The Time Machine (1960)

In his day, H.G Wells was an avowed socialist (as well as being a technocratic elitist, a supporter of eugenics and a bit of an anti-Semite.) Regardless of how you personally stand in regard to his political and social views, you can't argue that he felt that much was wrong with the society that he lived in, and that his book The Time Machine was meant as an argument against "Things As They Are" continuing on, rather than an endorsement of them. Yet the 1960 movie adaptation - presumably handled by an oblivious and not-very-literate director - goes exactly the opposite way!



In this film, the main character is a Brilliant Scientist and Lantern-Jawed Man of Action who not only is completely unphased by arriving 800,000 years into the future, but immediately sets about lecturing the Eloi on how their loungey lifestyle isn't the Proper British Way virtually the second he gets there. It's basically a giant argument for transporting the social structure, beliefs and attitudes of the present to 800,000 years in the future, to "straighten out" these wayward Eloi and get them back about the business of manufacturing tins of McVities Biscuits and carrying brollies while acting indifferent and awkward on the tram.



The basic theme of the Morlocks feeding on the Eloi has been retained, but a lot of the more challenging stuff from the book has been cut, like Weena's DIAF moment and the Time Traveller's dismal final trips to the ultimate end of the planet. Instead, there's a giant fight scene where the Traveller rather lulsily dispatches of a horde of Morlocks single-handedly (they look amusingly like Rudolph's Abominable Snowman), and the coda of the film is an Eloi regaining the ability to make a fist and smack a Morlock leading him to topple to his death. Also, the Eloi all speak English somehow.


Yeah, they've got him nut-punching Morlocks in this one.

Given that Wells meant for the Morlocks to represent the working classes, and the Eloi the privileged social elite that lived off of the toil of the Morlocks without any labor on their part, this makes for a pretty interesting interpretation by the director. Is his ultimate message that it is a victory when the Eloi elite learn how to use violence as a tool again to oppress the Morlocks? I doubt he was even thinking that deeply and probably had no idea what the subtext of the original book was, but it makes for some luls all the same. As a movie, however, it's basically just a 1960s serial, and unless you have some kind of nostalgic fondness for these things, it's really just a bunch of rather boring action sequences with all the really potentially challenging/interesting material from the book stripped away from them. Oh, and some loli that people flip over plays Weena, so there's that to eye up if you're that type of dude.


... Yeah, they went here too.