MovieChat Forums > The Time Machine (2002) Discussion > Perfect English... 800,000 years into th...

Perfect English... 800,000 years into the future!

posted 12 years ago by fostersforums
23 replies | jump to latest

Who'da thunk? Same goes for the Photonic sphere containing all human knowledge. Man, to think it survived countless years of ice ages, earthquakes, tectonic shifting, gravitational sheering and wear and countless other environmentally hazardous elements... is just plain amazing! (Sarcasm).

Come on. 800,000 years into the future NOTHING resembling today's technology or language would exist in even the remotest fashion, advanced or devolved.

First part of the movie was great up to the time traveling sequence. That was an amazing scene. Was downhill after that in terms of credulity.

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It's an opinion, not a statement of fact nor a declaration of war on your existence. Relax.

[–] marlarkey 9 years ago

The English language has changed considerably in only 100 years... and Old English (~1000 years) is unintelligible to the vast majority of modern English speakers.

There is no prospect of the English language being intelligible in 800,000 years time.

[–] StoneGriffin 9 years ago

But THEIR English is based on the English taught to them by the Photonic Compendium, which is based on English from the year 2030 in New York City. Not that different.

Dr. Kila Marr was right. Kill the Crystalline Entity.

[–] quball87 8 years ago

This is a very good point.

If we went back to the time Shakespeare lived (Ad 1600) - a mere 417 years ago - you would barely be able to communicate with anyone. They would certainly not understand you.

I suspended disbelief thinking "OK, I guess the attractive young female knows English while everyone else does not." It was still ridiculous.

[–] Monk_Drunk 9 years ago

Actually there's nothing wrong with that conceit because it's made clear that the Eloi were learning the English from roughly our time, and they also clearly had their own language that was very different to English.

The conceit that doesn't work is that there would even be a human species that resembled homo sapiens 800 000 years in the future. 800 000 years in the past, our ancestors, homo erectus, despite being bipedal were clearly a very distinct species. The Morlocks, silly-looking apemen though they may be, are far more believable than the Eloi in this respect. (In the book, of course, the Eloi were some kind of little pygmy people, but aside from some minor superficial differences like small ears or whatever, they still essentially resembled modern humans.)

The sphere was advanced technology built with materials and scientific know-how that are clearly beyond our current capabilities. It also mentions that it has some kind of fusion-based power source. It's not too hard to hand-wave its continued existence therefore as being down to wonderful super-tech.