DEF REC: Top Three Time Traveling Techniques

 The best movie method to go back in time

If I could turn back time, I’d do it in the most over the top, outrageous, and simply impossible way I could imagine.

For this Top Three list about out of this world movie methods of time travel, I bounced across multiple cinematic timelines to determine the best chrono-crazy vehicles, objects, police boxes, and superpowers. The Rule of Cool is doing some heavy lifting here as even the most “realistic” films about going backward or forward through time are still far fetched. I don’t want to immediately be a downer but despite my enthusiasm about the prospect, I’m fairly certain it’s simply not possible to travel through time. At least going back, that is - moving at ridiculous speeds can thrust you years past your contemporaries, but even if you achieved this, it’s a one-way trip. Cryo-sleep or extended comas are dangerously unreliable. Space travel will get you some time dilation, if that’s what you’re into. Even a theoretical wormhole isn’t exactly something I’d trust. Physics may have laws, but our imaginations aren’t bound to any rules, so let’s have some fun visiting dinosaurs or seeing what the world is like generations from now. Both settings could have dinosaurs.

The years-spanning methodologies and technologies featured in this list are based mostly on the techniques themselves. The “rules” aren’t necessarily the focus, nor are the repercussions. Timey wimey stuff is convoluted as it is, so my area of attention here is how awesomely amazing - or absurd - a craft, ability, or style is. For example, the device used in Looper (2012) was as good as any clunky, wire-laden metal ball you’d find in sci-fi. The gimmick of a person having a limb or something fade away in real time because of something that happened in “their” past? I’m out of the loop on that one. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) shared similar logic when the rocker heroes decided their future selves would create something useful for them and send it back to them at the time they needed it. Not entirely outside the realm of possibility, I guess, but ludicrous enough to knowingly be played for laughs. Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) outscore Young Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Old Joe (Bruce Willis) here due to the Wyld Stallions’ fabulous phone booth being most triumphant and way cooler than the Looper orb thing.

Honorable mentions: Primer (2004), The Time Machine (2002), Doctor Who (1963-???), A Sound of Thunder (2005), Timecop (1994), Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

Not so honorable mention: The Butterfly Effect (2004)

Okay, so there’s one more detail I’m taking into consideration about what time travel movie I’ll allow on this list - sorry, Terminator fans, but clothing is required when traversing the time-waves. This is a clean blog!

I’ll break down the Top Three Time Travel Techniques. And then I’ll reveal which is the number one pick I recommend.

If you agree with me or think I’m a psycho, let me know in the comments - or visit jonmcbrine.com to find all the ways to contact me and make some recommendations of your own.

Top Time-Traveling Techniques

Number Three: Reverse-Spinning the Earth - Superman: The Movie (1978)

The climactic ending of the Man of Steel’s ’78 silver screen adaptation made us believe a man could fly - as well prove that Superman (Christopher Reeve) can really just bend reality to what he wants it to be. Stricken with grief over the apparent death of Lois Lane, Kal-El soars at super speeds, lapping the globe to reverse time. By flying so fast around the Earth, Superman switches the planet’s rotation to spin the other way, therefore reversing the tragic events leading to Lane’s demise. Assuming that’s just how space and stuff works for a second, by doing this, the Man of Tomorrow showed us that he can basically alter the course of time itself - he simply chooses not to destroy the planet and/or press rewind on your life.

Here’s a twist in the myth: since understanding quantum mechanics is above my pay grade, I shall research “The Internet”:

Supes spinning the Earth backward to turn back the clock would naturally cause inertia to fling every building and human into the atmosphere at 1,000 miles per hour.

Superman is supposedly flying faster than the speed of light, effectively traveling backward through time. The Earth spinning in reverse is just a visual representation of time moving backward from his perspective, not him physically changing the planet’s rotation. Once he arrives at his target time, he flies forward again to snap the timeline back to normal.

- Thanks, World Wide Web. Regardless of whether he was merely shifting the planet or manipulating space and the fabric of reality as we know it, the Last Son of Krypton being able to do this is incredible. What a bold, bonkers choice.

Reason to Rec: The first Reeve Superman film is an all-timer, but for those who may not have ever actually watched it, be aware that it is an unapologetically 70s flick. The fashion alone is super.

Number Two: Solar System Slingshot - Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

An alien probe has threatened to vaporize Earth unless it can yap it up with extinct humpback whales. Vintage Star Trek stuff right there. Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) and his Starfleet friends are left with the obvious choice of resolving this space-time continuum conundrum, which is to travel back in time. Seeing how bouncing around the chronosphere is old hat for the Enterprise crew, it probably shouldn’t be surprising that this would be an option for them. Heck, the particular theory they use was presented way back in the original 60s Trek series.

In Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (1984), the Enterprise blew up, but they were indeed successful in locating Spock (Leonard Nimoy). In order to pull off this wild scheme of returning to the time of peak Earth whale action, Kirk and company would commandeer a stolen Klingon Bird of Prey which they rechristened the HMS Bounty.

To go from the 23rd century back to 1986 San Francisco, Spock calculates a maximum warp trick that has been dubbed the Slingshot Effect. There is a lot of technobabble about flying directly into the sun, using gravitational pulls, and precision piloting to catapult the vessel into the time stream. I’ll take their word for it.

The return trip to the future employs the same maneuver, except now the ship is carrying a cargo hold completely flooded with water, a pair of whales, and an 80s marine biologist, Dr. Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks), who ditches her current time to go live in Kirk’s era. To be so eager to totally abandon her present day life to go stargazing in the future, well, I guess you could say she must’ve had a whale of a time. Sorry-not-sorry.

Reason to Rec: For many Trekkies, The Voyage Home is their fave of the final frontier films. This story is a slice of 80s cinematic fun that has just enough goofball sensibility to not be a total message movie.

Number One: The DeLorean - Back To the Future (1985)

Of course, the souped-up car built by Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) is going to make this list. So much has been documented, discussed, and debated about the beloved Michael J. Fox-starring franchise that the only thing left to say is that making a time machine out of a DeLorean turned out to be a pretty fantastic idea. It beats the original script’s concept of a lead-lined refrigerator.

Back To the Future Part III (1990) features a cool time-tracking locomotive, but the OG two-seater reigns supreme as the coolest way to travel across the decades.

Reason to Rec: BTTF exists in its own atmosphere of highly enjoyable and infinitely rewatchable entertainment. The first Future is legitimately one of the greatest movies ever made. While the additional two are also classics, revisiting the original is always a smart use of your… time.

Def Rec: Of the three time travel techniques I’ve listed, the DeLorean drives away as the number one pick. I was tempted to choose the Star Trek trick to possibly subvert expectations, but who are we kidding? There’s a reason BTTF continues to enjoy total time travel supremacy to this day. If you watch any of these movies, feel the power of love and go back to Back To the Future.

Def Rec Podcast coming soon!

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