British citizen Herbert George Wells became famous, first of all, for giving the world several truly useful ideas. It was he who put forward the hypothesis of four dimensions, predicted chemical and laser weapons, and also introduced into circulation the concepts of “antigravity”, “invisibility” and other still fantastic and not fully realized gizmos.
Not being an inventor or a scientist, Wells was merely making the first pitch, leaving it to others, much more advanced in scientific knowledge, to delve into the details.
Two graphomaniacs, a certain Karl Alexander and Steve Hayes, without the gift of foresight or the power of thought, decided that Wells would make a good character for their science fiction novel. This book became the basis for the script written by the American director Nicholas Meyer. After his work on Arthur Conan Doyle's text in the film “Critical Decision” (1976) was nominated for an Oscar, Meyer was inspired and again turned to the events that took place in his historical homeland. As a result, in 1979, the science fiction melodrama “Time After Time” was released, localized in Russia under the title “Journey in a Time Machine”.
…Even before the publication of his first novel, The Time Machine, the publicist Herbert Wells gathered his high-society friends to boast of his latest invention – a machine for moving in the space-time continuum. His comrades treated the idea with a certain skepticism, as they did with all the crazy ideas of the socialist Wells, who constantly talked about the bright future of humanity. And only one of those present, the surgeon John Leslie Stevenson, an old friend of the owner of the house and his permanent chess partner, took note of his friend’s invention. And he did not fail to use it soon after, when the police descended on Wells’ house.
The thing is that Stevenson led a double life. During the day he was a successful doctor and gentleman, and at night he carried out strip operations on the streets of London. And his nickname was Jack the Ripper. Without waiting for Scotland Yard to charge him with another brutal murder of a prostitute, Stevenson took an untested time machine to the future, namely to 1979. Having discovered the loss of his friend and his device, Wells immediately understood what had happened. Being an idealist, Herbert was horrified by the mere thought of what the black soul of the Ripper could do in the future, where there have long been no wars and violence, and all people smell exclusively of violets. Having waited for the return of the machine (that's how the mechanism works), he collects cash and jumps into the “saddle” to find Stevenson and put him in his place, that is, into the hands of the law of the late 19th century …
What a wonderful idea to cross Wells's writing genius with the legendary serial killer (whose identity, let me remind you, was never established) and stick them both in the late 20th century, so that the former could feel the utopian nature of his socialist views on his own skin, and the latter could have a great time in the rotten West. Alas, the idea is all the advantages of Nicholas Meyer's film, because the idea's potential is not used even halfway. The hodgepodge of fantasy, detective and melodrama genres is replete with multiple bloopers, and the story of the characters' time travel often defies all laws of logic.
My mother likes to say: “If common sense was used in cinema, many films would end before they even began.” But does that mean that fiction has to be stupid? You must admit, having a functioning time machine under your butt, it is stupid to run around an obscure city on the other side of the world in the hope of finding your enemy. The question is, what prevented Wells from calmly traveling a couple of minutes into the past before the arrival of his “comrade” the Ripper and calmly whacking him on the head as he exited the machine? That's it, curtain call. No adventures, clashes with 70s civilization, or love affairs with a bank clerk.
It turns out that in order to make the characters do what the authors want, and not what follows from logical conclusions, it is necessary to deprive them of the opportunity to analyze the situation as much as possible. By the way, the creators of the film “Back to the Future”, which has a similar plot, managed to play out the situation in such a way that the viewer has no doubts. Nicholas Meyer took the path of least resistance: he, like Wells, did not care about the details, but only the general direction of the idea. But if the famous Englishman, omitting technical nuances, was still a herald of the future, then Meyer is simply a hack.
On the other hand, why did we pounce so hard on entertainment fiction created solely to amuse the audience? Maybe because the entertainment wasn't going so well either? The film confidently splits into three parts. The first, in which the characters end up in the future, is interesting because of the clash of different eras. An imposing and exceptionally polite Englishman, brilliantly played by Wells's compatriot, actor Malcolm McDowell, wanders around San Francisco in the late 70s (thanks to the fact that the prototype of the time machine he invented is based at an exhibition in that city) and is surprised to discover new things. A similar technique is used in all films related to time travel, be it the already mentioned “Back to the Future” or our Soviet “Guest from the Future”.
Alas, having briefly introduced Wells to the achievements of civilization (including dubious ones), the authors sharply turned the plot to the left, deciding that it was high time to transfer the runners to the melodrama genre. And right up until the finale, where Meyer managed to justify himself a little for the monotony of the first hour, the film never got off these rails. It is quite possible that the real stormy romance of the main actors – McDowell and American Mary Steenburgen, who even got married after the premiere of the film, having lived in marriage for ten years, was to blame. It is funny that immediately after her divorce from the Englishman, Steenburgen starred in almost the same role in Zemeckis's film “Back to the Future 3”, where she also made the “time traveler” Doc Brown fall in love with her. The work on “Epoch after Epoch” was, in fact, a debut for Steenburgen, and, to be honest, less successful than she would have liked.
The romantic component has nipped the intrigue in the bud, because it has now become clear that the writer from the past will spend the rest of the film defending his new acquaintance from the Ripper's advances (another Briton, David Warner, known to the general public from Titanic, plays his role). So it turns out that the pursuit of a serial killer, which was supposed to be the core of the plot, first gave way to Mr. Wells's acquaintance with fast food, cars, and electric toothbrushes, and then slid down to a banal denouement, where “he, she, and a villain with a knife.” The authors generally gave Warner little time on screen, so the Ripper turned out to be a bit of a cardboard character, and only thanks to the actor's talent does this image leave at least some trace in the memory.
And here they are, the disappointing conclusions. It seems that the inclusion of the Ripper in the plot was superfluous. Well, Herbert Wells would have traveled to the future, familiarized himself with the realities of the world, charmed a pretty girl and took her to 1895. But since the authors intended to make a thriller, we are forced to follow the inept hand of Meyer and company, who imagined themselves to be followers of Hitchcock.
