Back to the Future
Back to the Future is a 1985 science fictioncomedy film directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Steven Spielberg. Zemeckis wrote the story, along with Bob Gale. It stars Michael J. Fox as teenager Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd as mad scientist Doctor Emmett L. Brown. Accidentally travelling thirty years back in time in a De Lorean time machine, Marty inadvertently interferes with his parents' courtship and is forced to try to make them fall in love, or he will never be born.
The film opened on July 3, 1985, and grossed U.S. $210 million at the U.S. box office, making it the highest grossing film of 1985. The film was followed by two sequels, Back to the Future Part II in 1989 and Back to the Future Part III in 1990, forming a trilogy. On December 17, 2002, Universal Studios Home Entertainment released the film on DVD and VHS as part of Back to the Future: The Complete Trilogy.
Due to the film's success, three spin-off projects were made. CBS TV aired an animated series, Back to the Future: The Animated Series and Harvey Comics released a handful of similarly styled comic books, although their stories were original and not merely duplicates of the films. In 1991, Universal Studios Theme Parks opened a simulator ride based on the series called Back to the Future: The Ride. The ride closed on March 30, 2007 in Orlando, FL, and September 3, 2007 in Hollywood, California. The ride remains open at Universal Studios Japan.
Marty McFly (Fox) is a seventeen-year-old living in Hill Valley, California. On the morning of October 25, 1985, his eccentric friend, scientist Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown (Lloyd), calls him, asking to meet at 1:15 a.m. After school that day, a solicitor approaches Marty and his girlfriend Jennifer (Claudia Wells), asking for donations to preserve the town's clock tower which has not run since it was struck by lightning thirty years before. Upon arriving home, Marty finds the family car wrecked in the driveway. Inside the home, he finds his neurotic father George (Crispin Glover) being bullied by his supervisor Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson), who wrecked the borrowed car. At dinner that night, Marty's mother Lorraine (Lea Thompson) recounts how she and George first met when her father hit George with his car.
That night, Marty meets the Doc as planned in the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall. Doc presents a De Lorean DMC-12 which he has modified into a time machine. As Marty videotapes, Doc then explains that the car travels to a programmed date and time upon reaching eighty-eight miles per hour using plutonium in a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of power it requires. Demonstrating how to program the machine, Doc enters in November 5, 1955 as the target date, explaining that it was the day he conceived the idea of the flux capacitor; the device which "makes time travel possible." Before Doc can depart for his planned trip twenty-five years into the future, a pair of Libyan terrorists, from whom he stole the plutonium, arrive in a Volkswagen van and ruthlessly gun him down. Marty jumps in the De Lorean and is pursued by the Libyans until he hits eighty-eight miles per hour and is instantanously transported to 1955.
The car stalls shortly after his arrival, so Marty hides it and makes his way into town, finding that the town square now reflects the popular culture of the 1950s. He runs into his own father, then a teenager, being tyrannized just as he was in 1985 by Biff, then the school bully. Marty follows George, and as he is about to be hit by Lorraine's father's car, Marty saves his father by taking the hit himself resulting in Lorraine becoming infatuated with Marty instead of George. Marty is disturbed by her sexual advances which contrast her prudish attitude in 1985. He leaves to track down the Doc of thirty years ago. After managing to convince the scientist that he is from the future, Doc learns of the power requirements of the De Lorean from Marty's videotape. He tells Marty that aside from plutonium, which is unobtainable, the only possible source of that much power is a bolt of lightning, which is unpredictable. Marty realizes that the lighting strike at the clock tower will occur the following Saturday, and Doc concocts a way to harness the bolt's power.
However, Doc deduces that Marty has prevented his parents from meeting. Since Marty will not exist unless his parents fall in love, he finds that Marty is in danger of being erased from time. After several failed attempts at playing matchmaker, Marty eventually works out a plan to have George appear to rescue Lorraine from his own advances on the night of a school dance. When Biff shows up unexpectedly and attacks Lorraine, George manages to defend her for real, knocking Biff out with a single punch. Lorraine and George return to the dance together where they kiss for the first time, ensuring Marty's existence. Doc, meanwhile, has used cables to connect the clock tower's antenna to two lamp posts, which he plans to have Marty drive under in the De Lorean, now sporting a lightning rod, at eighty-eight miles per hour the moment the lightning strikes.
Before Marty can leave, Doc finds a letter in his coat pocket that Marty had written, warning him about his future assassination. Doc rips up the letter without reading it, knowing the dangers of learning about the future. Marty adjusts the time machine to take him back to 1985 ten minutes early, giving him time to prevent the shooting. Upon his arrival, however, the car stalls and Marty arrives at the mall too late to save the Doc. When the coast is clear, Marty runs to Doc's body and finds him alive. Doc unzips his radiation suit to reveal a bulletproof vest, and shows Marty the letter he had written in 1955, taped back together.
The next morning, Marty finds his family has been changed for the better. Most notably, Lorraine is no longer prudish, and George has become self-confident, ordering Biff around. Just as Jennifer and Marty reunite, Doc arrives from the year 2015, appearing frantic about a problem with the couple's future children. Marty and Jennifer climb aboard the De Lorean and, aided by the technology of thirty years hence, the car lifts off into the sky.
The inspiration for the film largely stems from Bob Gale, who discovered his father's high school yearbook and wondered whether he would have been friends with his father as a teenager. His father was class president and pretty much the "big guy on campus," while Bob was on the other end of the social barometermore of a nerd. Gale and Robert Zemeckis originally wrote the script in September 1980 but struggled to find the time to make it. Steven Spielberg read it when Gale first had the idea and asked Zemeckis a number of years later what had happened to it. The year 1955 was chosen because it was the era that teenage culture was born.
Zemeckis pitched the idea to several companies. Disney turned it down because they thought that a story involving a mother falling in love with her son was too risqu?, even if in a twist of time travel. All other companies said it was not risqu? enough, compared to other teen comedies at the time (such as Porky's, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Revenge of the Nerds).
Sid Sheinberg, the head of Universal Studios, made many changes to the movie. "Professor Brown" was changed to "Doc Brown" and his chimp Shemp to a dog named Einstein. Marty's mother had previously been Meg, then Eileen, but Sheinberg insisted that she be named Lorraine after his wife Lorraine Gary. Sheinberg also did not like the title, insisting that no one would see a movie with "future" in the title. In a memo to Robert Zemeckis, he said that the title should be changed to "Spaceman From Pluto," tying in with the Marty-as-alien jokes in the film. Steven Spielberg replied in a memo thanking him for the wonderful "joke memo" and told him everyone got a kick out of it. Sheinberg, too proud to admit he was serious, let the title stand.
In the original script, Marty's rock 'n roll performance caused a riot at the dance that had to be broken up by police. This, combined with Marty accidentally making the Professor (Doc) aware of the "secret ingredient" that made the time machine work (Coca-Cola) caused history to change. When Marty got back to the 1985, he found that it was now the 1950s conception of the future, with air-cars and other electronic devices, all invented by Doc Brown and running on Coca-Cola. Marty also discovers that rock and roll was never invented (the most popular musical style was the mambo), and he dedicates himself to starting the delayed cultural revolution. Meanwhile, his dad opens a scrapbook containing newspaper clippings from the day after the 1955 dance and sees his son in the picture of the riot. The time machine is not built around a De Lorean DMC-12, and the power source for Marty's trip back to 1985 comes from atomic testing, rather than a lightning strike.
Doc Brown's "man hanging off a clock face"-themed clock reprises the famous scene in Harold Lloyd's Safety Last! (1923). The fact that Christopher Lloyd and Harold Lloyd have the same last name, however, is merely a coincidence.
Deja Vu
In Algiers, New Orleans, after the explosion of a ferry transporting the sailors from the USS Nimitz and their families with 543 casualties, the lonely ATF agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) is assigned to investigate the terrorist attack. Without any lead, he is informed by Sheriff Reed about the corpse of a woman that was found one hour before the explosion, but burnt with the same explosive. He is invited by FBI Agent Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer) to join the surveillance team led by Jack McCready in the investigations, using a time window and Einstein-Rosen bridge to look back four and a quarter days in time. He discovers the identity of the mysterious dead woman called Claire Kuchever and decides to follow her last moments trying to find the criminal. Along the surveillance, Doug falls in love with Claire and tries to change destiny, saving her life.
Filming in New Orleans, Louisiana was delayed following Hurricane Katrina because of the devastation caused by the storm and the collapse of the Federal levees (see: Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans). Many of the exteriors were set to be shot in New Orleans, including a key sequence involving the Canal Street Ferry across the Mississippi River. After the city was reopened, the cast and crew returned to New Orleans to continue filming; some scenes of the post-Katrina devastation were worked into the plot, including in the Lower 9th Ward. They also spent two weeks filming a scene at a local bayou, Four Mile Bayou, in Morgan City, Louisiana.
During the car chase when Doug faces eye to eye with Oerstadt, he says: "Jesus, he's right in front of me". Jim Caviezel played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ. The producers first thought they had made fools of themselves since it was unintentional. At the end of the movie when the Bronco explodes in the water, the camera shot shows the Ferry Boat mysteriously empty of all people, then in the next shot 10 seconds later, all the people are back on the boat. The Hummer H1 driven by Denzel Washington in the bridge chase scene is modeled after an actual robot, H1ghlander, entered by Carnegie Mellon University into the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. Deja Vu's composer, Harry Gregson-Williams, used various loops from a previous score he made for Joel Schumacher's Phone Booth. Val Kilmer had shirts made for the crew that read "Malcolm X, Jesus Christ, and Jim Morrison: Deja Vu. How Can We Fail?" Denzel Washington played Malcolm X in Malcolm X, James Caviezel played Jesus Christ in The Passion of the Christ, and Kilmer played Jim Morrison in The Doors. In one scene, Adam Goldberg's character says out of frustration, "I need more cowbell," referencing a popular Saturday Night Live sketch. The French version of the movie poster. The French version of the movie poster ironically explains what d?j? vu means in French. The USS Nimitz crew welcome is in reference to the 1980 science fiction movie The Final Countdown and The Philadelphia Experiment (1984) which have similar time-travel themes. The Ambulance used in the later scene of the movie bears the sales license plate of Olathe Ford, a real dealership that is based in Olathe, Kansas. The phrase "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants", said by the terrorist on the final boat sequence, was also used in an earlier Jerry Bruckheimer film, The Rock. This is an interesting play with the phenomenon of d?j? vu within the film itself. The actual quotation is generally attributed to Thomas Jefferson. The quote by Denny exclaiming "Looks like I chose the wrong day to quit snorting hash" is a reference to a scene from Airplane!
12 Monkeys
Twelve Monkeys is a 1995 science fiction film written by David and Janet Peoples and directed by Terry Gilliam. The movie deals with time travel, madness and memory and is inspired by the French short film La Jet?e. The film stars Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, and Brad Pitt.
James Cole (Willis) is a convicted criminal living in a grim post-apocalyptic future. The Earth's surface has been contaminated by a virus so deadly that it killed five billion people in 19961997, forcing the surviving population to live underground. In the beginning of the movie, Cole is forced to "volunteer" on a mission to the surface in a barren Philadelphia. He collects bugs and is returned to the underground where another mission is proposed. To earn a pardon, Cole allows scientists to send him on dangerous missions to the past to collect information on "The Army of the 12 Monkeys" an organization they believe to be responsible for spreading the virus. If possible, he is to obtain a sample of the original virus so a cure can be made, enabling the human race to return to the surface. Throughout the film, Cole is troubled with recurring dreams involving a chase and a shooting in an airport.
The scientists' time machine is imprecise. On Cole's first trip, he arrives in Baltimore in 1990, not 1996 as planned. He is arrested and hospitalized in a mental institution on the diagnosis of Dr. Kathryn Railly (Stowe), where he encounters Jeffrey Goines (Pitt), a fellow mental patient with animal rights and anti-consumerist leanings. Cole tries unsuccessfully to leave a voice mail on a number monitored by the scientists in the future. After a failed escape attempt, Cole is placed in restraints but is then returned to the future, disappearing from his locked room and baffling his doctors.
Back in his own time, Cole is interviewed by the scientists, who play a voice mail message giving the Army of the Twelve Monkeys' location and show photos of Goines. They send him back to the past, and this time after a brief detour to World War I France he reaches 1996.
Cole kidnaps Railly and sets out in search of Goines, who they learn is a founder of the Army of the Twelve Monkeys. When Cole learns that Goines's father (Christopher Plummer) is a famous virologist, he becomes more than ever convinced that he's on the right track. When Cole confronts him, however, Goines denies any involvement with the virus and suggests that wiping out humanity was Cole's idea, originally broached at the psychiatric facility in 1990. Cole vanishes again as police approach.
After Cole disappears, Railly begins to doubt her diagnosis of Cole when she finds evidence that he's telling the truth. Cole, on the other hand, convinces himself that his future experiences are hallucinations, and longs to return to the pre-plague world and be with Railly. He persuades the scientists to send him back again.
Reunited in 1996 in Philadelphia, shortly before the initial outbreak of the virus, Railly attempts to settle the question of Cole's sanity by leaving a voice mail on the number provided by Cole. When she recites her message to Cole later, they realize that it is the message the scientists played for Cole prior to his second mission. They both now realize that the coming plague is real. They make plans to fly to Key West to avoid the virus.
On their way to the airport, they learn from their cab driver that the Army of the Twelve Monkeys is a red herring; all they have done is to delay traffic by releasing all the animals in the zoo. Cole decides he has done his duty to the future. At the airport, he leaves a last message telling the scientists they are on the wrong track following the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, and that he will not return to his own time. He is soon confronted, however, by a fellow time-traveler sent by the scientists, who gives Cole a handgun and instructions to complete his mission. At the same time, Railly spots the true culprit behind the virus - Dr. Peters, an assistant at the Goines virology lab, who is carrying a briefcase full of vials, about to embark on a tour of the world's major cities. After fighting his way through security, Cole is fatally shot by police as he pulls a gun to stop Peters from boarding his plane. As Cole dies in Railly's arms, she makes eye contact with a small boy - the young James Cole witnessing his own death, the scene that will replay in his dreams in years to come.
Dr. Peters, safely aboard, sits down next to the lead scientist from the future (Carol Florence). After some small talk with Peters, she introduces herself: "Jones is my name. I'm in insurance."
A "making of" documentary about the film, The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys, was made by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe. They later went on to make Lost in La Mancha, despite their protests that they would not make "any more movies about making movies."
The scene where Cole wanders post-apocalypse Philadelphia was not originally supposed to be winter. After the studio delayed the film's shooting, Gilliam decided he preferred the isolated look of winter.
Lebbeus Woods, an architect, sued the producers of the film, claiming they copied his work "Neomechanical Tower (Upper) Chamber." Woods won a "six figure sum," and allowed the film to continue to be screened.
Like Brazil, also directed by Gilliam, this film uses fresnel lenses in its set design.
Planet of the Apes
Planet of the Apes is a 1968 science fiction film loosely based on the Planet of the Apes novel by Pierre Boulle. The film stars Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter and veteran Shakespearean actor Maurice Evans. The film was ground breaking for its make-up techniques by artist John Chambers. The script was originally written by Rod Serling but had many rewrites before eventually being made. Changes included the expensive idea of futuristic buildings and advanced technology, using the idea of a more primitive society instead, as well as character names.
The film was well received by critics and audiences, launching a film franchise, spinning off 4 additional movies, each with a progressively lower budget, as well as a short lived television show and animated series, comic books, and eventually the much anticipated yet less well received remake in 2001. The character of Cornelius was the start of a long running relationship between McDowall and the "Apes" series: he starred in all but one of the movies (and the 2001 remake), the TV series and lent his voice to the animated series.
Astronauts Taylor, Landon, and Dodge are in deep hibernation when their spaceship (non-canonically known as Icarus) crash-lands in a lake on an unknown planet in A.D. 3978. The astronauts awaken to find that their fourth companion and only female, Stewart, has died in space and their ship has started to sink. They use the inflatable raft from the ship to safely reach shore. Once on shore, Dodge performs a soil test and pronounces the soil incapable of sustaining life.
The three astronauts set off through the desert, finding first a single plant and then others. They find an oasis at the edge of the desert where they decide to take a swim. While they are swimming, someone steals their clothes. Pursuing the thieves, the astronauts find their clothes in shreds and the perpetrators a group of mute, primitive humans contentedly raiding a cornfield. But shortly, the astronauts and other humans are being pursued by gorillas on horseback, hunting down the humans. Dodge is shot and killed during the pursuit, while Taylor and Landon are captured and taken back to Ape City; Taylor is shot in the throat, but survives due to the surgical efforts of two chimpanzee scientists, Zira and Galen. Upon his recovery, Taylor is thrown into a cage with a woman who was captured on the same hunt, the beautiful Nova. Due to the throat injury, he has temporarily lost his voice.
Taylor discovers that the apes, who can talk, are in control and are divided into a strict class system: the gorillas as police, military, and hunters; the orangutans as administrators, politicians and lawyers; and the chimpanzees as intellectuals and scientists. Humans, who cannot talk, are considered feral vermin, hunted to rid the fields and orchards from being over ridden, and used for scientific experimentation. Zira and her fianc?, Cornelius, take an interest in Taylor because of his lip movements, which resemble talking. While Cornelius and Zira are talking to their boss, Dr. Zaius, Taylor writes in the dirt and attempts to call Cornelius and Zira's attention to it, but he becomes frustrated when they do not notice the writing. Zaius sees some letters on the dirt and realizes that Taylor possesses intelligence, but hastily erases the letters with his cane. Taylor manages to steal paper and a pencil from Zira and convinces her and Cornelius that he is intelligent.
Zaius orders Taylor to be castrated and he tries to escape. Running through the ape city Taylor discovers the stuffed remains of Dodge on exhibit in a museum. At the conclusion of his escape attempt and run through the ape city, Taylor is captured and while hanging in a net stuns the crowd by speaking, "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!" Placed on trial to determine his origins (a parody of the Scopes Monkey trial) Taylor is stripped of his clothing. During the trial, he is treated like the beast that he is in their society, with little or no rights. At one point, the three-member panel of orangutan theologians don't want to deal with the subject of his springing forth naturally. One places his hands over his eyes (see no evil), one over his mouth (speak no evil) and the other over his ears (hear no evil). During the trial Taylor talks about his comrades and explains that one was killed and the other lost. At this point the court is directed to a group of humans that were captured at the same time as Taylor where he discovers the lobotomized Landon.
Later, he is taken to see Dr. Zaius, who threatens to lobotomize him as well if he doesn't tell the "truth" about where he came from. But Cornelius and Zira execute a plan (with the help of Zira's nephew) to free Taylor, who insists that Nova also be brought along. They flee to the Forbidden Zone, where Cornelius (an archaeologist) had, a year earlier, discovered a cave with artifacts of an advanced technology. Dr Zaius, along with a band of gorillas manages to find them. After a struggle Taylor shows them a talking human doll that proves that humans were there long before the apes. After a brief battle, Taylor and Nova are allowed to escape on horseback. Zaius lets them go without further confrontation, knowing that Taylor will find "his destiny."
Soon after his escape, in the final, iconic scene, Taylor discovers the Statue of Liberty half-buried in the beach. He realizes that he's really back on Earth (albeit in the future) and that humanity had destroyed its own civilization, thereby paving the way for the Planet of the Apes.
This scene frequently makes "best moments in film" and "best endings" lists. In the span of a few seconds, it completely changes the conception of the film's foregoing events, many of which are thus revealed to have foreshadowed this conclusion. The ending is based on the surprise ending of the original novel but with a twist using a device emblematic of scriptwriter Rod Serling. As with many episodes of Serling's own Twilight Zone series, this final plot twist sees the protagonist's arrogance undone when he is made to realize that it is precisely this characteristically human arrogance that evidently precipitated a catastrophe, assumed to be a nuclear war (a looming fear from the Cold War) that has plunged humans into savagery and allowed supposedly "savage" subhumans, the apes, to become masters of the Earth.
In the late 1960s most studios were not convinced that this film was a feasible production. One script that came close to being made was written by Rod Serling, though it was finally rejected for a number of reasons. A prime concern was cost, as the technologically advanced ape society portrayed by Serling's script would have involved expensive sets, props and special effects. Serling's script was rewritten and the ape society made more primitive as way of eliminating many costly sets and special effects.
In order to convince the Fox Studio that a Planet of the Apes film could really be made, the producers shot a brief test scene using early versions of the ape makeup. Charlton Heston appeared as an early version of Taylor (named Thomas, as he was in Rod Serling-penned drafts of the script), Edward G. Robinson appeared as Zaius, while then-unknown actors James Brolin and Linda Harrison played Cornelius and Zira. Harrison, who was the mistress of the head of the studio at the time, would later play Nova in the final film and its first sequel, and have a cameo in the Tim Burton remake more than 30 years later. This test footage is included on several DVD releases of the film, as well as the 1998 documentary Behind the Planet of the Apes. Dr. Zaius was originally to have been played by Robinson, but he backed out due to the heavy make-up, and long sessions to apply it, that were required. (Robinson later made his final film, Soylent Green, opposite his one-time Ten Commandments co-star Heston.)
Wells Time Machine
The Time Machine is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1895 and later directly adapted into at least two theatrical films of the same name as well as at least one television and a large number of comic book adaptations. It also indirectly inspired many more works of fiction in all media. Considered by many to be one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time, this 38,000 word novella is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposefully and selectively. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now universally used to refer to such a vehicle.
Wells had considered the notion of time travel before, in an earlier (but less well-known) work entitled The Chronic Argonauts. He had thought of using some of this material in a series of articles in the Pall Mall Gazette, until the publisher asked him if he could instead write a serial novel on the same theme; Wells readily agreed, and was paid ?100 on its publication by Heinemann in 1895. The story was first published in serial form in the New Review through 1894 and 1895. The book is based on the Block Theory of the Universe, which is a notion that time is a fourth space dimension.
The story reflects Wells' own socialist political views and the contemporary angst about industrial relations. Other science fiction works of the period, including Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and Thea von Harbou's Metropolis dealt with similar themes.
The Time Machine is in the public domain in the United States, Canada, and Australia, but does not enter the public domain in the European Union until January 1, 2017 (1946 death of author + 70 years + end of calendar year).
The book's protagonist is an amateur inventor or scientist living in London who is never named; he is identified simply as The Time Traveller. Having demonstrated to friends using a miniature model that time is a fourth dimension, and that a suitable apparatus can move back and forth in this fourth dimension, he completes the building of a larger machine capable of carrying himself. He then immediately sets off on a journey into the future.
The Time Traveller details the experience of time travel and the evolution of his surroundings as he moves through time. While travelling through time, his machine allows him to observe the changes of the outside world in fast motion. He observes the sun and moon traversing the sky and the changes to the buildings and landscape around him as he travels through time. His machine produces a sense of disorientation to its occupant, and a blurring or faintness of the surroundings outside the machine.
His journey takes him to the year 802,701 A.D., where he finds an apparently peaceful, pastoral, communist, future filled with happy, simple humans who call themselves the Eloi. The Eloi are about four feet tall (120cm), pink-skinned and frail-looking, with curly hair, small ears and mouths and large eyes. Males and females seem to be quite similar in build and appearance. They have high-pitched, soft voices and speak an unknown language. They appear to be quite unintelligent and child-like and live without quarrels or conflict.
Soon after his arrival he rescues Weena, a female Eloi he finds drowning in a river. Much to his surprise she is grateful to him and insists on following him.
The Eloi live in small communities within large and futuristic yet dilapidated buildings, doing no work and eating a frugivorous diet. The land around London has become a sort of untended garden filled with unusual fruiting and flowering plants, with futuristic, albeit broken down buildings and other structures dotted around, seemingly of no purpose and disused. There is no evidence of the implementation of agriculture or technology, of which the Eloi seem incapable.
The Time Traveller is greeted with curiosity and without fear by the Eloi, who seem only vaguely surprised and curious by his appearance and lose interest rapidly. He disables the time machine and follows them to their commune and consumes a meal of fruit while trying to communicate with them. This proves somewhat ineffectual, as their unknown language and low intelligence hinders the Time Traveller from gaining any useful information. With a slight sense of disdain for his hosts' lack of curiosity and attention to him, the Time Traveller decides to explore the local area.
As he explores this landscape, the Time Traveller comments on the factors that have resulted in the Eloi's physical condition and society. He supposes that the lack of intelligence and vitality of the Eloi are the logical result of humankind's past struggle to transform and subjugate nature through technology, politics, art and creativity. With the realisation of this goal, the Eloi had devolved.
With no further need for technology and agriculture and innovations to improve life, they became unimaginative and incurious about the world. With no work to do, they became physically weak and small in stature. Males, generally being breadwinners and workers in former times, have particularly degenerated in physique, explaining the lack of dimorphism between the sexes. The Time Traveller supposes that preventive medicine has been achieved, as he saw no sign of disease amongst his hosts. With no work to do and no hardships to overcome, society became non-hierarchical and non-cooperative, with no defined leaders or social classes.
The fact that there was no hardship or inequalities in societies meant there was no war and crime. Art and sophisticated culture, often driven by problems and aspirations or a catalyst for solutions and new developments, had waned, as no problems existed and there were no conceivable improvements for humanity. He accounted for their relatively small numbers as being due to the implementation of some form of birth control to eliminate the problems of overpopulation. The abandoned structures around him would suggest that prior to these achievements, the population had been larger and more productive, toiling to find the solution that would make the new utopia a reality.
As the sun sets, the Time Traveller muses on where he will sleep. Retracing his steps back to the building where he had eaten with the Eloi, he suddenly realizes that the time machine is missing. He panics and desperately searches for the vehicle. At first, he suspects that the Eloi have moved it to their shelter. He doubts the Eloi would be capable or inclined to do this, but nonetheless rushes back to the shelter and demands to know where his machine is. The Eloi are confused and a little frightened by this. Realising the Eloi don't understand him and he is damaging his position with them, he continues his search in desperation during the night before relenting and falling into an uneasy sleep.
The Utopian existence of the Eloi turns out to be deceptive. The Traveller soon discovers that the class structure of his own time has in fact persisted, and the human race has diverged into two branches. The wealthy, leisure classes appear to have devolved into the ineffectual, not very bright Eloi he has already seen; but the downtrodden working classes have evolved into the bestial Morlocks, cannibal hominids resembling human spiders, who toil underground maintaining the machinery that keep the Eloi their flocks docile and plentiful. Both species, having adapted to their routines, are of distinctly sub-human intelligence.
After further adventures the Traveller manages to get to his machine, reactivate it as the Morlocks battle him for it, and escape them. He then travels into the far future, roughly 30 million years from his own time.
There he sees the last few living things on a dying Earth, the rotation of which has ceased with the site of London viewing a baleful, red sun stuck at the setting position. In his trip forward, he had seen the red sun flare up brightly twice, as if Mercury and then Venus had fallen into it. Menacing reddish crab-like creatures slowly wander the blood-red beaches, and the world is covered in "intensely green vegetation." He continues to make short jumps through time, seeing the red giant of a sun grow redder and dimmer. Finally, the world begins to go dark as snowflakes begin to fall, and all silence falls upon Earth. In the very end of the Earth, all life has ceased, other than the lichens that still grow on rocks, and a kraken-like creature, roughly the size of a soccer ball, that slowly moves onto shore.
Feeling giddy and nauseated about the return journey before him, he nevertheless boards his machine and puts it into reverse, arriving back in his laboratory just three hours after he originally left. Entering the dining room, he begins recounting what has just happened to his disbelieving friends and associates, bringing the story back full circle to his entrance in chapter 2. The following day, the unnamed narrator returns to the Time Traveller's house. There, he finds the Time Traveller ready to leave again, this time taking a small knapsack and a camera. Although he promises the narrator he will return in half an hour, three years pass and the Time Traveller still remains missing. What happened to him, and where he ultimately ventured, remains a mystery.
The Great Illustrated Classics version of The Time Machine includes a whole chapter not found in the original novel, in which the Time Traveller blunders into a highly advanced future society where time travel is illegal. The time machine is confiscated and the Traveller is arrested, but he eventually escapes after one of the future men attempts to steal the time machine.
An extract from the 11th chapter of the serial published in New Review (May, 1895) was censored from the book, as it was thought too disturbing. This portion of the story was published elsewhere as The Grey Man.
The censored text begins with the Traveller waking up in his Time Machine after escaping the Morlocks. He finds himself in the distant future of an Earth that is unrecognizable, seeing rabbit-like hopping herbivores near him. He stuns or kills one with a rock, and upon closer examination realizes they are probably the descendants of the Eloi. A gigantic, centipede-like arthropod approaches and the traveller advances ahead in time a day to flee, finding the creature to have apparently eaten the tiny humanoid. This dark ending of humanity was thought too shocking to be published.
The first visual adaptation of the book was a live teleplay broadcast on 25 January 1949 by the BBC, which starred Russell Napier as the Time Traveller and Mary Donn as Weena. Sadly, no recording of this live broadcast was made; the only record of the production is the script and a few black and white still photographs. A reading of the script, however, suggests that this teleplay remained fairly faithful to the book. Main article: The Time Machine (1960 film)
George P?l (who also made a famous 1953 "modernized" version of Wells' The War of the Worlds) filmed The Time Machine in 1960. This is more of an adventure tale than the book was; The Time Traveller witnesses war's horrors first-hand in 1940 and 1966; also the division of mankind results from mutations induced by nuclear war during the twentieth century. In 802,701 AD, the Eloi learn and speak broken English. Rod Taylor (The Birds) starred, along with Yvette Mimieux as Weena, Alan Young as his closest friend David Filby (and, in 1917 and 1966, his son James Filby), Sebastian Cabot as Dr Hillyer, Whit Bissell as Walter Kemp and Doris Lloyd as his housekeeper Mrs Watchett. The Time Traveller had the first name of George. Interestingly, the plate on the Time Machine is inscribed ' Manufactured by H. George Wells'. In the end, the Time Traveller leaves for a second journey, but Filby and Mrs Watchett note that he had taken three books from the shelves in his drawing room. "Which three books would you have taken?" Filby inquires to Mrs Watchett, adding " ... he has all the time in the world."
The film is noted for its then-novel use of time lapse photographic effects to show the world around the Time Traveller changing at breakneck speed as he travels through time. (Pal's earliest films had been works of stop-motion animation.)
Thirty-three years later, a combination sequel/documentary short, Time Machine: The Journey Back (1993 film), directed by Clyde Lucas, was produced. In the first part, Michael J. Fox (who had himself portrayed a time traveller in the Back to the Future trilogy) went behind the scenes of the movie and time travelling in general. In the second half, written by original screenwriter David Duncan, the movie's original actors Rod Taylor, Alan Young and Whit Bissell reprised their roles. The Time Traveller returns to his laboratory in 1916, finding Filby there, and encourages his friend to join him in the far future but Filby has doubts. (Time Machine: The Journey Back is featured as an extra on the DVD release of the 1960 film).
A low-quality TV version was made in 1978, with very unconvincing time-lapse images of building walls being de-constructed, and inexplicable geographic shifting from Los Angeles to Plymouth, Mass., and inland California. John Beck starred as Neil Perry, with Whit Bissell (from the original 1960 movie and also one of the stars of the 1966 television series The Time Tunnel) appearing as one of Perry's superiors. However, the race names Eloi and Morlocks, and the character Weena (played by Priscilla Barnes of Three's Company fame), were reused, though set only a few thousand years in the future. Main article: The Time Machine (2002 film)
The 1960 film was remade in 2002, starring Guy Pearce as the Time Traveller, who is named as Alexander Hartdegen, Mark Addy as his friend David Filby, Sienna Guillory as Alex's ill-fated fianc?e Emma, Phyllida Law as Mrs. Watchett, and Jeremy Irons as the uber-Morlock. Playing a quick cameo as a shopkeeper was Alan Young, who featured in the 1960 film. (H.G. Wells himself can also be said to have a "cameo" appearance, in the form of a photograph on the wall of Alex's home, near the front door.) The film was directed by Wells' great-grandson Simon Wells, with an even more revised plot that incorporated the ideas of paradoxes and changing the past, before the Time Traveller moves on to 2030, 2037, 802,701 for the main plot, and (briefly) 635 million AD. It was met with generally mixed reviews and earned $56M before VHS/DVD sales. The Time Machine used a design that was very reminiscent of the one in the P?l film, but was larger and employed brass construction, along with quartz/glass (In Wells' original book, the Time Traveller mentioned his 'scientific papers on optics'). Weena makes no appearance; Hartdegen instead becomes involved with a female Eloi named Mara, played by Samantha Mumba. In this film, the Eloi have preserved a "stone language" identical to English with the help of a computerized librarian in the ruins of a library. The Morlocks are much more fierce and agile, and the Time Traveller has a direct impact on the plot.
In 1994 an audio drama was published on CD by Alien Voices, starring Leonard Nimoy as the Time Traveller (named John) and John de Lancie as David Philby. John de Lancie's children, Owen de Lancie and Keegan de Lancie, played the parts of the Eloi. The drama is approximately two hours long. Interestingly, this version of the story is more faithful to Wells's novella than either the 1960 movie or the 2002 movie.
Wells' novella has become one of the cornerstones of science-fiction literature. As a result, it has spawned many offspring. Works expanding on Wells' story include: The Return of the Time Machine by Egon Friedell, printed in 1972, from the 1946 German version. The author portrays himself as a character searching for the Time Traveller in different eras. The Hertford Manuscript by Richard Cowper, first published in 1976. It features a "manuscript" which reports the Time Traveller's activities after the end of the original story. According to this manuscript, the Time Traveller disappeared because his Time Machine had been damaged by the Morlocks without him knowing it. He only found out when it stopped operating during his next attempted time travel. He found himself on August 27, 1665, in London during the outbreak of the Great Plague of London. The rest of the novel is devoted to his efforts to repair the Time Machine and leave this time period before getting infected with the disease. He also has an encounter with Robert Hooke. He eventually dies of the disease on September 20, 1665. The story gives a list of subsequent owners of the manuscript until 1976. It also gives the name of the Time Traveller as Robert James Pensley, born to James and Martha Pensley in 1850 and disappearing without trace on June 18, 1894. Morlock Night by K.W. Jeter, first published in 1979. A steampunk novel in which the Morlocks, having studied the Traveller's machine, duplicate it and invade Victorian London. The Space Machine by Christopher Priest, first published in 1976. Because of the movement of planets, stars and galaxies, for a time machine to stay in one spot on Earth as it travels through time, it must also follow the Earth's trajectory through space. In Priest's book, the hero damages the Time Machine, and arrives on Mars, just before the start of the invasion described in The War of the Worlds. H.G. Wells himself appears as a minor character. Time Machine II by George Pal and Joe Morhaim, published in 1981. The Time Traveller, named George, and the pregnant Weena try to return to his time, but instead land in the London Blitz, dying during a bombing raid. Their newborn son is rescued by an American ambulance driver, and grows up in the United States under the name Christopher Jones. Sought out by the lookalike son of James Filby, Jones goes to England to collect his inheritance, leading ultimately to George's journals, and the Time Machine's original plans. He builds his own machine with 1970s upgrades, and seeks his parents in the future. The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter, first published in 1995. This sequel was officially authorized by the Wells estate to mark the centenary of the original's publication. In its wide-ranging narrative, the Traveller's desire to return and rescue Weena is thwarted by the fact that he has changed history (by telling his tale to his friends, one of whom published the account). With a Morlock (in the new history, the Morlocks are intelligent and cultured) he travels through the multiverse as increasingly complicated timelines unravel around him, eventually meeting mankind's far future descendants, whose ambition is to travel into the multiverse of multiverses. Like much of Baxter's work, this is definitely hard science fiction; it also includes many nods to the prehistory of Wells's story in the names of characters and chapters. The 2003 short story "On the Surface" by Robert J. Sawyer begins with this quote from the Wells original: "I have suspected since that the Morlocks had even partially taken it [the time machine] to pieces while trying in their dim way to grasp its purpose." In the Sawyer story, the Morlocks develop a fleet of time machines and use them to conquer the same far future Wells depicted at the end of the original, by which time, because the sun has grown red and dim and thus no longer blinds them, they can reclaim the surface of the world. The Man Who Loved Morlocks and The Trouble With Weena are two different sequels, the former a novel and the latter a short story, by David J. Lake. Each of them concerns the Time Traveller's return to the future. In the former, he discovers that he cannot enter any period in time he has already visited, forcing him to travel in to the further future, where he finds love with a woman whose race evolved from Morlock stock. In the latter, he is accompanied by Wells, and succeeds in rescuing Weena and bringing her back to the 1890s, where her political ideas cause a peaceful revolution. In Michael Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time series, the Time Traveller is a very minor character, his role consists of being shocked by the decadence of the inhabitants of the End of Time. H.G. Wells also appears briefly in this series when the characters visit Bromley in 1896. The Time Traveller makes a brief appearance in Allan and the Sundered Veil, a back-up story appearing in the first volume of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, where he saves Allan Quatermain, John Carter and Randolph Carter from a horde of Morlocks. The time-traveling hero known as "The Rook" (who appeared in various comics from Warren Publishing) is the grandson of the original Time Traveller. In one story, he met the Time Traveller, and helps him stop the Morlocks from wiping out the Eloi. Philip Jos? Farmer speculated that the Time Traveller was a member of the Wold Newton family. He is said to have been the great-uncle of Doc Savage. In the movie Gremlins, the Time Traveller's machine (the one from the 1960 movie) is briefly glimpsed at an inventor's convention. While a character has a phone conversation in the foreground, the time machine disappears in the background. Burt Libe wrote two sequels: Beyond the Time Machine and Tangles in Time, telling of the Time Traveller finally settling down with Weena in the 33rd century. They have a few children, the youngest of whom is the main character in the second book. In 2006, Monsterwax Trading Cards combined The Time Machine with two of Wells' other stories, The Island of Dr. Moreau and The War of the Worlds. The resulting 102 card trilogy, by Ricardo Garijo , was entitled The Art of H. G. Wells. The continuing narrative links all three stories by way of an unnamed writer mentioned in Wells' first story, to the nephew of Ed Prendick (the narrator of Dr. Moreau), and another unnamed writer (narrator) in The War of the Worlds.
Just to entangle reality and fiction further, H. G. Wells also appears as a character, aboard his own time machine, in the 1979 film Time After Time and the 1990s television series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. He also briefly travels in time with the Doctor in the Doctor Who serial Timelash, the events of which are said to inspire him to write The Time Machine. In Ronald Wright's novel A Scientific Romance, a lonely museum curator on the eve of the millennium discovers a letter written by Wells shortly before his death, foretelling the imminent return of the Time Machine. The curator finds the machine, then uses it to travel into a post-apocalyptic future.
Groundhog Day
Groundhog Day or Groundhog's Day is a traditional holiday celebrated in the United States and Canada on February 2. It was originally a mid-quarter day, midway between the Winter Solstice and the Vernal Equinox. However, before the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar, precession caused the cross-quarter day to drift to a later date. Groundhog day now falls four days before the cross-quarter day.
In traditional weather lore, if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day and fails to see its shadow because the weather is cloudy, winter will soon end. If the groundhog sees its shadow because the weather is bright and clear, it will be frightened and run back into its nest, and the winter will continue for 6 more weeks.
Around the fifth century, the European Celts believed that animals had certain supernatural powers on special days that were half-way between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. Folklore from Europe indicated that when certain animals, such as marmots and bears, came out of their winter dens too early, they were frightened by their shadow and retreated back inside for four to six weeks.
The earliest known American reference to Groundhog Day can be found at the Historical Society of Berks County in Reading, Pennsylvania. The reference was made Feb. 4, 1841 in Morgantown, Berks County, Pennsylvania storekeeper James Morris' diary: "Last Tuesday, the 2nd, was Candlemas day, the day on which, according to the Germans, the Groundhog peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as the weather is to be moderate."
In western countries in the Northern Hemisphere the official first day of Spring is about six weeks after Groundhog Day, on March 20 or 21. About 1,000 years ago, before the adoption of the Gregorian calendar when the date of the equinox drifted in the Julian calendar, the spring equinox fell on March 16 instead. This was exactly six weeks after February 2. Assuming that the equinox marked the first day of spring in certain medieval cultures, as it does now in western countries, Groundhog Day occurred exactly six weeks before spring. Therefore, if the groundhog saw his shadow on Groundhog Day there would be six more weeks of winter. If he didn't, there would be 42 more days of winter. In other words, the Groundhog Day tradition may have begun as a bit of folk humor.
Alternatively, the custom could have been a folk embodiment of the confusion created by the collision of two calendrical systems. Some ancient traditions marked the change of season at cross-quarter days such as Imbolc when daylight first makes significant progress against the night. Other traditions held that Spring did not begin until the length of daylight overtook night at the Vernal Equinox. So an arbiter, the groundhog / hedgehog, was incorporated as a yearly custom to settle the two traditions. Sometimes Spring begins at Imbolc, and sometimes Winter lasts 6 more weeks until the Equinox.
As stated earlier, a shadow of Punxsutawney Phil means six more weeks of winter and no shadow means spring is around the corner. Groundhog Day proponents state that the rodents' forecasts are accurate 75% to 90%. A Canadian study for 13 cities in the past 30 to 40 years puts success rate level at 37%. Also, the National Climatic Data Center reportedly has stated that the overall predictions accuracy rate is around 39%. Random chance at a correct guess would be about 50%
At the end of Disney's 1930 Silly Symphony Winter, a Mr. Groundhog the Weather Prophet comes out of his hole to determine whether or not there will be more winter. At first, he does not see his shadow, but the clouds clear and his shadow appears, causing him to run back inside. At this point, the winds picks up again and winter continues. In the 1979 Rankin-Bass Christmas TV special Jack Frost, a crucial plot point in the story involves Jack casting his own shadow on Groundhog Day for six more weeks of winter. At the end of the story it is revealed that the narrator (voiced by Buddy Hackett) is the groundhog.
The 1993 comedy movie Groundhog Day takes place in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania on this day (although the majority of the movie was actually filmed in Woodstock, Illinois). The main character (played by Bill Murray) is forced to relive the day over and over again until he can learn to give up his selfishness and become a better person. The movie consistently rates among the IMDB's Top 250 movies as voted by users.
Also in the As Told By Ginger episode "Next Question" Carl and Hoodsey liberate the towns Groundhog so they could sell scarfs remembering their Groundhog,Pete.When the matter is investigated,a monkey Mr.Licorice is in the hole,and people think that he ate Pete.
On January 9 2006, the Pennsylvania Tourism Office presented installments of the Groundhog 202 film series, a Groundhog Day promotion that played off The Shining. The film shows what happens when the groundhog, stuck inside for 364 days, goes mad with cabin fever. On January 11 2007, the Pennsylvania Tourism Office presented installments of the Groundhog Crossing film series, a Groundhog Day promotion that depicted the departure of the Shadow from his friend the Groundhog in an attempt to stop the cycle of winter predictions.
In Germany the 27th of June is "Siebenschl?fertag" (Seven Sleepers Day). If it rains that day, the rest of summer is supposedly going to be rainy. While it might seem it refers to the "Siebenschl?fer" squirrel (Glis Glis), it actually commemorates the Seven Sleepers (the actual commemoration day is July 25).
Einsteins Dreams
The novel fictionalizes Albert Einstein as a young scientist troubled by dreams as he works on his theory of relativity in 1905. The book consists of 30 chapters, each exploring one dream about time Einstein has during this time. The framework of the book consists of a prelude, three interludes, and epilogue. Einstein's friend, Michele Besso, appears in these sections.
Each dream involves a non-traditional conception of time. Such scenarios may involve exaggerations of true phenomena related to relativity, or may be entirely fantastical.
An example of the former is created when characters enter a world where time flows more slowly the farther one moves from the Earth's surface. This is in fact true; a clock at the top of a building will tick more slowly than one at the bottom of a building because it is farther from the Earth's rotational axis and is thus moving faster. However, in reality, this effect is vanishingly insignificant and must be measured with extremely accurate chronometers. In Einstein's Dreams, the effect is significant enough to prompt the construction of houses on stilts, to slow the aging of their occupants.
Einstein's Dreams was an international bestseller and has been translated into thirty languages. It was runner up for the 1994 PEN New England / Boston Globe Winship Award. Einstein's Dreams was also the March 1998 selection for National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" Book Club. The novel has been used in numerous colleges and universities, in many cases for university-wide adoptions in "common-book" programs. An off-off-Broadway adaptation of the novel ran briefly in 2003.
Timequake
Timequake is a semi-autobiographical work by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. published in 1997. Vonnegut describes the novel as a "stew", in which he alternates between summarizing a novel he had been struggling with for a number of years, and waxing nostalgic about various events in his life.
Vonnegut uses the premise of a timequake (or repetition of actions) in which there is no free will. The idea of determinism is explored -- as it is in many of his previous works -- to assert that people really have no free will. Kilgore Trout serves again as the main character. Vonnegut explains in the beginning of the book that he was not satisfied with the original version of Timequake he wrote (or Timequake One). So, he took parts of Timequake One and combined it with personal thoughts and anecdotes to make the finished product, so-called Timequake Two. Many of the anecdotes deal with Vonnegut's family, the death of loved ones, and people's last words.
The plot, while centered on Trout, is also a sort of ramble in which Vonnegut goes off on complete tangents to the plot and comes back dozens of pages later: the Timequake has thrust citizens of the year 2001 back in time to 1991 to repeat every action they undertook during that time.
Most of the small stories in the book center around the depression and sadness wrought by watching oneself make bad choices: people watch their parents die again, drive drunk or cause accidents that severely injure others. At the end of the timequake, when people resume control, they are depressed and gripped by ennui. Only Kilgore Trout has it together enough to call people to action.
In the conclusion of this book, Vonnegut (who has inserted himself into the text, something he also did in Breakfast of Champions) meets other authors for a celebration of Trout.
Kate and Leopold
Kate & Leopold is a 2001 romantic comedy motion picture that tells a story of a Duke who time travels from 1876 to the present and falls in love with a career woman in New York.
The film is directed by James Mangold and stars Meg Ryan, Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber. The DVD edition contains two versions of the film: one, the original theatrical release, runs for 118 minutes while the director's cut version runs for 122. One scene in the director's cut shows Ryan's character in a test screening for a new movie and also features a cameo by Mangold.
In 1876, Leopold Alexis Elijah Walker Gareth Thomas Mountbatten, Duke of Albany and inventor of the elevator, is a stifled man and dreamer, like his contemporaries Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. Strict Uncle Millard has no patience for Leopold's delusions of grandeur and disrespect for the monarchy, chastising him and telling him he must marry a rich American, as the Mountbatten family finances are depleted. His uncle has told him that on his "thirtieth birthday he had become a blemish to the family name".
In the meantime, the puzzled Duke finds Stuart Besser, an amateur physicist (and descendant of Leopold, according to deleted scenes) perusing through his schematic diagrams and taking photographs of them. He had seen him only earlier while listening to Roebling's speech about the Brooklyn Bridge. Leopold follows Stuart and tries to save him from what he thinks is a suicide, falling after him into the portal that brought the man there in the first place.
Leopold awakens in 21st century New York. (Consequently, all elevators malfunction.) He is at first confused and, thinking that he has been kidnapped, he immediately takes a strident and defensive stance against Stuart. Stuart describes to him that he has created formulae to forecast portals in the temporal universe and that Leopold must stay inside his apartment until the portal opens again a week later; he is "held in the time-after". As Stuart takes his dog out, he is injured by falling into the elevator shaft, and is eventually institutionalized for speaking about his scientific discovery.
Leopold is intrigued by the cynical and ambitious Kate McKay, Stuart's ex-girlfriend, who comes to the apartment for her Palm Pilot pointer. He observes that she is a "career woman" and states that he once dated a librarian from Sussex. Kate rudely dismisses him and sends him out into the city, demanding that he take Stuart's dog for a walk. Leopold is overwhelmed to see that Roebling's bridge is still standing. Back at the apartment, he befriends Charlie, Kate's brother and an unemployed actor, who believes him to be an actor as well, steadfast to his character.
The pressured Kate, who has been diligently working toward a promotion, enlists Leopold into a commercial for her job. He then ruins her dinner date with her boss. However, Leopold's eloquent apology brings them together. The two become romantically involved, as they dine and tour New York.
Leopold cannot see how she would have him endorse a flawed item without qualms, and declares that "when someone is involved in something entirely without merit, one withdraws". Similar to his uncle, Kate says that sometimes one has to do things they don't want to. He chides her about integrity. She retorts, "I don't have time for pious speeches from two hundred year old men who have not worked a day in their life".
When Kate receives the desired promotion, she must choose between the current time and job or the 19th century with Leopold, as Stuart, who has escaped from the mental hospital with some help, and Charlie arrive in time to the banquet to show Kate pictures of her in 1876. Stuart says that he had thought he disrupted the spacetime continuum, but actually "the whole thing is a beautiful 4-D pretzel of kismetic inevitability".
Leopold is a duke, but he has "never much felt like one". He is sophisticated, believing a meal to be "the result of reflection and study", with menus prepared in advance and entire courses served. Leopold has even seen the basement of the Louvre. He was trained in the art of weaponry by the Palace Guard, and taught to ride at the King's Academy. "Life is not solely comprised of tasks, but tastes", says Leopold. He is a man of honor and takes pride in his creations. Highly intelligent, the scientist improves modern conveniences he encounters.
Leopold has the same name and title as Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, the youngest son of Queen Victoria. In April 1876, at the time of the beginning of the film, Prince Leopold was a 23-year-old student at Christ Church, Oxford. In the film, the Leopold character is at least 30 years old. Although Mountbatten the family name of the fictional Leopold is the surname of a cadet branch of the British Royal Family, the name "Mountbatten" was not adopted until 1917, due to anti-German sentiment in Great Britain during World War I. (The original form of the name was Battenberg.)
In April 1876, at the beginning of the film, Leopold is listening to a speech by, supposedly, Roebling. (In reality, Roebling died in 1869.) Even if this was meant to be his son, Washington A. Roebling, chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge, he too never visited the site after 1872, owing to his struggle with caisson disease.
Leopold lists Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, among others, who were not famous in 1876. For instance, it was not until 1877 that Edison invented the phonograph which earned him his fame.
There is a scene where Leopold, Charlie and Hector are singing "I Am the Very Model of a Model Major-General", from the Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Pirates of Penzance, which had its United States' premi?re in New York on December 31, 1879, whereas Leopold claimed that he had attended the premi?re of "The Pirates of Penzance" the previous month (in March 1876). Leopold also got the story of the opera wrong. A similar scene involving a discussion of La Boh?me would likewise be impossible, as Giacomo Puccini's version of the opera debuted in 1896 and Ruggiero Leoncavallo's in 1897 (there is a chance that Leopold might have seen a television production of La Boh?me. Leopold never said that he saw the opera 'live' and we know that he watched television on Stuart's television set). In the italian version of the movie, the charaters talk about Giuseppe Verdi's "la Traviata", that had premiere in 1850's, so fits better with the story.
Stuart was desperate to make sure that Leopold returned to his own time, not out of concern for the invention of elevators, but because Leopold was his great-great-grandfather (and because Stuart would cease to exist if Leopold did not return to his own time due to the grandfather paradox). This situation was de-emphasised in the theatrical release since Stuart's ex-girlfriend Kate proves to be his great-great-grandmother. A deleted scene in the 'out-takes' on the DVD release shows this point dawning on Kate and Stuart in the back of a taxi.
Kate's dress changes in the last scene. When she lands in 1876, it suddenly has some trim around the neckline and a train, bringing it closer to the dresses worn by women of the time. This was, however, done intentionally, as stated on the special featurettes of the DVD.
When Leopold wakes up in Stuart's apartment, he says Stuart "could be Jack the Ripper for all I know", however since Leopold is from 1876 he couldn't know about Jack the Ripper, who didn't begin his crime spree until the late 1880's.
Millennium
Millennium is a grim, suspenseful American television series, produced by Chris Carter (creator of The X-Files), and set during the years leading up to the dawn of the new millennium. The series was produced in Vancouver, Canada and aired from 1996 to 1999 on the Fox Network.
Experienced genre actor Lance Henriksen starred in the series as investigator Frank Black, a freelance forensic profiler and former FBI agent with a unique ability to see the world through the eyes of serial killers and murderers, though he was not psychic. Black investigated the most horrific crimes and dealt with the mysterious Millennium Group, whose power and sinister intentions become more clear throughout the series. Black's character may have been inspired by the stories of real life FBI agents and criminal profilers such as John E. Douglas, the one-time head of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit. While the series started out as a crime investigation series, it became more and more supernatural, like The X-Files, with which it later had a crossover episode.
The series was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, though most episodes were set in or around Seattle, Washington.
Chris Carter originally conceived Millennium as a series that would present a more mature view of the world from the perspective of a law enforcement officer than was offered in its companion series, The X-Files. To this end, the character of Frank Black was to be portrayed by an actor older than David Duchovny, who played Agent Mulder, a main character in The X-Files. Carter wrote the role for Lance Henriksen and pushed studio executives at 20th Century Fox to approve Henriksen's casting. Carter also pursued Henriksen personally and finally persuaded the actor to take the role of Frank Black by leaving a copy of the pilot script outside the door of his hotel room. Henriksen signed up based on the strength of the writing.
Carter pitched Millennium to Fox as "Seven in Seattle." The setting of a dark, rain-soaked city and a world-weary detective's hunt for a religiously-inspired serial killer have clear parallels with the pilot episode. The pilot served to introduce the Black family, consisting of Frank, wife Catherine (Megan Gallagher) and daughter Jordan (Brittany Tiplady). The family was depicted returning to Seattle where Frank was born and raised because Frank wanted to protect his family from the evil with which his job as a criminal profiler with the FBI brought him in to daily contact. The end of the episode saw Frank receiving a series of Polaroid photographs of his wife and daughter in an envelope with no return address, setting up a stalking thread that would be resolved in the second season. It is often misconstrued that Frank is "psychic", but Chris Carter has reiterated in commentaries on the Millennium Season One DVD that Frank simply had "a gift", which Frank also stated was "a curse." Nonetheless, his daughter Jordan later turned out to have inherited her father's "gift", suggesting that Frank's abilities are not entirely derived from the knowledge and experience he gained from his work as an FBI profiler. In the pilot, Frank has accurate flashes of a murder from simply viewing the victim's corpse zipped inside a bodybag, visions which could not possibly be attributed to a typical profiler's talent. Like Mulder, Frank frequently "just knew".
Mike Atkins (played by Robin Gammell) was responsible for Frank's initial introduction to The Millennium Group, with the promise of helping Frank understand his gift. Frank's mentor is Peter Watts, played by Terry O'Quinn. The Group was depicted in this and other first-season episodes as being an association of former law-enforcement professionals who were called in to consult on crimes by other law-enforcement agencies. The Group recognised that Frank had a unique gift for profiling, as he was able to see into the minds of the perpetrators and deduce motive and psychological make-up based on crime scene evidence. Frank's gift was presented on-screen as a series of rough-cut cine-film inserts shot from the perpetrator's point-of-view. When Frank began to understand the mind of the perpetrator, he also began to see the world as if through the killer's eyes. The debate about whether Frank was actually seeing these visions or if they were merely a storytelling device used by the show's producers to depict Frank's thought processes was resolved in the second season when Frank confirmed that he does, in fact, see the visions. This was later carried on with a storyline involving Jordan Black, who was also able to see visions, showing that Frank's gift had been inherited by his daughter, and that he himself had actually inherited the ability from his mother. Frank's wife and daughter, Catherine and Jordan Black (Megan Gallagher and Brittany Tiplady)
In contrast, the Group was presented as a complex, multi-faceted entity during the second season. Carter had left day-to-day production of the series in the hands of Glen Morgan and James Wong, a writing/producing team who had previously worked with Carter on The X-Files and co-created the short-lived series Space: Above and Beyond. Morgan and Wong essentially took the underlying religious themes of the first season and made them explicit in the origin and nature of the Group, which was revealed to be divided into two opposing factions, the Owls and the Roosters. The Owls believed in a secular Millennium where mankind could be guided through the potential disasters of the year 2000 and prepared for an astronomical event that was due to occur in the 2060s. Conversely, the Roosters believed in the Biblical "End Times" foretold in the Revelation of St. John the Divine. They believed that mankind could not avoid the destruction that was foretold at the dawn of the new Millennium. Instead, they sought to control the destruction through the release of a modified Marburg virus to which they had an antidote that was given only to select members. The Roosters' plan was to negotiate themselves into a position of control and influence through the status of their members, as well as the acquisition of knowledge and religious artifacts such as a piece of the True Cross and the Hand of Saint Sebastian. The motives of Frank's patron in the organization, Peter Watts, were called into question when it was revealed that Watts had received protection for his family from the viral contagion, but had not moved to protect Catherine and Jordan Black from the plague.
The final season showed Frank returning to Washington and to profiling work at the FBI. Frank is joined by a young, female partner, Emma Hollis. The Millennium Group is shown at a distance as Frank is alienated from Peter Watts. The episode "Skull and Bones" depicted a mass grave in the path of a new freeway that contained the bodies of former members of the Group. Later in the season, in the episode "Seven and One", the demonic entity fans have dubbed Legion assumes the form of one of the Group's security men. The implication is that the Group have become corrupted by the very evil it was intended to fight against. Despite Frank's warnings and the evidence of her own eyes, Emma makes a commitment at a moment of personal weakness that sees her isolated from all non-Group assistance and Frank is last seen escaping from Washington having taken Jordan from school.
Episode 4 of Season 7 of The X-Files, entitled "Millennium," sees Lance Henriksen and Brittany Tiplady (in a cameo appearance) reprise their roles as Frank and Jordan alongside Mulder and Scully in a tale of necromancy and zombification of former Millennium Group members on the cusp of 1999/2000. This episode pulled the "Millennium" saga to a close, though many fans have been critical of it, claiming that it lacked substance due to all the series' plots being brought to an end in just one episode.