Question: When Richard accidentally pulls a coin out of his coat pocket, he sees that it's a penny and he is sent back to his own time. After being weakened upon his trip back to the future, why, after what was likely several days to get his full strength back, wasn't he able to return to the past? His mentor told him returning to his own time would leave him weakened but, given enough time to get it back, he could have gone back to the past again.
Question: Before Old Arthur leaves the room, why did he get the feeling that him and Richard met before?
Answer: Because they had met before. When Richard went back in time to 1912, Arthur was a five-year-old boy. Old Arthur remembers, or at least recognizes, Richard from that time.
Except that Richard hadn't travelled into the past yet.
Like all time-travel fiction, if he will, then he already did. The portrait he saw in the gallery of Jane Seymour is another example: He brought the smile to her face and IIRC, she changed her pose upon seeing him.
Exactly right. Time-travel films rarely make sense plot-wise. They employ a "suspension of disbelief" where the audience just accepts the premise so the story can be told, regardless of whether or not everything makes sense. As I recall, Jane Seymour's "old character" told Richard to "come back to her," meaning she wanted him to go back in time to when she was young.
Time Travel movies and shows do this sort of thing often. This movie actually keeps to the premise of time travel pretty well.
Answer: He already did, when the elder Elise approached him and said, "Come back to me." When he visited her home and listened to the music box and replied. "That's my favorite song." He found his name in the old hotel register in the storage room. At the end of the movie, when he returned to the future, Elise was holding his pocket watch, which she returned to him when she was old. All that concludes he did time travel, he just hadn't done it yet.
Thanks. Time travel movies sure are confusing.
Question: Where did the pocket watch originate? He got it from her, but she got it from him. No one bought it.
Answer: The book never included each of them giving the other the pocket watch. So it was added just for the film, but I don't know if the film makers did this to intentionally show audiences the paradoxes of time travel. This would be an example of a causality loop. The watch seems to exists solely because of time travel. This would be like if you were visited by your future self who tells you how to build a time machine and gives you the plans. You build the time machine and afterwards, go back in time to give your younger self the plans to build a time machine. So where did the plans come from? One solution basically states time was moving linear and at some point you invent time travel. Then once you go into the past, you created a loop. So at some point in the past, Elise had the pocket watch which she gives to Richard for some reason and when he gives it to her in the past, he creates the loop. But the film is just the loop, so we don't know where it comes from.
Question: Is there a scene where a young boy watching the filming is seen? I heard this years ago and the clip was shown.
Answer: There are several things like this throughout the movie. It's a rather busy location.
Question: Why did Christopher Reeves drive up to the Grand Hotel if cars weren't allowed on the island?
Answer: For environmental reasons, cars are not allowed on the island. The filmmakers received special permission to use autos for the movie. This was likely done for logistical reasons to simplify filming the scene. It is easier for Christopher Reeve to drive a car up to the hotel rather than using an alternative transportation mode available on the island. For example, using a horse-drawn carriage would be more complicated. It would also make little sense to most of the audience and would require plot exposition to explain the island's auto ban.
Answer: He was no longer able to put everything out of his mind, which was a requirement to successfully time-travel. He was distraught and unable to focus enough mentally. He stopped eating, and as time went on he became weaker and weaker.