Top Five: Time Travel Movies

Who doesn’t love time travel? If you don’t, I don’t think you’ll enjoy reading the rest of this so just turn around now. Are they gone? Good, let’s continue. The concept of time travel has existed for centuries portrayed in all the mediums and loved by people the world over. But once we decided it was time to make time travel movies, it was all over but the awesomeness. Here are my five favorites.

1. “Back To The Future” (1985)
This is in reference to the first film of the trilogy. The second one was awful, and the third one was pretty good, but nothing can match the glory of the first. First off, the time travel device is a flux capacitor (whatever that is) in a DeLorean. I could have just watched the DeLorean zip around at 88 M.P.H. for the entire 2 hours of the film. But the story is well worth it. Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) grabs the time machine created by his friend Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) after Brown is shot by Libyan terrorists from whom he stole plutonium… you know what? Let’s skip ahead. Long story short, Marty goes back in time to 1955, where he meets his dad, accidentally prevents his own father from meeting his mom and thus must race against time to get the pair to meet and fall in love so that he can continue existing. A stellar cast (Crispin Glover and Lea Thompson play Marty’s parents) and excellent directing (thanks Robert Zemeckis!) make the movie truly rock.

2. “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (1989)
And you thought Keanu Reeves was great in “The Matrix” movies. Here he plays Ted “Theodore” Logan, whose best friend is Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter). The pair is about to fail their history class, not graduate high school and thus be split forever (Ted must go to military school if that is the case). Luckily, Rufus (the late George Carlin) comes to the rescue from the future with a time machine (a phone booth) to solve their problems. You see, future society is based off the teachings of Bill and Ted, and we simply cannot have them break up their friendship. So the two embark on a romp through time in order to craft the greatest history presentation in the history of San Dimas High School! Yes, the plot is a tad ludicrous, but haven’t you always wanted to see Beethoven, Freud, Genghis Khan, Abe Lincoln, Joan Of Arc, Napoleon and Billy the Kid all in the same movie? Of course you have!

3. “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” (1986)
For once it paid off to have a series go longer than a trilogy (no offense Indiana Jones but “Crystal Skull” was pretty weak). Following the previous installments (it would take far too long to explain it all), the U.S.S. Enterprise is destroyed, so Capt. Kirk and his loyal crew must make do with a Klingon Bird-Of-Prey for their journey back to Earth from the planet Vulcan. Earth, however, is being punished by a space probe that is trying to communicate with whales (who are now extinct). So our intrepid crew must slingshot themselves around the sun and back in time to 1986 to steal a pair of whales from the Monterey Bay Aquarium as well as steal some nuclear power to make the trip back home. Awesome! Most of the movies fun comes from watching our heroes struggle with the world of the ‘80s. Spock takes out a guy on the bus with a nerve pinch; Chekov keeps calling nuclear vessels “wessels” (Hahahaha! Accents are funny!); Kirk flirts with some marine biologist. Pure bliss.

4. “Time Bandits” (1981)
Terry Gilliam (of Monty Python fame) directed this film about a bunch of time traveling dwarves who zip around stealing artifacts from all throughout time for fun. A young boy joins them as they rob from Napoleon (Ian Holm), Robin Hood (John Cleese) and King Agamemnon (Sean Connery). All this is achieved with the help of a map that shows the time portals of the universe. They stole it from the Supreme Being (Ralph Richardson), who wants it back, as does Evil (personified by David Warner). In the end, though, you just get to enjoy watching six dwarves steal things throughout time for two hours. There isn’t much more enjoyable than that.

5. “The Planet Of The Apes” (1968)
This isn’t quite a time travel movie because the astronauts actually endure the passage of 2006 years in their voyage to “another planet.” Charlton Heston is Taylor, our hero who finds himself on a strange planet that is almost exactly opposite to our own. Monkeys walk upright and speak like humans? Humans are put in cages and can’t speak, like apes? THAT’S CRAZY! The set-up, however, provides Heston (who is almost as manly as Chuck Norris) the chance to utter the immortal line “Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” The apes refuse to believe in evolution (sound familiar?) and think that there is no way in hell that a human could possess a shred of intelligence. I still don’t think we can, but Chuck Heston proves them that we can. SPOILER ALERT: It turns out that it’s been Earth the whole time! I’m sure I just blew somebody’s mind.