What a waste of an opportunity was the remake of this classic.
When I first saw this movie back in 1960, I was a schoolboy. After seeing the film I went to my local library and read the book in one day. The plot had gripped me that much and I had also fallen in love with the so vulnerable Weena, played by the beautiful actress Yvette Mimieux.
I have watched it on TV so many times since and looked forward to the remake, starring Guy Pearce, when it was first announced, but I was disappointed in the plot of the remake and the film in general.
My plot line for the remake would have consisted of Pearce's character, also a budding inventor, discovering his long lost uncle's time machine papers in the house that his uncle George (Rod Taylor) had lived in and which had fallen into ruin following his disappearance. Perhaps it could have been set in the post war years to start with. Some evidence would have emerged that showed that George had returned to his party of friends on New Year's eve in 1899 and had gone off again in his search for Weena. Thus George's nephew using the plans himself could have constructed another time machine - heading off into the unknown.
Now this is where I believe that the scriptwriters missed a great opportunity for the remake: surely it would have been so much more interesting if George's nephew had caught up with George and Weena in the future, clearly showing that George's efforts to educate the Eloi had been put to great use ? Both actors who appeared in the 1960 movie are still alive today and they could so easily have been discovered living together, as aged people obviously, and still actively engaged in a war with the dreaded Morlocks aided by their offspring and others. CGI could also have been used to show them as younger people when they were engaged in their first battles with their dreaded enemy, thus helping to fill the gaps. Those scenes could have been played out as flashbacks when George is explaining to his nephew what had taken place.
For my final scene I would have liked it to have ended just as Wells had written it, with George's nephew (in my plot) standing on a long sandy beach watching the sunset with large crablike creatures emerging from the sea. Mankind had gone... but there was still life forms roaming the earth.
Yep, in my humble opinion a great opportunity had been lost. Still love this old film though. It has everything and still stimulates my imagination...even though I am a codger these days.