Time travel is one of the most fascinating aspects of science fiction. It allows creatives and audiences to speculate on a fantastical idea and explore the concepts of changing one’s past, seeing future events, and tackling complex questions of destiny vs free will. Time travel can be used to explore a wide variety of stories and stretches from fantastical tales like A Christmas Carol to hard science fiction like Tenet.
Time travel is one of those concepts that, because it is impossible, there is no one way to convey it in a story. Aiming for realism in a time travel story seems absurd, as it can never truly be possible. Instead, the fun comes from exploring each story, particularly the use of the literary device. It is less about what is realistic in the real world than what makes sense in the world of the story, and if the creative team can effectively communicate it to an audience. Here are 17 science fiction movies where time travel not only makes sense but seems plausible.
18
‘Triangle’ (2009)
Struggling single mother, Jess (Melissa George), tries to escape her troubled life by spending time with friends and others as they embark on a boat trip. After the crew ends up in an accident, they think they have found a haven in a large cruise ship. However, once they board, they find it empty. As they explore, Jess starts to realize there is a killer on the loose, and that each of them is now caught up in a time loop, where they are forced to play the same macabre game of cat and mouse every time.
All Aboard!
As surreal and sensational as Triangle is, it is a testament to writer/director Christopher Smith that he was able to construct a cohesive narrative that makes sense once the details are made more apparent to Jess and the others stranded on the ship. While one of the entries on this list that feels the least grounded in reality, the sci-fi horror standout, manages to make audiences believe the events unfolding by evoking a raw, visceral reaction to the violence and confusion brought on by its premise.
17
‘Mondays: See You ‘This’ Week!’ (2022)
Office worker Akemi Yoshikawa finds herself trapped in a loop of having to repeat the same work day over and over again. Slowly, she becomes convinced that her way out is to convince her other co-workers of what is happening. When that fails, the now-gathered group of terrified workers decides that they need to make their boss’s dream come true to break the loop.
The Nine to Five Grind on Repeat
An absurdist comedy, Mondays: See You ‘This’ Week! already gets a pass for the feeling of realism by tapping into the accepted comedic scenario of Groundhog Day. Yet, past its groundhog scenario, the Japanese comedy movie has some authenticity in what it would feel like to be trapped in an infinite cycle of a workday with co-workers. Moreover, the group of workers timing the days’ events in a bid to convince others that the time loop is real, which pulls them in, gives the movie enough of a unique spin on a tired trope to make it worth checking out.
16
‘Synchronic’ (2019)
New Orleans paramedics Steve (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan) find themselves at the forefront of a rising case of a new synthetic drug called “Synchronic” as ODs begin to escalate. Claiming to allow users to see through time, Steve, after being diagnosed with a terminal illness, decides to experiment with the drug whose effect on the pineal gland has led him to believe it can help him.
Take a Trip, Travel Through Time
As many of the other entries on this list will show, you don’t always need a machine to head back in time. In Synchronic, the use of drugs messing with perception and potentially opening up a gateway to the past feels more grounded than a mad-scientist contraption. As surreal as the film gets, it does also ground itself in fundamental rules of time-travel, notably dealing with the consequences of changing the past.
15
‘Tenet’ (2020)
Tenet‘s approach to time travel is complex, but it is based on real physics theories and mechanisms (entropy). Christopher Nolan has his protagonist (John David Washington), a former CIA agent, try to change the flow of time to put a stop to a future attack that could endanger the world. Entropy is the measurement used to distinguish the past from the future, and it always works in one direction (forward in time). However, due to radiation, scientists can reverse this, making it possible to move backwards through time as well, hence the notion of time inversion introduced in the movie.
Christopher Nolan’s Sci-Fi Masterpiece
This should not be seen as something the characters were able to completely control. Tenet concludes that: “Everything that has happened has to happen and will happen.” It serves as a counterargument to the grandfather paradox, suggesting that human agency has very little influence on altering the future by altering the past. Part of Tenet’s charm is that while it tries to explain its rules in rich detail, it is less about the mechanics of it and allows the audience to go with the flow.
14
‘Predestination’ (2014)
Michael and Peter Spierig’s 2014 film Predestination is based on the 1958 short story “All You Zombies” by science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein. This mind-bending movie excels at exploring the paradoxes of time travel, tackling them with a simple yet relatable plot and characters. The story chronicles a temporal agent, Jack (Ethan Hawke), who attempts to catch a criminal known as the Fizzle Bomber of New York before he kills thousands of innocent people.
Chasing a Terrorist Through Time Travel
Although the time travel method in Predestination is rather simple (using a violin case in which a time machine is hidden), the reverberations of this process are abundantly explained through a wonderful plot of self-fulfilling prophecies, fateful inevitabilities, and predestination paradoxes. It’s the kind of movie that starts complex and mysterious, but that makes perfect sense when it draws to a close.
13
‘The Time Machine’ (1960)
Set in the late 1800s, The Time Machine follows an inventor, known as George, who successfully creates a time machine. Unwilling to find those willing to take him seriously, George instead begins to travel on his own, first heading to the near future or past. However, as curiosity gets the best of him, he begins to travel further into the past and future, witnessing both the brutality of primal man and the grim future that awaits him. Pushing so far into the future, George finds himself involved in a conflict between two different species of humans.
Adaptation of an Influential Sci-Fi Novel
H.G. Wells’ 1895 novel The Time Machine is one of the most influential pieces of literature, as the story popularized the idea of traveling through time with a machine. The 1960 film is equally iconic, particularly due to the signature time machine. While the exact physics of time travel is never explained, the concept of time travel via a time machine has been a recurring theme in various TV series and movies, from Doctor Who to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure to Hot Tub Time Machine.
12
‘Lightyear’ (2022)
Lightyear is a fictional movie within the world of the Toy Story universe that inspired the Buzz Lightyear toy line. The plot of the film revolves around time dilation, as Buzz’s attempts to achieve hyper-speed around a sun force him to go forward in time with each cycle. What are minutes for Buzz is four years for his friends.
Time Travel Taken Seriously for a Kids’ Film
Time dilation is a challenging concept to explain to young kids, so Lightyear’s simple explanation makes it click for the audience. The film also strikes an emotional chord, with the idea of lost time also weighing heavily on Lightyear as he loses out on moments shared with his friends. This “time-traveling FOMO” is perhaps the most realistic portrayal of the effects of time travel, as they are grounded in something more understandable to a universal audience, regardless of age; it’s a shame this was handled so well only to see Lightyear flop at the box office.
11
Totally Killer (2023)
Totally Killer marks itself in the peculiar subgenre of time-travel slasher film. When Jamie (Kiernan Shipka) accidentally travels back in time to the 1980s, she has the chance to not only meet her parents as teenagers but also save her mother’s three high school friends, who were all killed in high school, and also save her mother from dying in the present when the killer returns.
Heading to the Past to Stop a Killer
Totally Killer draws from many other time travel films and even references Back to the Future and Avengers: Endgame, but also establishes its own rules for time travel. The time traveler can influence future events before she returns to her present timeline. She will not be erased from history as she has been taken out of time, but that means the future she returns to will be altered dramatically, with only her knowing what happened. Essentially, she is taken out of time as changes happen and returns to a new point in time.
10
‘Star Trek’ (2009)
Star Trek has used many forms of time travel throughout the franchise’s history, but in 2009, Star Trek used time travel as a way to both tell a prequel story and reboot the franchise. A wormhole is created that transports the Romulan villain Nero and the older version of Spock back in time. Still, instead of it changing the future, it creates a branching timeline, and the characters now inhabit an alternate reality.
Using Time Travel as an Homage and a Clever Way to Reboot a Franchise
This concept offers a creative way to revisit a younger version of the classic Star Trek crew, allowing them to forge their path without the constraints of continuity errors. The movie’s attention to detail in approaching both time travel and paying homage to the legacy of the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise acts as a reminder of how beloved the franchise has been in its ability to tackle heavy sci-fi themes competently.
9
‘Groundhog Day’ (1993)
If there is a concept humans can wrap their minds around, it’s the concept of time loops. Repetition is very familiar; it’s what we do the most. Even without the notion of time magically forming a closed cycle, sometimes we have the impression of living the same day just because of how similar it is to the previous one. Groundhog Day perfectly describes this notion by trapping its TV weatherman protagonist on the same day and seriously testing his patience.
Highly Influential Time-Traveling Comedy
While Einstein opened the possibility of time travel, there was no evidence that time could come full circle and loop in on itself. But despite the lack of a scientific background, the time loop concept somehow effortlessly made sense. Starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, Groundhog Day can be considered one of the pioneers in introducing such a concept to the screen. It paved the way for many similar-themed movies that the audience absolutely enjoyed, such as Palm Springs, Looper, Doctor Strange, and Edge of Tomorrow. Besides that, Groundhog Day remains a deceptive philosophical masterpiece.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
