Here are the 12 coolest time travel movies of all time — and all times.
Cinema’s obsession with time travel makes perfect sense, given that movies may be the closest most of us will ever get to it: The filmmakers of the past told stories for the audiences of the future. As the gap between creation and audience grows, so does every film’s value as an artifact of its time.
As people and places disappear, films can become our best ways to remember them, and experience something like immersion in times we may remember only faintly, if at all.
So in a way, all movies are time travel movies. But the following films are explicitly about people starting in one time, and traveling to another.
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
If you think It’s a Wonderful Life isn’t a time travel movie, we would ask: How is it not? The dark Christmas classic from Frank Capra follows George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart at his best) revisiting his past — or rather an alternate version of his life in which he was never born.
Rather than going back and changing the past, George has to endure the present — and in doing so, shape the future. Just like all of us do every day.
As popular as the multiverse concept is today, it’s notable that It’s a Wonderful Life hit on it long, long ago. Credit goes to Capra and co-writers Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, as well as Philip Van Doren Stern, who wrote the story upon which It’s a Wonderful Life was based.
The Time Machine (1960)
No discussion of time travel is complete without bowing to H.G. Wells’ 1895 novel The Time Machine, one of the most influential stories of all.
George Pal’s adaptation of the novel presents a two-caste future in which humans have evolved into Eloi and Morlocks. The passive, vegetarian Eloi seem to have it good: They live a pleasant, idyllic existence — above ground, no less.
It all seems very nice until we realize the Eloi (including Yvette Mimieaux as Weena, above) are basically veal for the Morlocks, the scrappy, resentful subterraneans who emerge occasionally from their caves to feed on their pampered cousins.
The Time Machine is a great time travel movie, and inspired many others on this list., sometimes quite overtly. But it’s also a provocative, still-relevant piece of social commentary.
La Jetée (1962)
Chris Marker’s La Jetée explains to audiences that it is “the story of a man marked by an image of his childhood” — a violent image he witnessed “sometime before the outbreak of World War III.”
He comes to understand it only by experiencing it again and again, in a time loop that the short film illustrates almost entirely illustrated in still photos. His link to the past is a memory of a woman (played by Hélène Châtelain, above) he once encountered on the observation platform, or jetty, of Paris’ Orly Airport.
Between its deliberate repetition, black-and-white photography and unsettling setting — we are watching the past’s vision of our own possible future, which feels simultaneously dated and far beyond us — La Jetée is hypnotic.
Time After Time (1979)
Nicholas Meyers’ Time After Time has one of the best setups of any film. Pointedly inspired by The Time Machine, it begins in Victorian London, where Jack the Ripper (aka Dr. John Leslie Stevenson, played by David Warner) has just struck again.
He joins a gathering at the home of his friend H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell), who unveils a time machine he’s a bit apprehensive about using.
When the police close in, Stevenson flees to the future in the time machine — and H.G. follows him. They end up in 1979 San Francisco, where fish-out-of-water Stevenson adapts swimmingly to the violence of the (then) modern age, while gentle H.G. tries to stop him from killing again.
He’s aided by bank employee Amy (Mary Steenburgen), who becomes Jack’s target. Things build to kind of a disappointing climax, but there’s so much thoughtfulness and delight along the way that it’s silly to linger on it.
And in a sweet behind-the-scenes ending, Steenburgen and McDowell fell in love and were married for a decade.
The Terminator (1984)
When the low-budget Terminator emerged in 1984, some people dismissed it as a dumb, violent shoot-’em-up about a killer robot.
While it’s undeniably one of the best killer robot movies ever made, it also offers one of the coolest takes on how time travel works.
In the world of The Terminator, time travel is like an inevitable loop that transgresses calendar years: Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) is sent back in time to save Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) so she can give birth to her son John, the savior of humankind in a dark, robot-infested future. But he also ends up fathering John — who, in turn, is the one who sends him back in time.
Brilliant.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Yes, we’re going with two Terminator movies, because the inevitable-loop concept ramps up to another level when we learn in T2 that the arrival of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 in the first Terminator was the cause of the Judgment Day that sparks the A.I. takeover.
In short, the last remaining piece of technology from the T-800’s final battle against Sarah and John becomes crucial to Cyberdyne, the company that creates SkyNet, which quickly makes things very tough for humanity.
The past creates the future which creates the past which creates the future. At least, that’s how it goes in The Terminator.
The next time travel movie on our list has a different theory about it all works.
Back to the Future (1985)
One of the most flat-out entertaining movies ever, Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future embraces the geekiness of time travel and makes it as goofily cool as possible — while grounding everything in a very human story.
1980s teen Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) travels back to the 1950s thanks to a time traveling DeLorean built by his mentor, Doc Brown (Christopher LLoyd). But upon arrival, Marty prevents a crucial meeting of his young parents (Crispin Glover and Lea Thompson).
Worse, his mom develops a crush on him — which is a huge problem for many reasons. But it’s arguably most troubling because in the Back to the Future school of time travel, nothing is inevitable, even Marty’s existence. If he can’t get his parents together, he and his siblings will never be born.
Things get more complicated (and occasionally even more fun) in Back to the Future 2, in which Marty is propelled into the future, and back to the past — and has to avoid running into himself. And Back to the Future 3 goes for pure Western thrills.
Diehard fans of time travel movies will note that in the latter, Mary Steenbergen plays a character in a similar situation to the one her character faced in the aforementioned Time After Time.
Groundhog Day (1993)
Harold Ramis’ masterpiece stars his Ghostbusters castmate Bill Murray as a weatherman cursed to repeat the same holiday again and again. It enlivened the time travel movie genre and popularized the time-loop format. It’s also another of the best movies ever made.
Screenwriter Danny Rubin, who was steeped in Anne Rice’s vampire novels, became interested in the idea of immortality, and of repeating the same day over and over again. He and Ramis turned his original script into a meditation on life itself, and how all of us have the choice, each time the alarm goes off, to make each day a grinding re-enactment of the one before, or to take it in an entirely new direction.
Assemble enough of those decisions together, and you’ve completed a lifetime.
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
In the first Austin Powers film, 1997’s Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Mike Myers’ swinging ’60s spy is frozen in 1967 and thawed out in the ’90s.
In the sequel, Austin must travel back — this time to 1969 — to match wits with Dr. Evil (also Myers) who has stolen Austin’s mojo. The ramifications of crossing paths with his (frozen) past self causes Austin to go cross-eyed — but the wise Basil Exposition gives him some advice.
“I suggest you don’t worry about this sort of thing and just enjoy yourself,” he says.
Then he and Myers turn smilingly to the audience, as Basil adds, “That goes for you all, too.”
Thus freed from thinking about the space-time continuum, we’re able to just enjoy Austin returning to the past to dance and fight alongside Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham.)
Midnight in Paris (2011)
Woody Allen’s beguiling Midnight in Paris skips any concern about how time travel works in favor of charm. Owen Wilson’s character, who is having trouble with his fiancée (Rachel McAdams), travels back in time simply by stepping inside a 1920s car each night at midnight.
It transports him to glorious 1920s Paris, where he mingles with the likes of Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston), Zelda Fitzgerald (Alison Pill), Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody) and Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates). He also becomes captivated by Adriana, Picasso’s mistress, played by Marion Cotillard.
Instead of a new take on how time travel works, Midnight in Paris lays out a universal truth: Some people will always prefer to live in the past.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
This Tom Cruise-Emily Blunt gem takes the Groundhog Day concept into the realm of action and sci-fi. But it’s also funny, in a different way than Groundhog Day.
Cruise plays against type as a man who, like Murray in Groundhog Day, must re-live the same day again and again. But Cruise, known for playing ultra-competent heroes like Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible films and Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun, goes against type by portraying a bit of a bumbler.
He’s a PR man who dies in a series of darkly amusing ways under the tutelage of Blunt’s experienced super soldier, Sergeant Rita Vrataski.
The film was a box office disappointment, but has gained much respect since its initial release. Based on the Hiroshi Sakurazaka novel All You Need Is Kill, it was almost given director Doug Liman’s preferred title, Live Die Repeat, which became the film’s tagline.
Spoiler Warning: The next and final film on this list isn’t obviously a time travel movie until its incredible ending.
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Like we said, the presence of this film on this list is a spoiler — we’re sorry. Then again, the original Planet of the Apes has been out for 57 years, so you’ve had time to see it.
What’s coolest about Planet of the Apes is that for almost its entire running time, you don’t realize you’re watching a time travel movie. It just seems like a nightmarish sci-fi film in which a trio of astronauts led by Charlton Heston’s George Taylor crash-land on a planet ruled by apes. They treat humans — including Nova (Linda Harrison) — like animals.
Then we get to one of the greatest movie twist endings of all time, and realize the astronauts never left the planet earth.
Liked This List of the Coolest Time Travel Movies of All Time?
Thank you for giving us a few minutes of your time.
You might like this list of the 13 Best Post-Apocalyptic Movies We’ve Ever Seen, featuring, once again, Planet of the Apes.
If these time travel movies have taught us nothing, it’s that it’s much easier to prevent an apocalypse now than to try to build a time machine and go back to prevent one later. Good luck, everyone.
Main image: Yvette Mimieaux, as the Eloi Weena and Rod Taylor as H. George Wells in The Time Machine. MGM
Editor’s note: Corrects error in Time After Time item. Jack the Ripper flees into the future, not the past.
