10 Classic Time Travel Movies That Aren't 'Back to the Future'
The Back to the Future trilogy is such a huge part of my childhood, along with all the other 80s and 90s kids like myself, but it's not the only time travel movie worth your, er, time.
In fact, time travel movies are some of the most entertaining and thought-provoking forms of cinema in existence. Using the idea of time travel as a device to show us something about ourselves or about what might happen to our world. Just like each of these ten classic time travel movies set out to do.
This is not a ranked list. I've chosen these films partly for how iconic most of them are, and partly for how much I like them!
The Time Machine (1960)
I like the 2002 Guy Pearce remake of The Time Machine just fine, but for all its special effects, it doesn't hold a candle to the 1960 adaptation of H.G. Wells' 1895 novella. There's far more charm in the acting and production of the 1960 film, and it's still worth watching today.
Being a film from 1960, this adaptation sees the protagonist, George, travel from the year 1900 to witness the great world wars, and then a nuclear holocaust that happens in 1966, a legitimate fear when the film was made. Pushing past this armageddon, George ends up in the far future were the primitive Eloi and Morlocks are in conflict. Unable to save the world of the past, he tries to save the Eloi instead.
Planet of the Apes (1968)
The modern Planet of the Apes movies are destined to be future classics, but the Charlton Heston original will never be diminished either as a classic touchstone of culture or importance in film history.
Classifying this as a time travel film is a spoiler, and if you don't want to know why, don't read any further. Several astronauts crash-land on a planet and find that it's rules by intelligent, speaking apes. Humans are wild and uncivilized. Taylor (Heston's character) is captured by apes, but is soon threatened with torture because he won't tell the apes how he gained the power of speech. Eventually, it's revealed that the alien planet is actually far-future Earth, with a nuclear war reducing humans to mute animals, and the apes evolving to fill our niche.
Time After Time
Instead of a time travel film based on an H.G. Wells novel, here we have a movie based on a novel that features Wells as a character. In Time After Time, Wells finds out that one of his friends is in fact Jack the Ripper, who then steals his time machine and flees to the future of 1979.
While this movie is ostensibly about a chase to capture a heinous criminal, what it's really about is Wells' reaction to the world of the 20th century. He was expecting a utopia, but instead sees a world full of excess, conflict, and chaos. Sorry to say Mr. Wells, things aren't much better now!
The Terminator (1984)
What can I say about The Terminator other than it's not only one of my favorite movies of all time, but simply one of the best movies ever made period. Filmed on a shoestring budget, James Cameron's time-travel slasher monster movie hybrid launched a franchise that really only had one other good film, and though I would rate Terminator 2: Judgment Day as the better film overall, you need to watch the original first.
A killer cyborg and a human soldier are sent back in time. One to kill the mother of the future human resistance and the other to save her. An inevitable nuclear apocalypse is coming, launched by an AI we designed to protect us, but against this epic backdrop The Terminator tells a very personal story of a woman who has a grand fate thrust on her, and has to rise up to meet it.
Flight of the Navigator
This movie came out the year I was born, and I first watched it when I was very young, so my love for it might have been nothing more than rose-tinted glasses. However, having rewatched it more recently, I can say it still holds up as one of the best classic time-travel movies in history.
David Freeman accidentally leaps eight years into the future, which sure creates complications since his parents thought he was missing, presumed dead. Then, through some events I won't spoil he ends up at a military research base, where David escapes with the help of an intelligent alien spacecraft. They go on one heck of an adventure, backed up by some of the best special effects ever, and I don't just mean for 1986.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)
When humanity's utopian future depends on two lovable yet dumb goofballs getting a perfect score on their history test, it means a man from the future must intervene by teaching them that history first-hand.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure was, in my opinion, one of the key cultural influences on the 90s. While the film came out in 1989, it perfectly framed the attitude and style that would permeate throughout the decade. So ironically it predicted the future while having a "radical" time in the past. Also, George Carlin rocks in his role as Rufus.
12 Monkeys (1995)
12 Monkeys hits a little differently after the 2019 COVID pandemic, that's for sure! A man from a post-apocalyptic future is sent back in time to the 90s to stop a breakout from happening. He doesn't have all the information he needs, and, worst of all, he is sent back too far. Ending up in a mental institution.
There's a lot of hopping back and forth between the past and future, with almost no luck in stopping the deadly virus from being released. By the end of the film, well it's not entirely clear if this is a "happy" ending or not. Incidentally, Bruce Willis's Looper has similar vibes, if an entirely different plot.
Primer
This early 2000s indie film took the sci-fi world by storm, and it's still absolutely worth watching today if you're up for a little mind-bending drama. This was basically a Black Mirror episode before we had Black Mirror, and it's imperative that you watch it with no spoilers whatsoever. So all I will say is that two dudes accidentally invent time travel in their garage, and neither of them are responsible enough to have that power.
Donnie Darko
Donnie Darko is a cult-classic film, and an excellent sampling of early Jake Gyllenhaal to boot. Following similar mind-bending films as 1999's The Matrix and 1998's Dark City , the movie is built around keeping you and the protagonist guessing about what's real and what's just an illusion.
Donnie starts of in the film sleepwalking outside, where he sees someone in a rabbit suit named Frank outside his house. Moments later an airplane engine crashes through their roof, striking where Donnie wouldn't have been sleeping. The only problem is that there's no plane! This event kicks off a series of strange events that all tie up in a neat loop by the end, but the path there is anything but straightforward.
The Final Countdown
I actually only saw The Final Countdown quite recently, which is strange considering I love time-travel stories where modern military technologty goes up against the soldiers of our past. In this film, the USS Nimitz is mysteriously transported back to 1941, just before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Armed with F-14 Tomcats and advanced radar planes, the Nimitz has the power to prevent Pearl Harbor, and perhaps even end the war years before it would have ended in 1945. In the end, the Nimitz is transported back to the present of 1980 whether the crew wants it or not, but this little trip did leave some trace in history.
I think that's enough timey-wimey entertainment to keep anyone occupied for several weekends!
