Who or what won an Oscar for the movie “The Time Machine”?
Heck, anyone can go a few decades into the future like James Mangold’s Leopold Mountbatten or some years into the past like Gregory Hoblit’s John Sullivan. But try moving forward some 800,000 years! You probably think you won’t need sunscreen when you arrive, but when Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce) in Simon Wells’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’ masterpiece, “The Time Machine,” steps out of his eponymous contraption, he sees what at first looks like a prelapsarian civilization with an Eve-like woman, Mara (Samantha Mumba) and her little brother, Kalen (Omero Mumba). So far as we know, Wells himself never used a time machine so he could not have known about the Enron scandal when he wrote his slim novel in 1894, but in composing his tract he was determined to show his reservations about capitalism in England. Just as the danger of nuclear extinction was the big worry during the 1960s when school children were told to protect themselves by crawling under their desks, the dangers of class wa
While the 1960 version of the story won an Oscar for special effects, we’re now past the age of wonder, are drenched in movie technology, and see nothing here to capture the imagination in that regard. The most that can be said is that Wells restrains himself so that the machine and the civilization of 800,000 + is almost believable. Especially neat is Hartdegen’s slow climb into the year 2030 as building in New York quickly rise instead of falling, but once the Morlocks go on the attack with their chimpanzee-like springing and their fearsome growls, we’re tripping in ho-hum territory. H.G. Wells meant the Morlocks to represent the lower classes in England as they had evolved, regressively, many millenia hence. Taking umbrage at being kept down by the sun- drenched Eloi, they take revenge on their class masters in a futuristic version of Jean-Pierre Denis’s “Murderous Maids” or Jean Genet’s “The Maids.” No such import here. While the civilization encountered by Hartdegen at first looks
‘The Time Machine’ (1960) starred Rod Taylor, who earned an Oscar for the role. It is a “H.G. Wells story of a scientist (Rod Taylor) who travels waaaaay into the future. The special effects won an Oscar.” Sources: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/television/2009802273_tvbriefs04.
While the 1960 version of the story won an Oscar for special effects, we’re now past the age of wonder, are drenched in movie technology, and see nothing here to capture the imagination in that regard. The most that can be said is that Wells restrains himself so that the machine and the civilization of 800,000 + is almost believable. Especially neat is Hartdegen’s slow climb into the year 2030 as building in New York quickly rise instead of falling, but once the Morlocks go on the attack with their chimpanzee-like springing and their fearsome growls, we’re tripping in ho-hum territory. H.G. Wells meant the Morlocks to represent the lower classes in England as they had evolved, regressively, many millenia hence. Taking umbrage at being kept down by the sun- drenched Eloi, they take revenge on their class masters in a futuristic version of Jean-Pierre Denis’s “Murderous Maids” or Jean Genet’s “The Maids.” No such import here. While the civilization encountered by Hartdegen at first looks
