If you had the means to travel in time, where would you go? The past, or the future? For so long, filmmakers have wondered this same question, with more time travel movies than you can count. At least some of them happen to be - ahem, timeless classics.
While time travel has existed in the human imagination for centuri🌠es, with examples found in Hindu and Islamic mythologies, our modern understanding of time travel begins with early science fiction tales. Stories like T🐬he Year 2440 by French author Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, and The Time Machine by H.G. Wells are some of the earliest and most popular uses of time travel in sci-fi.
It should be no surprise that as soon as humans invented moving pictures, time travel became a recurring genre. (This is not to be confused with time loop movies,🌌 in which stories involve a set and finite time frame that "loop" back and start all over again.) Whether it's to prevent catastrophes or just fall in love, filmmakers have obsessed over time travel as a story device to explore what it really means to be human. With s♛o many time travel movies to choose from, here are 32 of the greatest time travel movies ever made.
32. The Time Machine (1960)
It should be no surprise that the first feature film adaptation of H.G. Wells' seminal science fiction novella The Time Machine also qualifies as one of the best time travel movies ever made. Rod Taylor stars as a scientist inventor, also named "H. George Wells," whose invention of a time machine flings him to Earth's distant future where he sees mankind split between peaceful, gentle Eloi and the predatory Morlocks who feed on them. Though its primitive effects may be hard on modern eyes, George Pal's movie splits the difference between pulp slop and old-sc൩hool magnificence.
31. Timecop (1994)
It's not saying much that Timecop, an adaptation of comic strips published by Dark Horse, is one of the best movies starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. But JCVD is in top form in Peter Hyams' corny '90s gem. Van Damme stars as a police officer in the Time Enforcement Commission who must stop a corrupt politician (played by Ron Silver) from influencing the past for personal gain. Although Timecop's comic book-y premise and wham-bam filmmaking renders it indistinguishable from other Van Damme fl🐽icks, ❀it also happens to feature one of Van Damme's finest performances.
30. The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)
Based on Audrey Niffenegger's hit debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife stars Rachel McAdams as the wife of a Chicago librarian (Eric Bana) who suffers from a genetic disorder that causes him to spontaneously travel through time, making a stable life in the present d🃏ifficult to maintain. Written by Niffenegger as an elaborate metaphor on her failed relationships, the sentimental and sappy movie version - from director Robert Schwentke - efficiently captures that painful desire to stay still in a life that pulls us apart.
29. Déjà Vu (2006)
In their third collaboration together, actor Denzel Washington and director Tony Scott teamed up for the time travel thriller Déjà Vu. Washington plays a special agent who goes back in time to prevent a terrorist attack in New Orleans. While doing so, he falls in love with a beautiful victim (Paula Patton) and becomes determined to save her. While Déjà Vu isn't the best movie by Scott nor even the best from Scott and Washington's creative tag-teaming, it's still a gritty action thriller wit🅺h a novel science fiction bent.
25. Midnight in Paris (2011)
Leave it to Woody Allen to create a time travel movie that isn't about aliens or A.I., but hanging out with famous literary icons. Owen Wilson stars as a dissatisfied screenwriter who, while on a trip to Paris with his fiance (Rachel McAdams), finds himself able to travel to 1920s Paris, meeting the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and befriending Ernest Hemingway. After a long period of movies that failed to live up to his established reputation, Allen enjoyed a brief career resurgence with his critically acclaimed Midnight in Paris, a jovial gem (with an excellent Corey Stoll as Hemingway) that romanticizeᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚs Paris regardless of whatever era you're seeing it.
23. When We First Met (2018)
After falling in love at a Halloween party in 2014, lovestruck Noah (Adam Devine) uses a magical photo booth to relive the night he met the gorgeous and funny Avery (Alexandra Daddario), who only sees Noah as a friend. While Noah tries to relive and redo that ൲night all over again, he quickly finds out that love is sometimes set in stone. Though Ari Sandel's sugary rom-com for Netflix may leave some audiences in the fri🐭end zone, for anyone familiar with the pangs of unrequited feelings, When We First Met is a breeze of a movie that can help us figure out why things happen for a reason - or for no reason at all.
