This Friday marks the long-awaited release of Men in Black 3, in which our old pal Agent J (Will Smith) is forced to travel back in time – somehow involving a jump off a very tall building – to rescue his partner K (Tommy Lee Jones) from an alien assassination attempt.
In honour of this momentous occasion, CultBox brings you the Top 5 time travel movies of, well… all time.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
The T-800 Terminator assassin (looking oddly like Arnold Schwarzenegger with a slightly different hairdo) is back with a vengeance – only this time he’s good (yay!) and must rescue future leader of the human resistance John Connor from the clutches of the evil T-1000. We all know the story, but what makes this one of the all time greats?
Most people would agree that it was the inclusion of Robert Patrick’s terrifyingly indestructible antagonist T-1000, a shape-shifting, liquid metal robot that you really do not want hanging on the back of your car.
Our favourite moment, though, involves Sarah Connor’s kick-ass escape from the psychiatric hospital where she has been imprisoned, only to discover – to her initial horror, unsurprisingly – that ol’ Terminator has kept to his word and is, in fact, very back.
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Bruce Willis as a time-travelling convict? Brad Pitt as a crazy dude? And all in the hands of Terry “Monty Python” Gilliam? Say no more. You had us at Bruce Willis.
Twelve Monkeys is set in a dystopian near-future world and tells the story of James Cole, a convicted criminal who – in exchange for a pardon – is sent back in time to find information on a deadly, life-ending virus that was released in the year 1996.
Gilliam made the most of the genre with his film’s central mystery – revolving around Cole’s mysterious recurring visions of a man running through an airport – thus ensuring one of the most satisfying, albeit tragic, denouements in the history of film.
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)
Bill S. Preston Esq and “Ted” Theodore Logan are two slackers who have a big history project coming up that they are most definitely going to fail. Cue future dude Rufus (George Carlin), who turns up in a magic time-travelling phonebox (a thinly-veiled American TARDIS), giving the boys the opportunity to research their history project first hand.
The film is memorable for a scene in which Bill and Ted bring their newly recruited pals – Beethoven, Lincoln and Socrates to name a few – to their local mall. Needless to say, all hell breaks loose and it’s utterly delightful.
Most excellent, though, is the notion that these two dim-witted but kind-hearted teens end up being the pioneers of a future Utopian democracy (the reason for Rufus’s intervention into their lives). Just imagine the excuses it must have inspired from a generation of nineties teens: “No I can’t tidy my room, dad, I’m going to be a future world leader. God!”
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Ah, Back to the Future Part II, the film single-handedly responsible for equating the concept of “the future” with the word “hoverboard”. Here, Marty and Doc Brown jump back and forth through time in order to get their hands on an errant Sports Almanac which has changed history (significantly for the better) for the villainous Biff Tannen.
Where the first film laid the all-important groundwork, the sequel took us to the next level: the actual future! (Or in this case, the now alarmingly-close 2015). Complete with self-drying clothes, ‘80s-themed diners and, yes, hoverboards galore, the second Back to the Future film expanded on the first with its scope and playful, boundary-pushing approach to the constraints of the time travel genre.
Our fave moment? It would have to be Marty travelling back to 1955 where he must get hold of the Almanac whilst simultaneously avoiding the reincarnation of himself that appeared in the first film. Phew! This would have all been a lot easier if T-1000 just turned up in 1955 and killed Biff with his knife arm.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
And here it is, folks. Beaming into first place (and the hearts of die hard Trekkies everywhere) is our favourite ever Star Trek film, The Voyage Home. Doubting our decision? Come on, people. It’s a time travel movie with an environmental message at its heart. What’s not to like?
Time travel is no alien concept to the Star Trek franchise but where The Voyage Home stands out is in its utterly joyful and original concept: Kirk and Spock going back to the eighties to rescue two whales and bring them into the future for the safety of mankind.
That’s right. When a giant tube turns up in the sky in 2286, threatening the destruction of the Earth, the crew realise that its signal matches the song of the long extinct humpback whale, and quickly hatch a plan to repopulate the Earth with these long lost creatures.
Famously directed by Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy, The Voyage Home embraced a lot of the inherent silliness about the series and didn’t shy away from having fun with the concept: memorable moments include Chekhov desperately seeking “nuclear wessels” and Spock giving a neck pinch to a rowdy punk on the bus.
And who can forget the important message at its heart? “To hunt a species to extinction is not logical”. Never was a truer word spoken, Spock.
What’s your favourite time travel movie? Let us know below…
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