Flux Yeah! A History Of Time Machine Movies

THE TIME MACHINE, 1960
TIME MACHINE: THE TIME MACHINE
• H.G. Wells' The Time Machine paved the way for all movies about time travel. The Time Machine is about a scientist who builds a (you guessed it) time machine and travels into the future to discover the human race has been divided into two: there are the peaceful Eloi who roam the lands, and the evil, blood-thirsty Morlocks who live underground. Now we finally understand where Dick Cheney's "undisclosed location" was.

BACK TO THE FUTURE, 1985
TIME MACHINE: DELOREAN DMC-12
• Without a doubt, Back To The Future is the most iconic time travel movie ever made. Since its release, BTTF has spawned a trilogy of sequels, multiple amusement park rides, and even made driving a DeLorean cool, which was basically impossible before Marty McFly came around. We're still most impressed by the fact President Reagan mentioned the movie during his 1986 State Of The Union Address Kanye used a DeLorean in his video for "Good Morning."

BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, 1989
TIME MACHINE: PHONE BOOTH
• We'd be lying if we said we didn't learn a little bit of history watching this movie. Yeah, maybe we didn't pay too much attention in school, but who needs teachers when you've got Hollywood movies! And there are few movies better than Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, where Bill and Ted use a phone booth to travel back in time to do research for a history paper, encountering Abraham Lincoln and Genghis Khan, among others. Most excellent!

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES III, 1993
TIME MACHINE: SCEPTER
• We've been all about our Turtle Power since the days of Underoos, but we've gotta say, the mystical scepter used in TMNT 3 is probably the most inefficient time machine on this list. Whether it works or not depends on if certain stars are aligned, which means it doesn't work when you need it to and it works randomly when you're not expecting it to. Sort of like a certain blow-up doll we haven't gotten around to returning yet.

TIMECOP, 1994
TIME MACHINE: TEC LV-4
• In Timecop, Jean-Claude Van Damme plays a special agent who enforces the public's responsible use of time machines in the year 2004. When Van Damme catches a senator toe-tapping in a public restroom using the time machine for corruption, he must travel into time and kill the senator in the past. Sure the plot might be a befuddled mess, but like porno flicks, we don't watch Van Damme movies for the plot, we watch them for the snappy dialogue!

TIME CHASERS, 1994
TIME MACHINE: CESSNA PLANE
• Possibly the lowest-budget time travel movie we've ever seen, Time Chasers has somehow managed to achieve cult status. Starring no-name actor Nick Miller, who's basically Kurt Russell with more mullet, Time Chasers is about a guy who uses his Commodore 64 computer to turn his single-engine Cessna into a time machine. Kinda like the time we tried to make a bong out of our Duck Hunt gun.

DOCTOR WHO, 1996
TIME MACHINE: TARDIS
• To us, TARDIS sounds like some kind of dental condition that makes your breath smell like gym socks. But to millions of virgins sci-fi aficionados, the TARDIS, modeled after a 1950's London police box, is the most iconic time machine ever thought up. In fact, this made-for-TV movie was so wildly popular, the word TARDIS even found its way into the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER, 2002
TIME MACHINE: CADILLAC ELDORADO
• Maybe not our favorite Austin Powers movie, but definitely one of our favorite time machines. Aptly described by Austin as a "pimp mobile," this candy-coated Eldorado takes Austin Powers back into the '60s where he hooks up with his co-star, Beyoncé. Damn, we didn't realize we had to go that far back to get at her before she was sitting on Grandpa Hov's lap.

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN, 2004
TIME MACHINE: TIME-TURNER
• Okay, so we haven't read all any of the Harry Potter books. Because after all, we do have lives around here. Instead, we decided to save ourselves about 100 hours and just see the movies. And pardon the nerd-speak, but if there's one thing we learned from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, it's that if you ever manage to get permission from Dumbledore to wear a time-turner, you better keep a damn good eye on that shit cause it's valuable!

LAND OF THE LOST, 2009
TIME MACHINE: TACHYON AMPLIFIER
• Definitely not Will Ferrell's finest movie, Land Of The Lost is about an under-appreciated science teacher who invents a device to travel through time and accidentally warps himself into a parallel universe where all timelines converge. Yeah we know, we were lost after the under-appreciated science teacher part. If only Ferrell could've traveled into the future to find out this was going to be a box office flop.