Trailer
Plot summary
In 1899, Dr. Alexander Hartdegen teaches at Columbia University in New York, where he prefers pure research to the business career his friend David Philby has chosen. A personal tragedy turns his work toward changing the past, and he finishes a time machine of his own design. He travels back to 1899 to prevent the death, but the same fate finds another way. Seeking a scientific answer, he moves forward to 2030, then to 2037, when the Moon's destruction by lunar colonists is making Earth unlivable. Debris knocks him unconscious, and he wakes on a healed Earth 800,000 years later, among people living in a Stone Age way, where a woman named Mara nurses him back to health.
Cast
- John W. Momrowas Fifth Avenue Carriage Driver
- Jeffrey M. Meyeras Central Park Carriage Driver
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Time Machine (2002)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Brad Silberling took over the project but left over creative differences, and Simon Wells, who had been directing animated films for Spielberg since An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, wanted to get into live-action and went to Jeffrey Katzenberg saying he really ought to be directing this one because of the name.
- Director Gore Verbinski was brought in to take over the last 18 days of shooting, as Wells was suffering from extreme exhaustion, and Wells returned for post-production.
- A scene was removed from the Moon destruction sequence showing pieces of the Moon crashing into buildings in New York, because it looked too similar visually to the September 11 attacks.
- For some of the lighting effects used for the digital time bubble around the time machine, ILM developed an extended-range color format which they named rgbe, for red, green, blue and an exponent channel.
- Guy Pearce told The Sydney Morning Herald that the shoot was a gruelling test of patience and nerves, and admitted he is not at all happy with what he did in it, recalling producers asking him what he was doing and saying they did not like it.
