THE TIME MACHINE BY HG WELLS BOOK TO MOVIE REVIEWS AND COMPARISONS! Book: I thoroughly enjoyed re

THE TIME MACHINE BY HG WELLS

BOOK TO MOVIE REVIEWS AND COMPARISONS!

Book:

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Time Machine by HG Wells. It was very reminiscent of most classic novels I have read. I however had to continually remind myself that this novel is the literature that inspired so many other time travel pieces of work. It was easy to think that this novel was like another time travel novel or movie like Back to the Future when it was in fact the other way around. H.G Wells as an author is known for his science fiction tales, like Journey to the Centre of the Earth and The Invisible Man among many others. I could see how someone reading this in the year 1895 would find it so revolutionary. That being said I can appreciate the history and inspirations that occurred from this novel. Being someone, however born literally 100 years after the publication of this piece I personally found it slow and boring compared to the time travel literature written today with such in depth plot lines and complexity. The main character was dull and the story when the time traveller goes into the future didn’t seem thrilling or suspenseful. The main character was calculating and seemed detached from his own story. I really don’t mean to put this down as a classic. It was an easy read and I can sympathize with people who love this book a lot. Overall I gave it a 3.5/5 stars and would recommend it to someone looking to expand their reading to classics and/or science fiction.

Movie: (1960)
The movie starts with the second dinner in George’s home, the one where he has returned from his travels to tell his friends the story. Then we flashback to the first dinner where they are chatting about the 2nd, 3rd and 4th dimensions. George shows his model of the time machine and sends it forward. Once his comrades leave, he decides to leave on his time machine that night. He leaves on December 31 1899. In the novel he observes from his time machine what passes on around him but does not leave the machine until he reaches the year 802701. In the movie however he stops first in 1917, 1940 and 1966 he witnesses WW1 and 2 and in 1966 there is a huge bomb and volcanic eruption. I’m assuming they added these important events in to show the ‘fall’ of humans as we know them. The novel being written in 1895, wouldn’t have included actual events like WW1 and 2 because they hadn’t happened yet. Once he stops in the time where the story takes place it goes by very quickly in the novel he spends 8 days in 802701 and in the movie he seems to only be there a day and a half. The Eloi who are described as being small humanoid pale hairless beings, look like any other human in the movie and they speak English, when they are supposed to have their own language. George is rather frustrated with them because they have no interest in learning or their history. There is an insta-love interest in Weena who I imagined as more of a child in the book. Right away we find out that the Morlocks are the Eloi’s keepers, Weena says “They give us the food we eat and the Clothes we wear”.
There are these talking rings that explain how the separate species started in what I think was supposed to be the porcelain museum. Soon these sirens that sound like bomb sirens go off and all the Eloi flock to the Sphinx where some are taken to be eaten. George saves the Eloi and tries to get them to fight back. He destroys the Morlocks underworld and finds his time machine. It’s a trap the Morlocks attack and he escapes. In the novel he goes forward and observes the end of time, but in the movie he goes right back, tells his story and then returns to the Eloi. I don’t think book George would’ve gone back because he never destroyed the Morlock and Weena dies.

I would give the movie 2/5 stars.