The Time Machine

P.J. Greystoke

P.J. Greystoke

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After loving the 60'S film for so many years I was excited to read the book. The language was amazing but I was consumed by an overwhelming feeling of guilt because I preferred the film. Isn't the book supposed to be better than the film?
 
I read the book long ago before I ever saw the George Pal Film , I liked the book very much but, between the two, I prefer the film because George Pal gave the story the one thing Wells didn't. George Pal gave the story hope. :) I find H G Wells ending too heartbreakingly bleak.:(


As too the 2002 film with Guy Pierce , I didn't initially like this film but, over time and subsequent viewings , this version has grown on me quite a bit. In its own right, it is a very good film. :cool:
 
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I often find that it's the first media you watch/read a film/book on that is the one that leaves the greatest impression on you. It doesn't surprise me that you found the movie preferable to the book, because that was the one you saw first. How many films/tv shows have I watched after having read the books, only to be left (at best) disappointed? Too many to mention. And any book I have read after watching the tv/film version has always had me picturing the characters as the camera - and not the author - intended; sometimes for better,sometimes for worse.
 
P.J. Greystoke said:
After loving the 60'S film for so many years I was excited to read the book. The language was amazing but I was consumed by an overwhelming feeling of guilt because I preferred the film. Isn't the book supposed to be better than the film?
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How is it even possible?. I never read it but I have always assumed that the book would be much more better. Are you sure about what you have just said?. I was even preparing to buy the book to read it. What exactly you did find that made you like the movie more?.
 
Well the original story really doesn't have a happy ending, Wells can be a bit glum at times, through an interesting description of the end of the world just the same, but it's amazing to think this is the first modern time travel story using an actual time machine and published in 1895 when Queen Victoria was still on the throne and a lot of the world was coloured pink on maps, this alone makes it out of this world good!!!!!
 
BigBadBob141 said:
Well the original story really doesn't have a happy ending, Wells can be a bit glum at times, through an interesting description of the end of the world just the same, but it's amazing to think this is the first modern time travel story using an actual time machine and published in 1895 when Queen Victoria was still on the throne and a lot of the world was coloured pink on maps, this alone makes it out of this world good!!!!!
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Which is why I liked two film versions a bit more then then Well's novel.

There was a third Time machine film. It was a made for TV movie done in 1978. It wasn't bad. wasn't great .
 
P.J. Greystoke said:
Isn't the book supposed to be better than the film?
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It’s been my experience that this isn’t always the case. Trainspotting is an example. I thought the book was a disjointed mess but the film flowed much more smoothly and gave a more coherent storyline.

As for The Time Machine, I enjoyed both book and film but I view them as very different from each other. The movies were made for our times whilst Wells was writing for his.
 
raysosher said:
How is it even possible?. I never read it but I have always assumed that the book would be much more better. Are you sure about what you have just said?. I was even preparing to buy the book to read it. What exactly you did find that made you like the movie more?.
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I'm unsure. Perhaps a combination of things. I grew up obsessed with the idea of time travel and fell in love with the film. Although the language in the book is amazingly addictive, the story is rather more bleak than in the film.
 
I'm in the book camp, myself. Haven't seen the second movie, but the first one is okay, just not as powerful as Well's novel. Feel that way about his War of the Worlds and Pal's movie version, too.

I agree with Marvin, though. Sometimes it depends on what you saw first, book or movie.

Randy M.
 
I haven't read the book, but I did enjoy the film and I have yet to see the 2002 remake.

Time Ships by Stephen Baxter was a pretty good sequel, as was Morlock Night by K. W. Jeter was also pretty good. (According to Wikipedia, there were quite a few novels that featured the characters from the original book.)
 
Foxbat said:
It’s been my experience that this isn’t always the case. Trainspotting is an example. I thought the book was a disjointed mess but the film flowed much more smoothly and gave a more coherent storyline.

As for The Time Machine, I enjoyed both book and film but I view them as very different from each other. The movies were made for our times whilst Wells was writing for his.
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Nah, Trainspotting is a collection of short stories not a "meat and two veg" novel. Hence it is disjointed by its very structure. I viewed it as small slices of different parts of (mostly) junkie life in Edinburgh and I loved the kaleidiscope approach. Book is miles better than the film IMHO. But then I like weird narrative structures and experimentation. Film is fine too, not dissing it.

@raysosher I'm with you, generally my rule of thumb is that the only books worse than their films are book adaptions of films. Films that adapt books very rarely capture what makes the book special or get close to encompassing everything in the book.

Time Machine is a fine read, getting older all the time - well over a hundred years and counting - so the language is getting a bit creaky, so be warned. But it's short and once you get used to it you won't notice it (One can do the same with Dickens, say - I gleefully absorbed all of his novels, after acclimatising to Victorian idioms and language a bit). I think also I prefer a bit of pragmatic British glumness in my literature compared to optimistic American happy endings. Plenty of the latter in Disney films and the TV.
 
What is fantastic about H.G.Wells is he single handedly invented four modern science fiction themes that I can think of, Time Travel (using science and a machine instead of just wishful thinking), Alien Invasion, Invisibility and Genetically Modified Animals ( see Cordwainer Smith and the underpeople) , to invent one is great but four is amazing.
To be honest science based Invisibility has not been used all that much in stories and the same goes for the G. M. Animals, but at least the ideas are out there.
But it's overwhelming the amount of stuff that has been churned over the years about the other two!
P.S. And do not forget he foresaw the invention of the tank in modern warfare in the short story "The Land Ironclads" and the London Blitz , the film "Things To Come", the audience would laugh as they watched it in the cinema, for some strange reason they weren't laughing a few years later!
 
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Rodders said:
I haven't read the book, but I did enjoy the film and I have yet to see the 2002 remake.

Time Ships by Stephen Baxter was a pretty good sequel, as was Morlock Night by K. W. Jeter was also pretty good. (According to Wikipedia, there were quite a few novels that featured the characters from the original book.)
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You might find the 2002 film to be of intenset for a number of reasons . One them that the director of that movie Simon Wells, is the great grandson of H G Wells. :cool:(y)


Time after Time novel and movie and tv series.
 
I liked the 60s film, but I think the novel is much better. Watching the film and then reading the book, I felt like I was watching another version in my head that was far more satisfying.
 
Eventually, ther will be another movie version

Interestingly George Pal wanted to do a film sequel 1960 film but was never able to do it. He novel sequel The Time Machine II
 
The narrator of War Of The Worlds , a middle class writer , Is probably Wells himself . He trows in lots of ideas of the time , Darwinism, Colonialism, to name just two . The original was serialised in a magazine and knocked together as book later . Wells was an inventive writer , writing for his audience of his time . I don't think War of the world was one of his best books , it probably should of been edited when published as a book and the issues are no longer issues for most people .
 
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