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The Time Machine (2002) - 34 corrections

Directed by Simon Wells, starring Guy Pearce, Jeremy Irons, Mark Addy, Orlando Jones, Samantha Mumba (add more)

Genres: Sci-fi, Adventure, Action

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

Mistakes
Trivia
Corrections
Questions
Submit
After Emma is hit by the carriage, the next scene shows David consoling Alexander. Yet Alexander, we soon learn, is the Alexander who came from the future to save Emma, not the one who would have been arriving at the park for her. Presumably, by the time David is consoling him, the present-day Alexander would have left the park and found out about Emma's accident, making for pretty good odds that he would have run into his future self (or at least confused several of his friends) going to see Emma. [The key words here are "presumably" and "pretty good odds", which make the whole statement speculation. It is impossible to say exactly what present-day Alexander would do, or for how long he would have waited in the park, so he could just as well have been doing something else than what the submitter expects.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
When Alexander is leaving the hologram thingy in Future New York, the hologram says 'live long and prosper' he then walks off to the right...and you can hear a sound effect, exactly like the doors make on Star Trek, as he walks off the holographic glass. [This isn't really trivia, as the hologram uses the saying, hand gesture, and sound effect to mock Alexander.]
Edit Corrected by jhoffman100@yahoo.com
The design of Alexander's house makes no sense. From the front it almost looks like a firehouse. It is obvious his laboratory is a converted horse shed. (If you look closely, you can see the horse stalls in several shots.) However, attached to this is a large glass conservatory. No architect would have placed a conservatory, one of the more impressive spaces in a Victorian house, adjacent to a smelly, fly-infested horse shed. It does not appear to be an addition, since it has impressive columns and an arch that matches the front of the room. Also, the wall of the staircase going upstairs is lined with clocks, but their placement would make them almost impossible to wind unless he had invented a special ladder to access them. [These are all your opinions and assumptions. You don't KNOW the house used to be a horse shed, you don't KNOW the conservatory wasn't an addition, and you don't KNOW he didn't have a ladder to wind the clocks. No errors here.]
Edit Corrected by jhoffman100@yahoo.com
The lighting switches on the walls in Alexander's home are connected using surface mounted pin and post wiring. There are no wires visible running to the light fixtures. [Alexander is a brilliant inventor. It would be easy (and better looking) for him to run the wires inside the walls.]
Edit Corrected by jhoffman100@yahoo.com
The holographic librarian's room in the year 800,000 still has some books on the verge of dissolving, some glass-like panes, etc. How? After a gigantic period of 800,000 years, almost nothing man-made could have possibly survived. Just think of all the earthquakes, nearby meteor hits, rains, radiation bombardment, etc. [The holographic librarian comes from our future, so who knows what materials have been invented between now and then (obviously new technology is being invented, as the librarian exists). Remember there's technology around today that people thought couldn't possibly exist.]
Edit
In 2020 they talk about the first 20-megaton explosion to create the lunar colony. Then we find out that these blasts have knocked the moon off its orbit causing it to break up. However even a single moderately sized crater on the moon would have been created by a blast an order of magnitude greater then this. How could such small blasts knock the moon out of its orbit while countless meteor impacts have had no effect? [All we hear is that the FIRST blast was a 20-megaton explosion, and then later, that the attempts to colonize the moon had knocked it out of orbit. We have NO idea what went on between the year 2030 and 2037, and to say that the moon's orbit was disrupted by 20-megaton blasts is an assumption, nothing more.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
When Alexander goes to the year 802,701, the level of water had dropped about 30 metres. As that the climate seems to be tropical, the polar ice would have melted down and the water level would be higher than what it is in today's New York. [Being that the Moon was destroyed hundreds of thousands of years prior to that time, that could have had a major effect on the planet. In addition to the fact that tides would pretty much disappear, there is also a theory saying that without the moon, the earth's tilt can gradually be altered over time which would change the position of the poles. Also, a large portion of the moon could have collided with the Earth, knocking it off of its axis, or 800,000 years worth of continental drift might have moved the former New York farther from the poles than where is now.]
Edit Corrected by AD
Just before Alexander climbs into the machine for the first time we see a clear shot of the seat with nothing obscuring it from our side whatsoever. He then climbs in, puts the control lever in, and then releases a brake lever on his right that *should* have been visible in the previous shot. [If you pay close attention, the brake lever is there when he goes to sit in the machine.]
Edit
After the scene where he gets hit in the head and he travels into the future 800000 years, he has that gross stuff and blood on his mouth. In the next scene you only see the blood. [He most likely just wiped it off, as would anyone who had "gross stuff and blood" on their mouth.]
Edit
The Time Machine is steam powered. They make this very obvious with Alexander thumping the steam gauge when he first starts it up and during the fight with the Morlock at the end. However, there is no source of fuel for a boiler on the machine. By traveling in a steam time machine without carrying fuel, he would face the prospect of landing somewhere where there was nothing to burn to get himself back (for example when he found himself in an ice age toward the end of the film). Granted he originally built the machine only to travel backwards four years and where fuel would be available, but not having at least a coal scuttle on the machine seems shortsighted. [Character mistake. It is possible to forget things like this, especially when, as the submitter says, he was not planning to go anyplace where fuel would be in scarce supply.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
When Alexander is preparing to board the Time Machine for the first time and go back to save Emma, he selects the pocketwatch she gave him. He is shown setting the hands, closing the case, and placing it in his pocket. However, the watch is obviously not wound. The seconds hand is not moving in the closeup and the watch is not making any sound. [Character mistake. He had been quite excited recently, nearing the completion of his project and going back in time to see his girlfriend again, so he had simply forgotten to wind the watch.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
Alexander kills the Morlock leader by hanging him outside the time machine and going forward in time. Shouldn't the Morlock then reappear when Alexander comes back from that future time to save the girl from the cage? He had already proven that events reverse when he travelled back in time to try to save Emma. [Simple. The Morlock leader fell off the Time Machine somewhere between the thousands AD and the millions AD. So, when the Machine travelled back to the thousands AD, his lifeless body would not have been carried back, and would therefore not come back to life as a result of the time reversal.]
Edit
The light bulbs in Alexander's laboratory are frosted. Frosted bulbs were not invented until later. The bulbs should be clear with the filaments visible for that period. [A man who invents a time machine without claiming credit, publishing his design or registering a patent, for a time machine, can also similarly have other unknown, uncelebrated inventions. It is plausible to think that such a man can have invented a frosted light bulb for his own personal use, before they were invented and mass produced by another person.]
Edit
In the scene in which Alexander meets the Eloi people for the first time, he is barefoot since he had just gotten dressed after waking up from a coma or something. In the next scene, Alexander is talking to Marla in her home at night, and he is wearing his boots. When did he put them on? [This one's easy. There was scene change. Thats when he did it.]
Edit
When we first see the time machine, it's hidden behind drapery. After the drapery is pulled back we see the glass atrium all around the machine. If he really wanted to keep it hidden, why place it where it's surrounded by clear glass? [The large atrium was presumably the only place in the house that had the room for the time machine to be built.]
Edit
When Alexander travels into the future everything around him is moving at a fast pace but it is always daytime. Wouldn't the sunlight be flashing on and off really fast? [Yes and it does. A rapidly flashing light source (faster than about 10 flashes per second) appears as a continuous source due to persistence of vision. Incidentally, this is the very effect that makes motion pictures possible at all!]
Edit Corrected by Oscar Bravo
When the time traveller goes back into the past and alters the way in which his girlfriend dies, wouldn't the him from that time still go ahead and devise time travel, and therefore go back to save her. Only this time, when he saves her from being hit he should run into himself. [The Uber-Morlock said to Alex that he built his time machine because of his fiance's death and that if he had succeeded, his time machine would never have been invented; therefore he couldn't use it to go back and save her.]
Edit
The librarian said that an Eloi escaped the moorlocks, and that they talked for years. Why didn't this Eloi go home? I mean, it shouldn't have been hard to find it, even after a few weeks. [Maybe he didn't want to? This is not an error. Just your opinion of what you would do if it was you.]
Edit
After Alexander knocks the Moorlock leader out of his time machine and he is just hanging in space, he only blinks once. If he was hanging in space until he died of hunger, wouldn't he blink more than once, or maybe sleep? [No one knows how a time machine works. Maybe he just aged and died in the seconds he hung there....like when the creature dies in the blast of the time machine exploding.]
Edit
The Eloi retain knowledge of English by reading engraved text in stone. Yet their pronunciation is perfect and they know words (i.e. "ghost") which are unlikely to be found in stone tablets. [They had the fotonic librarian, too. And the language didn't die when the moon crashed. It just evolved.]
Edit

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