Timeline



Timeline (2003) is a complete failure of imagination. It takes an interesting idea and does practically nothing with it. The movie is based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name, and follows the book fairly closely, much to its detriment. I read the book, and it was awful and silly, and should never have been made into a movie, but Hollywood loves to pay Crichton lots of money.

A group of archeologists are uncovering the medieval town of Castlegard, France, site of a battle during the Hundred Years War. They are receiving funding from a tech company called ITC. When the company provides information about the site they can’t possibly know the head archeologist, Professor Johnston (Billy Connelly), flies from France to America to visit ITC headquarters. While he’s gone the remaining archeologists, including Connely’s son (Paul Walker), come across a sealed room containing Johnston’s glasses and a 600-year old written message from the professor. Because this is a movie no one is allowed to leap to the only obvious conclusion, so we go through the whole rigmarole where all the other archeologists fly to ITC and are shocked to find out that time travel is possible, the Professor is trapped in the past, only they can save him, etc. etc. Yawn.


The Enterprise has Renaissance festivals too.

When it comes to explaining time travel the rather odd metaphor the movie (and the book) uses is a three dimensional fax. “Putting a piece of paper through a phone line is impossible, but we do it with faxes” is the explanation. However, it’s not the piece of paper we’re sending, but an image and there’s a machine to decode the signal at the other end. How the objects “faxed” to the past get decoded is never explained, nor is how they get re-encoded for the trip back. Frankly, they should have just left it ambiguous. We are told that the only time and place ITC’s time machine can transport people to is Castlegard 600 years ago because they’ve tapped into a wormhole or something.

Once everyone is back in the past the movie is just scene after scene of the main characters being chased around by the evil English while trying to help the French… except the professor, who has been forced to make “Greek fire” for the English. The movie never defines what “Greek fire” means. In real life it’s a historical mystery from the 7th century, a flamethrower-like weapon the Byzantines may have used in two naval engagements but the details of which are lost to time. In the movie it’s just an excuse to have something explode inside the English Castle. It’s also an indication of just how dumb Timeline is. At one point our heroes declare “we have six hundred years of knowledge on these people”  as if knowing how to operate a home espresso machine will protect you from arrows and bubonic plague, and then the only knowledge that any of the future people apply to the situation is 1300 year old.


"Let me just put "crappy movie" into Google and see what comes up..."

The movie does feature one vast improvement over the book. In the book the evil CEO of ITC (portrayed in the movie to look like Bill Gates) has a secret plan to profit from time travel that’s hinted at constantly until it’s finally revealed. What’s his secret plan? He’s going to recreate medieval Castlegard in every detail on the modern site as the “ultimate tourist attraction.” Oooh...

Father: Hey kids, we had tickets to feed the Tyrannosaurus at Jurassic Park, but instead your mother and I have decided to take you to a completely accurate reconstruction of a medieval town in France so you can see how people used to live in their own filth!

Kids: Yay!!!

It’s probably for the best that they cut that out.

Posted: Fri - May 27, 2005 at      

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