10 Greatest Time Travel Films
Time travel stories feed on our innate desire for second chances — our fantasies about doing things over and getting them right the second time.
How a time travel story is told depends on which model of time travel the author chooses to follow. What happens if someone goes back in time and attempts to change something? There are four main models. In the first, the traveler goes back to change something but ends up being responsible for the original event happening in the first place. In the second, a paradox is formed. The most common example of this is the grandfather paradox. A person goes back in time and kills their grandfather while he is still a child. This results in the time traveler never being born, but if they aren’t born, they can’t go back and prevent their birth — a paradox. The third postulates that changing an event results in the creation of an alternate universe that propagates forward from the new action. The fourth is the time loop. The characters are caught in a time loop, repeating the same actions over and over until they figure out what is happening and change their actions enough to break out of the loop.
Let’s look at some fun movies that feature time travel.
10. Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009) — Low budget and goofy movie that has fun with the tropes of time travel. Three geek friends go to the pub for a few beers and discover that the men’s room is a time machine.
“Not just butterflies, anything, you can’t kill anything in the past because it wipes out all it’s descendants in the future and you could end up wiping out the whole human race.” — Toby
9. Somewhere in Time (1980) — A beautiful romance starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. He plays a modern day man that somehow travels back in time and falls in love.
“Please, don’t leave. You have no idea how far I’ve come to be with you.” — Richard
8. About Time (2013) — Tell me Richard Curtis wrote a film, and I’m there. This British comedy stars Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, and Bill Nighy. Domhnall’s character learns from his father that the men in their family have the ability to travel in time.
“There’s a song by Baz Luhrmann called Sunscreen. He says worrying about the future is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life will always be things that never crossed your worried mind.” — Tim
7. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) — Star Trek had a lot of fun with time travel in the original television series. This was their first time to bring it to the movies. Kirk and crew return home to face the brass after rescuing Spock in the previous film. Enroute, they find Earth under attack by an alien probe and determine that the only way to save Earth is to travel to the past to retrieve the thing the probe is looking for.
“I prefer a dose of common sense! You’re proposing that we go backwards in time, find humpback whales, then bring them foward in time, drop ’em off, and hope to Hell they tell this probe what to do with itself!” — Dr. McCoy
6. Time After Time (1979) — Jack the Ripper steals H.G. Wells’ time machine and travels 100 years forward in time. David Warner plays the Ripper and Malcolm McDowell plays H.G. Wells.
“My name is H.G. Wells. I came here in a time machine of my own construction. I am pursuing Jack the Ripper, who escaped into the future in my machine.” — H.G. Wells
5. The Final Countdown (1980) — My first exposure to Martin Sheen and one that sticks with me because of the subject. Imagine you were the commander of an aircraft carrier and one day your carrier came out of a storm and found itself back in time forty years, just prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. What would you do? Kirk Douglas plays the ship’s commander and Sheen plays a civilian analyst, brought aboard on a mysterious assignment.
“If the United States falls under attack our job is to defend her in the past, present and future.” — Captain Yelland
4. Looper (2012) — Joseph Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis play a man in youth and middle age. Criminals utilize time travel to dispose of their foes, and the young man finds himself tasked with killing his older self.
“I don’t want to talk about time travel because if we start talking about it then we’re going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws.” — Joe
3. The Time Machine (1960) — H.G. Wells’ classic story is adapted in this film starring Rod Taylor as a time traveler that travels 800,000 years forward in time and finds humanity evolved into two species.
“What have you done? Thousands of years of building and rebuilding, creating and recreating so you can let it crumble to dust. A million years of sensitive men dying for their dreams… FOR WHAT? So you can swim and dance and play.” — George
2. The Terminator (1984) — Before James Cameron made his name, he had to use restraint. The Terminator is a lean, mean, smart, and timeless science fiction picture. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a killing machine sent from the future to kill the mother of humanity’s leader, before that leader is born.
“I’ll be back.”- The Terminator
1. Back to the Future (1985) — Robert Zemeckis’ action comedy just can’t be beat, thanks is large part to the charm and comic timing of Michael J. Fox.
“No! Marty! We’ve already agreed that having information about the future can be extremely dangerous. Even if your intentions are good, it can backfire drastically!” — Doc Brown
Oh wait, what is this? The action of selecting these films resulted in an alternate universe being formed in which other choices were made.
10. I’ll Follow You Down (2013) — a low budget Canadian film starring Haley Joel Osment, Victor Garbo, Gillian Anderson, and Rufis Sewell. A scientist on a trip to Princeton disappears. Years later, his father in law and son deduce that the scientist had traveled to the past and been unable to return.
“I need you to be open to the craziest possibilities.” — Sal
9. Edge of Tomorrow (2014) — Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt star in this big budget science fiction film about a man that keeps relieving a battle that can’t be won.
“What I am about to tell you sounds crazy. But you have to listen to me. Your very lives depend on it. You see, this isn’t the first time.” — Cage
8. The Philadelphia Experiment (1984) — Don’t accidentally watch the 2012? Remake, that also happens to star Michael Pare. That one is awful. The story is about two sailors that inadvertently end up half a century out of time.
“This now, this time, it’s not ours. We weren’t here when it happened. The experiment took place on a ship in a Philadelphia harbor. It was — 1943, October. Does this sound… crazy? You know, or is this sort of thing possible now?” — David Herdeg
7. Timeline (2003) — not a critically well received film. I loved the Michael Crichton book and that no doubt has affected my view of the film. I think it’s a fun story about a group of students that travel back to the middle ages to rescue their professor.
“The way I see it, we’ve got what, we’ve got 650 years of knowledge on these guys. If we put our heads together, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get out of here and home in 20 minutes.” — Chris Johnston
6. 12 Monkeys (1995) — Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis star in Terry Gilliam’s nutty time travel story. A plague threatens humanity in 2035 and Willis’s character is sent back 45 years to thwart it.
“Science ain’t an exact science with these clowns but, they’re getting better. You’re lucky you didn’t end up in ancient Egypt!” — Louie
5. Toki o kakreru shôjo (Time Traveller) (2010) — This blog tends to focus on English language films and foreign films that received significant attention in America or Britain. It does that because I can only talk about films I’ve had the opportunity to watch. Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon have started making it easier to get access to foreign films. This is one I came across while researching the topic. It’s a Japanese film, previously made as an anime and based on a manga. It’s a lot of fun. The two main characters have infectious enthusiasm. The story is about a daughter that travels to the past at the request of her mother.
4. Midnight in Paris (2011) — Woody Allen wrote and directed this quirky film about a modern day man (played by Owen Wilson) that discovers a way to visit a bar frequented by the artistic greats, in the 1920s. The appeal of these encounters with people like Hemingway starts to have negative effects on his modern day life and relationship.
“I’m from the ’20s, and I’m telling you the golden age is la Belle Epoque.” — Adriana
3. Star Trek: First Contact (1996) — First Contact — Jonathon Frakes (Will Riker) did a fine job directing this, the best of the Next Gen films. The Enterprise must chase the Borg back through time to a key point in Earth’s history — the first warp speed flight.
“Mr. Data, lay in a course for the 24th century. I suspect our future is there waiting for us.” — Captain Picard
2. Groundhog Day (1993) — Not the most effective romance — I have never been able to figure out what the two character see in each other (or what is appealing about Andie MacDowell), but a great movie that staples its sarcasm and cynicism to the romcom formula.
“Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today.” — Phil
1._Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) — The Terminator returns, and this time with a production budget and a sense of irony.
“The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it, for the first time, with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too.” — Sarah Connor
Other films considered for this list include:
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Hot Tub Time Machine, The Butterfly Effect, Peggy Sue Got Married, Primer, Time Bandits, Timecop, La Jetee, Source Code, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Frequency.
What would make your list?
