Last weekend, a new friend and I visited the John Alexander exhibit at The MAC. If you like glowing devil-monkeys in pope hats, suprised crustaceans, and nuclear fusion, this is the art exhibit for you. Me? I enjoyed it immensely.

Later, Susan and I went to see The Time Machine. As many of the reviews indicated, this was a truly awful movie. It’s not based on the Book by H. G. Wells but rather loosely on the George Pal movie (which was based loosely on the book), The Time Machine from 1960. The Pal version was far better. The new version is full of unnecessary plot holes that weren’t in either the Pal movie or the book. For example, we are told at great length about how the Morlocks and Eloi have evolved into two distinct species and then a few minutes later, we’re told the Morlocks need the Eloi to breed more of their race (apparently the writer wasn’t clear on what “distinct species” meant). As in prior versions of the story, we’re told the Morlocks have evolved a sensitivity to light that prevents them from coming above ground except at night but the scene where the Morlocks attack the Eloi is shot in broad daylight for no apparent reason. The Eloi are described as initiative-deficient sheep bred as food by the Morlocks but they are shown maintaining a pretty elaborate culture with basic technology.

Some of the changes seem to have been made for no reason. In the Pal movie, the Earth was destroyed through war (which fit with Well’s original anti-war sentiment) but in the remake, a small nuclear blast on the moon, intended to create a cavity for a new moonbase, breaks up the moon and “pushes it out of orbit” (okay, so the writer didn’t pay attention in his high-school physics class either). Even the inventor’s motivation to build a time machine was changed. In both the book and the Pal movie, the inventor had been obsessed all his life with traveling to a future where humans weren’t quite as stupid as they are today. In the new movie, the time machine is just something a math teacher whips up in a couple of years because he wants to prevent the death of his insipid girlfriend. I could go on but what’s the point? Lousy movie. Rent the 1960 George Pal version instead or, even better, read the book.