Five Time Travel Ideas You Haven’t Tried

This Week on The 5: Five Ways To Travel Through Time According to Film

We love time travel movies so much that we’ll even watch the worst ones over and over. Maybe its because we desperately want to see the future or travel to the past. Or maybe it’s just because we’re dying to figure out how it will be done. Here are five methods of time travel that we learned from watching movies.

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• The Delorean:  Back to the Future.  Dr. Emmett Brown’s time traveling Delorean is loosely based on the theory that time travel involves speed (although 66 mph is hardly the kind of speed that physicists had in mind).  Doc Brown’s science of   speed + power source = time travel has become more or less the baseline for cinematic time travel.  Why it works:  The Flux Capacitor is beautifully designed, and more importantly brilliantly named and you can precisely choose the time and date you travel to.  What to watch out for:   You’re basically fucked if you don’t have 1.21 gigawats of energy to get you going, and if you interfere with your own evolution, you won’t be in any more family photos.
• The Speed Train:  Time Cop. Time Cop gets points for style, even if the whole system makes zero scientific sense.   The speed ride  rocket train propels you at a very high speed into a different time, or certain death through a solid wall.  Why it works:  It’s very very fast, very flashy, and dangerous to ride, and somehow that translates to believable.    What to watch out for:  You definitely don’t want touch your former self or you will endure the worst special effects demise in the history of cinema.
• Hypnosis:  Somewhere in Time.  In this odd little cornball-ish romantic film, Christopher Reeve’s character travels through time by using self-hypnosis and a few trinkets from the past to meet and fall in love with Jane Seymour.  Why it works:  because we all like to believe that our minds are capable of doing anything if only we can find the way to properly focus.  What to watch out for:  Any reminders of the time frame you came from. One little penny can send you hurtling back to the present.
• Getting Drunk and Waiting for a Ride:  Midnight in Paris.  In Woody Allen’s Rom Com, Owen Wilson gets to travel to the golden age of Paris every night, simply by drinking some wine and hanging out on a street corner waiting for a ride into the past.  Why it works:  because it’s mystical, romantic and unexplainable and only the ‘chosen’ get to go.  What to watch out for:  Nothing.  Not only is this time travel perfectly harmless, it will even help you get rid of unpleasant castrating fiances and their unpleasant parents from your life in the present.
• The Time Travel Box:  Primer.  Shane Carruth devised such clever and original method to travel  through time for the movie Primer, that scores of fans resorted to reading complicated charts to figure out exactly how it all worked.  His character’s time travel box was an accidental discovery that allowed a person to  turn on the box in the morning, return later in the day, and time travel back to when it was first turned on. Why it works:  It’s complicated, it has specific temporal limitations, and completely original, so it  feels genuine.  What to watch out for:  you could create an unlimited number of other selves resulting major  personal complications as well as some sinister looking nosebleeds.

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Every Time Travel Scene From Back to the Future

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwTj7SwzcHI]

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Time Cop (Go to :20 seconds for Time Travel Device)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OPLHgw54h4]

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Somewhere in Time

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ3O-3XO9Sw]

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Midnight in Paris

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzoOA473wq0]