If the movies have taught us anything, it’s that time travel is real, and you can make it work for you. Whether you want to go back in time to change history, go forward in time to see the future, or just want to fast forward through that pesky math test you have on Monday, time travel is the easy solution to all of your problems. Of course you want to travel through time, but have you ever asked yourself how you’d actually do it?
Related: Edge of Tomorrow Review: Starship Looper
There are tons of ways to break the laws of time and space, and they’ve all been the subject of movies, so let the CraveOnline Film Channel help you pick out the time travel mechanism that’s right for you. Not all time machines are the same, and they each have their own advantages and drawbacks you will need to consider before you go leaping about in the timestream. So we’ve put together a list of 20 different modes of time travel for you to choose from. Let us know if there’s any we missed in the comments!
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
The Guide to Movie Time Machines
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The Stationary Time Machine
From: The Time Machine (1960); The Time Machine (2002); Time After Time (1979)
A good old-fashioned stationary time machine, favored by H.G. Wells himself in Time After Time, moves anywhere forward or backward in time but only stays in one place. It's just a time machine, not a teleporter.
Caveat Emptor: Be ready to hide this sucker every time you time travel, and whatever you do, don't lose the keys.
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The Portable Time Machine
From: Click (2006), Clockstoppers (2002); Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
A handy-dandy time machine that fits snugly in your pocket. Never leave home without it! Usually equipped with various functions, like slow-motion or fast forward.
Caveat Emptor: Easy to lose, and easy to abuse. You might want to avoid the temptation of this one.
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The Ambulatory Time Machine
From: The Back to the Future Trilogy (1985-1990); Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989); Mr. Peabody and Sherman (2014)
A fully mobile time machine that can drive or fly around on its own, perfect for fast getaways. Different versions may be able through space as well as time.
Caveat Emptor: Get ready to think fourth-dimensionally. You don't want to fly at high speeds, travel through time and hit a wall that wasn't there before.
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The Pre-Existing Time Machine
From: Primer (2004); Timecrimes (2007)
A low-fi time machine that can only send objects back into its own confines. In other words, what goes into the time machine has to come out of the time machine, and therefore can only travel to a time when the machine itself had already been invented.
Caveat Emptor: The possibilities are limited, and for whatever reason this model leads to more head-scratching paradoxes than all the others combined.
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Geographic Time Travel
From: Brigadoon (1954); arguably Pleasantville (1998)
Sometimes a person doesn't get unstuck in time, an entire place does. When that happens you may find your hometown traveling a century forward every day, or trapped in the 1950s even though the rest of the world kept moving forward normally.
Caveat Emptor: Occupants will always be retro, and not in a cool, Hipster kind of way. This is the rare mode of time travel that acts more like a prison than an opportunity to explore.
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Mental Time Travel
From: The Butterfly Effect (2004); About Time (2013); X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
Ignore all the fussy machinery and simply shunt your consciousness back into a younger version of yourself through sheer concentration or mutant powers. Perfect for changing your own past.
Caveat Emptor: The temptation to fix every little detail of your life can be too great for some time travellers, so use only when absolutely needed, or when you're about to be killed by robots.
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The One-Way Backward Time Machine
From: The Terminator Movies (1984-2015); Looper (2012)
A pretty darned inconvenient form of time travel that sends you back in time with absolutely no way of getting back.
Caveat Emptor: The downside should be pretty obvious. To be used only as a last resort or to dispose of bodies.
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The One-Way Forward Time Machine
From: Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997); Captain America: The First Avenger (2011); Freejack (1992)
Typically taking the form of cryogenic freezing, although other technologies do exist, this mode sends you forward in time with - again - no way of getting back. Unless they've invented a more effective time machine in the future of course.
Caveat Emptor: If you're the type who gets homesick, this is not the time machine for you.
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The Remote-Controlled Time Machine
From: 12 Monkeys (1995)
An uncommon form of time travel in which the traveler can go backwards and forwards in time, but has no control over where or when, or how long he or she stays there. Their movement through time is entirely controlled by operators in the future.
Caveat Emptor: The process tends to disorient the time traveller, who may find themselves returning to their original time when it's least convenient. It's not that great for the controllers, either, since they control the travel but not the traveller.
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The Two-Way Time Communicator
From: Frequency (2000); The Lake House (2006)
A simple but efficient device that allows two or more users from different timelines to communicate directly without actually travelling in either direction.
Caveat Emptor: Good for transmitting useful information into the past or future, but not always effective at actually changing the timeline.
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The A/V Time Machine
From: Deja Vu (2006)
A highly specific device that allows the user in the present to witness the past from any angle, within a certain geographic distance from the device itself, exactly 4 days, 6 hours, 3 minutes, 45 seconds and 14.5 nanoseconds later. Other applications exist but are experimental. Pretty much only effective for stalking, or crimefighting after the fact.
Caveat Emptor: A highly specific device with extremely strict limitations.
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Faster-Than-Light Time Travel
From: Flight of the Navigator (1986)
Time moves more slowly for someone travelling at the speed of light than for those who, well, aren't. So the traveller appears to have jumped in time when they return, now suddenly younger than everyone else.
Caveat Emptor: On the upside, you travelled at the speed of light. On the downside, you may not have much to come back to. A real pain in the ass when used strictly as a time machine.
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Reversing the Rotation of the Earth
From: Superman: The Movie (1978); Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (2006)
If you can fly fast enough to reverse the Earth's rotation, the days move backwards instead of merely throwing gravity out of whack and sending the Earth's population skyrocketing into space.
Caveat Emptor: Unless you're Superman, don't even think about it.
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'Space Stuff' Time Travel
From: Star Trek IV: The Undiscovered Country (1986); Star Trek: Generations (1994); Star Trek (2009)
If you tech the tech and slingshot around the thing, your ship goes into a another thing that sends you back in time.
Caveat Emptor: It's impossible to understand and it only works when it's really, super dramatic.
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Time Portals
From: Time Bandits (1981); Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time (1991)
A single-location portal that sends the traveller through time. May come as part of a set.
Caveat Emptor: Not always conveniently located, difficult to find without a map, may be the envy of evil-doers everywhere or everywhen.
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Magical Time Travel
From: The Christmas Carol (all versions); Army of Darkness (1992)
A method of time travel that typically transports travellers exactly where they need to go, but at the whim of inexplicable but specifically supernatural powers.
Caveat Emptor: If you find yourself magically travelling through time to complete a prophecy or save your soul, you may already be an a-hole.
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Satanic Time Travel
From: Warlock (1991); The Devil's Advocate (1997)
Sometimes the Prince of Darkness just wants to send you forward or backward in time, and there ain't nothing you can do about it.
Caveat Emptor: This is never good.
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The Time Loop
From: Groundhog Day (1993); Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
The traveller relives the same day, or a certain specific amount of time, over and over again, retaining all knowledge of the events within that time period. Nobody else knows what's going on. A rare occurence with either no explanation or a very complicated one.
Caveat Emptor: Very difficult to make long-term plans, and very annoying after a while.
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Delusional Time Travel
From: Peggy Sue Got Married (1986); A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949)
A hard-to-replicate form of time travel in which the traveller experiences head trauma and then travels back in time. These time travel events may be easily dismissed as a hallucination, and very frequently that's what they are, but they are also on occasion very real.
Caveat Emptor: The traveller is more likely to get a severe concussion than actually go back in time. Never recommended.
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'Just Because' Time Travel
From: Midnight in Paris (2011); Run Lola Run (1999)
Sometimes time travel just happens. There are no mechanisms, there are few (if any) rules. It's like some kind of puppetmaster just thought your life would be more interesting if you travelled through time for some reason.
Caveat Emptor: You will probably learn a valuable lesson of some kind but you will also probably doubt your sanity for the rest of your life.
