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Time After Time: Difference between revisions
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In 1893, aspiring writer and inventor [[H. G. Wells]] (McDowell) invites some friends over to dinner, where he shows them one of his latest inventions -- [[The Time Machine|a device he claims can travel through time]]. Despite the general mockery he receives, one of them -- a surgeon called John Leslie Stevenson (Warner) -- takes particular interest in his claims, and not for no reason; moments after, the police intrude into Wells' home, claiming to have traced none other than [[Jack the Ripper]] to the premises. When a search reveals that Stevenson has disappeared, Wells realises that not only is Stevenson the Ripper, but that he has used Wells' time machine to escape into the future and evade justice.
Appalled at the thought of having unleashed a monster onto the social utopia he believes the future will be, he decides to follow Stevenson into the future and bring him back to face justice. Arriving in San Francisco in 1979, Wells finds that the future is not everything he thought or hoped, befriends an attractive, feminist bank clerk
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* [[Hey, It's That Guy!]]: A ''very'' young Corey Feldman as a kid in the museum where the time machine ends up.
** [[Tron|Sark/Dillinger]] is Jack the Ripper!
* [[Historical In-Joke]]: Wells brings Amy back with him to the 19th Century at the end of the film; as [[Don't Explain the Joke|the epigraph afterward explains]], H. G. Wells did in fact end up marrying a proto-feminist named Amy Robbins.
* [[Hostage for Macguffin]]: Giving his word as a gentleman, Stevenson offers to trade {{spoiler|Amy for the anti-return key Wells holds. [[I Lied|He naturally fails to deliver the hostage]], and chides Wells for [[Good Is Dumb|not realizing that he is no gentleman]].}}
* [[I'm Mr. Future Pop Culture Reference]]: Inverted and subverted; to blend in, Wells, adopts the name of a period fictional character he's sure will be forgotten ninety years later. Unfortunately, this fictional character happens to be [[Sherlock Holmes]]. (For [[Bonus Points]], one of the cops to whom he introduces himself this way is named ''Inspector Gregson''.)
** Also, despite still being famous in the future, being known by his initials allows him to blend in quite nicely with his real name Herbert Wells.
* [[Jack the Ripper]]: Well, yeah.
* [[Oh Crap]]: {{spoiler|Stevenson}} during the climax when he realizes {{spoiler|Wells is about to pull the [[Chekhov's Gun|"send the passenger to infinity" key]] out of the time machine}}.
* [[Playing Against Type]]: Malcolm McDowell, who [[A Clockwork Orange (film)|thanks to various]] [[Caligula|prior roles]] generally gets cast as a bit of a psycho nutcase or otherwise amoral type, plays the rather sweet, slightly naive Wells -- in a movie with Jack the Ripper.
* [[Shown Their Work]: Inverted and expressed simultaneously: McDowell studied actual recordings of H. G. Wells speaking -- but because Wells' real voice was high-pitched and Cockney-accented, he chose not to imitate it.
* [[Taking the Heat]]: When the cops [[Police Are Useless|refuse to listen]] to Wells's Jack-the-Ripper story, he gets so desperate that he confesses to the killings in an attempt to get them to check Amy's apartment and make sure she's safe.
* [[Terminator Twosome]]
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