And then after this, this part's a little hazy,
Speaker 3: but he says, mother nature responds somehow, like all of
Speaker 3: the human warfare causes volcanic eruptions from below, which flood
Speaker 3: the city with glowing hot lava. Apparently this special effect
Speaker 3: was done with a model city set and a big
Speaker 3: vat of orange oatmeal oatmeal made orange with food coloring,
Speaker 3: poured out onto the model set. And then the story
Speaker 3: is the oatme was left sitting out for several days,
Speaker 3: long enough that it started to ferment, and it smelled
Speaker 3: incredibly foul.
Speaker 2: It looks great though. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So after this, George pilots his time machine fast into
Speaker 3: the future. He gets encased in lava and is completely
Speaker 3: covered in stone, so he has to keep running the
Speaker 3: machine until the rock around him erodes away so he
Speaker 3: can escape, and that takes a long time. He eventually
Speaker 3: pops out of the rock, like eight hundred thousand years later,
Speaker 3: when the world is greatly changed, he finds himself deposited
Speaker 3: in what seems to be a peaceful land of perpetual summer.
Speaker 3: The earth stays green and lush year round, and no
Speaker 3: war seemed to come in and destroy all the human
Speaker 3: structure as he sees in the distance, And so he
Speaker 3: brings the time machine finally to a.
Speaker 2: Halt, and in this we finally get to the portion
Speaker 2: of the film and book that most people remember. Though again,
Speaker 2: the journey here really makes us earn it. You know,
Speaker 2: we definitely needed all these steps to get here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the time traveler He tumbles out into a
Speaker 3: clearing of grass surrounded by this green jungle, in front
Speaker 3: of some kind of stone temple crowned with a monolithic
Speaker 3: statue of a human head, generally referred to as a sphinx.
Speaker 3: The doors of this temple are made of metal, and
Speaker 3: they are sealed shut. Georgie goes up. He tries to
Speaker 3: knock on the doors, but he finds no reply.
Speaker 2: I love the design here of the sphinx. It's, you know,
Speaker 2: it feels connected to various Earth traditions, but also feels
Speaker 2: very alien, so it really strikes a perfect note. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So he goes out wandering through the landscape and he
Speaker 3: finds beautiful flowers everywhere, fruit trees heavy with ripe, unfamiliar produce,
Speaker 3: wonk of fruits. Yeah, wank exactly, Yeah, he says, not
Speaker 3: a weed or a briar in sight, No unpleasant plants.
Speaker 3: So it's as if the entire natural world has become,
Speaker 3: in its wild state.
Speaker 2: A garden.
Speaker 3: It's like the wilderness itself is now a fruit orchard
Speaker 3: in a botanical garden. Humankind has fully tamed the plant
Speaker 3: kingdom and shaped it entirely to our liking. And he
Speaker 3: thinks he says, at last, I'd found a paradise, but
Speaker 3: it would be no paradise if it belonged to me alone.
Speaker 3: So he goes out looking for people. He wanders down
Speaker 3: a hill covered in ivy, and he comes to one
Speaker 3: of the structures he saw in the distance. It is
Speaker 3: a giant dome with stone rocky steps leading up from
Speaker 3: a plaza in front, flanked by two dark sphinxes, and
Speaker 3: there's a big metal door leading inside. And once he
Speaker 3: comes close, George sees that this building is actually in
Speaker 3: pretty bad disrepair. It seems it has not been kept
Speaker 3: up for centuries. So is it abandoned? Well, seems maybe not.
Speaker 3: He goes inside and he finds a hall filled with
Speaker 3: circular banquet tables covered with glasses and bowls and ripe fruit,
Speaker 3: so it seems like someone is coming in here on
Speaker 3: a regular basis. And when he makes sounds in here,
Speaker 3: the sounds echo through the hall with this eerie delay pattern,
Speaker 3: like they're like running away and coming back. Next, the
Speaker 3: time Traveler wanders down to a riverside where he finds people.
Speaker 3: A group of beautiful, fit young men and women, all
Speaker 3: blonde with like The men all have bowl cuts, lounging
Speaker 3: on a sandy bank next to the water. They are talking, laughing, dancing,
Speaker 3: and picking fruit.
Speaker 2: Quick question, do you think they're cutting their own hair
Speaker 2: or do you think the morlocks cut their hair?
Speaker 3: Very good question. I think they're cutting their own hair,
Speaker 3: but only for fun, right, because there's no work in
Speaker 3: this world.
Speaker 2: We'll get to that.
Speaker 3: So this is what he says. He sees them all
Speaker 3: lounging around. He says, so this is man's future, to
Speaker 3: bask in the sunlight, bathe in the clear streams, and
Speaker 3: eat the fruits of the earth, with all knowledge of
Speaker 3: work and hardship forgotten. Well and why not? So it
Speaker 3: seems he thinks he has finally found his long sought
Speaker 3: earthly paradise of peace. But then he hears a scream.
Speaker 3: A young woman is drowning in the river. She's being
Speaker 3: swept away by the current, and weirdly, her friends on
Speaker 3: the rocks nearby do nothing. They barely seem to notice
Speaker 3: her cries for help, and when they occasionally glance her way,
Speaker 3: they don't even bother to like reach down and offer
Speaker 3: her a hand up. So she's drifting away helplessly while
Speaker 3: the rest of the people just sit there and talk
Speaker 3: and laugh and ignore her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well they're just yeah, they're just like, oh, something's happening,
Speaker 2: and that's it. Is dispassionate.
Speaker 3: So finally the time Traveler himself jumps in the water
Speaker 3: to rescue her. He brings her ashore and he puts
Speaker 3: his coat around her shoulders, and once she comes to,
Speaker 3: she doesn't say anything to George. She just gets up
Speaker 3: and walks away. And Rob I took a screen grab
Speaker 3: here because did you see this part where the other
Speaker 3: lady's here by the river giving the time traveler the
Speaker 3: stink face? They're just like, ew weird. Yeah, so George
Speaker 3: is plexed. He's like, what's wrong with these people? Later,
Speaker 3: they all wander away happily to the dome that he
Speaker 3: found earlier, and he follows them back. He sits down
Speaker 3: by himself on the stairs outside, and eventually the woman
Speaker 3: that George rescued from the water comes and sits behind him,
Speaker 3: and again this is evet Mimu. She asks why he
Speaker 3: saved her. He asks how come twenty of her friends
Speaker 3: did not save her, Like why were they watching her
Speaker 3: dying and doing nothing to help? And she says nothing.
Speaker 3: She doesn't even seem to understand the question, so they
Speaker 3: introduce themselves to each other. Her name is Weena, and
Speaker 3: George learns that despite speaking perfectly understandable twentieth century English
Speaker 3: eight hundred thousand years later, none of these people can
Speaker 3: read or write, and so when he shows her what
Speaker 3: writing is, he writes words in the dust. She laughs.
Speaker 3: She thinks this is funny, and in this scene and
Speaker 3: the following scene he learns a number of things. He
Speaker 3: learns that these people call themselves the ELOI, that they
Speaker 3: are profoundly incurious and don't seem to have thoughts about
Speaker 3: much of anything. That there is no one older than
Speaker 3: what looks like maybe mid twenties or so, only young people.
Speaker 3: They have no government, no laws, nobody works, and they
Speaker 3: don't seem to know where their food and clothing come from.
Speaker 3: They are afraid of the dark and believe that you
Speaker 3: have to hide inside the dome after the sun goes down.
Speaker 2: I had a nice chuckle observing that they're kind of
Speaker 2: all like thirteen year olds, you know, like, where does
Speaker 2: food and clothing come from? I don't know, It's just
Speaker 2: it's provided.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's just here here for us. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: inside the dome, George eats fruit with the rest of them,
Speaker 3: and he's trying to figure out how their world works.
Speaker 3: He tries to make conversation, but nobody has much much
Speaker 3: to say to him. They just sit there, docile, dull,
Speaker 3: eyes down, giving these simple, half hearted responses to all
Speaker 3: his questions, and.
Speaker 2: He's he's coming up with some real softball questions here,
Speaker 2: some real leading questions, like you give me anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah. On one hand, he seems to be impressed because
Speaker 3: he believes they have eliminated war and automated all labor
Speaker 3: and production, so there is no more suffering or want.
Speaker 3: Everything these people need is produced and harvested for them
Speaker 3: by machines, so they can Yeah, they can spend their
Speaker 3: lives doing doing what George suggests, Well, maybe you spend
Speaker 3: all your time studying and experimenting, learning you know about
Speaker 3: about the world. Evidently not the other guy at the table.
Speaker 3: Look when he brings this up. This guy just acts
Speaker 3: annoyed and he's like, you ask too many questions. And
Speaker 3: the time traveler says, do you have books? You know
Speaker 3: he wants to He's like, books will tell me about
Speaker 3: your culture. And one of the eloy men takes George
Speaker 3: to a room in the dome, which is a dark
Speaker 3: library with shelves indeed full of books, but they are
Speaker 3: covered in thick dust, and as soon as the time
Speaker 3: traveler tries to open one, it falls apart into flakes
Speaker 3: in his hand. And finally George becomes enraged and he
Speaker 3: shouts at the eloy He says, what have you done?
Speaker 3: Thousands of years of building and rebuilding, creating and recreating.
Speaker 3: Also you can let it crumble to dust. A million
Speaker 3: years of sensitive men dying for their dreams for what,
Speaker 3: So you can swim and dance and play. Then he
Speaker 3: comes back out into the hall and he yells some more.
Speaker 3: He yells at the whole crowd of the Eloi. He says,
Speaker 3: I'm going back to my own time. I won't even
Speaker 3: bother to tell them of the useless struggle for a
Speaker 3: hopeless future. But at least I can die among men.
Speaker 3: So here we get to I think one of the
Speaker 3: most interesting paradoxes of the movie. The central desire of
Speaker 3: our hero is to escape the cruelty and stupidity of
Speaker 3: his time, war, greed, rapacious destruction, and he finally does
Speaker 3: come to a time in the future that seems free
Speaker 3: of these evils, but he discovers that the people here
Speaker 3: make him sick because they have no virtues, no intelligence
Speaker 3: or curiosity, no kindness or generosity or spirit of self sacrifice.
Speaker 3: He has escaped a world he saw as characterized by
Speaker 3: vicious stupidity, and arrived in one instead of docile, mindless,
Speaker 3: pointless self entertainment. Now one could be tempted here to
Speaker 3: interpret this as an inversion of the earlier themes of
Speaker 3: the film, like a maybe leaning back into a spartan
Speaker 3: ethic of war is life. I don't think that's it.
Speaker 3: I don't think that is the point of the film here.
Speaker 3: The point of view that I detect is more that
Speaker 3: the time George left behind was wrong. It was ruled
Speaker 3: by a vicious stupidity. It did cause the needless suffering
Speaker 3: of millions for the glory of a few selfish men.
Speaker 3: But he has discovered that merely eliminating war and material
Speaker 3: want do not automatically make life good. You might see
Speaker 3: the elimination of war and material want in George's new
Speaker 3: dawning consciousness as necessary, but not sufficient conditions for the
Speaker 3: earthly paradise that he dreamed of. So the eloy are
Speaker 3: abhorrent to him, even though they are at peace, or
Speaker 3: at least they appear to be at first, because there's
Speaker 3: more about this world he hasn't figured out yet. So next,
Speaker 3: the time traveler goes back out to hop into his
Speaker 3: time machine. I think he's going to go back home
Speaker 3: or find another time. But when he gets there, the
Speaker 3: time machine is gone. Oh done, dun duh. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: been towed exactly, adds an impound lot. He can see
Speaker 3: from tracks in the ground that it has been dragged
Speaker 3: inside the doors of the stone temple underneath the sphinx.
Speaker 3: Who took it and how how is he going to
Speaker 3: get it back now? Despite her fear of the dark
Speaker 3: that was established earlier, Weena follows George out into the
Speaker 3: world woods to warn him of danger. Interesting that this
Speaker 3: is the first risky or self sacrificing thing that we
Speaker 3: have seen in eloy Do. She's perhaps inspired by the
Speaker 3: way George risked his life for her earlier. But what
Speaker 3: is the danger? We learn it is the Morlocks. They
Speaker 3: come out at night. George doesn't know what these are,
Speaker 3: but there are several points here where we can see
Speaker 3: the Morlocks spying on our hero through the bushes. We
Speaker 3: don't get a good look at them at all, but
Speaker 3: we see their eyes twinkling. They have these glowing eyes
Speaker 3: kind of like the jawas that are a wonderful feature
Speaker 3: of the costume design.
Speaker 2: That's all right, they sparkle in the dark. And in general,
Speaker 2: this film does a great job of obeying all the
Speaker 2: laws of monster revelation. You know, we only get some
Speaker 2: peaks and all does it despite I realize the fact
Speaker 2: that they're prominently featured on the posters for this movie,
Speaker 2: and that's also often the case.
Speaker 3: One of the Morlocks tries to grab Weena and take
Speaker 3: her away, but George rescues her, and it seems that
Speaker 3: they are repelled, and not only by the light of day,
Speaker 3: but even by the light of a torch. They're afraid
Speaker 3: of fire, and we'll need to remember that for later.
Speaker 3: Weena and George gather sticks to build a fire for protection,
Speaker 3: and here we also get the first hints of a
Speaker 3: love story, where they're huddled around the fire at night.
Speaker 3: As I mentioned earlier, not always opposed to adding in
Speaker 3: a love story, but it seems really ill suited to
Speaker 3: the story of the time machine, given a number of
Speaker 3: things like how different the eloy are from us and
Speaker 3: how soon it is after George's arrival and all that.
Speaker 2: Ye getting they have in common as they eat fruit.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, the next day we get some we get some
Speaker 3: exposition in this sequence through the so called talking rings.
Speaker 3: So Weena takes George to this automated history museum where
Speaker 3: there are machines that tell about the events of the past,
Speaker 3: and you can play these sort of data discs that
Speaker 3: are stored in metal rings by setting them spinning on
Speaker 3: a glowing tabletop. From these rings, George learns that long ago,
Speaker 3: there was a horrible world war that left the atmosphere
Speaker 3: so contaminated with germs that the air was not fit
Speaker 3: to breathe, and two groups of humankind parted ways here.
Speaker 3: Some remained above ground to take their chances trying to
Speaker 3: survive in the poisoned atmosphere, and the other group went
Speaker 3: underground into caves and tunnels. The earth eventually recovered over
Speaker 3: the centuries, but this became a division point for the
Speaker 3: human species. The Eloi are descended from those who stayed
Speaker 3: on the surface, and the Morlocks from those who went below.
Speaker 3: This history is if I'm recalling correctly, Rob, I think
Speaker 3: you've read the novel more recently than me, somewhat different
Speaker 3: from the novel. My memory of the novel is that
Speaker 3: Wells included a class critique here, where like the Morlocks
Speaker 3: were descended from exploited workers who were forced to toil
Speaker 3: underground on the machines that kept life free and easy
Speaker 3: for the rich on the surface above. Though eventually, over
Speaker 3: the centuries the relationship changed and the exploited underground people
Speaker 3: became the Morlocks and became the exploiters in the most
Speaker 3: direct sense, by eating the surface dwellers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is my recollection as well, and yeah, it
Speaker 2: was more of a class critique here, though I think
Speaker 2: the change is understandable because it's been adapted to fit
Speaker 2: the overarching critique of humanity's propensity for warfare. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, at some point, while George is trying to climb
Speaker 3: down a ventilation shaft to explore the caverns below, there's
Speaker 3: a sound from above. And here's a scene I made
Speaker 3: reference to earlier. It is the sound we hear of
Speaker 3: air raid sirens. When the A raid sirens go off,
Speaker 3: the noise puts the eloy into a hypnotized state where
Speaker 3: their eyes go glassy and they just start to automatically
Speaker 3: march en mass straight into the temple of the Sphinx
Speaker 3: until the door slam shut, And so this is what
Speaker 3: happens here. George runs after the eloy trying to get
Speaker 3: them to stop, but it's like they don't even see him,
Speaker 3: and Weena and many others are taken underground. George is
Speaker 3: unable to get there in time. So here we have
Speaker 3: the final descent into the underworld. George has to go
Speaker 3: in to the rescue, so he climbs down one of
Speaker 3: these ventilation shafts to find below the surface a great
Speaker 3: cavern with all these pipes and gears. This is the
Speaker 3: machinery that makes life on the surface possible. And also
Speaker 3: he finds bone pits full of human bones. He discovers
Speaker 3: that the Morlocks treat the Eloi as livestock for meat,
Speaker 3: and they lure them underground with the sound of the
Speaker 3: air raid sirens that now almost by like a biological mechanism.
Speaker 3: The surface dwellers have been conditioned to retreat underground to
Speaker 3: safety when they hear the air raid sirens. Like so
Speaker 3: the technology of war has become a part of our
Speaker 3: physical organism, and they retreat underground for the air raid
Speaker 3: sirens and then they're eaten by the Morlocks. Now, one
Speaker 3: thing I do wonder what kind of dishes do you
Speaker 3: think the Morlocks make out of the Eloy or is
Speaker 3: it just like raw bone chopping?
Speaker 2: I mean, there's there are machines down there, so I
Speaker 2: assume they're processed into some sort of sausage and then
Speaker 2: they just dump the skeletons, which I guess rather complete skeletons.
Speaker 2: They're in the bone pit Eloy Mortadella.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so here we come down to meet the Morlocks.
Speaker 3: Rob do you, I know, you had some stuff about
Speaker 3: the Morlocks. This is probably the place to talk about them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So we don't actually see these guys in
Speaker 2: full until this point, really pretty late in the film.
Speaker 2: You know, we get a few teases here and there,
Speaker 2: and then we begin to see them more fully as
Speaker 2: our hero, the time traveler, is stalking into the caverns.
Speaker 2: He's you know, trying to find what happen into the Eloy,
Speaker 2: and we begin to see them stalking him here. I
Speaker 2: think one of the first glimpses we get one where he's, uh,
Speaker 2: he's blending into the cavern walls and then he moves uh,
Speaker 2: and then there's even one that comes right up behind
Speaker 2: him like he's gonna grab him. It's almost a little
Speaker 2: abbot in costello. But it's still rather creepy because the
Speaker 2: monsters look so good. Uh. They're essentially stocky, blue gray
Speaker 2: ape like creatures with long manes of white hair kind
Speaker 2: of bangs to a little bit. They have sharp claws
Speaker 2: and teeth and gave it. Yeah, they're quite stealthy, and
Speaker 2: as we'll see in a bit, they're they're prone to
Speaker 2: leap at their adversaries from ledges do like a flying
Speaker 2: body uh body presses the kind of Luca door style. However,
Speaker 2: they're just as if not more, prone to injury than
Speaker 2: a typical human, So they're not like super strong. They
Speaker 2: can still get you know, knocked on the head and
Speaker 2: they're out for the count.
Speaker 3: The sense I get if the Morlocks is a glass
Speaker 3: cannon design. Yeah, they are very vicious and dangerous, but
Speaker 3: if you just hit back there, they're easily beaten. Like
Speaker 3: they're very delicate. There's one point where someone hits a
Speaker 3: Morlock in the face and it's almost like its face
Speaker 3: just shatters, like all the blood comes out, and and
Speaker 3: that if that is intentional, that would fit with the themes,
Speaker 3: because the whole thing is that the Eloi don't fight
Speaker 3: back at all. It doesn't even occur that occur to them.
Speaker 2: To Yeah, and if memory serves, this does essentially match
Speaker 2: up with the book where I think the Morlocks are
Speaker 2: not depicted as like super strong eight men. They are
Speaker 2: like weaker than a contemporary human, but they have the
Speaker 2: numbers on their side of course.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So down here, in the down here in the caverns,
Speaker 3: George locates the Eloi who have been brought in to
Speaker 3: be to be eaten, and he uses the fact that
Speaker 3: the Morlocks are afraid of fire to get advantage over them.
Speaker 3: There's also just a lot of standard like punching and
Speaker 3: roadhouse roadhouse, still.
Speaker 2: Fighting, swinging the torch around. We'll see the torch in
Speaker 2: a bed.
Speaker 3: Yes, But the very important thing here is not just
Speaker 3: the George fights, but that he finally inspires he rouses
Speaker 3: the imprisoned Eloy to fight for themselves. There's a scene
Speaker 3: where one of them dramatically makes a fist as if
Speaker 3: for the first time in his life, and then he
Speaker 3: punches a Morlock and breaks his face and we see
Speaker 3: the blood running out of its mouth and George and
Speaker 3: the Eloy. Then they fight back and they escape the
Speaker 3: underground caverns, and then on the surface, they drop flaming
Speaker 3: branches into the air vents all around the landscape, burning
Speaker 3: the passages below.
Speaker 2: Yes, things kind of collapse and more smoke and fire
Speaker 2: comes out, and I remember thinking, I mean, both times
Speaker 2: I've seen the film, I've had the thought, Oh, I
Speaker 2: hope none of the machinery they just destroyed wasn't essential
Speaker 2: for life to continue on the surface here.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the implication actually is that it was
Speaker 3: like they did destroy the machinery. They destroyed the morlocks
Speaker 3: who were harm or repressing them, but they also destroyed
Speaker 3: the machinery that it keeps them alive. Yeah, so they're
Speaker 3: going to have to learn how to live again. They're
Speaker 3: going to have to learn how to work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, presumably it doesn't like destroy oxygen, Like the machinery
Speaker 2: down there wasn't creating a breathable atmosphere or anything like that.
Speaker 3: Hopefully not. Yeah, but you know, this whole sequence I
Speaker 3: think is also interesting because it highlights some paradoxical stuff
Speaker 3: in the film that I don't know exactly what the
Speaker 3: intended way to take it is, but again to come
Speaker 3: back to the movie's anti war themes. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: pretty clear that the movie that the story is opposed
Speaker 3: to militarism. One of these themes we get over and
Speaker 3: over again is that every time humankind is able to
Speaker 3: build something good, something benevolent and brilliant and useful, we
Speaker 3: unleash our war making impulses and destroy it all over again.
Speaker 3: So it's a human kind's relationship to war before this
Speaker 3: point is presented as this kind of horrible addiction, one
Speaker 3: where every time we think we've kicked it and can
Speaker 3: begin to build a good life, we relapse and we
Speaker 3: ruin everything. And yet when George reaches the far future,
Speaker 3: he finds the eloy As, these people who are purely
Speaker 3: peaceful and have no destructive impulses. But as we talked about,
Speaker 3: he's disgusted by their lack of virtue and the absence
Speaker 3: of humanity and kindness and generosity within them. And the
Speaker 3: only way they're able to save themselves is when George
Speaker 3: inspires them to make war against their oppressors, the Morlocks.
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly how to take that again. I
Speaker 3: don't think that means the film is going back on
Speaker 3: its earlier values and making a war is good argument.
Speaker 3: But I don't know. I guess that I would have
Speaker 3: to take it as that it has a more complicated attitude.
Speaker 3: We're accepting it has an ethos of some accepting that
Speaker 3: sometimes we have to fight in self defense and admitting
Speaker 3: there could be virtue in that, but also sticking by
Speaker 3: this belief that maybe the case for fighting needs to
Speaker 3: be very strongly made.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like it needs to be a righteous battle.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting because in this moment, or at least
Speaker 2: the we were talking about it here, it reminds me
Speaker 2: of that that pivotal moment in the the Baca Ragita. Uh.
Speaker 2: This is the scene where I believe it's Arjina who
Speaker 2: is you know, he's he's he's out there on the battlefield.
Speaker 2: I think he's perhaps on his chariot and you know,
Speaker 2: there's about to be this huge battle and he's just
Speaker 2: ruminating on like like how can I act? How can
Speaker 2: I do anything? Like? This is just you know, this
Speaker 2: awful situation of war, and Krishna, you know, comes to
Speaker 2: him and persuades him that no, you know, you have
Speaker 2: to just follow your duty. You know, that's that's what
Speaker 2: you have to do like you in action is not
Speaker 2: a choice, and so we have something maybe akin to that.
Speaker 3: Though of course that that has to be done with
Speaker 3: the kind of with the kind of a piece biased
Speaker 3: re I think is the case you would make here,
Speaker 3: because you can justify any number of atrocities by claiming
Speaker 3: that it's somebody's duty and bullies and you know, oppressors
Speaker 3: are always able to convince themselves that they are in
Speaker 3: the right. If you know, if you if you are
Speaker 3: not skeptical of the arguments that make your side feel good,
Speaker 3: then yeah, you can you can always kind of come
Speaker 3: up with a way of justifying being the bad guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, because if you're going to really like
Speaker 2: analyze things like maybe the Morlocks need some help too,
Speaker 2: and they don't just need to be wiped out. Maybe
Speaker 2: there's room for growth for them as well.
Speaker 3: Maybe well we don't really get to hear their point
Speaker 3: of view. If if only there were an uber Morlock
Speaker 3: to speak for them, to explain their side of things.
Speaker 2: There have been so many like time machine inspired works
Speaker 2: of fiction and derivative works, this has to have been
Speaker 2: explored at some point. I know there's been at least
Speaker 2: like literary and comic work for the Morlocks, like get
Speaker 2: a hold of the time machine and travel to late
Speaker 2: Victoria in England and have their own adventures there. So
Speaker 2: maybe someone has explored this.
Speaker 3: So anyway, we're coming to the ending.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: George is going to go back to his time machine,
Speaker 3: but because the doors of the temple are open again,
Speaker 3: so he goes back to his machine. There's a question
Speaker 3: of whether he's gonna take Weena with him or something,
Speaker 3: or whether he's maybe not going to go back or
Speaker 3: I don't remember exactly what he lands on there. But anyway,
Speaker 3: there's a surprise attack by the remnant of the Morlocks.
Speaker 3: They jump him by his machine, and so he has
Speaker 3: to get in and escape through time back to the
Speaker 3: year nineteen hundred, and this cycles back to the beginning
Speaker 3: of the story.
Speaker 2: We get that great scene though of the Morlock that's
Speaker 2: been killed, slow motion rotting right as he travels forward,
Speaker 2: and then he's like, whoa, I don't need to go forward,
Speaker 2: I need to go back. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, for a second I was like, are we going
Speaker 3: to get the vision of the further future with the crabs?
Speaker 3: But we didn't. So he goes back and he you know,
Speaker 3: stumbles into dinner to tell the story to his friends
Speaker 3: at the burnt Roast dinner. They don't really believe him,
Speaker 3: though he does bring a piece of proof. He has
Speaker 3: a flower given to him by Weena, and we learn
Speaker 3: here that Philby is a botany fanatic and he takes
Speaker 3: a look at it, He's like, I've never seen a
Speaker 3: flower like this before. There isn't a flower like this
Speaker 3: on Earth. And then shortly after this, Philby comes back
Speaker 3: looking for George but finds both him and his time
Speaker 3: machine missing.
Speaker 2: Where did he go?
Speaker 3: And so I think we're just left with Philby and
Speaker 3: missus Watchett standing around being like, where did he go?
Speaker 3: Did he take anything with him? And he did take something?
Speaker 3: Mis Watchett is like, oh, look, three books are missing
Speaker 3: from the shelves.
Speaker 2: What could they be? That's right? And so this is
Speaker 2: I love this. This is a nice little, hey, audience,
Speaker 2: here's a ready to go conversation to have after the movie. Indeed,
Speaker 2: which three books might he have taken with him into
Speaker 2: the far future to essentially rebuild civilization and like renurture
Speaker 2: the best of humanity? And then indeed, like, what three
Speaker 2: would any individual choose to take with them?
Speaker 3: And you got to have dianetics got.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking about this. I was thinking, well,
Speaker 2: I guess you'd want, what a book on physics, a
Speaker 2: book on medicine, and maybe a book on biology. And
Speaker 2: I think, I mean, certainly physics would still hold up,
Speaker 2: and most medicine in biology, I mean obviously not for
Speaker 2: the extinct species, but presumably humanoid biology is still relatively
Speaker 2: the same.
Speaker 3: I would wonder if the most useful books, Yeah, maybe
Speaker 3: something on like a field medicine manual and a book
Speaker 3: about like metal working or something something, just given where
Speaker 3: you're starting there, because like otherwise, you know, if you
Speaker 3: don't know how to work metals, then that might really
Speaker 3: prove difficult for a long time.
Speaker 2: Well, I was thinking one of my first thoughts was
Speaker 2: a book on foraging. But we have no idea what
Speaker 2: the flora situation is like out there, So who knows
Speaker 2: A book a book on scavenging and harvesting flora and
Speaker 2: mushrooms wild mushrooms today would be of virtually no use.
Speaker 2: Presumably in the far.
Speaker 3: Future, presumably metals still work the same way. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: I'm going to stand by metalworking as one of the three.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think that's a strong that's a strong
Speaker 2: selection metallurgy. I don't know that you could make a
Speaker 2: case for books of general knowledge. I don't know how.
Speaker 2: I don't know how ultimately useful like a farmer's almanac
Speaker 2: would be, But things of that nature I guess would
Speaker 2: be an easy selection. It gets a little easier when
Speaker 2: you get into the days of e readers and kindles,
Speaker 2: because you can just have a kindle loaded with, like
Speaker 2: you know, essentially all the important works of human literature,
Speaker 2: and then another one with a whole bunch of scientific works,
Speaker 2: and then you're pretty much good to go. But you
Speaker 2: can also nitpick this and say, why just three books?
Speaker 2: Like you would think he had room for if he
Speaker 2: had room for three, he had room for five. Just
Speaker 2: grab two at random, even if even if they prove
Speaker 2: virtually useless, you've still got two more books in a
Speaker 2: world where you maybe have five books total.
Speaker 3: I bet it really did get people chatting going out
Speaker 3: of the theater. I mean, I wonder if there's stories
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I did a quick look around, and I
Speaker 2: see people asking this question all the time on the internet.
Speaker 2: People rewatch the time machine and they're like, hey, what
Speaker 2: three books would you choose? And you know, people are
Speaker 2: you know, making very personal choices here at times. You know,
Speaker 2: I see the Bible mentioned numerous times as being like
Speaker 2: a key book, and I don't know, it's also fun
Speaker 2: to think of it just like, okay, if I don't
Speaker 2: have to rebuild a human civilization, like if it was
Speaker 2: just for my personal reading, like essentially, treat it like
Speaker 2: a desert island question, which everybody loves that one as well,
Speaker 2: you know, like I think, well, I guess they'd bring Dune.
Speaker 2: I guess i'd bring Name of the Rose, and I
Speaker 2: don't know, maybe Dune Messiah. Maybe that's too much Dune.
Speaker 2: I just I wouldn't want to go as far as
Speaker 2: to have Dune Dune Messiah and then Children of Dune
Speaker 2: as well, because then I don't know, it's like I'm
Speaker 2: happy with just the two. But then again, it's like
Speaker 2: people are that I share these with the They're gonna
Speaker 2: be like what happens next? And I'm like, well, there
Speaker 2: are these other books, but I just didn't bring them.
Speaker 2: I only brought the first two.
Speaker 3: The novelization of Halloween, three, Season of the Witch. Okay,
Speaker 3: I think that does it for the time machine.
Speaker 2: All Right, we're going to go ahead and close this
Speaker 2: one up then, but we hope you enjoyed it, and
Speaker 2: we'd love to hear from everyone out there. What are
Speaker 2: your thoughts on the time Machine, the original work, the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty adaptation, other adaptations, derivative works, you know, the
Speaker 2: use of the time machine and morlocks and related works
Speaker 2: of fiction right in We would love to hear from you.
Speaker 2: Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow your Mind is
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays, including some past episodes on time travel,
Speaker 2: and we did one on time travel fiction, like when
Speaker 2: did we start writing about time travel? You know, speculatively
Speaker 2: and so forth. That's a fun one to revisit, so
Speaker 2: you'll find all those, you know in the archives wherever
Speaker 2: you get your podcasts. But yeah, on Fridays we set
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns, so just talk about a weird
Speaker 2: film here on Weird House Cinema. If you go to
Speaker 2: letterbox dot com, you'll find a list of all the
Speaker 2: movies we've covered over the years, and sometimes a glimpse
Speaker 2: at what is coming up next, such as next week,
Speaker 2: which is Star Trek Week. Yes, on Friday, we will
Speaker 2: talk about one of the Star Trek movies, which one
Speaker 2: will it be? Well, you can go to letterbox right
Speaker 2: now and get a peek ahead at what we're we
Speaker 2: going to cover.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway,
Speaker 3: and special thanks to our guest producers this week, Dylan
Speaker 3: Fagan and Evan Tyre. If you would like to get
Speaker 3: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 3: any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or
Speaker 3: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
Speaker 3: pat Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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