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17 Underrated Sci-Fi Movies About Time Travel

Everyone and their mother knows about time travel movies like Back to the Future and Avengers: Endgame , but what about the underrated time travel movies ? It's a sci-fi subgenre with plenty of room to maneuver; there have been virtually countless time travel movies since the dawn of filmmaking. Some films fare better than others - the less said about 2002's The Time Machine , the better - but we're here to focus on some of the hidden gems and/or underrated films of the genre.

From low-budget gems like Primer and Timecrimes to big-budget blockbusters like Men in Black 3 and Deja Vu . From comedies to anime to the foreign arthouse, time travel keeps reliably cropping up. There's a lot of room to maneuver in this particular subgenre, so get ready to dive deep. Remember to vote up your favorite underrated films about time travel.

Does it count as time travel if the only thing traveling back and forth in time are voices? The answer is an unquestionable yes, and though Frequency uses its time travel to tell a by-the-numbers murder mystery, that doesn't make it any less worthy. Buoyed by grounded performances from Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviezel, Frequency ends up being more than the sum of its parts.

There's nothing wrong with a classic thriller, especially when there are time travel hijinks involved. And if you thought Quaid and Caviezel weren't enough, let's bring Andre Braugher and Noah Emmerich to the party. The fact that it was directed by Gregory Hoblit, a man responsible for two of the most underrated thrillers of the past 25 years ( Fracture and Primal Fear) is just a bonus. If you're a fan of any of these Hollywood players or time travel in general, you should give Frequency a look.

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Upon release in 2006, Déjà Vu was a minor hit for Tony Scott, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Denzel Washington. Critics were mixed on the film, and it has ended up as a footnote in the career of one of America's most celebrated actors. But Déjà Vu deserves better. Every film that comes out of Hollywood doesn't have to reinvent the wheel, and sometimes you're just in the mood for a competent, well-made drama. This one happens to be about a man who travels back in time to stop a domestic terrorist strike from decimating New Orleans.

If you keep your expectations at a reasonable level, there's a lot to admire about Déjà Vu . With a cast that features Washington and a host of gifted performers like Val Kilmer, Paula Patton, and Bruce Greenwood as well as competent direction from Scott, Déjà Vu is the kind of big-budget filmmaking that has gone away in the wake of Hollywood's neverending hunt for the next blockbuster franchise. Besides, who doesn't like watching Denzel do his thing?

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Predestination

Based on Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 short story, "'—All You Zombies—'", 2014's Predestination struggled to make back its minuscule budget of $5 million at the box office upon release and that is a crying shame. Starring Ethan Hawke and Sarah Snook, Predestination is a heady sci-fi thriller that's a bit hard to pin down. It's hard to sum up all of its twists and turns in the limited space here, but suffice it to say, Predestination is a hell of a trip.

This is a film that demands rewatching in order to decode what it's trying to say with its themes on gender and fate, and even then it can be difficult to decipher at times. But that's okay! The journey is fun enough to make it all work. As Richard Roeper said in his review , "As soon as the credits rolled on Predestination , I wanted to watch it again. It was even more of a mind-dance the second time around."

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Flight of the Navigator

It may be hard to imagine now, but there was a time not so long ago when the Walt Disney Company was floundering. Before Michael Eisner and Frank Wells came in to turn the company around in the mid-'80s, the House of Mouse was in serious financial straits and the creative side of the company wasn't faring much better. One of the first projects released during the duo's successful tenure was 1986's Flight of the Navigator . This was a few years ahead of The Little Mermaid and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids setting the box office on fire to bring Disney back to the top, but that doesn't make Navigator any less worthy.

Flight of the Navigator is more a story of accidental time travel due to time dilation more than anything else, as the 12-year-old protagonist travels to a planet 560 light years away, and back, causing him to age just over two hours in a span of eight years. He sets off on an adventure to return back to his own time, and family-friendly fun is had by all. To be frank, it's heady stuff for a kid's movie and the special effects were top-notch for the time. A remake has been rumored for years, but for now let's stick with the undeniable charm of the original, thank you very much.

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It's certainly very shocking that a film called Timecrimes has something to do with time travel. But let's just focus on that title for a second, here. Timecrimes ? That is an awesome title for a movie! And Timecrimes itself is a saucy little low-budget thriller. The Spanish film tells the story of a man who becomes part of a time loop thanks to an experimental time travel machine. That's not all, as he also must stop his other selves (who exist in the same plane of existence thanks to the time travel) from continuing to exist.

It's a bit much to wrap your head around, but it all makes sense when you're watching it. Made for under $3 million, Timecrimes is an effective little thriller that you can't help but admire. And if that English-language remake ever actually gets off the ground, perhaps the original will find a bigger audience than it did upon release back in 2007.

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The Final Countdown

A few years before the iconic '80s song was released, The Final Countdown hit theaters. The film is about a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that travels through time to the day before Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. It also stars two titans of cinema, Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen, as they ham it up in a B-movie blockbuster. The Final Countdown doesn't take itself too seriously and it doesn't expect its audience to, either.

The real star of the show is the massive amounts of actual Navy aircraft aboard the real aircraft carrier the filmmakers got to use for the production. The USS Nimitz , which is astonishingly still in use to this very day, served as a shooting location for The Final Countdown and it is glorious to behold. There are more than a dozen genuine aircraft vehicles that appear in the film and it lends an authenticity that is hard to fabricate. Come for Douglas and Sheen, stay for some awesome Navy realism.

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Primer , Shane Carruth's 2004 sci-fi debut made on an estimated budget of around $7,000 , was one of the first cult hits of the internet age. A cerebral tale of two men who accidentally discover time travel in a garage and subsequently try to exploit it to earn heaps of money, this micro-budget movie was less of a word-of-mouth success and more of a find-via-blog success. Still, Primer feels like an underseen classic in the age of endless streaming services.

Perhaps that has something to do with the density of both the plot and the dialogue. Primer doesn't try to hold your hand, and it makes no apologies for it. To do so would be a disservice to both the film and the audience. More about humankind's ethical dilemmas and less about the time travel itself, Primer is a movie that is both hard to explain and impossible to forget.

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Time After Time

At a fundamental level, using time travel as a storytelling device lets the audience suspend disbelief a little bit more than they usually would. Case in point: 1979's Time After Time . Based on the novel of the same name, this film follows famous British writer H.G. Wells - author of timeless novels like The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds - as he uses a time machine to pursue Jack the Ripper into the future of 1979 San Francisco. It sounds more like fantastical fan fiction than a Hollywood studio film, yet here we are.

Though this movie has largely been forgotten to time, it actually works! Obviously, the film isn't to be taken all that seriously, and that ends up working in its favor. With charismatic leads as affable as Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen, it's easy to see why it succeeds. It's just delightful. And it's clear to see some people have fond memories of Time After Time as Kevin Williamson, of Scream and Dawson's Creek fame, brought a television version to screens in March 2017.

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Time Bandits

If you're in the mood for a kooky sci-fi fantasy featuring an all-star cast, Time Bandits has you covered. Co-written and directed by Monty Python's Terry Gilliam, Time Bandits features Sean Connery, John Cleese, Shelley Duvall, Katherine Helmond, and Ian Holm in an adventure that could only be dreamed up by the man who brought you films like Brazil and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus . Seriously, Time Bandits is nothing if not a whole mess of fun.

Made for kids (and everyone who used to be kids) with vivid imaginations, Time Bandits follows 11-year-old Kevin as he becomes embroiled in a loopy time travel escapade. You know what kind of film this is going to be when an armored knight on horseback comes billowing out of Kevin's closet. It is so much fun. And hopefully you like dark comedy, because the ending of Time Bandits has a grueling fate in store for Kevin's parents.

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Some time travel films are light and breezy, meant to delight fans both young and old with capricious tales of science fiction. Synchronic is not one of these films. Unless stories about cancer and missing children are "light and breezy" to you. Alas, Synchronic remains a criminally underseen film from Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (who are absolutely perfect choices to direct episodes of Disney+ MCU show Moon Knight ).

New Orleans paramedics Steve and Dennis, played by Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan, become embroiled in a weird mystery surrounding Dennis's missing daughter and a new drug that somehow causes its users to travel in time. Benson and Moorhead manage to keep everything dark and moody despite the odd premise of the film, and it ends up being a ride worth taking.

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Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

Bill & Ted's Excellent Excellent Adventure is the well-regarded original, while Bill & Ted Face the Music is the unexpected franchise revival. This means Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey is the unfortunate middle child too often dismissed as inferior. In many eyes, however, Bogus Journey is unfairly maligned by the movie-going masses. The screenplay may not be as tight as Excellent Adventure and it may lack the nostalgic punch of Face the Music , but don't go sleeping on Bogus Journey .

It's a juvenile comedy that also spoofs The Seventh Seal - what more could you possibly ask for? It has something for everyone, provided you go into a viewing with the right mindset. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are as game as they were in Excellent Adventure, but it's ultimately William Sadler who steals the show as Death incarnate. Roger Ebert put it best in his positive review , saying it is for "lovers of fantasy, whimsy, and fanciful special effects. This movie is light as a feather and thin as ice in spring, but what it does, it does very nicely."

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Men in Black 3

Men in Black will forever remain a '90s classic and, well, the less said about Men in Black II , the better, but Men in Black 3 has quickly become an underrated movie - even though it grossed a monstrous $624 million at the worldwide box office. The sci-fi threequel follows Will Smith's Agent J as he goes back in time to team up with Agent K's younger self to save the world from evil aliens.

Josh Brolin is delightful as he does his best young Tommy Lee Jones impression as Agent K, and Jemaine Clement is just tons of fun as the villain, Boris the Animal. Is it a bit derivative of the first two? Yes, but sometimes you're just in the mood for some popcorn comfort food and Men in Black 3 is certainly that. Besides, it's much better than 2019's soft reboot, Men in Black: International .

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In the Shadow of the Moon

The problem with releasing a genre picture on Netflix is that they usually get lost in the shuffle. If it isn't something Netflix thinks it can market to a wide audience, it just sort of gets released with little-to-no fanfare. This certainly was the case with 2019's In the Shadow of the Moon . From director Jim Mickle, known for little-seen critical darlings like Cold in July and We Are What We Are , this sci-fi thriller is about a cop who tries to stop a serial killer who reappears every nine years to strike again.

We don't want to give the twist away as to how this involves time travel, because doing so kind of ruins the whole point of the film. If you've got a Netflix account, it's worth a watch and is just waiting there for you. The Detroit News ' Adam Graham puts it best : "[W]hen you least expect it, In the Shadow of the Moon delivers a powerful message about the roots of hate and the dangers it poses to society. Don't let this one stay in the shadows for long."

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What is there to say about La Jetée ? From the fact that it is a 28-minute-long French film from 1962 almost entirely made up of still images, it's safe to assume all but the most fervent cinephiles haven't seen it. Of course, if you're game for its aesthetic, all there is a lot to love about La Jetée. And if you're a fan of 12 Monkeys , a film it directly inspired , then you're sure to have a good time.

The film follows a prisoner in post-apocalyptic Paris right after World War III as he is used as a test subject in a time travel experiment. Throughout the events of the film, the protagonist is sent both back in time before WWIII and way out into the future, where he meets a race of technologically advanced beings. Had it been shot traditionally, it isn't hard to see an alternate timeline in which La Jetée became one of the most popular foreign films of all time.

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The History of Time Travel

The History of Time Travel is a 2014 movie written and directed by then-film student Ricky Kennedy. It's a mockumentary that tells the story of the men who created the world’s first time machine and the unintended ramifications it has on world events. If this were all the film was, there wouldn't be much more to talk about. But The History of Time Travel has more up its sleeve than being a fake documentary about false events.

The brilliance of the film resides in its clever use of time travel ramifications. As the film goes on, subtle changes begin to appear on screen as more information about the time travelers' exploits is revealed. Of course, the people being interviewed don't realize these changes are happening to them because, why would they? We wouldn't be aware of changes to our past because they would just become our history (at least, in the universe of this film). The History of Time Travel is quite low-budget and it shows, but it is still a rollicking good time for anyone in the mood for a new take on time travel.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Time travel and anime seem like they were made for each other - though couching the time travel in a coming-of-age story for young adults is a bit of a twist on the formula that's easy to get behind. And with a title like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time , you kind of know what you're getting yourself into. This film is your average young adult fare with a sci-fi twist, which totally works.

There's not much else to say about The Girl Who Leapt Through Time without giving the whole plot away. It's a film that was pretty much universally adored by critics and audiences alike as its infectious energy can't be denied. If you recall the plights of your teenage years with any sort of whimsy, jump into The Girl Who Leapt Through Time . You'll be glad you did.

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Je t'aime, je t'aime

2001: A Space Odyssey is often heralded as a film before its time - and rightly so - but there was another 1968 sci-fi film that dared to break the mold and challenge viewers to think outside the box. A supposed influence on Michel Gondry's landmark Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , Alain Resnais and Jacques Sternberg's Je t'aime, je t'aime is about a suicidal man who volunteers for an experiment that causes him to experience his past through a series of disjointed memories.

Je t'aime, je t'aime is not a happy film. By the end, we discover that our protagonist has killed his terminally ill partner to ease her pain and he ends the film about to perish from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. We do not get to see whether he actually makes it or not, but that is beside the point. Je t'aime, je t'aime is a heady film about love, loss, and mental illness. It is both a relic of its time as well as highly forward-thinking in both its subject matter and its technique.

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As they say in well-written scripts, "You mean... like time travel?" + also a few bizarre stories about real people who have claimed, despite every law of physics, they have traveled through time.

The Most Underrated Time Travel Movies You Need To Watch

Time travel stories have a long history, with H.G. Wells' classic "The Time Machine" being published in 1895, and stories of travelers from the future having existed in folklore for centuries . Some of the most fascinating real-life mysteries and urban legends have involved stories of time travel , too. So it should come as no surprise that time travel movies have long been a favorite of the sci-fi genre.

Over the years, some of sci-fi's best movies have involved time travel, be they family adventures like "Back to the Future," thrillers like "12 Monkeys," action movies like "The Terminator," or even comedies like "Groundhog Day." While audiences are well-acquainted with time travel through these big blockbuster films, there are a lot of other, lesser-known movies that employ the same sci-fi concepts. Many of these films have gone under-appreciated, whether because they got lost on streaming, were given initially bad critical scores, or simply weren't marketed well.

Well have no fear, temporal explorers, because even if you can't go back to see them when they were first released, you can see them now, with our helpful list of underrated time-travel movies .

A Netflix original, the unusually titled "ARQ" came and went with little fanfare in 2016. This isn't your ordinary time travel adventure though, like the straightforward thrillers that send heroes back and forth through time. Instead, the film is centered on a young couple who become inadvertently trapped in a repeating loop of time. But unlike "Groundhog Day," they're not stuck in a pleasant little midwestern village — they're stuck in the throws of a robbery gone wrong.

The film stars Robbie Amell ("Upload") and Rachael Taylor ("Jessica Jones") as Renton and Hanna, a husband and wife living in a dark future where oil has become scarce and energy supplies are dwindling. Renton once worked for one of the world's major corporations and made off with his greatest invention, the ARQ — a powerful device capable of generating infinite energy. But when agents of his company's rival come to steal it from him, he switches it on and they become trapped in a deadly time loop.

A gripping thriller and borderline horror movie, "ARQ" is a time loop story done right, where despite events repeating, you're still left guessing what will happen next. Though it did spur some amount of discussion upon its initial release, the film has sadly faded into obscurity since.

A low-budget indie movie that's become a cult favorite among sci-fi cinephiles, the highly experimental 2004 film "Primer" has remained largely unnoticed by those who don't go digging for hidden gems. Written, directed by, and starring Shane Carruth , the film follows a pair of friends who unwittingly invent a time machine that allows them to return six hours into the past.

At first, their trips backward in time are for little more than experimentation, but they quickly escalate to interference as the friends use the box to invest in short-term stocks that they already know the outcome of. The more they use their machine, though, the more they see the rapid deterioration of their physical and mental states. Repeated experiments soon lead to terrifying consequences when they discover that someone else has been using — and is going to use — the box to irrevocably alter the timeline. But an attempt to activate a fail-safe and end the experiment before it ever started leads to a fateful confrontation with their future selves.

A haunting time-travel tale unlike any other, "Primer" won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and made Carruth one of the most talked-about emerging filmmakers in the industry.

Time After Time

In the mid-1970s, author Karl Alexander approached filmmaker Nicholas Meyer with an early draft of his next book, "Time After Time," and the director was so impressed he snatched up the feature film rights before it was even published. In 1979, the film hit theaters starring Malcolm McDowall ("Clockwork Orange"), David Warner ("The Omen") and Mary Steenburgen ("Back to the Future Part III").

Set in the latter half of the 19th century, the film tells a fictional story centered on real-life sci-fi author H.G. Wells, the man behind the all-time classic "The Time Machine." Here we learn that the time travel contraption from Wells' book was no mere fiction, and is in fact very real. But when serial killer Jack the Ripper steals his machine and escapes to the 'present day' of 1979, it's up to Wells to follow him and prevent him from continuing his murder spree in the 20th century. While there, Wells is equally amazed and horrified by the world he witnesses, where he finds technologies beyond his wildest dreams but a society that's far from the utopian future he'd always imagined.

A satisfying crime drama with a moral message and plenty of time-travel hijinks, "Time After Time" has been mostly forgotten, though it was the subject of a short-lived TV spin-off in 2017.

Starring the MCU's own Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan ("Fifty Shades of Grey"), "Synchronic" is more than just a time-travel thriller. It's a story of love, friendship, and redemption — a powerful tale that uses time travel to prop up a deeply personal character story. With a pair of big-name stars, there's no reason it should have gone overlooked, but while reviews were strong , the film didn't elicit the wider recognition it deserves.

The movie follows Steve and Dennis, a pair of EMS partners and best friends troubled by a recent rash of fatal overdoses of a new designer drug gripping their city. When Dennis' daughter Brianna becomes involved and disappears, it leads him down a road of despair, while Steve decides to look for answers. When he finally tracks down the illegal drug called Synchronic, he learns that it has the power to send users into the past. Determined to find Brianna, he embarks on a harrowing journey through time that he may never return from.

A brilliant sci-fi thriller with time travel that uses its own unique set of rules, "Synchronic" succeeds at being both an engrossing, mind-bending roller coaster and a moving character drama.

Starring Emilio Estevez ("The Mighty Ducks"), Anthony Hopkins ("The Silence of the Lambs"), Rene Russo ("Lethal Weapon 3"), and Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, the 1992 sci-fi action flick "Freejack" is a long-forgotten relic, overshadowed by bigger sci-fi movies of the era. But with a twisted time-travel premise and a strong cast, it's also an underrated adventure that needs to be revisited.

In the dystopian future of 2009, society has found a new way of achieving immortality, with those wealthy enough hiring time-traveling agents to steal victims from the past to become host bodies for their brains. One such future mogul in need of a new, more vital body is Ian McCandless (Hopkins), who hires a time tracker named Victor Vacendak (Jagger) to find him one. Arriving in 1992, Vacendak spirits away Formula One driver Alex Furlong (Estevez) seconds before he was to die in a devastating race crash. But when he escapes Vacendak he becomes a Freejack — a time-displaced fugitive with nowhere to go. With the help of his former fiancee Julie (Russo), he must fight powerful forces to stay alive.

Though the film has a fair amount of schlock and low-budget goofiness, it's also a heck of a lot of fun. It's a movie that almost nobody seems to remember despite its big-name cast and high-concept premise, and it's definitely still worth revisiting today.

Just two years after winning an Academy Award for his performance in the World War II biopic "The Pianist," Adrien Brody appeared in a small indie sci-fi film called "The Jacket." Co-starring Kiera Knightley, the film also features Daniel Craig, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Kris Kristofferson (whose 1989 time travel adventure "Millennium" narrowly missed this list). Inspired by a 1915 short story called "The Star Rover" by "White Fang" author Jack London, the film takes the premise of a convicted murderer who learns how to send his consciousness through time and space and turns it into a compelling thriller.

Brody plays Jack Starks, a Gulf War veteran who's implicated in the death of a police officer after returning home. Deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial due to amnesia, Starks is placed in a psychiatric hospital where he's abused by the staff. After being given an experimental serum, Starks is strapped into a straitjacket and sealed in a morgue drawer. He then discovers that the horrific treatment has sent him 15 years into the future, where he meets Jackie — a young woman from his past. After earning her trust, Starks and Jackie work together in an attempt to manipulate time and get him released from his bizarre captivity.

Gut-wrenching and truly strange, "The Jacket" got mixed reviews upon release, but there's no time like the present to check it out.

Star Trek: First Contact

The "Star Trek" franchise needs no introduction, and even the most casual fans may be aware that time travel is a common trope for "Trek" stories. In addition to "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," which sees Kirk and the Enterprise visiting the "present day" of 1986 to rescue a pair of whales, another time travel "Trek" film released a decade later has been a bit forgotten by time.

"Star Trek: First Contact" sees Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D out to stop the Borg from destroying Earth. On the verge of defeat, the cyborg conquerors travel back in time more than 300 years in an effort to change history. Picard follows them and discovers that the Borg have taken them to 2063 in the aftermath of World War III, where they try to stop Dr. Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell) from making the first warp drive flight that leads directly to Earth's first contact with Vulcans.

While critics and fans have lauded "First Contact" for its high-stakes adventure, it rarely gets its due for also being one of the best time travel stories in the franchise. When you're done, be sure to check out the "Star Trek: Enterprise" Season 2 episode "Regeneration" too, as it serves as a direct sequel that adds even more layers to the time-travel fun.

Fetching Cody

A romantic drama of love and obsession, "Fetching Cody" might remind you of the better-known time-travel thriller "The Butterfly Effect." But as a super-low-budget indie movie that blends sci-fi with teen romance, it went mostly unseen in 2005 and only gained some attention later after its star, Jay Baruchel, became a bigger name. If you're only familiar with Baruchel from his more comedic roles like in "Knocked Up," though, seeing him here might take a bit of time to get used to.

"Fetching Cody" follows a small-time drug dealer named Art (Baruchel), who lives on the streets with his girlfriend Cody (Sarah Lind). But when she overdoses and winds up in a coma, Art decides to do whatever it takes to make things right — which just so happens to include travelling back in time with a makeshift time machine that takes the form of a living room recliner. Determined to alter her past so that the tragedy never occurs, Art attempts to undo her overdose but only makes things worse, until he's finally forced to do the unthinkable.

"Fetching Cody" wasn't well-received , with critics unhappy with its mish-mash of tones. But the premise is a good one and the cast is terrific, so if you can overlook its rough edges, you'll find a strong story about true love and how all of our fates intertwine.

When it premiered in 1994, "Timecop" was seen more as a sci-fi action movie vehicle for Jean-Claude Van Damme — perhaps even a direct answer to Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Total Recall" – than the clever time travel adventure it really is. In some ways, though, the intriguing mystery at the heart of the film is more similar to 2002's "Minority Report," even if it lacks that film's style and flare.

Set 10 years into the "future" in 2004, the film follows Van Damme as Max Walker, an agent of the Time Enforcement Commission tasked with stopping time-traveling criminals. His latest case sends him back to 1994, the same year his wife was killed in a deadly bombing. While there, he uncovers a dark conspiracy that leads directly to a politician from his own time who may be using time travel to orchestrate his rise to power. When he returns to 2004 and discovers history has changed, he realizes he's the only one who can restore the timeline. But his plans are complicated when he encounters his wife in the past, and he has the opportunity to prevent her death.

To be sure, "Timecop" is every bit the action movie it was originally billed as, but it's always been undersold for its suspenseful thriller elements and clever temporal twists. It may never be a true time travel classic, but it's definitely worth a watch.

Receiving just a limited European release in theaters in 2009, "Mr. Nobody" has gotten a bit more attention via streaming in the years since. Nevertheless, it's remained mostly a cult favorite and under-the-radar movie that's been sorely underrated. What most people do know of it stems from its cast, led by controversial thespian Jared Leto and featuring Sarah Polley, Diane Kruger, Rhys Ifans, and Linh Dan Pham.

The film centers on the titular Nemo Nobody (Leto), the last mortal man living at the end of the 21st century when humanity has achieved immortality. At the ripe old age of 118 he faces his final days, and with the help of a psychiatrist, he's able to recall the many forgotten events of his life. As he looks back and reflects, Mr. Nobody explores different possible routes his life could have taken. In each timeline, Nemo makes different choices that affect the outcome of his long life in different multiversal realities.

An esoteric film about choice and family, "Mr. Nobody" isn't a time travel movie in the traditional sense, but it operates under the same basic rules. By showing the many timelines in Mr. Nobody's troubled life be affected by each decision he makes, the film builds out an interesting world and a unique nonlinear story .

The Last Mimzy

Before "A Wrinkle in Time" adapted a beloved time-traveling children's book for the big screen, another kids' adventure made its way to theaters but was largely overlooked. Starring Rhiannon Leigh Wryn, Chris O'Neil, Kathryn Hahn, Timothy Hutton, Rainn Wilson, Joely Richardson, and Michael Clarke Duncan, "The Last Mimzy" hit theaters in 2007 but was swallowed up by bigger family-friendly blockbusters like "TMNT" and "Meet the Robinsons" that released around the same time.

Based on a sci-fi short story from the 1940s, the film makes changes to the original version but retains its core concept, with a scientist in the far future testing a time machine by sending what appear to be children's toys into the past. The film ups the stakes a bit, with the world of the future in dire peril and the time travel having a much bigger mission: To recruit children in the past to help save the future. The "toys" — actually complex futuristic tools — are discovered by siblings Noah and Emma Wilder, who gain incredible psychic powers thanks to their special properties. Once discovered, however, they become the targets of government agents.

A story with a powerful message, "The Last Mimzy" might not be the best sci-fi family film out there, but it's a fun and underrated one that's worth checking out.

Idaho Transfer

Another indie movie filmed on a shoestring budget, the 1973 science fiction film "Idaho Transfer" is only known thanks to being directed by Hollywood great Peter Fonda ("Easy Rider"). Filmed with a cast of mostly unknowns and non-actors, it was only released for a few weeks in theaters before the movie's distributor went bankrupt and has since fallen into obscurity.

The film stars Kelly Bohanan as Karen Braden, a disturbed young woman who's taken to a research facility in Idaho by her father. There, a team of government scientists working on an unrelated project have inadvertently discovered time travel. Peering into the future, they learn that mankind will be mostly wiped out by an ecological disaster, prompting them to send Karen and other young men and women forward in time to help repopulate the planet.

Driven more by an interesting story than by any stunning visual effects or standout performances, "Idaho Transfer" is an under-seen, under-appreciated time-travel tale that deserves better than to be lost to the dustbin of history. Reviews at the time were mixed, but Time Magazine praised its "slow, severe beauty that makes its quiet edge of panic all the more chilling." With a "Twilight Zone" style twist ending , it's also a startling story that explores mankind's worst impulses.

In the Shadow of the Moon

Just a few years before helming the hit Netflix fantasy series "Sweet Tooth," filmmaker Jim Mickle directed the time-travel movie "In the Shadow of the Moon," starring Boyd Holbrook, Cleopatra Coleman, Bokeem Woodbine, and Michael C. Hall. A seriously underrated sci-fi adventure, the film has unfortunately been glossed over in most discussions of the genre.

The film opens in 1988 with Detective Thomas Lockhart (Holbrook) investigating a series of connected but unexplainable deaths that appear to have been caused by a mysterious woman. Nearly a decade later in 1997, an apparent copycat killer surfaces, and in 2006, Lockhart puts the pieces of the puzzle together and realizes he may be tracking a time-traveling serial killer with a personal vendetta. But Lockhart may be tempting fate by looking for answers, as his investigation brings him face-to-face with a ghost from his own past, and future.

A grizzly crime drama with a time-hopping premise that spans more than six decades, "In the Shadow of the Moon" is distinct and affecting. Receiving mediocre reviews , it escaped notice when it was released to Netflix in 2019, but if you're looking for a diamond in the rough, look no further.

Many renowned films have toyed with non-linear storytelling, with director Christopher Nolan's movies being particularly famous for the use of such devices in recent times. Time-travel stories are especially perfect for playing with nonlinearity, and the 2020 sci-fi horror movie "Intersect" does just that.

At the fictional Miskatonic University, a group of researchers cracks the code for time travel using a system called Q42 (a computer voiced by renowned evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins). Their experiments with sending material into the past yield startling results, with one of the scientists realizing that the project may be connected to unusual occurrences in his own childhood. But none of them anticipate the truth about the dark forces who've orchestrated their work, or the terrifying ends of their experiments.

The film does have its issues. It's a tad too long, a bit more of a melodrama than it's billed as, and its low budget shows. But "Intersect" is still a fresh take on time travel, mixing in downright Lovecraftian elements that make it something else entirely and a final act that's not to be missed. It won't win any awards, but it works as a nice diversion after you've cycled through the best that the sub-genre of time-travel movies has to offer.

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18 low budget sci-fi movies that are better than blockbusters (& where to stream them).

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10 Movies That Surprisingly Turned Out To Be Sequels To Other Movies

Every upcoming mad max movie in development, beetlejuice 2 finally explains a gross detail from lydia’s original wedding scene, read update.

Avatar: The Way of Water will dominate the box office in 2022's holiday season as the sequel to James Cameron's original Avatar , the highest-grossing movie of all time. However, while the movie will make a lot of money, it also cost between $350 to $400 million to make. With those numbers, it has to make a lot of money to be a success. However, there are countless low-budget sci-fi movies that have impressed critics and fans made for a budget barely a percent of the Avatar movies. While they might not make as much box office money, they are often profitable in the end and remain and enjoyed a long life as cult classics.

When they’re done right, big-budget sci-fi films can offer viewers a thought-provoking, intelligent story tied to a grand spectacle. While there are many examples of big-budget sci-fi’s that hit the mark, there are just as many that fail to meet it, often featuring clichéd plot points with less than stellar visual effects.

The beauty behind a great low-budget sci-fi film is that it doesn’t have the luxury of money behind it to potentially mask its shortcomings with whiz-bang action and special effects. A low-budget sci-fi must rely purely on its story while using clever filmmaking techniques to build a sense of mystery surrounding the world and characters it’s presenting.

UPDATE: 2023/01/20 12:00 EST BY SHAWN S. LEALOS

Moon (2009), stream now on hbo max.

David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones, made his directorial debut in 2009 with the low-budget sci-fi movie Moon . The movie stars Sam Rockwell as the only main actor in the movie throughout its running time. He plays astronaut Samuel Bell, who has been on a three-year work contract on the moon's space station and is nearing the end of this contract.

RELATED: 10 Sci-Fi Movies That Nailed Their Final Scene

However, he starts to have possible hallucinations of someone in the station other than himself. With only one actor in person and Kevin Spacey in a voice role as the station's AI, most of the money went into the effects. The budget was a low $5 million and Jones made it look like so much more. He ended up using his success with this low budget to get bigger projects, including the video game movie Warcraft . Even with bigger budgets, critics consider Moon as his best movie.

Monsters (2010)

Stream now on prime video & hulu.

Gareth Edwards has directed a movie in the Star Wars franchise with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and helped reboot the Godzilla franchise with that 2014 movie. What got him these jobs was his directorial debut, the low-budget sci-fi monster movie called Monsters and what Edwards did with the production was more than impressive.

The movie featured giant tentacled monsters roaming parts of the Earth and the story followed a photojournalist sent into a zone with monsters to rescue his boss's daughter. Most sci-fi monsters movies cost millions of dollars just for the digital CGI creations but Edwards did all the work himself on Monsters and the budget checked in under $100,000, proving he could make a great monster movie at a fraction of the cost of big-budget movies.

Primer (2004)

Rent now on prime video & apple tv.

There have been some big-budget time travel movies in cinema history , but sometimes smaller is better. With so many massively budgeted movies in the genre's history, there might not be a better sci-fi time travel movie than Primer . The movie arrived in 2004, written, directed, and edited by Shane Carruth.

Thanks to the all-in-one work by Carruth, the budget remained very low at just $7,000, and it all paid off when it won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. The story was complicated with two engineers creating a time travel machine, only to find that there are terrible side effects. While most big-budget time travel movies are pure entertainment, this is a thinking man's movie and one that challenges the viewers, standing the test of time.

A Boy And His Dog (1975)

Stream now on fubo & pluto tv.

Before he donned his white linen suit, Don Johnson was a teenager in A Boy and His Dog . Based on a story by Harlan Ellison, the film was made for $400,000 back in 1975. It didn't gain commercial success during its initial premiere. However, it made up for it in subsequent video and DVD releases.

In the film, Johnson plays Vic, a young man trying to survive in a post-nuclear Southwestern U.S. He's joined by his dog, Blood. Together, they discover an underground population that seems homey at first. However, it turns out to be bloodthirsty. There's a vein of black comedy in the film.

Mad Max (1979)

Stream now on roku & kanopy.

It only took legendary director George Miller $300,000 to turn Mel Gibson into a star and launch a multi-billion dollar sci-fi franchise. Yet, it was hard to tell if Mad Max was science fiction or not. It certainly didn't have the post-apocalyptic atmosphere of its sequels.

As the movie moves ahead, the audience begins to see that Max lives in a society that is breaking down due to the lack of fossil fuels. The circumstances would be darker in later films. In turn, those would lead to dozens of apocalyptic-themed music videos.

The Ice Pirates (1984)

Rent now on apple tv & prime video.

Robert Urich didn't make many theatrical movies in his lifetime. However, the ones he did make drew a good audience. Case in point, the 1984 sci-fi comedy The Ice Pirates .

RELATED: 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies Set On Earth

Made for only nine million dollars, the movie is about space pirates who deal in the rare commodity of ice cubes and managed to make a profit. Urich, who was good at comedy as well as drama, played his role in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. It's probably why The Ice Pirates remains a cult classic.

Deep Impact (1998)

Deep Impact premiered the same summer as Armageddon . However, while the latter was designed to be a summer blockbuster at $140 million, Deep Impact kept things quieter at a comparatively low $75 million.

The film, which featured an all-star cast, was hard science fiction mixed with a little conspiracy theory. The government's actions and how the public responded were much more realistic than how the space cowboys reacted in Armageddon . Also, unlike the Bruce Willis venture, Deep Impact didn't have a real happy ending.

The Butterfly Effect (2004)

Ashton Kutcher took on the dramatic role of an unwilling time traveler in this film. It was undoubtedly a change for the actor after years of playing the lovable dunce on That 70s Show . It may be why The Butterfly Effect , made on a $10 million budget, earned almost $60 million at the U.S. box office.

In the film, Kutcher plays Evan Treborn, a college student who can travel back in time after reading segments in his journal. During those times, Evan attempts to change numerous traumatic moments that affected him and his friends. The Butterfly Effect is an interesting and sometimes creepy film that viewers have to intently watch to keep up.

Circle (2015)

Stream now on netflix.

The sci-fi thriller Circle sees a group of 50 people wake up in a round room with no recollection of how they got there and unable to move from a stationary position. It's soon discovered that the room is killing them off one-by-one every two minutes, with the people eventually figuring out that they hold the power over who lives and who dies.

Circle presents the terrifying dilemma of holding a person’s life in one’s hand and then having to choose whether they live or die based on character. It’s a film that places the audience in an awkward position, but is all the more riveting for it, keeping viewers on the edge of their seats throughout.

The Endless (2017)

Stream now on peacock.

The Endless follows two brothers, who after uncovering an old videotape with a cryptic message from their past, decide to follow the message and revisit the events surrounding their escape from a UFO death cult as kids. Their journey sends them down a twisting path as a strange mystery unravels before them, making them question their beliefs.

The Endless is a slow-burning low-budget sci-fi thriller film with ambitious ideas. It's one that demands the full attention of its audience, as it enters territory that's not easily explainable. Much like the film's protagonists, the audience is thrust into a world of mysterious events as they try to figure out the truth of what's real and what isn't.

The Discovery (2017)

A hidden sci-fi gem on Netflix , The Discovery sees a world in which life after death has been proven to exist. This knowledge sends the world into a tailspin, as people begin to take their own lives for a chance to reset and start again on the other side. The scientist at the forefront of this discovery is visited by his son, who along with a mysterious woman, attempts to figure out the deeper meaning behind this scientific breakthrough.

The Discovery features one of the more unique premises to come from a sci-fi film of late, with contentious themes that are prime for debate upon completion of the film. It's a gloomy film that asks viewers to look introspectively and reflect on their mortality, making it a rare film that can connect with its audience on an emotional level.

Prospect (2018)

Stream now on hulu.

Prospect follows a father-and-daughter team on an expedition to harvest riches on a remote alien moon when they discover that they're not the only ones roving the landscape. The daughter is forced to take matters into her own hands when the journey quickly turns into a fight for survival.

RELATED: 10 Most Unique Sci-Fi Concepts, According To Reddit

Prospect is a perfect example of a film that builds a sci-fi world on a small budget and manages to pull its audience right into it. Its strengths lie in the relationship and character-building between the father and daughter while offering the right amount of thrills and suspense. Its story is one with universal themes that would have worked just as well in any setting.

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

Not all low-budget sci-fi films are full of doom and gloom and such is the case with Colin Trevorrow's quirky dramedy, Safety Not Guaranteed. This obscure but great sci-fi movie follows three magazine employees who answer a strange classified advertisement from a man who is looking for someone to travel back in time with him.

The sci-fi aspects in this one are modest at best, and it works better as a coming-of-age story with a heartfelt, character-driven story. The film focuses on more profound themes relating to time travel, such as missed opportunities and second chances while doing so in a witty and clever style.

Sound Of My Voice (2011)

A mysterious cult is the focus of the indie drama Sound of My Voice, which sees a pair of documentary filmmakers attempt to go deep within the cult and oust its enigmatic leader, who claims to be from the future. However, they too become at risk of falling under her spell.

Cults in movies always make for an intriguing subject matter, as audiences often wonder what drives people to join them and become so entrapped by their charismatic leaders. Such is the theme in Sound of My Voice, with its sci-fi spin adding even more mystery to the stigma behind cults.

Another Earth (2011)

A romance sci-fi film with profound themes, Another Earth follows a man and woman who come together through tragedy on the same night a second Earth is discovered in the solar system. The pair forge a bond over their common, tragic events, though an opportunity to visit the second Earth will cause them to question their relationship.

Another Earth can feel like a slog to get through but offers a lot to think about and reflect on long after the credits have rolled. The film is one that has appeal over multiple genres, making it a good choice for romance lovers, indie lovers, and sci-fi lovers.

Predestination (2014)

Stream now on roku.

Predestination follows the journey of a time-traveling police officer, played by Ethan Hawke in one fo his most underrated roles , whose mission is to stop potential killers before they can commit their crimes. His final mission will be his greatest test yet as he aims to track down a criminal who has eluded him for a very long time.

The film features plenty of sci-fi movie tropes related to the time travel sub-genre, but it doesn't feel clichéd at all. There's a captivating mystery element running through the film that keeps audiences engaged, with a twist that will shock viewers, making Predestination one of the more compelling, yet underappreciated sci-fi films of the 2010s.

Coherence (2013)

Stream now on prime video & peacock.

Coherence follows 8 friends at a dinner party who begin to elicit some disturbing behavior following an astronomical anomaly. Their relationships are tested, and their wits are pushed to the edge as they try to figure out what has caused this troubling turn of events.

This little-known gem is an excellent example of minimalist filmmaking, relying on its small cast of well-developed characters and a suspense-filled story to engage its audience. Films that are set in a single location like this one are hard to pull off, so it's a testament to the filmmaker's ability to hit the mark in such a gripping and entertaining fashion.

The Man From Earth (2007)

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If there was ever a film to achieve excellence in minimalist filmmaking, then The Man from Earth would be it. In the film, a scientist invites his colleagues to a cabin in the woods for a night, where he reveals to them that he is a 14,000-year-old immortal being that's lived through many of human history's evolutionary phases. The revelation sparks a discussion between the group that covers themes of philosophy, religion, and science, as they come to grips with what they've just heard.

The Man from Earth features expert storytelling with an engaging subject matter that will have audiences peeled to the screen. The film revolves around a group of people having a discussion that's so profound and thought-provoking that it makes it a lot more enthralling than any sci-fi film with a bigger budget.

NEXT: 10 Most Rewatchable Sci-Fi Movies, According To Reddit

Primer: Arguably the Most Realistic Movie About Time Travel

Primer, the low-budget debut film from Shane Carruth, may just be the most realistic time travel movie ever made; let's find out why.

Do you ever wish you could turn back time? Well, the 2004 psychological science fiction film Primer will ultimately blow your mind on the ideas and possibilities of time travel. The film was written and directed by Shane Carruth , who is a college graduate and former software engineer himself, with a degree in mathematics. So what makes this time travel adventure film so great, and more importantly, so mind-blowingly realistic?

The Scientific Accuracy of Time Travel in Primer

First, despite its modest budget and experimental story structure, Primer is notable for its philosophical undertones and dense technical and scientific dialogue that was not simplified for the sake of the audience. The language in this movie is difficult to understand. You might be a science fiction fan, but if you are not a scientist, the first time you watch it you will probably only fully understand half of it.

Related : Shining Girls Review: A Time-Travelling Serial Killer is on the Loose

Although, this might be the film's best quality; you will experience the urge to re-watch out of pure fascination. Choosing to focus on the scientific aspect of time travel makes the movie just that extra bit more realistic and allows the viewer to see the logic behind what is going on. It allows the low budget to no longer matter, with the film instead more interested in verisimilitude. It also incorporates a deeper level beneath the technologically accurate dialogue; when asked in an interview with MovieWeb if he expects audiences to understand the "technojargon," Carruth says:

I guess I really don't expect them to. I know I wouldn't, watching it for the first time. The hope is that those scenes are written with an authentic dialogue but they're also written in the hopes that even if we're humming, that there's information coming across about the politics of the group and who's enthusiastic about what, who's proprietary, who the unofficial groups are within the group.

Ultimately, Primer tackles the science of time travel by taking it to a whole other, believable level.

Believable Choices, Characters, and Consequences in Primer

While working with an unrelated invention in their garage, two intelligent engineers, Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan), discover the key to time travel. It goes without saying that when you dabble with time travel, complications always arise (something seen wonderfully in season two of Russian Doll ). When Aaron and Abe unintentionally create what they believe to be a time machine, Abe constructs a version of the device that is capable of transporting a person and puts it through tests.

In their obsession with the invention, the two friends come to realize the frightening consequences of their choices. It's certainly the most realistic take on the notion of time travel, as there's no fancy mission to save the universe; the development of the device is realistic, and the science is bafflingly sophisticated and used out of a passion for science, along with some petty, selfish purposes. It is also fascinating to see the complicated relationship between humans and technology, as the film explores the capitalistic, selfish, and exploitative implications of technology in this corporate world.

Related: These Are Some of the Best Movies About Time Travel

The scientific language in this movie is not the only reason it might take multiple viewings and need to be watched twice or more, they might be essential because the time travel idea is dense, and there’s a lot to absorb. This movie makes you believe that time travel is possible, but also nothing to mess around with.

While the concept of moving through time may be complicated (okay, very complicated) in the movie, the time travel destinations in Primer are just hours or days apart from the present. This is part of what gives the film its very puzzling nature, since characters do not age dramatically and neither do the surroundings alter over a few days time frame; it's sometimes legitimately difficult to know which version of time (and how much the characters know about it) we are watching.

What also makes Primer so believable and realistic is that there is a significant cost to their inventions. In most time travel movies, nothing too terrible or catastrophic happens, and they always seem save the day without gaining even a cut or scratch, or any implications for that matter. In Primer, though, the box is detrimental to the time-traveler’s physical and emotional well-being, and in the end, their friendship is at risk and trust is permanently damaged. The box takes a toll on their bodies; essentially their days become 36 hours long, and as the story progresses, the two men begin to experience some extremely worrying side effects.

Generally, Primer may be the greatest movie on time travel because of its believability, but it's also a film with extremely believable characters, and a plot which is more interested in intellectual sci-fi ideas rather than explosions and happy endings. This is actually the time travel movie to beat them all; if you really want to delve into the nuts and bolts of advanced technology, science, and time travel, then Primer is an essential film.

The Inventory

The Making of Primer : 'Every Inch of Film We Shot Was in That Movie'

We sometimes describe films like 10 Cloverfield Lane as being low-budget—but a real low-budget classic is more like the time-travel movie Primer , which was made for a shockingly tiny $7,000. In a new interview, star David Sullivan talked about how insanely shoestring this production was.

Sullivan talked to Forbes , promoting his new Netflix series Flaked , and he recalled the process of filming Primer :

Primer was made for $7 thousand. That was just five of us running around with the camera in Dallas, Texas. I’m really fortunate as an actor because that was my first role and we got this opportunity to tell this tale of time travel. With that kind of storytelling, there is no way that anyone is going to believe it unless they believe the characters – it’s an independent film with no special effects and almost no budget so the story has to be right. Primer won Sundance in 2004 and it was released later that year or 2005. Every inch of film we shot was in that movie with the exception of maybe 30 feet. We used expired stock, we used short ends, we used any kind of stock that Kodak would donate to us. We were a crew of five guys who trusted each other, you had to trust each other on that kind of budget, and we made this special little film.

You need to watch the most ingenious time-travel thriller on HBO Max ASAP

This little flick proves that big budgets are often just obstacles.

Low-budget time-travel movies often can be too ambitious for their own good, spending too much time on world-building and production design instead of telling a story. The 2007 debut feature from Nacho Vigalondo, however, is a notable exception.

While Vigalondo as a director is conceptually ambitious, he’s also stylistically conservative as seen in his sci-fi thriller, Timecrimes. The time-travel movie features just four characters and four locations, all of them intertwined in a deliciously circular plot that starts and ends with Héctor (Karra Elejalde), a middle-aged everyman and reluctant time traveler.

Having just moved into a country house with his wife Clara, Héctor is tempted into the nearby woods when he spies on a young woman taking her top off. A series of seemingly inconsequential and odd events occur – the woman, a strange phone call, a menacing man with a bandaged face, and a pair of scissors — which lead Héctor to stumble into a hidden facility and travel back in time to about an hour ago.

THE RULES OF TIME TRAVEL is an Inverse special issue exploring the evolution of science fiction's most imaginative sub-genre. From Marty McFly to Avengers: Endgame .

Vigalondo’s storytelling is at its best when it’s logically ambitious. Already sporting an Academy Award nomination for his short film 7:35 in the morning , he would go on to make the Spanish-set Extraterrestrial, an alien invasion movie that takes place almost entirely in a single Madrid apartment, before making his English-language debut with the jittery internet thriller Open Windows. The latter film came along at a time when genre films were taking direct inspiration from the manic multitasking of online life.

That ruthless efficiency is on full display in Timecrimes, where Vigalondo uses the film’s small budget to maximum effect, creating a film that’s aged better than a lot of sci-fi from the mid-2000s. We can recognize the different time travelers through clear visual markers, like the wounds they sport. The actual time machine itself is lowkey, just a big tub of nondescript liquid, like a serious take on Hot Tub Time Machine .

Timecrimes also features love triangle. Héctor’s voyeuristic curiosity draws him away from the safety of home and his wife into a dangerous time warp. His wandering eye is the catalyst of the story and its main theme, as his efforts to get back to where he began become increasingly desperate and cold-blooded.

A scene from Timecrimes with the time traveling machine

Who says a time machine needs to be fancy?

The time travel itself is an accident, occurring only because a rogue technician (played by Vigalondo) wanted to play around with the machine on the weekend. He ends up getting embroiled with Héctor as he attempts to iron out the time paradox he unwittingly creates. Héctor, the cause and the solution of his own misfortunes, races against several past versions of himself to restore balance to his life. He needs to put things right — and herein lies the ingenuity of the film — by not changing anything.

While most time paradoxes are guided by the desperate need to fix or improve something, Timecrimes instead creates a circular narrative. It’s a puzzle you want to solve on the first viewing while being a satisfying example of circular reasoning. The protagonist’s ultimate decision to escape this time paradox acts as a startling reminder that the universe is inalterable.

Timecrimes is streaming on HBO Max .

This article was originally published on May 7, 2022

Science Fiction

Best time travel movies of all time

Journey through cinema and science fiction history as we run down the best time travel movies of all time, from simple trips to other eras to time loops.

Best time travel movies: Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future

Mankind has been fascinated by the possibility of travelling to a different age for over a century. This hypothetical activity, now widely recognized in philosophy and fiction, was popularized by H.G. Wells’ 1895 novel The Time Machine. But it was cinema that made it a recurring science fiction premise in mainstream works. Such movies have kept evolving and taking time travel in wildly different directions, so we have ventured across time and space to bring you our ranked list of the best time travel movies of all time.

A good time travel movie doesn’t need to try too hard to take the subject seriously, as the core concept itself and the mechanics surrounding it remain a mystery and purely hypothetical. Of course, there are stories that leave massive plot holes throughout, but even time travel movies which go for more “realistic” approaches have to make up their own sets of rules. As a result, our list covers both movies that are steeped in the science of the genre and those which simply use time travel as a vehicle for shenanigans. One-way trips through black holes ? Parallel timelines ? Mind-bending paradoxes? It’s got a bit of everything.

For other great sci-fi genres, check out our guides to the best alien invasion movies , the best zombie movies , the best disaster movies , and the best giant monster movies of all time. If you’re in the mood for hands-on time travel fun, our list of the best time travel video games you can play right now is a must-read too.

15. The Time Traveler’s Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)_New Line Cinema

Release date: August 14, 2009
Cast: Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams, Ron Livingston

The original marketing of The Time Traveler’s Wife, based on the novel of the same name, was billed as a sappy romance movie akin to anything from Nicholas Sparks. While it does have its romantic moments, the movie’s commitment to a deep, compelling story of a man who cannot control his own movements through time is a well thought out original take on the concept. Think of it more as a romantic sci-fi drama.

As Henry DeTamble (Bana) travels through time, he cannot control when or where he appears. Luckily, at least, he often is among the same people, specifically, his future/present wife, Clare Abshire (McAdams). Their relationship develops and is bruised by his time shifts, which creates strain as well as successes for both of them throughout the movie.

The Time Traveler’s Wife takes its premise seriously. It allows for the concepts of paradoxes by only ensuring that he directly affects what would, in theory, already occur. Henry is more enacting a prescribed timeline, rather than trying to fight it. It works, and it’s great.

Release date: October 8, 2004
Cast: Shane Carruth, David Sullivan, Casey Gooden

Primer is the quintessential movie for any fan of time travel. With a low budget of only $7,000, it grossed over $800,000 at the box office, making it one of the most successful independent movies of all time. It deserves its success as well, as it brings hard science to audiences in a way that, at first, seems impenetrable, but worms its way into our minds and keeps us analyzing the movie long after it’s over.

When two engineers accidentally create a time travel apparatus during their own experiments, they begin using it for personal gain. As their ideologies on the preservation of time begin to diverge, however, their relationship is pushed to its limits alongside the fraying timeline they alter.

Primer demands multiple viewings, each one illuminating hidden moments throughout the movie that hint at its own finale. Audiences looking for a dense, no-frills look at what time travel would mean if given to an average (albeit genius) Joe, will find it in Primer.

Rent or buy Primer on Amazon.

13. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)_Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.

Release date: February 17, 1989
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, George Carlin

The Bill and Ted franchise are considered family hits for a reason. With the charm of two goofy leads that bumble their way through major historical moments, the movies rely on the time travel conceit to build out and support their silly sense of humor. While the historical moments are considered overly cliché by some, and it’s true that they often misrepresent the moments they are based on, the point of the movie is not to relish in accuracy, but to parody those that try to stick to history all too closely.

In order to ensure a future utopian society created by the titular characters, Rufus travels back in time to the 1980s to help Bill and Ted pass a history class. In order to understand the perspective of the historic figures they are supposed to be researching, the trio travel through time to meet each of them.

Without going into spoilers, decisions made by the pair of heroes as well as Rufus would, if not for the movie completely ignoring them, destroy history as it is known. While this is frustrating for anyone looking for a movie that takes paradoxes seriously, that doesn’t keep Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure from being a fun, engaging flick that should be watched with brains mostly turned off.

12. Deadpool 2

Release date: May 18, 2018
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin

While many movies are poorly received due to their failure to properly respect their own laws of time, Deadpool 2 was given generally positive reviews from critics for intentionally doing the same. In true fashion of the character, Deadpool 2 pokes fun at time travel clichés and tropes, finding ways to both incorporate as well as deride them.

After Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool joins the X-Men they take a young mutant, Russell, under their care. However, his actions in the future lead the mutant cyborg Cable to travel back in time in order to kill Russell and prevent his own tragedy from occurring.

Multiple fourth-wall breaking jokes are made about the villains striking similarities to a certain futuristic machine that is mentioned later in this list. And also similarly, the movie strikes a balance in approaching the anti-hero trope that is often associated with these androids from the future. We’re looking at you Dragon Ball Z.

11. Source Code

Release date: April 1, 2011
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga

Source Code is an exciting sci-fi thriller which shows a lot of restraint despite the sheer audacity of its premise: Army Captain Colter Stevens finds himself in someone else’s body and quickly discovers he’s part of an experimental US government program that wants him to find the person behind the bombing of the train where he wakes up. The catch is that he can only be there for the last 8 minutes before the bomb goes off, being stuck in that loop until he can catch the bomber.

Director Duncan Jones had already wowed sci-fi aficionados with the remarkable Moon (2009), so expectations surrounding Source Code were quite high. While the final result might not be a masterpiece, it ranks easily among the most interesting time travel flicks in recent times. It’s also relatively easy to follow despite its kooky premise thanks to its limited scale.

10. 12 Monkeys

Release date: January 5, 1996
Cast: Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt

Let’s be honest, if someone were to run up to you on the street and say they were from the future and had come back to stop a society-destroying virus, would you believe them? Well, at this point, we probably would too. But, that certainly wasn’t the case when 12 Monkeys came out in the 90s.

When James Cole (Willis) is sent back in time from 2030 to stop a devastating virus from ever being spread, he is immediately captured and committed to an insane asylum, because that’s what would realistically probably happen. There he meets Brad Pitt’s Jeffery Goines, who is a staunch anti-corporate activist and an environmentalist. You can see where this is probably going.

With plenty of back and forth time travel for Cole, and a sincerely harrowing story about the dangers of trying to intervene in the development of a horrific future, 12 Monkeys creates a narrative that looks at the actual implications of time travel. It’s a must see for any action-thriller science-fiction fan.

9. Groundhog Day

Release date: February 12, 1993
Cast: Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott

There’s always been discussion surrounding Groundhog Day and whether it’s really a time travel movie, but you know what? It doesn’t really matter. A simple time loop can be more interesting than a straight-up time-travelling odyssey. In fact, this movie is more of a fantasy comedy that poses the question of what would a regular person do if trapped inside a time loop they cannot explain nor fix.

It's an endearing movie that, despite many creative differences behind the scenes, ended up resonating with audiences thanks to its smaller scale and impeccable comedic timing, all built around a script which is undoubtedly clever, but lacks pretension. Many movies in this list are downbeat or serve as cautionary tales, so we thought it’d be great to inject a healthy dose of optimism.

8. Predestination

Release date: August 28, 2014
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Sarah Snook, Noah Taylor

Predestination might be one of the most overlooked sci-fi movies in recent years, mainly because it didn’t get a very wide international release following its global premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas. Fanatics of time travel movies and loopy sci-fi thrillers made sure as many people as possible heard about it though.

The movie is based on the 1959 short story “All You Zombies” by Robert A. Heinlen, and follows a temporal agent as he pursues one criminal that has eluded him throughout time. The chase quickly turns into a mind-bending exploration of love, fate, and identity that questions the very foundations of time travel as explained in-universe. This one’s a big head-scratcher that requires your full attention, but it’s also far from a slog due to its (mostly successful) action thriller ambitions.

7. Tenet

Release date: August 26, 2020
Cast: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki

We’re still trying to wrap our heads around some of the wilder mechanics featured in Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi thriller, so that alone gives Tenet some weight among the genre’s best. It’s true that some of the character arcs aren’t as fleshed out as they could’ve been, plus its spy-movie villain – played by Kenneth Branagh – can often be unintentionally funny, but it’s hard to find a bolder big-budget action thriller in recent times.

The story follows a former CIA agent who must learn to master “time inversion” and prevent a renegade Russian oligarch from starting World War III. The problem is the attack will come from the future. As the plot unfolds, weirder concepts come into play, and everything isn’t what it seems at first glance. This is a time travel movie unlike anything we had seen before, mainly because it takes a while to adjust to the mind-bending mechanics of its universe and how they play out in parallel to regular action.

6. Edge of Tomorrow

Release date: June 6, 2014
Cast: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton

Edge of Tomorrow was one of the biggest surprises of 2014 thanks to a tight, action-packed script which masterfully mixed the alien invasion subgenre with time-travel shenanigans, so you’re killing two birds with one stone if you choose to watch this banger for the first time.

Based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need Is Kill, Edge of Tomorrow presents a near future in which most of Europe has been taken over by a hostile and unstoppable alien species. Major William Cage, a PR officer, is forced to join an operation against the aliens, only to end up experiencing a time loop that could be the key to defeating the invaders if he can convince the right people. Edge of Tomorrow is both funny and dark, but above all, a true rollercoaster ride.

5. Interstellar

Release date: November 7, 2014
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain

Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, the man behind other “I lost my wife” movies such as Inception, The Prestige, and the more recent Tenet, Interstellar is a time travel movie that uses theoretical laws of physics to alter the perception of time for its protagonists. While Tenet may be a more direct time travel movie, Interstellar surpasses it in its writing, emotional character beats, and the spectacle of its space travel.

After food sources on Earth have been depleted, Cooper (McConaughey) and a team of astronauts go out in search of a habitable planet beyond the solar system. During their journey, time shifts with them depending on the planets they are on, or how close they are to the black hole at the center of their travels.

While none of the characters go back in time, they do experience time travel by how fast or slow their own perception of time is compared to the characters back home. And a particularly interesting point using the black hole does allow information and communication to be sent backwards, which we think totally counts.

Release date: September 28, 2012
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt

Bruce Willis’ most recent foray into time travel, Looper is a mind-bending movie that attempts to tackle the grandfather paradox. Although it falls a bit short of this lofty goal, it still maintains a good narrative that builds to an intense climax that uses the universe’s rules against the main villain in unique ways.

Time travel is ubiquitous in the world of Looper. Unfortunately, a crime syndicate has figured out a way to use this to “lose bodies” by sending their victims back in time to be killed by employees working in the past (or present, if you’re the employee). When Joe, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is hired to kill his older self, played by Bruce Willis, he fails to do so, setting off an intense chase for JGL to correct his mistake.

Ultimately, the movie sets out its own rules for time travel. When young Joe gets a cut, a scar appears on old Joe. This concept progresses through the movie to an ending that may not be temporally possible, but that works to bring closure to the loop.

Rent or buy Looper on Amazon.

3. Avengers: Endgame

Avengers Endgame (2019)_Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Pictures

Release date: April 26, 2019
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo

As the culmination of a storyline spanning over 20 movies, Avengers: Endgame had a serious amount of great moments to look back on in its finale of the Avengers’ stories. After having gone through far-flung cosmic adventures, as well as into subatomic realms, there was only one novel place the Avengers could go: Back in time.

After Thanos wipes out half of all life in the universe with the Snap (or the Blip) in Infinity War, he destroys the Infinity Stones before being killed by a vengeful Thor. With the stones destroyed, the remaining Avengers travel back in time to collect them from various points in the timeline, so that they may restore the universe to what it once was.

During their travels, the Avengers are met with spectacular fight scenes, heart-wrenching deaths, and great callback moments that reward long-time fans of the series. While it can be viewed just alongside Infinity War as a sequel, it needs to be seen after having watched all of the MCU in order to appreciate just how far the Avengers have come.

2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)_Carolco Pictures

Release date: July 3, 1991
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong

When it comes to famous time travel action movies, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the best of them all. With cutting-edge effects for the time that still hold up today, James Cameron’s sequel took what made the original great and expanded on it in ways that only few other sequels have ever managed to do.

When a new Terminator, the T-1000, is sent back in time to kill John Connor, the one person responsible for protecting humanity’s future, the futuristic resistance also sends back Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator to protect him. Now there’s a great premise.

Schwarzenegger was able to bring humanity and empathy to the cruel, menacing robot that he had characterized in the first movie. Plus, Robert Patrick’s T-1000 became a villain that, to this day, is synonymous with the idea of unrelenting pursuit. The movie is pure blockbuster thrills bookended by a time travel story that could change the future of all humankind.

Watch Terminator 2: Judgment Day free on Pluto TV.

1. Back to the Future

Back to the Future (1985)_Universal Pictures

Release date: July 3, 1985
Cast: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson

We gotta go back! Back to when time travel as a concept was still fresh in popular cinema. Back when it hadn’t yet become a TV and movie trope that is often used as a plot device when all other options have been exhausted. Back to when the concept was held with reverence as well as with glee.

Robert Zemeckis’ 1985 classic follows Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) as he travels back in time to the 1950s in order to rescue his mentor, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd). After Marty is accidentally rescued by his own mother in her teenage years, he has to work to ensure that not only can he make it back to the present, but that his parents get together so he’ll even exist.

Back to the Future is full of time travel twists that wind their way into a viewer’s brain and beg to be dissected. This is a movie that’ll appeal to everyone – it has a nostalgic pull for older adults and it’s a great, fun way for a younger generation to connect to the sci-fi genre.

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12 Most Complex Time Travel Movies Executed Well

Hi, this is Barry, and welcome to my site. How a time travel movie is conceived and executed establishes how complicated it can become. Some filmmakers avoid the complexities, others attempt it and make a mess of the timeline(s), but a few embrace the convoluted nature of time travel and do a fantastic job with the execution. Before we go into the list, let me be clear on how I define a time travel movie. So long as there is one person experiencing time in a non-linear fashion, the film makes it into the category. Here is my list of the most complex time travel movies that are well-executed (in no particular order).

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To find where to stream any movie or series based on your country, use This Is Barry’s Where To Watch .

Oh, and if this article doesn’t answer all of your questions, drop me a comment or an FB chat message, and I’ll get you the answer . You can find other film explanations using the search option on top of the site.

For the complete list, do check the 50+ Best Time Travel Movies of all times.

Back To The Future: Part 2

I’m talking specifically about the second part. And why is that? Because a significant portion of the film’s events happens on the same date as the first movie. You see two of Martin and Doc Brown, and they have to make sure they achieve their objective without disturbing any of the events from the first film. This complexity does nothing to affect the film’s humour and quirky characters.

The timeline diagram that Doc Brown draws on the blackboard is iconic and is used by almost everyone to explain complicated time travel movies today. Watching many of the scenes from the first part in the backdrop of this sequel is what makes it extraordinary. Many other time travel movies have emulated this idea in their plots.

Oriol Paulo’s films are a pleasure to watch. He’s got a real talent for non-linear storytelling in the genre of murder mysteries. Mirage combines a crime-thriller with science fiction and time travel in one movie. This time travel movie follows a multi-timeline approach and keeps you on edge with multiple plot twists. A mysterious storm causes a TV to become a bridge across 25 years, enabling characters to communicate with the past. Information that is shared with the past results in different decisions and thereby creates an alternate timeline. Facts and events from each timeline are aggregated to solve the case of murder. It’s enjoyable to watch other subtle pieces of information getting unearthed due to the altered timeline and how they feed into the plot.

The ending of the film wraps up all the time-complications very well, leaving almost no plot holes. Placing a murder mystery within the container of time travel and the movie’s non-linear narrative really make Mirage quite unique.

You can find a detailed explanation with a timeline diagram here – Mirage Explained .

The Infinite Man

You have probably not heard of this low budget Australian film, but it’s a pretty wicked time travel movie. A man wants his girlfriend and himself to relive their anniversary of the previous year. When they do so, they end up encountering multiple versions of themselves travelling back various times into the past. You really need to not blink when you watch this film, as the same events are revisited time and over from different perspectives. The Infinite Man follows a single timeline model and handles the time-complexities superbly. Each character loops back a different number of times. The execution challenge then becomes how to let the who is who and what the reason was for travelling back in time. This complexity was handled excellently in the film.

Infinite Man really deserves more attention considering something this complicated was achieved in a tiny budget with three actors and no special effects. Oh, did I mention some scenes are damn funny too?

For a detailed breakdown of the film and a timeline diagram, read this – The Infinite Man Explained .

Avengers: Endgame

The fate of 20+ films was riding on Avengers: Endgame. We had already witnessed X-Men: Days Of Future Past, which was otherwise a good film, mess up the timeline so badly it erased the events of the original movies and left the fate of future films in the dark. Endgame needed to revisit multiple films of the MCU to temporarily borrow Infinity Stones. To achieve this, the multiple timeline approach was strategically adopted. Meaning travelling to the past of the prime MCU timeline cannot alter it, and all past events occur in alternate timelines. This ensured that all of the prior 20+ movies were preserved. It also provided a clear direction for future MCU films which will be set in the prime MCU timeline. Using this setup, they took the liberty to mess around with the events of previous movies to introduce repercussions of time travel. Examples of this are when we see two Caps fighting and Loki disappearing with the Tesseract.

The best part of this is if future directors choose, they can explore tinkering with plots set in any of the five alternate timelines created in Endgame. Considering the time travel movie wrapped up revisits to older movies in a smart way, learning from the small mistakes in Back To The Future, Endgame definitely deserves mention in this list.

For an extensive analysis of the time travel, plot and characters with a timeline video, go here – Avengers: Endgame Explained .

Primer is centred on two guys who discover time travel accidentally while experimenting with gravitational effects on objects. While the first couple of trips to the past make the film look easy, it soon escalates into a web of timelines folding onto themselves in an extremely convoluted manner. Primer also sports one of the most creative mechanics of time travel using the simple logic that you cannot travel back to before the time machine was switched on or primed . The movie smartly uses this limitation to show how the characters need to come up with ingenious ideas to travel back multiple times. The fascinating bit is that the reason for time-travel comes from pure scientific curiosity and not to achieve a grand purpose. While there might appear to be a few loose ends, the film wraps it up nice and tight. Do pay close attention to everything in this film, and yeah, you’ll need to watch it twice.

No time travel movies’ list is complete without the mention of Primer. The film was produced within a teeny tiny budget of $7000 and yet presents one of the most complicated sets of timelines one can imagine.

Here’s a detailed timeline-wise explanation of this movie – Primer Explained .

12 Monkeys is too close to the COVID-19 virus epidemic for comfort. This time travel movie sees a dystopian future trying to identify the original strain of a virus that took out most of the living beings on the planet. The scientists of the future rely on time travel to identify the source of the infection. The film sports a single faultless timeline with every event tying up beautifully at the end. Small pieces of apparently isolated incidents begin connecting and come together as a whole to reveal the planned solution for the epidemic.

Wading through the misdirections, and the way Cole slowly narrows down and locates the source and how his actions affect the timeline (or rather don’t) makes this film an excellent piece of time travel thriller.

Here’s a detailed plot analysis and explanation of the film – 12 Monkeys Explained .

Predestination

Predestination is the mother of all time complexities that one can witness in a time travel movie. When you try to mentally visualize this single timeline’s flow of events, you will have a couple of nosebleeds. Based on the short story All You Zombies, Predestination extrapolates the book brilliantly. The character development, their interaction and how their stories merge into a larger scheme of events is intriguing and surprises you continually. Every time you think you are getting a hold on what’s happening, the film takes it up a notch and in the end, brings it all together and leaves you talking to yourself.

Predestination is perhaps the most flawless execution of an extremely complex time travel plot while establishing that everything about the movie is one giant paradox.

Here’s everything you need to understand and untangle this film’s plot (yes, there’s a timeline diagram) – Predestination Explained .

Déjà Vu is the classic tale of hunting down a bomber before he strikes again. The catch, however, is that the team uses a time device to follow the life of one of the victims to get the bomber. While the folks of science, who believe in paradoxes, believe that the victim’s fate is sealed, Agent Doug finds it impossible to ignore the obvious that apart from nabbing the bomber he can save the lives of many, but this requires messing with time and rewriting history as they know it.

Though the execution of the film does introduce mild plot holes, the timelines in the movie are wrapped up pretty convincingly at the end. The really innovative sequence is the car chase taking place between two vehicles in entirely different times.

Timecrimes is a fun Spanish time travel movie happening over the duration of one day and a single timeline. What’s unique about this film is that the lead character who travels through is an average Joe. Typically the person travelling through time intends it and is well versed with the science behind it. Not in Time Crimes though. Héctor fumbles his way through most of the plot, and it’s the nature of time that seems to iron things out automatically. The entire film is a giant series of accidents complicating matters for the central character as he gets through his extra-long day.

Multiple Hectors cluelessly running around and amplifying time complications provides for a good deal of humour. Timecrimes is well-executed, and the end of the film wraps up any loose ends and maintains the timeline integrity beautifully.

To read a detailed explanation of this movie, go here – Timecrimes Explained .

Butterfly Effect

Butterfly Effect toggles back and forth, repeatedly creating multiple futures based on small yet significant actions. The story is thought through well and lays out the prime timeline with strategically placed voids in the first half. The latter half revisits these pockets of missing memories, offering a choice to the protagonist to execute a different action.

The protagonist making a small change to a single event causes a cascading effect over years leading up to a drastic and unexpected change to the future. True to its name, Butterfly Effect plays off on Chaos Theory fantastically.

This is a low budget film showcasing an innovative angle to non-linear events via the means of a mystical camera that takes pictures of the future, of the next day. Time Lapse lacks quality characters but makes up for it by executing a single timeline well. At the beginning of the film, we are shown one picture weeks into the future, while the remaining photos are 24hrs into the future. The characters witnessing the pictures of their future creates a chain of events leading up to that final photograph. What’s more, is that the camera possibly takes photos as close as 12 hrs into the future. Regardless of the characters’ intentions and actions, they keep feeding into their fate which refuses to get altered.

Despite a complicated chain of events, the film manages the timeline accurately. It leaves no room for flaws in the execution and hence Time Lapse finds its way into this list despite its poor character development.

Here’s a detailed plot analysis for the film with each of the pictures from the camera – Time Lapse Explained .

Triangle is not strictly a time travel movie. But as I mentioned before, as long as one character experiences time non-linearly, the film qualifies. The film contains time loops that have three versions of the lead at any given moment on a abandoned ship. The film is quite complicated and yet manages to deliver an airtight sequence of events looping on itself wonderfully.

Placed in the slasher genre, Triangle has brilliantly conceived time loops. The cherry on top really is the ending which discloses the reason why the loops have come into existence.

Here’s a complete numbered loop-wise detailed breakdown of the movie – Triangle Explained .

Barry is a technologist who helps start-ups build successful products. His love for movies and production has led him to write his well-received film explanation and analysis articles to help everyone appreciate the films better. He’s regularly available for a chat conversation on his website and consults on storyboarding from time to time. Click to browse all his film articles

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‘Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes’ Review: Hello, It’s You

In this time-travel comedy, a cafe owner and his friends discover a portal that allows them to see two minutes into the future.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

More goofy than gripping, Junta Yamaguchi’s sci-fi farce, “Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes,” is a time-travel tale dotted with philosophical musings and romantic expectations. Yet however cleverly constructed and enthusiastically executed, this debut feature — shot on an iPhone in a single location — rarely surmounts the twistiness of its premise and the repetitiveness of its setups.

After closing his cafe for the day and retiring to his flat upstairs, Kato (Kazunari Tosa) is stunned to see himself on his television screen, apparently speaking from the linked monitor in the cafe — and from two minutes in the future. Kato and his delighted cohort waste no time in exploiting this marvel, racing up and down stairs and backward and forward in time to interrogate their near-future selves. And when fun experiments with lottery scratch cards have been exhausted, the group’s temporal tinkerings become infinitely more complex and consequential.

While there is much to admire in this scrappy, micro-budgeted debut feature, its sci-fi shenanigans are too convoluted and its visuals too claustrophobic to sustain interest. Yamaguchi’s skillful editing (he also acted as cinematographer) makes the tumbling momentum of Makoto Ueda’s script appear seamless, and the young, mostly theater-based actors are charmingly eager. Yet the movie’s darkest and most interesting insight is addressed only glancingly as Kato and his friends, with growing unease, realize that their foreknowledge is programming their present behavior.

That awareness of the unwelcome implications of seeing one’s future is soon subsumed by the movie’s more preposterous concerns, including the arrival of the time-travel police with memory-wiping powder. Bemused viewers, however, may feel they’ve been sniffing that all along.

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes Not rated. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV , Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.

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100+ Best Time Travel Movies

A list of the best time travel movies from the 1940s to the 2020s.

Table of Contents

Time travel movies fascinate us.

Playing with the laws of time is more than an amusing plot device. It’s also a method of covering important themes of redemption, morality, progress, and our place in the universe.

Paradoxically, at the heart of most time travel films — indeed, a fantastical genre if there ever was one — are real and practical questions such as:

Can we overcome our past mistakes?
How do we break vicious habits?
How do our actions affect future generations?
Is love eternal?
How much of our reality in an illusion?
Is it too late? Can we alter fate?

Here we’ll survey the whole time span of time travel films throughout Hollywood history and how these movies address those questions above. Let’s move through time!

Old Time Travel Movies

A connecticut yankee in king arthur’s court (1948).

Based on a Mark Twain novel from 1889, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court is a funny musical about time travel. It stars Bing Crosby — the 1900s singer most famous for his rendition of “White Christmas” — as a mechanic who in the year 1912 bumps his head on a crowbar and is thrown back to Britain in the year 528 AD. Film critics generally agree it is the first time travel movie ever made. In terms of historical importance, it’s a whimsical story that works because it plays off fun and universal fantasy: What kind of chaos and fun would you have if you could travel in time? Bing Crosby shows us.

The Time Machine (1960)

Director George Pal was the first filmmaker to bring H. G. Wells’s novel The Time Machine to Hollywood. The movie plot stays close to the original novel. A scientist in the Victorian era builds a machine that brings him to the year 802,701, where he finds a very different Earth dominated by two tribes at war. Like the book, the movie is an archetypical voyage-and-return story where the journey changes the narrator and his perspective on the world and where it is going. The film is perhaps most important in retrospect, though, for introducing us to technological machines that can traverse time, a trope that would be widely embraced in action and sci-fi movies.

The Time Travelers (1964 )

The Time Travelers is a B-movie from the 1960s. Despite existing on the fringe of pop culture, the film has an amusing campy flavor, and given the film’s small budget, it showcases admirable ingenuity. It’s about a group of scientists who accidentally open a portal to the future with disastrous consequences. The future is an atomic wasteland with mutants, and like the protagonist in The Time Machine , the scientists must find their way back to the present day. Many fans of this film believe director Ib Melchior deserves more credit within the sci-fi genre, and the film did inspire the TV series The Time Tunnel (1966) and remake Journey to the Center of Time (1967).

Jubilee (1978)

Derek Jarman’s Jubilee is an avant-garde film born out of the punk rock era in Britain. The premise: Queen Elizabeth I (born in 1533) is transported by an occult figure to the United Kingdom in the 1970s. There she encounters a new world of gangs, totalitarian police, and a far-reaching dystopia of wretchedness. While the story has more of scrapbook feel than a coherent plot, Jarman’s unique film uses time travel as a device to make political and cultural commentary stating that across all time, whether punks or royalty, we all get corrupted by power, perhaps especially the outcasts. For more on Jubilee and its unusual history, read “A right royal knees-up” by Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian .

Time After Time (1979)

Nicholas Meyer’s Time After Time has a fantastical plot: the serial killer Jack the Ripper finds a time machine made by the author H.G. Wells. Then Jack the Ripper uses it to travel to modern America—San Francisco to be exact. H.G. Wells must use the time machine as well and track down Jack the Ripper before he causes too much chaos. This film is a prime example of a time travel story that tickles the imagination with whimsy and playfulness for the sake of entertainment.

New Time Travel Movies

Somewhere in time (1980).

Somewhere in Time , starring Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymour, is perhaps the most romantic time travel movie ever made. Christopher Reeve plays a young playwright in college. After the performance of his first play, an old woman comes up to him and hauntingly says “come back to me” while handing him a watch. A decade passes. He still has the watch. What did this old woman mean? Why did she give him this watch? As Reeve investigates, he eventually figures out how to travel back in time after talking to a physics professor. As he’s warped back to time, he meets this old woman again in her younger form. The movie is most remembered for romantic lines such as “I cannot find the words. Except for these: ‘I love you.’ Such would I say to him if he were really here.”

Time Bandits (1981)

Writer and producer Terry Gilliam describes his motion picture Time Bandits as the first installment of his “Trilogy of Imagination,” with Brazil (1985) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) as the second and third installment. All three films deal with time, aging, and escapism. Time Bandits is the only one of the three films to use time travel in the plot, and when director Terry Gilliam was asked why, he said that time travel was a “ metaphor for a child’s imagination ” and their “cosmic megalomania” — which is a beautiful statement about a beautiful and enchanting film.

The Philadelphia Experiment (1984)

The title of this film refers to a notorious incident that may or may not have happened at the Philadelphia Naval Yard in 1943—conspiracy theorists insist it happened, while the US Military denies it ever took place. Briefly, it involved an experiment with electromagnetic forces in which a ship, the USS Eldridge, disappeared from the radar.

In this cinematic retelling of the story, which takes the original rumored incident and fictionalizes it to add a time-travel element, David (Michael Pare) and Jim (Bobby Di Cicco) star as two sailors who jump ship in the middle of the experiment, only to find themselves transported to the year 1984. Faced by an angry mob at a restaurant, they take a woman named Allison (Nancy Allen) hostage at gunpoint and escape. Jim’s physical condition deteriorates to the point where he ceases to exist, but it is revealed he was somehow able to return to 1943. David stays in the year 1984 and gradually falls in love with Allison.

Terminator Franchise (1984 – 2021)

The Terminator franchise is undeniably influential in the time travel genre and as one of the most important legends within the the greater sci-fi cinematic canon. The franchise began in 1984 with the release of James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd’s The Terminator , a story about two time travelers from 2029 — Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) and The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) — going back to the 1980s to battle out the future of humanity. In sum, Kyle Reese has traveled back to the 80s to stop artificial intelligence from taking over the world and nuking most of humanity out of existence on August 29th, 1997 by protecting Sarah Connor and her unborn child John, who will lead the resistance against artificial intelligence in the 2020s. The Terminator, a cyborg or cybernetic organism, is there to kill Sarah and Reese and to ensure the child is never born so the self-aware computer system Skynet can rule the planet.

Although the first Terminator film was a blockbuster success, the sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day cemented the franchise’s place in pop culture and is considered one of the best sequels ever made in Hollywood. In Judgment Day , Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator character is sent back to the 90s, but this time as a hacked version designed to protect rather than kill Sarah and John Connor. The success of the sequel was due to the comical and heartwarming dynamic between Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator character and the young child John Connor (Edward Furlong) and the riveting sci-fi comic-book action.

With the launch of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003, James Cameron left the franchise due to an internal dispute . Although Terminator 3 is still a fun and amusing movie, it marks the rapid commercialization of the franchise that led to a slew of additional sequels that many found to be lackluster: Terminator Salvation (2009), Terminator Genisys (2015), and Terminator: Dark Fate (2019), as well as a spinoff TV show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Fox. In 2019’s Dark Fate , James Cameron returns to providing a background writing credit and serving as a producer, and the plot is actually a direct sequel to Terminator 2 and ignores the mythology created in the other versions.

Regarding the impact the franchise had on time travel, this quote has had the most staying power: “there’s no fate but what we make for ourselves” — and throughout all the films, the sense that we can control our destiny is at the heart of the narrative. For a detailed analysis of the actual science and absurdity of time travel in these films, read this conversation with a theoretical physicist .

Trancers (1984)

Trancers (also released as Future Cop ) is an example of a sci-fi action time travel movie. In a strange case of morphic resonance , it was released just a month after The Terminator and shares a similar storyline. Jack Deth, played by Tim Thomerson, is a Los Angeles cop from the 23rd century who hunts “trancers” (futuristic zombies). His most wanted criminal and the creator of these trancers has escaped by traveling back to the 1980s, so Jack has to travel back in time to catch him and stop his evil dominance. The movie had many sequels and adaptations; however, it never became the same kind of pop culture phenomenon the Terminator franchise became.

Back to the Future Trilogy (1985 – 1990)

Director Robert Zemeckis made one of the most memorable blockbusters of all time with Back to the Future (1985). The next two films in the trilogy, Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Back to the Future Part III (1990) were also roaring, action-adventure flicks adored by fans and with high accolades on the ranking site Rotten Tomatoes.

What made these big Hollywood motion pictures work so well? Entertainment journalist Emily VanDerWerff explains how Back to the Future is just a super, super fun movie:

We all have a favorite big, dumb, fun movie that’s loud and raucous and less interested in any thematic depth than in giving us a great time. Such movies exhaust any critical objections and simply leave you spinning around, with a giddy smile on your face. For me, that movie is and always shall be Back to the Future , a movie I consider literally perfect. Tell me about its imperfections. Point out to me its plot holes. Lecture me on how time travel doesn’t work like that. I don’t care. It’s a weird little science-fiction incest comedy that, to me, sets the standard all other popcorn movies must match, the one that leaves them all feeling a little bit lacking.

That is indeed the appeal — they’re just cinematic adventures that don’t purport to be anything else. Naturally, in terms of the logic of the time travel within the films, it’s a mess, but who cares? The Back to the Future franchise is important as time travel movies, because they provide a marvelous and comedic spectacle in a unique approach to science fiction.

The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988)

In this, the first big-budget collaboration between Australian and New Zealander filmmakers, Griffin (Hamish McFarlane) is a nine-year-old psychic boy whose abilities enable him to view alternate realities. He is able to look back and envision England in the 1300s, where the Black Plague threatens to kill everyone in a small, snowy village, so some of the men begin digging into the ground in a desperate attempt to find “the far side of the world.” The find it, indeed—but it’s a giant city in the 1900s, which causes the film suddenly to switch from black and white to full color in the manner of The Wizard of Oz. The tunnelers take their Old World beliefs with them as they attempt to navigate this strange new city—for example, when they see a submarine surface, they are terrified because they think it’s a giant sea creature coming to attack them.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

In this, the first film of a successful 1980s franchise, Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are a pair of high-school would-be musicians in San Dimas, CA who are tasked with a high-school history project requiring them to describe how three prominent historical figures would describe life in San Dimas in the 1980s. They are visited from the year 2688 by a man named Rufus, whose time capsule resembles a phone booth. During their journeys to the past, Bill and Ted are able to transport Napoleon Bonaparte, Princess Elizabeth of England, Socrates, Sigmund Freud, Joan of Arc, and Abraham Lincoln to San Dimas in the 1980s, causing their high-school project to be a rousing success. Their time machine also allows them to travel into the future year of 2688, where they realize that they not only became successful musicians—they are the most admired men in history.

Forever Young (1992)

The narrative setup of the film involves cryogenics more than zipping through the space-time continuum. A test pilot is transported from 1939 to 1992 and falls in love. One lover of the film praises the way the storyline transcends many genres: “The movie, every bit a sci-fi film, manages to be a pretty engaging chick-flick as well. What I like most about it is that it manages to balance both genres fairly convincingly, and in the process, we are left with a nice piece of fiction, although something that won’t go down as a classic film by any stretch of the imagination, still manages to have great pacing and keep its audience’s attention until the final, beautiful moments.”

Groundhog Day (1993)

Groundhog Day is a classic time travel film and perhaps the greatest fantasy comedy in cinematic history. Bill Murray’s character is forced to relive the same day, February 2, over and over again. He’s stuck in a time loop with no way out. The film is comical and heartwarming. It also captures an important paradox of time for all of us—how do we break out of our own habits and beliefs and see the world as something new? While all might not be stuck in a literal time loop, our daily routines can frequently put us in a metaphorical time loop that Groundhog Day lays bare and inspires us to break and be open to the new.

Timecop (1994)

Jean-Claude Van Damme stars as a world-weary cop in the year 1995 who must travel in time to prevent a corrupt US government and its Time Enforcement Police—an organization set up to prevent any sort of time travel that will subvert the government’s stranglehold on such technology. His first journey takes him all the way back to the year 1863, where he must bust a Civil War conspiracy where gold intended for Robert E. Lee’s army is stolen, forward to the year 2004, when the same gold is used to finance a corrupt Senator’s campaign. Roger Ebert wrote, “More than most movies about time travel, ‘Timecop’ invites you to meditate on the logical contradictions of the genre.”

12 Monkeys (1995)

Bruce Willis stars as James Cole, a prisoner in the year 2036 who is trapped in a tunnel underneath Philadelphia after a worldwide plague wiped out most of humanity back in the mid-1990s. As part of the one percent of humanity who survived the pandemic but also as a prisoner whose life is not deemed to be worth much, Cole “volunteers” to travel back in time to stop a maniacal animal-rights activist (Brad Pitt) from releasing the virus that almost exterminated humanity. This involves Cole first being scrubbed clean and then placed in a plastic time-travel device. But since time travel has not yet been perfected, he is first sent back to 1990, and then even further back to 1914, before finally landing in Baltimore in 1996, right before the outbreak. Without revealing the ending, director Terry Gilliam reveals why Cole’s mission may not have been successful: “[It] seems, in the short term, to be a disaster. But in the long term, it’s good for the people 40 years in the future, because they’ll reclaim the world. It’s like agriculture, you gotta chop the plants down, dig ‘em into the ground, and in the future great shoots will sprout up.”

Retroactive (1997)

A time-travel road thriller by director Louis Mourneau, Retroactive stars Frank Whaley as Brian, a brilliant physicist obsessed with time travel. James Belushi plays Frank, a sociopathic computer chip thief. After Frank and his wife Rayanne (Shannon Whirry) pick up a female psychiatrist whose car broke down on the roadside, Frank flies into a rage when he learns that Rayanne has been cheating on him and kills her. But Brian’s flux capacitor allows Rayanne to travel back in time 20 minutes before her murder several times—with things only getting worse until she finally gets it right. According to a review in Gizmodo , “ Retroactive does have some interesting thoughts to share about the similarities between time travel and psychotherapy. Karen explains to Frank and Rayanne that the essence of psychotherapy is examining your past life and imagining what you would do differently given a second chance.”

Blast from the Past (1999)

This romantic comedy film by Hugh Wilson is the most realistic time travel movie on the list because, well, it could actually happen. Brendan Fraser has lived his whole life in a bomb shelter, and now at the age of 30, his dad—played by Christopher Walken—allows him to leave the bunker. Fraser’s character is indeed a blast from the past, as he knows nothing about society and current pop culture; all he knows is what he knew 30 years ago when he went into the bunker. While technically it’s not a time travel movie, it does deal with time distortion as well as typical time travel plot devices, and it’s a rather fun and heartwarming movie that contrasts a radically changing society with the difficulty humans have dealing with it.

Donnie Darko (2001)

Donnie Darko is a cult film and has a rich philosophical backstory about time travel and alternative timelines. The director of the film, Richard Kelly, goes so deep on the topic he even wrote a companion book called Philosophy of Time Travel , which explains the metaphysics of the film in greater detail. The plot while rather complex has divided critics since release — but the movie resonates both as a highly esoteric sci-fi movie and fun coming-of-age tale.

Primer (2004)

Abe and Aaron are two engineers who spend their spare time developing entrepreneurial tech projects out of Aaron’s garage. During an experiment with electromagnetic reduction of an object’s weight, they stumble upon the “A-to-B” causal loop effect, meaning that objects suspended in the weight-reducing field can travel back and forth in time in a repeating loop. Abe builds a device he calls “The Box,” big enough for one human, to test whether it will enable him and Aaron to travel back and forth in time. It works—in six-hour intervals, which are long enough for them to do things such as successfully bet on stock-market manipulations. But since they begin to notice adverse effects of the experiment, such as ear bleeds and their handwriting progressively worsening, they develop a “failsafe” box that enables them to travel backward in time four days to prevent the cumulative negative effects of their time traveling. However, the failsafe box fails — and proves to be anything but safe.

The Butterfly Effect (2004)

Ashton Kutcher stars as Evan, a troubled man in his 20s who suddenly discovers that he is able to travel back in time merely by reading his childhood journals. He attempts to travel back to change things so that he and everyone he knows in the present is in a happier and better place. But just as the scientific concept of the “Butterfly Effect” dictates, changing even one tiny thing can have unintended and even disastrous consequences. For example, during one spate of time-traveling, Evan accidentally kills his girlfriend and winds up in prison and must devise a way to escape. The film was a box-office success and led to two sequels: The Butterfly Effect 2 (2006) and The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations (2009).

Kate & Leopold (2001)

Kate & Leopold is a typical Hollywood romance movie about an English duke time traveler from 1876 who falls in love with a woman from 21st century New York. Like most time travel stories, Kate & Leopold is filled with inconsistencies and has a terrifying premise . Regardless, the movie was a mainstream success in the early 2000s because it used time travel to portray a perfect love that transcended time and space. Real love can be hard and sad. So what better way to idealize romance than bringing it outside time? This is why the subgenre of time travel romance works so well with audiences.

13 Going On 30 (2004)

Jenna is a 13-year-old girl in 1987 who dreams of fitting in with the “cool kids,” who at her school are a clique known as the Six Chicks. Her best friend, Matty, builds her a Barbie’s Dream House and sprinkles it with “wishing dust.” But Jenna’s interest in Matty is only platonic. When the Six Chicks pull a prank on Jenna—promising to bring the boy she has a crush on at school—they instead bring Matty, which causes Jenna to feel betrayed and to kick Matty out of the house. She is so enraged by her betrayal, she bangs her head against the closet and wishes she was thirty—causing some of the wishing dust to fall on her head and for her to be transported 17 years into the future to the year 2004, where she is 30 but still feels as if she is 13.

Southland Tales (2006)

Southland Tales feels more like a puzzle (or cinematic hieroglyphic) than a movie, which is a nice way of saying it’s an incomprehensible mess. Directed by Richard Kelly of Donnie Darko fame, Southland Tales is by almost all accounts an “ego-fueled folly” and a terribly, terribly bad movie . Despite Southland Tales ‘ unwatchable nature, it features a blockbuster cast of pop-culture darlings:

Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) plays amnesiac action star and Mandy Moore plays his wife.
Amy Poehler’s character is a punk neo-Marxist.
Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a porn star named Krysta Lynn Kapowski (aka Krysta Now).
Justin Timberlake plays an Iraq War veteran addicted to a drug called Liquid Karma.
Seann William Scott plays a cop.

Actors aside, Southland Tales is not a conventional Hollywood blockbuster. Consider the film cost over $17 million to make and generated less than $300,000 in theaters. Southland Tales is more in the tradition of the aforementioned arthouse time travel film Jubilee from Derek Jarman than The Terminator franchise, offering esoteric cultural and political prophecy through a heap of images that begin in media res and lack a comprehensible storyline to anyone but the most patient cinephile.

How is time travel related to the story? Suffice it to say that Seann William Scott’s character notices his reflection is delayed in the mirror and some kind of black hole thing opened up in a desert that is causing a wave of chaos. There are nods to the rip in the space-time continuum from Donnie Darko as well.

Southland Tales can be interpreted more generously . The movie isn’t just a science fiction time travel film, it is the ultimate postmodern time travel film. Why? Because it presents a Gen Z version of time where traditional notions of narrative and time have been eroded to the point of no return, and we all live in the amnesia-inducing and ahistorical nowness of social media feeds. There is no time to traverse, just content blocks to bounce endlessly and mindlessly through, which is how the movie moves in a way.

Indeed, it might be said if Southland Tales was released as 15- to 60-second clips posted to TikTok and Instagram Reels instead of as a linear film in theaters, it might be a viral success. For the movie is just a weird scrapbook of skits of lip-syncing, conspiratorial thinking, stunts, dancing, extremist politics, dress-up, and surveillance footage all tinged with an ooze of faux-sexuality and drugged-up schizophrenia.

Deja Vu (2006)

Filmed in New Orleans, Déjà Vu stars Denzel Washington as a New Orleans police officer who is enlisted in a new government project called Snow White. He is shown a video screen and told that it allows him to look at images from four days and six hours ago from any possible angle. What he is not told but discovers on his own is that a screen is actually a time machine that allows him to view and manipulate events as they actually are happening four days and six hours ago, so he marshals his energies to prevent a bombing and save a woman’s life.

Timecrimes (2007)

A man named Hector looks through binoculars deep into the woods, where he sees a woman who appears to be naked. When he searches in the woods for her, he finds her lying naked on a rock. Suddenly, a man with a bandaged face appears and stabs Hector with a pair of scissors. The man begins to chase Hector through the woods, but Hector escapes into a house which he thinks is abandoned, only to realize there’s some strange machinery there. The “strange machinery” turns out to be a time machine, causing Hector to travel back in time one hour—where he must engage in battle with his own self an hour in the future. Through a series of disasters, he realizes to his horror that the naked woman he saw in the woods was his own wife.

The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009)

In this cinematic adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s novel of the same name, Eric Bana stars as Henry DeTample, a man whose ultra-rare genetic disorder enables him to time-travel while his patient wife Clare waits for him at home, unaware of why he constantly goes missing. Since he is the time machine himself, he can only travel back so far as his birth but not before. He uses his strange powers to travel back in time and save his mother from a car crash that would have killed her. Roger Ebert wrote, “If you allow yourself to think for one moment of the paradoxes, contradictions, and logical difficulties involved, you will be lost.”

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

Three friends, seeking a vacation, travel to a run-down ski lodge for a few days, only to discover that the hot tub is actually a time machine that transports them back to the year 1986, when they’d previously spent an extremely unpleasant night at the same resort in the same hot tub. But since they want to make sure that one of the friends’ nephews will be born, they have to recreate the steps of that fateful night without changing a thing. Reel Views wrote, “An attempt to flavor The Hangover with a little Back to the Future , this film argues that what happens in the ’80s stays in the ’80s, but does so with middling results.”

Source Code (2011)

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Colter Stevens, a soldier who was mortally wounded in Afghanistan but wakes up in the body of a man named Sean on a Chicago subway train. Colter realizes to his horror that as Sean, he is part of a top-secret governmental time-travel experiment designed to find the terrorist who bombed the train and to prevent it from happening. He relives the last eight minutes of Sean’s life over and over again in his attempt to thwart the bombing. Reel Views wrote, “ Source Code is what might happen if one cross-bred Groundhog Day with 24 and The Matrix .”

Looper (2012)

In a dystopian future, time travel is controlled by organized crime, and a “looper” is someone who kills criminals who time travel to the past from the future to alter history. Bruce Willis stars as Joe, who is sent back to the past, only to confront his former self, who is tasked with assassinating his future self. But both versions of “Joe” survive, sending the crime syndicate who controls time travel into a frenzy to remediate the situation before it gets out of control.

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 91 Ocean View, WA 99393. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED.

In a film that is about time travel but seems to contain no actual time travel and is based on a real-life ad placed in a magazine in 1997, a journalist named Jeff (Jake Johnson) takes it upon himself to track down the prankster who placed the ad. Two interns assist him in his quest and are able to save two lives—but it remains unclear whether any time travel actually took place in the process. Because of this, Roger Ebert hailed Safety Not Guaranteed as a sterling example of how “to make a time-travel movie containing no apparent paradoxes.”

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

The slogan of this Tom Cruise film is Live Die Repeat , and this captures the contribution of this film to the time travel canon. Edge of Tomorrow is a retread of Groundhog Day applied to a high-tech military confronting an alien invasion . Cruise’s character, Major William Cage, wakes each day to relive the same massacre and must figure out a way to overcome it. Director Doug Liman fought for the time travel element of the film and recalls in an interview with Collider that the movie studio wanted to remove it :

When you try and develop a movie with a world that involves time travel, you quickly realize that humans are never going to travel through time because there are so many paradoxes. You can hardly get through a screenplay. At some point during the development of the screenplay of the first film, Warner Bros said to me, ‘Does he need to travel through time? Maybe he could just battle aliens.’ I was like, ‘Well if you want me to make this movie, he does. I’m not interested in aliens, I’m interested in the repeating the day part.’ Doug Liman

Thankfully Warner Bros allowed the film to keep the time loop element, and many people consider it one of the best action films of the 2010s, an assessment we concur with. Edge of Tomorrow is a tremendous cinematic accomplishment for the way it balances humor, incredible sci-fi special effects, action, and stellar acting performances with a refreshingly clever screenplay.

Time travel in the film is facilitated by a super organism alien that is so advanced it has a different understanding of time as well as the ability to traverse it. When Tom Cruise’s character kills a special breed of this alien, the chemical-blood element seeps into his body giving him the ability to repeat time as well. The film does not fixate much on the mechanics or physics of how this works but as a result, it feels believable enough.

Predestination (2014)

Predestination reaches into the core of the paradoxes inherent in the very idea of time travel. It stars Ethan Hawke as a temporal agent with the ability to inhabit time loops and to stop crimes before they happen. In the process of sending Hawke’s character back to 1970 in an attempt to avert a 1975 attack by a character known as the Fizzle Bomber…then back to the 1960s…and then forward to the 1980s… it becomes unclear whether or not Hawke’s character and those of several other prominent players are actually the same person. In the process, time-travel quandaries such as the Predestination Paradox , the Bootstrap Paradox , the Temporal Paradox , and the Let’s Kill Hitler Paradox are all explored. A review on Astronomy Trek states, “this cerebral sci-fi thriller navigates through multiple twists of fate as the story’s tragic key character is gradually revealed to be [a] self-created entity trapped within a closed loop in time.”

Reset (2017)

Produced by Jackie Chan and directed by Korean filmmaker Yoon Hong-seung, Reset is a time travel movie in Chinese with English subtitles. The film has an emphasis on time travel realism with a focus on wormhole technology and parallel universes but is thoroughly an action thriller about a young mom who loses her son and then is forced to travel through time and different universes to get him back. GirlsWithGuns praised the film for its “fresh and original concept, exactly the kind of thing which Hollywood desperately needs in the genre of late” — and it’s a unique contribution to time travel cinema from a non-English perspective.

When We First Met (2018)

When We First Met is a good example of a time loop movie used as a narrative structure for a romantic comedy. It applies the Groundhog Day formula to figuring out who you love, and the day repeated over and over again is Halloween. Our time traveler, Noah — played by Adam DeVine of Comedy Central’s Workaholics fame — keeps going back in time to try to make a girl fall in love with him. Many parts of the film are cliché, and time travel physics are naturally a mess, but it’s an amusing and heartwarming film for a rainy day.

See You Yesterday (2019)

What if Spike Lee produced Back to the Future instead of Steven Spielberg? And what if that film captured the same fun and whimsy of the Back to the Future franchise but addressed racism and police violence instead? This is exactly what is accomplished in See You Yesterday — social relevance is merged with the fantastical and imaginative power of a sci-fi time travel movie. As a time travel movie, and as a philosophical statement, the movie does an incredible job of being playful but also delivering a real-world message, which critic Carla Hay at the Culture Mix describes thus: “ See You Yesterday shows people, no matter what their age, that life is not about changing the past but how we move forward.”

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

The culmination of the first three phases of Marvel Studios films (aka The Infinity Saga), Avengers: Endgame is the second highest-grossing movie of all time with a $2.7 billion tally. With half the population wiped out by Thanos, the Avengers attempt a daring trip through time in an attempt to reverse the Mad Titan’s destructive actions to bring balance to the galaxy. Directors Anthony and Joe Russo revisit several important time frames in the MCU and challenge the normal time travel rules by having younger and older versions of characters directly interact. Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeeley establish some basic time travel laws that hold up within the context of the film while also poking fun at the Back to the Future time paradox. Endgame is the culmination of 21 films so prepare to spend some time on an extended marathon session to fully appreciate all the references.

Palm Springs (2020)

Palm Springs is a Hulu original film and arguably the most original comedic take on the Groundhog Day formula since, well, Groundhog Day in 1993. Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti star in the film as a pair of 20-somethings stuck in a time loop together on November 9th, the wedding day of their mutual friend. It’s a unique time travel film because of how successful the gonzo, often nihilistic humor is throughout the film’s 90-minute runtime. Palm Springs is also successful in provoking the viewer to ask interesting questions about their own life, like how much fun would you have if you could live the same day over and over again with no consequences for your actions? Likewise, what existential dread would you feel living a life with no responsibility? The film joyfully brings you to that adventurous thought experiment.

Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

In this, the third film in the Bill & Ted time-travel series that came out nearly thirty years after the 1991 sequel Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, the time-traveling aspiring rock stars find themselves as middle-aged and stuck in the near future where they still have been unable to find the musical success which will enable them to save the world. They are then suddenly transported to the year 2067 and are confronted with their elderly and dying selves. They must return to the past in a hurry to sing and record a hit that will save the universe — but the song will happen with the help of their daughters, Billie and Theadora. As a time travel movie, Bill & Ted Face Music is particularly fun because they travel back in this movie to put all the best musicians that ever lived into a supergroup.

The Adam Project (2022)

Ryan Reynolds stars in this sci-fi/drama film from Netflix that explores time travel and multiverses . The Adam Project is most successful as family-friendly movie with heartwarming laughs. The charming plot involves an older version of oneself visiting the younger version and the two teaming up to save the world. It is typical formulaic Hollywood, but it works as a fun little ride of a movie.

The Flash (2023)

In The Flash , the scarlet speedster discovers that he can travel through time using the “speed force” that give him his superpowers . The Flash, who is Barry Allen in his everyday life, decides to use his newfound time-traveling ability to go back in time and prevent the death of his mother. Naturally, his actions have dire consequences. The Flash tries to explain time travel in a novel way, presenting it as an action that changes timelines not just in a straight line towards the future, but in a way that alters events in all directions of space and time. So Barry doesn’t just change his past, he changes the history of events years prior to the date he travels to, and in locations he’s never even been to. This way of looking at time travel gives the filmmakers unlimited freedom to change whatever they want within the DCEU even if it doesn’t really make a lot of sense.

More Time Travel Movies

Cyborg 2087 (1966) takes place in the year 2087, where governments are now using totalitarianism to control the population. A group of “free thinkers” send a cyborg time traveler back into the past to target the person they believe is responsible for their dystopian society.
Planet of the Apes (1968) a great deal of this popular franchise has aspects of time-bending woven within the plot.
Je t’aime, je t’aime (1968) is a 60s sci-fi time travel film from France. A suicide survivor just released from the hospital agrees to participate in a mysterious time travel experiment. He is sent back in time and forced to relive his most painful memories.
The Final Countdown (1980) this Kirk Douglas film tells the story modern aircraft carrier thrown back to 1941 near Hawaii.
Cavegirl (1985) follows a high-school boy who gets lost on a class trip and ends up entering a time portal that sends him to the Stone Age. He falls in love and must fight off murderously jealous cannibal cavemen!
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) Kirk and his crew travel back from the 23rd century to San Francisco in the 1980s to avert a situation that could destroy life on Earth.
Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982) a dirt-bike racer wanders off course in the desert and winds up being transported to the year 1877.
Flight of the Navigator (1986) opens with a young man discovering that he has been the face of a missing-child poster for the past eight years. The plot weaves together alien spaceships, time dilation, and mind transfers.
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) the second installment in this stoner series featuring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter.
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) is a 1960s-inspired film that follows a cheeky British spy who fights his nemesis throughout time in an effort to save his future self. Dr. Evil has invented a powerful new time machine and is determined to sabotage Austin Powers’s future.
Frequency (2000) centers on an NYC detective whose firefighter father died in a tragic accident thirty years earlier. The detective ends up finding a faulty radio that opens a channel of communication across time between him and his late father.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) in the third installment of one of the most successful literary and film franchises of all time, Harry Potter and his friends use the Time Turner, an hourglass that sends you back one hour in time for every time you turn it upside-down and reset the trickling sand. This proves to be a lifesaver for Harry, who learns to his dismay that the evil Lord Voldemort has escaped Azkaban prison and is seeking to kill him.
Click (2006) features a workaholic husband and father, played by Adam Sandler, who discovers a magic remote-control device that allows him to control time and fast-forward through any moment in life that he wishes. He soon discovers devastating disadvantages to this technological miracle.
Premonition (2007) is a supernatural thriller about a woman whose husband dies suddenly. The storyline weaves throughout the widow’s experiences in the days leading up to his death. She attempts to piece together clues to identify his killer and save herself.
Triangle (2009) is set on a cruise ship caught in a time loop.
Star Trek (2009) a Romulan ship called the Narada and Spock’s vessel simultaneously go into a black hole and are sent back in time, but 25 years apart.
Haunted – 3D (2011) marks India’s first 3D feature film release. This supernatural horror flick focuses on a realtor responsible for selling a haunted house. He experiences sinister paranormal presences and travels back in time to prevent them from ever coming alive.
Sound of My Voice (2011) deals with charismatic cult leader that claims she is a time traveler.
11 A.M. (2013) is a Korean sci-fi thriller that dives into a futuristic underwater marine laboratory where a time machine is invented. Surveillance-camera footage offers the lab workers clues on troubling mysteries of the past.
About Time (2013) at age 21, a man named Tim (Domnhall Gleeson) realizes he’s able to travel back in time and fix his life, so he travels back in time to get a girlfriend—but it doesn’t quite end well.
Interstellar (2014) this Christopher Nolan film deals with time travel from light speed travel and intergalactic exploration. More of a study of aging in time vs. on Earth than time travel, it still touches on many tropes of time distortion and travel.
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) Wolverine is sent into the past with a daunting mission: He must change history and, in the course, assure a better future for both humans and mutants.
Lucy (2014) stars Scarlett Johansson as a young woman who is kidnapped and forced to conceal and smuggle drugs into Europe. An accident punctures the powerful drugs into her bloodstream, causing her to develop psychokinetic powers such as time travel and telekinesis.
Doctor Strange (2016) features many time loops, which director Scott Derrickson says isn’t technically time travel: “Well, we don’t time travel in the movie. He reverses time, and time resets. But there’s only ever one timeline, and so it’s a movement of that timeline back and then forward.”
Synchronicity (2016) is a cyberpunk movie inspired by Blade Runner . A man needs to travel back in time to stop an attractive young woman and a wealthy tycoon from stealing his invention.
Time Trap (2017) this low-budget sci-fi movie was made popular through distribution on Netflix. A critic at Inverse describes the movie: “Time Trap is the perfect indie gem to see storytelling in its most simple form. The exposition takes a found-footage angle, making it feel all the more real, even when the footage is found in the suit of an 8-foot-tall spaceman. Yes, it’s cheesy, but it strikes the perfect balance of mindless fun and thought-provoking concepts.”
Happy Death Day (2017) takes the Groundhog Day formula and applies it a slasher and serial killer film. Watch this one if you’re looking for a horror movie with time travel.
The Man With The Magic Box (2019) is a Polish sci-fi dystopian film set in 2030. A janitor finds a time-traveling device and accidentally gets himself stuck in 1950s communist Poland.
In the Shadow of the Moon (2019) is a science-fiction movie from Netflix in which Rya, the protagonist, travels back in time in nine-year intervals to kill the people responsible for the mess the world has become in the present.
James vs . His Future Self (2019) James’s future self travels back in time to prevent the invention of a time machine, which leads to a battle between future and past versions of the same man.
2067 (2020) is an Australian science fiction film where time travel is used to fix climate change.
The Tomorrow War (2021) a man gets drafted to travel into the future, where he must do battle in a war where humanity is forced to confront everything that went wrong in the past. This is one of the newest and most exciting time travel movies released in a while.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) An aging Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is drawn into an adventure that involves his goddaughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and an artifact that is said to hold the secret to time travel.

History of Time Travel Storytelling

Time travel storytelling as a science fiction phenomenon began with Enrique Gaspar’s book The Time Ship (1887) and became mainstream in the late 1800s because of the success by H. G. Wells’s novel The Time Machine (1895). In terms of cultural memory, it might be said the fever dream tour of the past and future in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843) is the most imprinted time travel story in Western consciousness.

As far as Hollywood’s impact, Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future franchise (1985 – 1990) has a great deal of pop culture clout. The ancient idea of infinite loop or eternal return popularized in Groundhog Day (1993) has become a mainstay plot device of modern cinema. And of course there is the Terminator franchise (1984 – 2021), which defined action movies and made Arnold Schwarzenegger into a star.

Like ghost movies , time travel movies transcend any one genre. Time travel is used in everything from romance films to comedies to arthouse cinema to Marvel superhero movies to thrillers and, of course, to science fiction. No matter the genre, though, basically all time travel films require a suspension of disbelief, as they’re full of plot holes and hardly scientifically accurate .

Meet The Author

Chris Laverne

Chris likes weird movies more than horror movies. He studied media, philosophy and literature at Hampshire College. His writing for Creepy Catalog tends to use cinema as a portal for understanding larger societal trends.

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Den of Geek

10 Underrated Time Travel Movies

We would say forget the Back to the Future movies, but we included one in here anyway.

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Time travel could be the coolest plot device in the entire circular history of science fiction. Covering dinosaurs to UFOs and everything in between, without it we wouldn’t have Star Trek , Doctor Who , The Terminator , Bill And Ted , or half of all the greatest genre films and TV shows ever made.

But not all time travel movies are created equal. Some are universally loved ( Back To The Future , Donnie Darko ), but others pretty much overlooked altogether liked they’ve slipped between the cracks of a time travel paradox.

If we ever get our hands on a time machine, we’ll use it to go back and drum up support for some of the best time travel movies that didn’t get the credit they deserved. So if you still don’t think Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime is as good as Looper , we’re probably still living in the darkest timeline…

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

Director Mamoru Hosoda graduated from Digimon: The Movie to this underrated anime classic. The story of a high school girl who stumbles on the power of time travel, it’s mostly all about how much fun a teenager can have with the concept. Instead of using it to go back and stop wars and meet dinosaurs, she uses it to retake her exams and fix an awkward fling – choosing to relive the same 24-hours, Groundhog Day style, until she gets her life right. There’s more to it than that though, and there’s a nice buried message about how you can’t stay a kid forever.

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Watch The Girl Who Leapt Through Time on Amazon

Sound Of My Voice (2012)

Brit Marling was the indie darling of 2011’s Sundance because she had two quirky sci-fis out at the same time. One, Another Earth , got just enough love to go cult, but the other, Sound Of My Voice , came and went without fanfare. Of the two, it’s Marling’s lesser known film that arguably stands up better after a few years in the wilderness – making for one of the most interesting and original takes on the time travel flick so far. Marling plays a cult leader who claims to be from the future and the film follows two documentary directors who set out to expose her. It’s understated and low-fi and very Sundance, but it finds a great new way to come at the genre.

Watch Sound Of My Voice on Amazon

Meet The Robinsons (2007)

Sandwiched between lesser-liked Disney features Chicken Little and Bolt , Meet The Robinsons arrived at a time when the Mouse House was, quite frankly, a bit lousy. Made during Disney’s acquisition of Pixar, the film was half finished when John Lasseter became the chief creative officer, and he reportedly scrapped most of the film and made director Stephen Anderson go back to the drawing board (literally). The result was uneven, at best, but the film has more creative fun with the space-time continuum than most animations that have tried, and the film has a freewheeling, zany approach to storytelling that feels more Looney Tunes than Disney.

Watch Meet The Robinsons on Amazon

Back To The Future Part III (1990)

No one’s favorite Back To The Future movie, Part III was made back-to-back with Part II , and it probably ranks as the world’s most owned, least watched film thanks to the trilogy boxset (alongside Alien 3 , Indy 4 , and Rocky 5 …). In retrospect though, the film is possibly better than Part II (which looks a bit ridiculous now that we’re past 2015), and it stands-up as a fun, retro time-travel adventure in its own right. More B-movie than blockbuster, the film doesn’t try quite as hard as the others but it’s an approach that actually pays off – making it a lighter, brighter sequel than its predecessor. It’s got a great train set piece too.

Watch Back To The Future Part III on Amazon

Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime (1968)

Possibly the best movie about time travel that doesn’t have a gun or a robot or a DeLorean in it, Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime comes from the master of cinematic time hopping – Alain Resnais. Following up more ambiguous experiments with narrative memory like Hiroshima Mon Amour , Last Year At Marienbad , and Muriel , the French master tackled sci-fi head on with the story of a man who volunteers to test a time machine. The experiment goes wrong (obviously) and he’s left skipping through random episodes of his own life. Stan Lee loved it (working with Resnais on two unmade movies), Michel Gondry loved it (citing it as a big influence on Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind ), but it’s still not considered a classic for some reason.

Watch Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime on Amazon

Predestination (2014)

There are only ever two kinds of time travel movies. There are those that take the time to really try and make it all make sense, following each paradox and closing every loophole (see: Primer ), and then there are those that just try to run fast enough so no one notices (see: Edge Of Tomorrow ). The interesting thing about Predestination is that it manages to do both at once – somehow coming off cerebral and dumb at the same time. Similar to Looper in lots of ways, Ethan Hawke does a great job of holding everything together and it’s worth watching as a reminder that The Spierig Brothers actually made a decent film before Jigsaw and Winchester .

Watch Predestination on Amazon Prime

The Amazing Mr. Blunden (1972)

Possibly because it was directed by the same bloke who made the lovely tea-time classic The Railway Children , Lionel Jeffries’ The Amazing Mr. Blunden used to be considered a family film. Bleached of hope in an early ’70s Worzel Gummidge palette, the film makes for a surprisingly chilling ghost story – like a version of Tom’s Midnight Garden with more children burning to death in a house fire. Mixing Henry James horror with a time-skipping kids’ sci-fi story, the film is one of the great cross-overs that manages to fall between the cracks of a dozen different genres. It also ends with the promise of a sequel that we’ve now been waiting almost 50 years for – so watching it now feels like an endlessly looping time-machine in itself.

Watch The Amazing Mr. Blunden on Amazon

Timecrimes (2007)

Nacho Vigalondo ( V/H/S: Viral , Colossal ) made his debut with this ridiculously complicated thriller. The set-up is weird enough – a bloke uses a pair of binoculars to perv on a topless woman, then he gets attacked by man covered in pink bandages before stumbling into a time machine, skipping back an hour – but it gets weirder as the narrative starts tying itself in space-time knots. Sold as horror but surprisingly funny, Vigalondo’s film is perhaps best viewed not as a time travel movie but as an allegory about marriage that’s disturbing but also rather sweet.

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Watch TimeCrimes on Amazon

Time After Time (1979)

There’s no good reason at all why Time After Time isn’t considered a classic. It won a load of awards, it starred Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen, and it’s about HG Wells chasing Jack The Ripper through ’70s San Francisco. Taking liberties with Wells’ legacy and Jack’s infamy, and throwing a sweet love story in for good measure, it’s a terrific fish out of water time-jumper that runs its murder mystery like an antique clock (looks great but doesn’t really work), and looks a bit like a lavish episode of Doctor Who . What’s not to love?

Watch Time After Time on Amazon

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

The last few years have seen several attempts to quirk-up the genre, ranging from rom-coms like About Time and The Time Traveller’s Wife , to alternate takes like Project Almanac and Midnight In Paris – but the one that managed to feel the most original didn’t really get the credit it deserved. Essentially a mumblecore movie with a time machine, Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass deadpan their way through Colin Trevorrow’s slick little indie to make one of the most endearing, smart and gently overwhelming time travel movies of the modern era. And all it’s really remembered for now is for being the movie that Trevorrow made before Jurassic World .

Watch Safety Not Guaranteed on Amazon

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Paul Bradshaw

The 10 Most Expensive Movies Ever Made

Surprisingly, 'Avatar' does not top the list!

The Big Picture

Hollywood's most stunning films are often the result of incredible budgets, with classic epics like Ben-Hur and Cleopatra rivaling today's blockbusters.
The success of a film is no longer solely determined by its box office performance, but also by factors such as marketing campaigns and performance on streaming platforms.
The “make or break” point for some films has become more complicated in recent years.

Hollywood has a history of indulging itself, and many of the most stunning films of all time are the result of incredible budgets. With adjustments for inflation, classic historical epics like Ben-Hur and Cleopatra are just as pricey as the blockbusters of today. A film’s budget and box office performance can change the way that the industry operates and inspire new trends . In the case of Ben-Hur , Hollywood saw a future in epic storytelling with elaborate sets and set pieces; in the case of Cleopatra , the film’s failure marked an end to this fruitful period of movie stars and signified the dawn of the New Hollywood era.

The “make or break” point for some films has become more complicated in recent years. Between the costs paid to theater owners, the price tag on the marketing campaign, and a film’s performance on physical media, VOD, and streaming, many factors can affect whether a movie is seen as a “success.” Budgets tend to grow beyond their original proportions when considering the costs of reshoots, last-minute editing changes, and the flexible release window. 2023 in particular offered an exemplary year of cinema, and many films had a massive budget that paid off. Barbie and The Super Mario Bros. Movie , for example, were released to critical acclaim, and each made more than $1 billion worldwide. Here are the top 10 most expensive movies ever made.

10 'Justice League' (2017)

$300 million.

Production issues tend to dominate the most expensive films ever, and the story behind the $300 million Justice League is far more interesting than either version of the film. After Zack Snyder left the production, Joss Whedon effectively reshot the film in order to rebound from the critical failure of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice . However, it seems like the previous DCEU installments had burned fans too hard, as J ustice League failed to become a critical and financial success on the level of The Avengers . Even $300 million wasn’t enough to make Henry Cavill ’s digitally erased mustache convincing.

Justice League

Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman's selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his new-found ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy.

Watch on Max

9 'Avengers: Infinity War' (2018)

$324.1 million.

Avengers: Infinity War somehow did the impossible and brought together a decade's worth of storytelling into a coherent narrative that balanced all the heroes. The hefty $324.1 million price tag for uniting these superheroes paid off, and Infinity War became the first Marvel film to pass the $2 billion box office threshold . The film's now iconic ending, which saw the heroes losing their first battle against Thanos ( Josh Brolin ), proved to be a shocking cliffhanger that generated increased anticipation for the next installment.

Avengers: Infinity War

The Avengers and their allies must be willing to sacrifice all in an attempt to defeat the powerful Thanos before his blitz of devastation and ruin puts an end to the universe.

Watch on Disney+

8 'Fast X' (2023)

$325 million.

Despite crossing the $700 million mark at the global box office, the excessive budget for Fast X means that it may not have actually been profitable. The shocking ending of Fast X indicated that The Fast and the Furious franchise wouldn't be ending anytime soon, as Dominic Toretto ( Vin Diesel ) still needs to get his revenge on the new villain, Dante Reyes ( Jason Momoa ), by the time that the series reaches its conclusion. However, the diminishing returns of the Fast franchise suggest that the series may have overstayed its welcome.

Over many missions and against impossible odds, Dom Toretto and his family have outsmarted and outdriven every foe in their path. Now, they must confront the most lethal opponent they've ever faced. Fueled by revenge, a terrifying threat emerges from the shadows of the past to shatter Dom's world and destroy everything -- and everyone -- he loves.

Watch on Peacock

7 ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ (2022)

$350 million.

Despite criticisms that James Cameron 's Avatar failed to leave a cultural impact after becoming the highest-grossing film of all time , the second installment in the series proved that audiences were still willing to go on another Pandoran adventure . Avatar: The Way of Water is another film where you can see the results of the price tag on screen. The stunning underwater photography and epic action sequences somehow managed to top the visual achievements of its predecessor. Avatar: The Way of Water was also a critical success, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.

Avatar: The Way of Water

Jake Sully lives with his newfound family formed on the extrasolar moon Pandora. Once a familiar threat returns to finish what was previously started, Jake must work with Neytiri and the army of the Na'vi race to protect their home.

6 ‘Avengers: Endgame’ (2019)

$356 million.

The $356 million final film in the “Infinity Saga” brought back dozens of heroes for a three-hour-long epic that featured time hopping, cameos, and one of the biggest battle scenes in cinema history . Beyond its critical acclaim, Avengers: Endgame provoked emotional responses from viewers who had lived with these heroes for over a decade. Endgame managed to briefly become the highest grossing film of all time before Avatar topped it upon its re-release . Given the critical backlash that Marvel Studios has received for Phases Four and Five, the unique success of Avengers: Endgame stands out even more in comparison.

Avengers: Endgame

After the devastating events of Avengers: Infinity War (2018), the universe is in ruins. With the help of remaining allies, the Avengers assemble once more in order to reverse Thanos' actions and restore balance to the universe.

These Low-Budget Movies Became Some of the Best Blockbusters

5 ‘avengers: age of ultron’ (2015), $365 million.

Surprisingly, the most expensive film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe thus far was 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron at $365 million . Although it received generally favorable reviews and still became one of the highest grossing films ever, Age of Ultron failed to top the earnings and fan enthusiasm of its predecessor. While James Spader 's Ultron is not regarded as one of the best MCU villains , the film marked the debut of the fan-favorite character Wanda Maximoff ( Elizabeth Olsen ).

Avengers: Age of Ultron

When Tony Stark and Bruce Banner try to jump-start a dormant peacekeeping program called Ultron, things go horribly wrong and it's up to Earth's mightiest heroes to stop the villainous Ultron from enacting his terrible plan.

4 ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’ (2011)

$410 million.

Following the massive success of the original trilogy, Disney quickly planned a fourth film in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise — and a $410 million one at that — offering more of Johnny Depp ’s iconic role as Captain Jack Sparrow. While the general consensus was that Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides was an overindulgent mess that stretched the narrative , it didn't fail on a financial level and became yet another film in the series to cross the $1 billion box office mark . However, good will for the series didn't last, as the fifth installment, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, was a critical and financial disappointment that effectively marked the conclusion of the series.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

The checkered past of Capt. Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) catches up to him when he encounters Angelica (Penélope Cruz), a beautiful pirate that Jack once loved then left. Angelica forces him to accompany her to the Queen Anne's Revenge, the ship of the notorious Blackbeard (Ian McShane). Accompanied by a zombie crew, the trio sets sail to find the legendary Fountain of Youth. However, Jack's rival, Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), also seeks the fountain, as does a ship from Spain.

3 ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ (2019)

$416 million.

Where to start with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker ? The production of the final installment in the Star Wars sequel trilogy was hit with setbacks at the very beginning due to the tragic loss of Carrie Fisher , and they swapped Colin Trevorrow out for J.J. Abrams in a last-minute change. Unfortunately, The Rise of Skywalker was a major blunder that squashed the inventiveness of The Last Jedi . While the film still managed to cross the box office $1 billion mark, it’s notably the last theatrical Star Wars film that we’ve seen in theaters. The underwhelming reaction to The Rise of Skywalker may have inspired Disney to put more emphasis on Star Wars streaming shows instead of theatrical films.

Star Wars: Episode IX- The Rise of Skywalker

In the riveting conclusion of the landmark Skywalker saga, new legends will be born-and the final battle for freedom is yet to come.

2 2. ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ (2018)

$516 million.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the second installment in the rebooted trilogy, and is arguably the weakest film in the Jurassic Park franchise. Fallen Kingdom takes the saga in a darker direction and brings dinosaurs outside the park itself . Director J.A. Bayona put a greater emphasis on horror and suspense, and beefed up the roles of the new characters Owen ( Chris Pratt ) and Claire ( Bryce Dallas Howard ), who had been introduced in 2015's Jurassic World . Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom managed to generate enough enthusiasm for the series that its sequel, Jurassic World: Dominion , also crossed the $1 billion mark . The films together cost a reported $844.7 million, with $516 million attributed to Fallen Kingdom, according to Forbes .

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

In the follow-up to Jurassic World, Claire Dearing and Owen Grady aim to save the dinosaurs of Jurassic World from an impending volcanic eruption. Though some would see the creatures die and others aim to sell them on the black market, Owen and Claire hope to see humans and dinosaurs live alongside each other.

Rent on Prime Video

1 ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ (2015)

$533 million.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the first Star Wars film released by Walt Disney Studios, and immediately proved that the acquisition of Lucasfilm had been a success. Despite a massive budget that exceeded $500 million , The Force Awakens 's marketing campaign emphasized nostalgia for the original Star Wars trilogy with its prominent focus on the return of Han Solo ( Harrison Ford ) and Princess Leia ( Carrie Fisher ). The Star Wars franchise may have suffered critical backlash within the last few years due to the overabundance of Disney+ content, but for a brief instance, The Force Awakens proved that the franchise was still worth celebrating.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens

As a new threat to the galaxy rises, Rey, a desert scavenger, and Finn, an ex-stormtrooper, must join Han Solo and Chewbacca to search for the one hope of restoring peace.

Movies Featuring Time Loops & Time Travel

Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, Mary McDonnell, Noah Wyle, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, and Stuart Stone in Donnie Darko (2001)

1. Donnie Darko

2. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

3. Time Traveller

4. Steins;Gate

Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis, and Madeleine Stowe in 12 Monkeys (1995)

5. 12 Monkeys

6. The Visitors

Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell in Groundhog Day (1993)

7. Groundhog Day

Bruce Willis, Jeff Daniels, Piper Perabo, Paul Dano, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Emily Blunt in Looper (2012)

9. The Terminator

Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

10. Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kristanna Loken in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

11. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

12. Terminator Salvation

Cas Anvar, Vera Farmiga, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jeffrey Wright, Michelle Monaghan, and Michael Arden in Source Code (2011)

13. Source Code

Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Sharon Stone in Sphere (1998)

16. Triangle

17. Timecrimes

18. Dead End

19. Time Lapse

Sam Lerner, Allen Evangelista, Jonny Weston, and Virginia Gardner in Project Almanac (2015)

20. Project Almanac

Bryan Raiton, Sarah France, Jessica Mirl, and Ben Miller in Timespace (2014)

21. Timespace

22. Coherence

23. The I Inside

24. Retroactive

26. Lost Highway

27. Dark Country

Richard de Klerk, Amanda Crew, and Dustin Milligan in Repeaters (2010)

28. Repeaters

29. Memory Lane

30. The Reeds

Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart in The Butterfly Effect (2004)

31. The Butterfly Effect

32. Extracted

33. 11 Minutes Ago

Alan Tudyk, Craig Roberts, Zoe Myers, Carlson Young, Katie Findlay, and John Karna in Premature (2014)

34. Premature

35. Fetching Cody

37. The Door

Sara Paxton, Scott Eastwood, and Katherine Waterston in Enter Nowhere (2011)

38. Enter Nowhere

Vincent D'Onofrio and Marisa Tomei in Happy Accidents (2000)

39. Happy Accidents

Anna Faris, Dean Lennox Kelly, Chris O'Dowd, and Marc Wootton in Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009)

40. Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel

41. Safety Not Guaranteed

42. Pleasantville

Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams in The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

43. The Time Traveler's Wife

Rachel McAdams and Domhnall Gleeson in About Time (2013)

44. About Time

45. Midnight in Paris

Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux in The Time Machine (1960)

46. The Time Machine

Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves in The Lake House (2006)

47. The Lake House

Guy Pearce and Samantha Mumba in The Time Machine (2002)

48. The Time Machine

49. La Jetée

Gerard Butler, Frances O'Connor, and Paul Walker in Timeline (2003)

50. Timeline

Sharon Gans, Perry King, Valerie Perrine, and Michael Sacks in Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)

51. Slaughterhouse-Five

52. Time After Time

53. The Final Countdown

Nancy Allen and Michael Paré in The Philadelphia Experiment (1984)

54. The Philadelphia Experiment

Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future (1985)

55. Back to the Future

Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future Part II (1989)

56. Back to the Future Part II

Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, and Mary Steenburgen in Back to the Future Part III (1990)

57. Back to the Future Part III

58. S. Darko

Walter Koenig, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, James Doohan, DeForest Kelley, George Takei, and Nichelle Nichols in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

59. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

60. Star Trek

Keanu Reeves, Robert V. Barron, Terry Camilleri, George Carlin, Al Leong, Tony Steedman, and Alex Winter in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

61. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Keanu Reeves, William Sadler, and Alex Winter in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991)

62. Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

63. Biggles: Adventures in Time

64. Timestalkers

The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988)

65. The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey

66. Millennium

Ariana Richards and Jeff Daniels in Grand Tour: Disaster in Time (1991)

67. Grand Tour: Disaster in Time

68. Time Runner

69. magic müller.

70. Run Lola Run

72. Timecop

Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man (1993)

73. Demolition Man

74. 100 Million BC

75. Moebius

Alice Krige, Brent Spiner, and Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

76. Star Trek: First Contact

Martin Sheen, Casper Van Dien, and Catherine Bell in Thrill Seekers (1999)

77. Thrill Seekers

78. Frequency

Rupert Grint, Daniel Radcliffe, and Emma Watson in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

79. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

80. Slipstream

John Cusack, Chevy Chase, Clark Duke, Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry, Brook Bennett, Aliu Oyofo, and Jake Rose in Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

81. Hot Tub Time Machine

82. All Over Again

84. Clockstoppers

Denzel Washington and Paula Patton in Deja Vu (2006)

85. Deja Vu

Anthony Hopkins, Emilio Estevez, Rene Russo, and Mick Jagger in Freejack (1992)

86. Freejack

87. grand tour: disaster in time.

88. Idiocracy

Gillian Anderson, Rufus Sewell, and Haley Joel Osment in I'll Follow You Down (2013)

89. I'll Follow You Down

90. Journey to the Center of Time

Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, and Josh Brolin in Men in Black³ (2012)

91. Men in Black³

Barry Watson and Sara Rue in My Future Boyfriend (2011)

92. My Future Boyfriend

Gary Oldman, Mimi Rogers, Lacey Chabert, William Hurt, Heather Graham, Matt LeBlanc, and Jack Johnson in Lost in Space (1998)

93. Lost in Space

Olivia d'Abo and David Cassidy in The Spirit of '76 (1990)

94. The Spirit of '76

95. Time Changer

Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982)

96. Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann

97. Timequest

98. The Yesterday Machine

Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30 (2004)

99. 13 Going on 30

100. 17 Again

More to explore, recently viewed.

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Observe Memorial Day with these events in southern Maine

Tons of towns have parades and ceremonies happening Monday.

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Kids and adults gather at a Memorial Day parade to honor and celebrate veterans in South Portland. Sofia Aldinio/ Staff Photographer

BATH 10 a.m. Monday. Parade begins at 200 Congress Ave. and concludes at Library Park and will be followed by a wreath-laying service at 11 a.m.

BERWICK 11 a.m. Monday. Parade begins at Berwick Town Hall/Sullivan Square and proceeds to Lord’s Cemetery by way of Wilson and Allen streets. After a ceremony there, the parade will continue down Saw Mill Hill Street with a pause at the Somersworth-Berwick Bridge for a brief memorial service for those lost at sea. The parade ends at Sullivan Square with a memorial service honoring area veterans.

BIDDEFORD-SACO Opening ceremony at 9:55 a.m. Monday at Saco City Hall. Parade starts at 10 a.m. from Saco City Hall and proceeds along Main Street and down York Hill into Biddeford, continues along Main Street, onto Alfred Street and finishes at Veteran’s Memorial Park with a closing ceremony at 10:45 a.m.

BRUNSWICK-TOPSHAM 9 a.m. Monday. Parade proceeds from Topsham Town Hall, pauses for observances while crossing the Brunswick-Topsham bridge, and concludes at the Brunswick Mall.

CAPE ELIZABETH 9 a.m. Monday. Parade begins at the middle school parking lot, turns right on Scott Dyer Road, right onto Route 77 and ends at the village green adjacent to the town hall. A brief ceremony and laying of the wreath will be held at the Village Green after the parade.

CUMBERLAND 8 a.m. Monday. Kids run at Greely High School followed by 5K Run and Remember race at 8:30 a.m. Parade starts at 10 a.m. at Mabel I. Wilson School and ends at the veterans’ monument in Moss Side Cemetery in Cumberland Center, where a ceremony will be held at 10:30 a.m. Advertisement

FALMOUTH 10 a.m. Monday. Parade proceeds from 65 Depot Road (Falmouth American Legion) to Pine Grove Park, where a ceremony will be held.

FREEPORT 9:30 a.m. Monday. Parade proceeds from Holbrook Street, heads north on Main and makes a right onto School Street, then right onto Park Street, ending in Memorial Park. There will be a small ceremony in Memorial Park starting at 10 a.m.

GORHAM 11 a.m. Monday. Parade starts at Village School (12 Robie St.) and ends at Eastern Cemetery on Johnson Road.

GRAY 11:30 a.m. Monday. Parade leaves the Russell School (8 Gray Park), proceeds to Shaker Road and continues to the Soldiers Monument at the intersection of Routes 26 and 3 for a wreath-laying ceremony. Parade continues north to the American Legion Post (15 Lewiston Road) for a closing ceremony.

LYMAN 1 p.m. Monday. Parade starts at Waterhouse Road/Mill Pond in Goodwins Mills and ends at the Lyman Town Hall on South Waterboro Road.

NEW GLOUCESTER 9 a.m. Monday. Parade leaves from Memorial Elementary School (86 Intervale Road) and heads down Intervale Road to Route 100/202 to Veterans Park for a memorial service. The parade will reconvene and go down Peacock Hill Road, then take a left on Gilmore Road. Advertisement

OLD ORCHARD BEACH 1 p.m. Monday. Parade starts at the corner of Ballpark Way and E. Emerson Cumming Boulevard and proceeds down Saco Avenue, Old Orchard Beach Street to First Street and ends at Veteran’s Memorial Park.

PORTLAND 2 p.m. Monday. The procession starts at Longfellow School (432 Stevens Ave.) and ends at Evergreen Cemetery for a commemoration ceremony.

SANFORD 10 a.m. Monday. The parade starts at the Sanford Armory (88 William Oscar Emery Drive), proceeds up Gowen Park Drive and ends at Central Park.

SCARBOROUGH 10 a.m. Monday. Parade starts at Scarborough High School, turns onto Route 114 and then Route 1, past town offices to the Maine Veterans Home and concludes with a ceremony there.

SOUTH PORTLAND 10:30 a.m. Monday. Parade starts at Southern Maine Community College parking lot, proceeds down Broadway to the Veterans Monument for a short Memorial Day recognition service.

WELLS 9 a.m. Monday. Parade starts at Wells High School (200 Sanford Road) and proceeds to Ocean View Cemetery for a ceremony and musical performances. Advertisement

WESTBROOK 10 a.m. Monday. Parade proceeds down Main Street and will be followed by a ceremony in Riverbank Park.

WINDHAM 9 a.m. Monday. Parade starts at Windham Town Hall and proceeds onto Route 202 toward Windham High School. At 10 a.m., there will be a ceremony in front of Windham’s Veterans Memorial Flagpole at Windham High School.

YARMOUTH 10 a.m. Monday. Parade leaves from Yarmouth High School (286 West Elm St.) and proceeds to the Memorial Green at Town Hall for a ceremony.

YORK 10 a.m. Monday. Parade starts near St. Christopher’s Church (4 Barrell Lane) and proceeds down York Street to York Town Hall.

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