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The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.
For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for The Time Machine can be found here.
Yes. The Time Machine is an 1875 novella by English science fiction writer H.G. Wells [1866-1946]. The novel was adapted for the screen by screenwriter David Duncan. A remake, The Time Machine, came out in 2002.
He didn't. In the book, the principal character was referred to simply as "The Time Traveler." For the movie, the name of the principal character was changed to H. George Wells.
The story begins on January 4, 1900, as friends of H. George Wells (Rod Taylor) gather at his house for dinner. As George later moves through time, he makes stops in 1917 where he meets James Filby (Alan Young), the son of his good friend David Filby (Alan Young). Another stop in 1940 puts him in the wake of WW2. At a third stop in 1966, he finds everyone scurrying underground for shelter against an atomic bomb. To escape being incinerated, George thrusts his machine into the future. Next stop: the year 802,701.
Wells dealt with that in his novel. He wrote: The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long as I travelled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered; I was, so to speak, attenuated--was slipping like a vapour through the interstices of intervening substances! But to come to a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule by molecule, into whatever lay in my way; meant bringing my atoms into such intimate contact with those of the obstacle that a profound chemical reaction--possibly a far-reaching explosion--would result, and blow myself and my apparatus out of all possible dimensions--into the Unknown. This possibility had occurred to me again and again while I was making the machine; but then I had cheerfully accepted it as an unavoidable risk--one of the risks a man has got to take! Now the risk was inevitable, I no longer saw it in the same cheerful light. The fact is that, insensibly, the absolute strangeness of everything, the sickly jarring and swaying of the machine, above all, the feeling of prolonged falling, had absolutely upset my nerve. I told myself that I could never stop, and with a gust of petulance I resolved to stop forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I lugged over the lever, and incontinently the thing went reeling over, and I was flung headlong through the air.
The talking rings explain how, following a long war between "the East" and "the West", the surface of the planet was virtually decimated, forcing the survivors to move underground. Eventually, some of them chose to live on the surface again, evolving into the Eloi. Those who remained underground became the Morlocks. In Wells' book, however, the Eloi are the descendants of the wealthy, leisured class while the Morlocks descended from members of the working class.
Quite different from in the movie. In the book, the Eloi are short, pale, hairless, and almost genderless. The Morlocks are albino and spiderlike. Some viewers have suggested that director George Pál chose to make the Eloi tall, thin, and blond because of the prevailing concept in the mid1900s of the Aryans as being the superior human. Others have suggested Pál chose that look because of the prevailing stereotype that blonds are not very intelligent. Still others have commented that, perhaps in the eyes of the Morlocks, blonds simply taste better. None of these presumptions have been confirmed or denied by George Pál [1908-1980].
Yvette Mimieux (Weena) was 17 when the movie was filmed. Her "look" was supposed to coincide with a girl just entering adulthood. How old the character Weena was supposed to be in Eloi years was never addressed in either the book or the movie.
The reason there are no elderly Eloi is pretty much explained in the movie. They are culled from the "herd" when they reach their prime, i.e., late teens and 20s, and eaten by the Morlocks.There do appear to be younger Eloi. For example, in the scene where Weena is taken into the Morlock sphinx by the air raid siren, a young boy and a young girl can be seen walking along with Weena.
The reproduction of baby Eloi is not addressed. Most viewers assume that Eloi reproduction, like everything else, is controlled by the Morlocks. Four possibilities have been suggested: (1) The Eloi reproduce normally, but their babies are raised in communes where the more responsible adult Eloi take care of them, (2) some of the Eloi taken below in the air raids are breeding stock; they are made to reproduce, the babies are cared for by the Morlocks, and the children are released when they become old enough to join the herd aboveground, (3) replacement Eloi are cloned by the Morlocks, and (4) the life cycle of the Eloi has evolved to the point where their children grow and mature in a vastly reduced amount of time. Of the four possibilities, (2) is the most probable, as indicated by George when he sees the underground boneyard and says: The Eloi were being bred by the Morlocks, who had degenerated into the lowest form of human -- cannibalism.
George says goodbye to David, who leaves the house. The time machine can then be heard whirling (off screen). David comes back in and bangs on the door to the lab, gets it open just in time to see that there are tracks between the lab and the garden. The housekeeper follows him, and David explains that George had to move the time machine from the outside back into the laboratory so that, when he returned to the future, he wouldn't be on the inside of the sphinx anymore. The housekeeper notices that three books are missing. She wonders which books George might have taken, to which David replies, "Which three books would you have taken?" She then wonders whether George will ever return, to which David replies, "One cannot choose but wonder. You see, he has all the time in the world." The film ends with David leaving the house and the housekeeper turning off the lights as the snow falls.
The three books were not named in the film, and they were not a part of Wells' original story in which the items that George took back with him included a knapsack and a camera. Interestingly, that same question has been posed to millions of students over the years, asking them, "If you were to be marooned on an island or to be sent to the future, what three books (or items) would you take with you?"
That's the assumption made by most viewers of the movie and readers of the book. In truth, we don't know that George returned to Weena, only that he returned to the future, perhaps in an attempt to change it or, at least, to educate the Eloi and help them learn self-sufficiency.
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