The Time Machine (2002 Movie) - Plot

Plot

In the year 1899, Dr. Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce) is a young inventor teaching at Columbia University in New York City. Unlike his conservative friend David Philby (Mark Addy), Alexander would rather do pure research than work in the world of business. After his sweetheart Emma is killed by a mugger, he devotes himself to building a time machine in order to save her. When the machine is completed four years later, he travels back to 1899 and prevents her murder, only to see her killed by a horse and buggy.

Alexander goes to 2030 to find out whether Emma's life can be saved. At the New York Public Library, a holographic librarian called Vox 114 insists that time travel is impossible, so Alexander continues into the future until 2037, when the accidental destruction of the moon by space colonists renders the Earth virtually uninhabitable. When he restarts the time machine to avoid falling debris, he is knocked unconscious and travels to the year 802,701 before waking up and stopping the machine. At this point in time, the human race has reverted to a primitive lifestyle. Some survivors, called "Eloi", live on the sides of cliffs of what was once Manhattan. Alexander is nursed back to health by a woman named Mara, one of the few Eloi who speak English. One night, Alexander and Mara's young brother, Kalen, dream of a frightening, jagged-toothed face, and the next day, the Eloi are attacked and Mara is dragged underground by ape-like monsters called "Morlocks" that hunt the Eloi for food. In order to rescue her, Kalen leads Alexander to Vox 114, which is still functioning.

After learning from Vox how to find the Morlocks, Alexander enters their underground realm through an opening that resembles the face in his nightmare, but he is captured and thrown into an area where Mara sits in a cage. There he meets an intelligent, humanoid Über-Morlock, who explains that Morlocks are the evolutionary descendants of the humans who stayed underground after the Moon broke apart, while the Eloi are evolved from those who remained on the surface. Über-Morlocks are a caste of telepaths, who rule the monsters that prey on the Eloi. The Über-Morlock explains that Alexander cannot alter Emma's fate because her death is what drove him to build the time machine in the first place: saving her would create a temporal paradox. Alexander gets into the machine, which the Morlocks have brought underground, and prepares to return home, but he suddenly pulls the Über-Morlock into the machine, which carries them into the future as they fight. The Über-Morlock dies by rapidly aging when Alexander pushes him outside of the machine's sphere of influence. Alexander then stops in the year 635,427,810, revealing a harsh, rust-colored sky over a wasteland of Morlock caves.

Finally accepting that he cannot save Emma, Alexander travels back to rescue Mara. After freeing her, he starts the time machine and jams its gears, creating a violent distortion in time. Alexander and Mara escape to the surface as a huge explosion kills the Morlocks and destroys their caves. Alexander begins a new life with Mara and the Eloi in 802,701. The film ends with two scenes in the same location displayed in parallel: while Alexander shows Mara and Kalen a field that was once his home, Philby and Alexander's housekeeper, Mrs. Watchit, sadly discuss his absence. Before leaving Alexander's lab, Mrs. Watchit says, "Godspeed, my fine lad. Godspeed."