old movies about time travel

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The 25 Greatest Time-Travel Movies Ever Made

It must say something, surely, about humans, how often time-travel movies are about returning to the past rather than jumping to the future. As Mark Duplass’s forlorn character says in Safety Not Guaranteed , “The mission has to do with regret.” With all the potential to explore the unknown world of the future, so often when our minds conspire to bend the rules of time it’s instead to rehash the old. It’s compelling to watch a character in a movie do what we cannot — right past wrongs or uncover the reason for or meaning behind the events in their lives, whether they be emotionally catastrophic or merely geopolitically motivated.

So absent is the future from the canon, in fact, that when it is involved, typically future dwellers are leaving their own time to come back to the present. Back to the Future Part II aside, it seems as if there’s something about going forward in time that just doesn’t track for humans. (Of course, you could argue that this is because the present-day concept of bidirectional time travel would infinitely multiply or change beyond recognition any future that may occur, but that’s a knot for another article.)

In any case, the time-travel stories deemed worthy of Hollywood budgets aren’t always straightforward in their mechanics. Some films on this list barely qualify as time-travel movies at all; others could hardly qualify as anything else. There are movies about trips through time but also ones about the bending and fracturing and muddying thereof; then there are those about, as Andy Samberg aptly puts it in Palm Springs , “one of those infinite time-loop situations you might have heard about.” There’s even a movie in which we get only 13 seconds’ worth of time travel, when it functions more like a joke whose punch line hits at the film’s climax.

What these films all do have in common is a fascination with changing the way time works. That being said, the list leaves out movies in larger, more extended franchises in which time meddling is a one-off dalliance thrown into a sequel with little by way of foreshadowing: think Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Avengers: Endgame , and Men in Black III . (It also leaves off perhaps the Ur-time-travel movie, Primer , and the quite good Midnight in Paris because their directors don’t deserve the column inches.) We’re looking at self-contained stories using time mechanics from the start, with preference given to those that involve themselves more intently with the ins and outs of time travel; that ask questions about time, aging, memory and so forth; and that try to succeed at it in new and interesting ways. So let’s get to it.

25. Galaxy Quest (1999)

Does Galaxy Quest really count as a time-travel movie? Some compelling reasons argue that it doesn’t: Time travel isn’t a major factor in the plot, and the time traveling that does occur is, yes, only a 13-second jump. But its use of time travel is meaningful insofar as the movie itself is a loving spoof of Star Trek , which makes use of time travel in three films ( one of which made this list ), not to mention dozens of episodes across its various TV iterations. Tacking on time travel as a deus ex machina for the actors in a Star Trek– like show pressed into service as an actual space crew by an endangered alien race is the exact right amount of ribbing in a movie that’s as on point as it is hilarious.

Galaxy Quest is available to rent on Amazon .

24. Happy Death Day (2017)

Pick away at the surface of a time-loop movie and you find a horror movie. Most of the entries on this list are covered in enough feel-good spin to land as comedies, but Happy Death Day stares the horror of the time-loop phenomenon right in the face. (It’s also quite funny.) Reliving the same day over and over is an unimaginably potent form of psychological torture, and adding murder to the equation does little to dull that edge. The film follows a college-age protagonist struggling to escape from a masked slasher hell-bent on killing her again and again while she tries to solve the mystery of how she got stuck in a time loop.

Happy Death Day is available to rent on Amazon .

23. Back to the Future Part II (1989)

Seriously, this may be the only good movie in which the film’s whole focus is using a time machine to travel into the future. The fact that it’s a sequel is telling — the characters already traveled into the past in the first movie , and the filmmakers decided to save “traveling even further into the past“ for the third film in the trilogy. Still, Back to the Future Part II is a fun time that makes great use of sight gags and references, recasting scenes from the first film in the distant future year of 2015 with all its hoverboards and self-lacing Nikes.

Back to the Future Part II is available to rent on Amazon .

22. See You Yesterday (2019)

It’s a dirty little secret of time-travel movies that they tend to be, well, pretty white. Tenet ’s Protagonist aside, if Hollywood’s sending someone through time, they’re almost certainly not a Black person, and for obvious reasons: Most of post-contact North American history is deeply unfriendly to people of color, and the problems a person running around out of time and place is going to encounter are deeply compounded if they’ll likely be the target of racist abuse or violence — which makes See You Yesterday all the more compelling. Produced by Spike Lee and featuring one of filmdom’s most famous time travelers in a cameo role, it follows a Black teenage science prodigy who uses a time machine to try to save her brother from being killed by a police officer.

See You Yesterday is streaming on Netflix .

21. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

No offense to the Back to the Future franchise, but time travel never looks more fun on film than it does in the first Bill & Ted movie. It’s a concept that feels distinctly of a different era, so pure is its zaniness, that it’s hard to imagine anyone concocting it today. The titular duo, Californian high-school students in the ’80s, travel through the past looking for historical figures in order to ace a history project, then bring them all back to the present. High jinks ensue! We get Genghis Khan in a sporting-goods store and Mozart on an electric keyboard. What more could you want?

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is streaming on HBO Max .

20. Source Code (2011)

Time-travel-film aficionados know this won’t be Jake Gyllenhaal’s only stop on this list, but no matter. Source Code finds him repeating the same eight minutes over and over as he struggles to find the culprit in a train bombing — with each replay ending in his own death by explosion. For some reason, a romantic subplot is shoehorned into this, along with a bunch of frankly unnecessary technical mumbo-jumbo, but the core idea is a compelling mix of the time-loop movie and the train whodunit that Gyllenhaal is a perfect fit for.

Source Code is available to rent on Amazon .

19. 12 Monkeys (1995)

Some sort of law of nature dictates that every genuinely good idea and/or piece of true art has to at some point be turned into a Hollywood movie. Thank God La Jetée was adapted into something that can stand on its own feet artistically. 12 Monkeys may not retain its source material’s black-and-white look or stripped-down, static-image presentation, but it is a rollicking good time nonetheless. That’s in no small part due to director Terry Gilliam getting the best out of Bruce Willis and a young Brad Pitt, and recasting World War III as a planet-decimating virus. Which, like at least one other movie on this list , “speaks to the present moment,” or whatever.

12 Monkeys is available to rent on Amazon .

18. Run Lola Run (1998)

Unlike almost all of the other films on this list, the terms time travel and time machine don’t show up anywhere in Run Lola Run . Rather, it’s a sort of de facto time-loop scenario in which the protagonist tries repeatedly to pay a ransom to save her boyfriend’s life. In fact, if not for a few key details, it could easily be characterized (and often has been) as an alternate-endings movie rather than a time-travel film. But the fact that Lola seems to be learning from her past attempts with each successive one suggests that she is, indeed, using knowledge gained from previous loops to bring a satisfactory end to this situation.

Run Lola Run is available to rent on Amazon .

17. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

One of the most striking things about Groundhog Day is the mutability and replicability of its core conceit. Perhaps the best case in point is Edge of Tomorrow , sometimes known as Live. Die. Repeat. after its original tagline. It’s the kind of physically grueling movie only an actor as genuinely unhinged as Tom Cruise could pull off. A noncombatant thrust into a war against invading aliens, Cruise’s character finds himself reliving day one of combat over and over, slowly but surely refining his techniques in order to survive the extraterrestrial onslaught. Like the central twosome in the much less violent Palm Springs , he winds up with a partner in (war) crime, teaming up with the similarly time-trapped Emily Blunt, and the explanation for the replay glitch here is actually pretty satisfying.

Edge of Tomorrow is streaming on Fubo TV .

16. Star Trek (2009)

If you could create some sort of an advanced stat to measure controversy generated per unit of interesting filmmaking decisions, J.J. Abrams would have to be near the top in terms of his ability to rig up movie drama from almost nothing. This is a guy whose filmography is like Godzilla rip-off, Spielberg homage, safe reboot of cherished IP, repeat. Star Trek may be his best film, though, a sure-footed reinvention of a dorky sci-fi franchise that made it, well, cool. Somehow, the beauty of Spock and Kirk’s bromance being woven through chance encounters with future selves kind of … works?

Star Trek is available to rent on Amazon .

15. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

There’s a relative dearth of time travel in animated film, which perhaps is a function simply of the fact that it’s less impressive to stage in a world that’s already unreal. If you can Looney Tunes your way through physics, what’s so special about grabbing the flow of time and tying it into a bow? Still, the original Girl Who Leapt Through Time deserves mention here. It’s a beautiful story that interlaces the complexity of time leaping with the intensity of teenage emotion and the thorny process of growing up where the opportunity to redo things leads, over time, to growth — a less shitty Groundhog Day , in a way.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is available to rent on Amazon .

14. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

She may not be the most famous, decorated, or emulated actress of her generation, but Aubrey Plaza is someone whose personality spoke to the irony-soaked 2010s in a way that simply could not be denied. Her character on Parks and Recreation , April Ludgate, was, by all accounts, created specifically to channel Plaza’s real-life personality to the screen, and she plays essentially the same character in Safety Not Guaranteed . Here, she’s a sarcastic intern at a magazine working on a story about a would-be time traveler and using her feminine wiles to slowly gain his trust. The chemistry between Plaza and Mark Duplass is probably the film’s high point; the subplot about the FBI feels like it was clipped out of a bad X-Files episode.

Safety Not Guaranteed is streaming on Tubi .

13. La Jetée (1962)

At only a 28-minute run time, La Jetée is arguably too short to merit inclusion on this list. However, what it lacks in content (and in, well, moving images; it’s almost exclusively a collection of static black-and-white shots set to voice-over), it more than makes up for in inventiveness and influence, and it would be a travesty to leave it out in favor of more recent by-the-book fare. Tracing the tale of a man held prisoner in post-WWIII Paris being used in time-travel experiments as his captors seek to remedy the postapocalyptic state of the world, he’s sent into both the future and the past and ends up unraveling a lifelong personal mystery while he’s at it.

La Jetée is streaming on the Criterion Channel .

12. Planet of the Apes (1968)

Unlike the worse but more straightforwardly time-traveling Tim Burton remake, the relationship between the original Planet of the Apes and time travel is inexact — technically, the astronaut crew that lands on the titular planet does travel forward 2,000 years, but it’s not done via a time machine. The travel isn’t instantaneous: It literally does take them 2,000 years to get there; they’re just unconscious and on life support. Still, the way the film’s ending handles the iconic reveal is exactly in line with the best of the time-travel canon, the telescoping, mise en abyme feeling of the world shifting in front of your very eyes without your moving an inch.

Planet of the Apes is available to rent on Amazon .

11. Groundhog Day (1993)

The famous Bill Murray vehicle essentially invented the infinite-time-loop genre (and it’s hardly a movie that succeeds on the strength of its concept alone), but the idea at its core is so steeped in the casual misogyny of late-’80s and early-’90s cinema that it’s hard to watch today without cringing. Murray’s character employing what amounts to PUA-style techniques over and over and over in a desperate bid to fuck his hapless co-worker just doesn’t hit the way it did back then. If the story arc didn’t present a guy detoxifying himself of the worst aspects of masculinity in order to be worthy of a woman’s love as the primary way for a 20th-century white man to achieve full personhood, this would be much higher on the list.

Groundhog Day is streaming on Starz .

10. Predestination (2014)

This is probably the most complicated film on the list. Following a “temporal agent” (played by Ethan Hawke) who’s trying to prevent a bombing in 1970s New York, it’s based on a Robert A. Heinlein short story and features Shiv Roy herself, Sarah Snook, in a star-making turn as someone with a complicated backstory and a secret. Like the best sci-fi, the film’s premise raises all kinds of fascinating questions about the titular concept and throws in some interesting musings on sex, gender, and the self in the process.

Predestination is streaming on Tubi .

9. Looper (2012)

Wes Anderson gets a lot of flak for his overwrought twee visuals, but Rian Johnson has a knack for making movies that feel and function like dioramas even if they don’t look it. Narratively speaking, everything here is constructed just so — and there’s a certain beauty in that — but who ever had a profound experience of art by looking at a diorama? Looper was probably Johnson’s least precious pre– Star Wars film, which is nice because the temptation to drastically overmaneuver the mechanics of a time-travel story can lead to disaster. The tech used to Bruce Willis–ify Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s face is distracting, and the third act’s retreat from the postapocalyptic city of the future to the postapocalyptic corn farm of the future is a brave choice that the film struggles to land. Still, Johnson’s vision of a future in which organized crime runs time travel is compelling and well worth a watch.

Looper is streaming on Netflix .

8. Donnie Darko (2001)

Donnie Darko is a bit of a genre mash-up. Part high-school movie, part sci-fi flick, part bleak meditation on the soullessness of late-’80s America, it’s nevertheless a weirdly successful piece of filmmaking that makes fantastic use of a young Jake Gyllenhaal, a great supporting cast (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Jena Malone, and Patrick Swayze among others), and an absolutely iconic haunting cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World.” Watching high schoolers navigate parallel universes, wormholes, and time travel is a dicey proposition, but director Richard Kelly makes it work, somehow.

Donnie Darko is streaming on HBO Max .

7. Back to the Future (1984)

While it’s clearly superior to the sequel (and leagues ahead of the final film in the trilogy), the original Back to the Future is a bit of a mess (John Mulaney was right , to be honest). Its racial and gender politics are cringey, and the incest subplot is weird (“It’s your cousin Marvin. Marvin Pornhub . You know that new plot element you’ve been looking for?”), but there’s a clear interest in time travel beyond its shimmering surface: the very real addressing of the “grandfather problem” in time travel via the slow disappearance of Marty from his family photo, the accidental invention of rock music, and a genuine curiosity about the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of time machines. Ahh, what the hell. It’s a romp.

Back to the Future is available to rent on Amazon .

6. Palm Springs (2020)

No offense to Gen-Xers and boomers, but the best time-loop movie of all time is Palm Springs . The film isn’t without its missteps, but it’s much more curious about life than Groundhog Day was through the eyes of Murray’s misanthrope. Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg‘s characters, stuck in the loop together, are a perfect comedic match, and their shared humanity makes for a beautiful arc. The film raises questions about what’s worth doing in life when nothing lasts and how to stay sane when every day is the same. Of course, as a sort of polar opposite of Tenet , it benefited from coming out during the pandemic by speaking, as it does, to the experience of lockdown.

Palm Springs is streaming on Hulu .

5. Tenet (2020)

Interstellar wasn’t enough for Chris Nolan, apparently. Tenet ’s legacy may end up being little more than that of the COVID action movie no one saw — a bloated thriller that Nolan fought to get into theaters and bar from home viewing reportedly to swell the size of his own pockets. It really did suffer from bad timing, though, because this is genuinely a quintessential big-screen popcorn movie whose absurdity is all the more palatable when it’s given the audiovisual bombast it deserves. Ambitious in scope as it traces a war on the past by the future (yes, you read that right), Tenet is as enamored of action tropes as it is in bucking them, and its investment in rendering visible the brain-bendingly knotty mechanics of moving through time is laudable, even when the movie itself remains opaque — as impenetrable as the future, as hazy as the past.

Tenet is streaming on HBO Max .

4. The Terminator (1984)

A partner to Blade Runner in the mid-’80s invention of sci-fi noir, The Terminator is a stunning film in many ways, despite the third act’s now-iffy visual effects. While it’s not James Cameron’s debut, and it would go on to be bested by its sequel , it functions as an incredible showcase for an emerging young director who would exclusively make big stories for the rest of his career. Arnold Schwarzenegger is perfectly cast as the relentless, unemotional killer cyborg sent back from the future to terminate the mother of the eventual resistance leader, and the film’s romantic subplot has just the perfect amount of time-travel-induced cheesiness for it to work.

The Terminator is streaming on Amazon Prime Video .

3. Interstellar (2014)

It’s not inaccurate to say Christopher Nolan is a director who’s more interested in scale and scope than in expressing the minutiae of the human experience in its purest form. But in Interstellar, a Nolan movie in its titular ambitions, there’s a core element of time travel wrought not as sci-fi fireworks but as a paean to the sheer force and will of the power of love. It both does and doesn’t work, depending on your capacity for cheese in space, but even besides that, Nolan’s use of time as story arc — the way Miller’s planet functions, in particular — is conceptually masterful in the best kind of time-travel-movie way.

Interstellar is streaming on Paramount+ .

2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Whereas the franchise’s first movie spends more time on the question of time travel, in the second it takes a bit of a back seat to the action itself. It’s hard to fault director James Cameron for this decision; T2 remains one of the best action movies of the ’90s and — along with Jurassic Park and The Matrix — one of the decade’s best when for special effects. The groundbreaking T-1000 would honestly be enough to get this movie on the list; a tween John Connor grappling with questions of predestination and the fact that he is vicariously responsible for his own conception feel almost like icing on the time-travel cake. Much as in 12 Monkeys , time travel here is mistaken for delusion, as valiant Sarah Connor, in a Cassandra-esque nightmare, has to battle against the future only she knows is coming. Of course, Cassandra never had access to any firepower stored in underground desert arsenals.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is streaming on Netflix .

1. Arrival (2016)

It’s fair to wonder whether Arrival really is, in fact, a time-travel movie. The Ted Chiang short story it’s based on isn’t about time travel per se; rather, it’s an exploration of alternate forms of temporal understanding. The linguist protagonist, played by Amy Adams, doesn’t travel through time so much as come to experience it differently. Still, the plot ends up hinging on foreknowledge that she is granted not via visions but by actually experiencing her future simultaneously with her present and past. For our purposes, though, that’s time fuckery enough to merit inclusion, and boy howdy does the film deliver in overall quality. Partly, that’s simply a question of the source material. Chiang is arguably the most talented (and possibly the most decorated) American sci-fi writer of his generation. But the source story is not especially Hollywood friendly, and director Denis Villeneuve has adopted it lovingly, borrowing a plot device from another of Chiang’s stories, the more straightforwardly time-travel-based “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” in order to add some third-act blockbuster flavor. The result is a beautiful meditation on love, choice, and courage that packs art-film ethos into a genuine sci-fi blockbuster.

Arrival is streaming on Hulu and Paramount+ .

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55 Best Time Travel Movies Of All Time Ranked

One of the fun things about time travel movies (apart from, you know, the time travel part) is that they're not married to one particular genre. Hopping from one year to the next is a narrative device that benefits everything from romantic comedies to slasher films. If you have a preferred genre, there is a very good chance that there's a time travel film within it just waiting to blow your mind. On the other hand, if you're not picky about your watch habits and are just as keen to watch a Western as a psychological thriller, time travel films are a great way to experience a generous swath of genres while keeping one thematic element consistent: messing with the sanctity of the space-time continuum. 

Below you'll find 55 of the best time travel films that the sub-genre has at its disposal. Along the way, you'll notice a couple of recurring narrative trends. More than one pair of lovers find themselves separated by a decade (or a century). Time-traveling protagonists are forced to accept the messiness of the past after attempting to right the wrongs of history. There are also fish out of water comedies galore, from helicopter-piloting samurai to modern-day teenagers stranded in the Wild West. So with all that said, feel free to take notes, synchronize your watches, and settle in for a look at the best time travel films cinema has to offer ... at least in this timeline.

55. A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court

You may be familiar with that holiest of fish-out-of-water scenarios: "man from the present gets transported back to medieval times." The third installment in the "Evil Dead" franchise, which may or may not feature later on this list, is one example. The 2001 Martin Lawrence vehicle "Black Knight" is another. But there's something especially charming about Tay Garnett's 1949 film, "A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court," which adapts Mark Twain's 1889 novel of the same name. 

Inspired by Twain's text, the film follows a crooning mechanic (Bing Crosby) who is launched back to 6th-century England after receiving a blow to the head. There, he finds allies, lovers, and rivals as his modern ways inevitably clash with the antiquated traditions of a medieval court. "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" is an easy-breezy Saturday matinee flick that highlights Crosby's undeniable charm.

54. G.I. Samurai

Criminally underseen outside of Japan, Kōsei Saitō's 1979 film "G.I. Samurai" follows an elite squad of soldiers who accidentally slip through the cracks of time to an era when roving samurai clans warred in hopes of securing dominance over the country. Starring comedic legend Sonny Chiba (who, as ever, does most of his own stunts), the film is undoubtedly one of the strangest entries on this list. That said, don't let that stop you from checking out this violent genre mish-mash. "G.I. Samurai" (which also goes by the equally accurate name "Time Slip" and the utterly baffling "I Want To") is a charming if eccentric adventure through time.

53. The Visitors

Directed by Jean-Marie Poiré (who also helmed the 2001 English-language remake "Just Visiting"), "The Visitors" follows two poor medieval souls who accidentally stumble into modern times, landing in the early 1990s thanks to a bumbling, not-all-there magician. With his loyal servant (Christian Clavier) in tow, brazen knight Godefroy de Malfête (Jean Reno) must navigate such futuristic horrors as concrete roads, dentistry, and bowl cuts no longer being a fashion-forward haircut choice. Wacky to its core and endlessly over the top, "The Visitors" is a fish out of water time travel romp that's just about as goofy as they come.

52. The Butterfly Effect

While "The Butterfly Effect" wasn't particularly well-regarded when it first premiered in 2004 (as its low score on Rotten Tomatoes testifies), Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber's high-concept time travel film has since enjoyed a modern reevaluation, emerging as one of the more interesting sci-fi horror offerings of the early naughties. The film follows Evan (Ashton Kutcher, playing against type), a young man who struggles to remember his past, thanks to a history of harrowing abuse. By chance, Evan discovers that reading from his old journals allows him to literally embody his younger self, changing the most traumatic parts of his past by making different decisions. Unfortunately, as the film's title suggests, Evan's meddling in the past, however seemingly insignificant, produces a domino effect of tragic consequences for not just his own life, but the lives of those around him.

51. The Final Countdown

Plenty of films on this list have time machines. Heck, one of those time machines is even a DeLorean. But only one film has a time-traveling nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Released in 1980, "The Final Countdown" tells the story of a US military vessel that has the misfortune of traveling back in time to December 6th, 1941, the day before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Once the crew (which includes the talents of Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen) comes to terms with the moral implications of their situation, a "Twilight Zone"-like dilemma breaks out as to whether they ought to intervene and change the course of history, or allow a national tragedy to unfold. Part B-movie science fiction romp, part recruitment tool for the US Navy, "The Final Countdown" is utterly unlike any other time travel film on this list.

50. Somewhere in Time

Released in 1980 and starring three of the hottest people to ever exist (Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, and Christopher Plummer, respectively), "Somewhere in Time" follows a young playwright named Richard (Reeve) who has an uncanny experience on the opening night of his first stage play: An old woman, who he has never met before, begs Richard to come back to her. Obsessed by the mystery-laden encounter, Richard does what any self-respecting romantic would do and travels back in time to find her via self-hypnosis. Directed by French filmmaker Jeannot Szwarc (whose 1975 creature feature "Bug" gives William Castle a run for his B-movie money), "Somewhere in Time" is both charming and emotionally devastating. You've been warned!

49. 13 Going on 30

One of the more straightforward romantic comedies on this list, "13 Going on 30" follows a young dorky teen named Jenna who makes a wish on her thirteenth birthday to grow up faster (specifically, she wants to be, "30, flirty, and thriving"). And just like that, Jenna is catapulted into the future, waking up as a 30-year-old woman with 30-year-old problems (first and foremost, the naked man she finds in her new apartment, to her considerable disgust). While the thrills of independence and adulthood are exhilarating at first (what 13-year-old doesn't dream of disposable income?) Jenna soon finds that being older comes with its own set of challenges. A contagiously charming document of all the fashion crimes the early naughties had to offer, "13 Going on 30" is notable for highlighting the considerable talents of its main cast, especially Jennifer Garner, Mark Ruffalo, and the ever-delightful Judy Greer.

48. Déjà Vu

Marking the reunion of director Tony Scott and actor Denzel Washington after 2004's "Man on Fire," "Déjà Vu" is a bombastic (pun intended) time-traveling romance that also dares to be a straight-laced crime thriller. The film follows Doug Carlin (Washington), a federal agent who is summoned to investigate a horrific bombing on the Mississippi River. When Carlin proves himself to be a competent ally, an experimental FBI team invites him to participate in a new, super-secret form of investigation: A device, dubbed "Snow White," that allows users to take brief glimpses back into the past. But as the investigation persists, Doug grows less interested in catching the perpetrator in the present day, instead looking to alter history to prevent the accident from ever happening. With Denzel Washington's engaging presence, "Déjà Vu" is thrilling and heart-wrenching in equal measure.

47. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

While there's certainly a debate to be had about whether or not being cryogenically frozen counts as time travel, around these parts we're liable to vote yes. As far as we're concerned, superspy Austin Powers (Mike Myers) going to sleep in the swinging '60s and thawing out in the 1990s absolutely makes the cut. And with his bald-headed nemesis Dr. Evil (also Mike Myers) equally de-thawed and back with a vengeance, it's up to the shagadelic international man of mystery to acclimatize to these modern times in order to save the day. The first (and best) entry in the "Austin Powers" series, Jay Roach's 1997 film is brimming with sly nods and genuinely insightful critiques of its source material (namely, the "James Bond" films). A hoot from start to finish, "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" stands tall in the genre of spy parodies.

46. Army of Darkness

The third entry in the flawless "Evil Dead" trilogy, "Army of Darkness" was director Sam Raimi's vision of a horror film set in the past. This tale of the medieval dead reunites us with the series' incredibly groovy hero Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell), who was sucked through a wormhole (book of the dead-hole?) at the end of "Evil Dead II" that transported him to the year 1300 A.D. Somehow goofier than its predecessor, "Army of Darkness" follows Ash as he wins over the hearts, minds, and women of a walled city besieged by nefarious deadites. As he attempts to woo his crush and banish evil from the land, our strong-jawed hero is preoccupied with figuring out how to return back to his own time. Bonkers to its core and unabashedly full of both Raimi and Campbell's love of physical comedy, "Army of Darkness" is a blast from the past in more ways than one.

45. Happy Death Day 2U

Yeah, we hear you: Everything was tied up in one neat little bow at the end of the original 2017 film, "Happy Death Day." How could there be a sequel? What could possibly be worse than getting trapped in a time loop where you are killed over and over again by a killer wearing a creepy baby-faced mask? Well, all of you who answered "getting stuck in a parallel dimension where you're stuck in a time loop again " deserve a pat on the back. Yes, Tree Glebman (Jessica Rothe) may have escaped the maddening time loop in  her dimension, but thanks to the science experiment of some neighboring dorks, she's lost all that hard-won narrative closure and must fight for her life (well, lives ) once again. Matching its predecessor in charm and creativity, "Happy Death Day 2U" is an arguably unnecessary yet still delightful sequel.

44. Slaughterhouse-Five

Based on Kurt Vonnegut's novel of the same name, "Slaughterhouse-Five" follows the time-tripping exploits of Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks), an aptly named man who is "unstuck in time" after becoming a prisoner of war in 1940s Germany. Slipping in and out of his past, present, and future, Billy trips in and out of decades and major life events (including being abducted by aliens). Directed with a dreamy, atmospheric competence by George Roy Hill (the man behind "The Sting" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"), even Vonnegut himself praised the movie as "a flawless translation ... I drool and cackle every time I watch that film." And if praise from the horse's mouth doesn't do it for you, the film just so happens to enjoy critical acclaim across the board.

If you know one thing about 2004's "Primer," it's that it's famously difficult to explain without sounding like you spent a lot of time in a glue factory. That said, let's have a go at it: "Primer" follows four tech bros who build a machine in their garage that does ... something. They're not sure what, exactly. But it's something . One of the bizarre effects of their creation is that time appears to work differently inside the machine, making it a kind of "time machine," if you will. After much discussion, the foursome decide to experiment with it, only to discover a strange side effect: Whatever passes through the machine creates a double. A puzzle of a film full of paradoxes, loopholes, and sequences of events that overlap, dovetail, and intersect, "Primer" is a feisty, wildly ambitious indie movie that holds its own amidst the bigger blockbusters of the genre.

42. Triangle

Packaged as a typical slasher movie, Christopher Smith's 2009 psychological horror film follows a group of shipwrecked survivors who seek refuge on a mysteriously deserted ocean liner. At first, they think they are alone. Then a shotgun-wielding masked killer emerges out of the woodwork to make an already terrifying situation even worse as they pick everyone off one by one. To say much more than that (or how any of this has to do with time travel) would give away the film's secrets. So we will say no more! Featuring an innovative mid-film plot twist, "Triangle" is an unexpected delight with a captivating lead performance from Melissa George as the mentally fragile Jess. An expectation-subverting watch, "Triangle" will unquestionably win over adventurous fans of the slasher genre.

41. Happy Death Day

Grounded by a charming and sardonic performance by Jessica Rothe, Christopher Landon's 2017 horror-comedy sticks the slasher and time-travel genres in a blender with hilarious results. "Happy Death Day" follows Tree (Rothe), a mean-spirited sorority girl with a tragic past who finds herself reliving the day of her murder over and over again. Some psycho wearing the very creepy mask of their college's mascot has it out for her. And somewhere between being stabbed and electrocuted, Tree starts to suspect that uncovering the identity (and motive) of her die-hard killer is the only way to get out of this cursed time loop. But when the effects of being murdered in a variety of brutal ways start catching up with her, Tree realizes that she doesn't have much time (ironically enough) to solve the mystery. "Happy Death Day" makes dying repeatedly look super fun, and if that isn't a stamp of approval, we don't know what is.

40. Trancers

We have a fair number of time travel methods on this list: cars, hypnosis, telephone booths, you name it. But "Trancers," in all of its 1980s wisdom, takes a different approach: time travel via drugs. Set in the far-flung future of 2247, our hero is the improbably named Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson), a bounty hunter hot on the heels of a psychic villain (Michael Stefani) capable of entrancing his victims with his mind. When Deth finally learns that his foe has traveled back to the 1980s to assassinate the ancestors of future City Council members, it's up to Deth to follow him to the past and stop the nefarious mesmerist from executing his violent scheme. With more laser special effects than you can shake a stick at, "Trancers" comes courtesy of the ingenious low-budget mastermind Charles Band. Ripoffs of "The Terminator" are a dime a dozen, but they're rarely this entertaining.

39. About Time

While you could certainly say that all of the films on this list are about time, only one film is really "About Time." The 2013 sci-fi rom-com follows a young man named Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) who learns that he's inherited the ability to travel in time and change the course of his life. Written and directed by Richard Curtis — a New Zealand-born filmmaker who readers may know from the likes of "Love Actually" and "Four Weddings and a Funeral" — "About Time" has charm to spare, with one of the most lovely onscreen father-son dynamics of the 2010s. A film that is the cinematic equivalent of a warm bowl of soup, "About Time" is a high watermark for one of the more persistent themes in time travel cinema: learning to accept things just as they are.

38. Back to the Future Part II

While admittedly falling short of the lighting in a bottle effect of its predecessor, "Back to the Future Part II" succeeds in being better than most sequels and most time-travel films. Directed once again by Robert Zemeckis, the 1989 film sees scrappy teen Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and his geriatric pal Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) journeying forward in time to the unthinkably futuristic landscape of 2015. The objective is to stop Marty's future son from making a mistake that will land him in the slammer. As you'd imagine, things don't go exactly according to plan, leaving the future (and the past) a little shaken in the wake of Doc and Marty's meddling. A solid if decidedly more chaotic sequel, "Back to the Future Part II" is full of charms of its own.

37. Frequency

Released in the year 2000 and directed by Gregory Hoblit (the man behind the Richard Gere vehicle "Primal Fear"), "Frequency" follows John Sullivan (Jim Caviezel), a New York City detective who accidentally stumbles on a way to communicate across time with his now-deceased father (Dennis Quaid) using a HAM radio. Overcome with joy at the possibility of saving his father's life, Gregory warns his father of his cause of death, triggering a series of events arguably more tragic than his dad's fiery demise. "Frequency" is a suspense-riddled character study that also makes for a solid (and probably weepy) Father's Day watch.

36. The Muppet Christmas Carol

Are all movie adaptations of Charles Dickens' cautionary ghost story time travel stories? In our estimation: yes. The story spends Christmas with Ebenezer Scrooge, a real jerk who begins his journey to becoming a better person after he is visited by three ghosts that show the miserly curmudgeon his past, present, and future to gain some much-needed perspective. While everyone has their own favorite "Christmas Carol" adaptation, we're going to make an executive decision here: The best "Christmas Carol" movie is 1992's "The Muppet Christmas Carol," the directorial debut of Brian Henson. Roll your eyes all you want at the presence of the titular Muppets, but this film features one of Michael Caine's finest performances as the cold-hearted Scrooge. Also, it's a musical. What more could you want?

35. The Time Machine

Based on H.G. Wells's novella of the same name, which was literally the work that popularized the concept of a "time machine" , George Pal's 1960 film follows a fancy and adventurous Victorian Englishman (Rod Taylor) who travels into the far-flung future only to find humanity divided into two warring factions: the child-like Eloi and the brutish Morlocks. While the inventor had hopes that the future would be a paradise of new, utopic developments, it would seem that the warring tendency in our species is bound to persist throughout the centuries unless we change our ways. Warmly received by critics , the 1960 adaptation of "The Time Machine" is campy in all the right places with plenty of charm to spare.

If you ask us, "Tenet" is less about the convoluted ins and outs of using time travel to prevent World War III than it is about the vibes (and the friendship between John David Washington and Robert Pattinson). Look, it's totally possible to enjoy a movie without having the faintest idea what it's about. Then again, director Christopher Nolan has always been interested in non-linear filmmaking, from the memory-loss of "Memento" to the languid dream logic of "Inception." "Tenet" is Nolan leaning fully into his love of temporal logistics and while it's disorienting, there can be no denying that it's a hell of a good time. Despite any flaws it may have, "Tenet" is what you get when you put James Bond and time travel in a blender (in the best possible way).

33. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Directed by Leonard Nimoy (yes, the same Leonard Nimoy who plays the pointy-eared Spock), the fourth feature film in the "Star Trek" franchise begins in a far-flung future on the edge of disaster. An alien probe is wreaking havoc on Earth's environment, drying up our oceans and polluting our atmosphere. (Are we sure it's an extraterrestrial threat? Sounds like plain old climate change to us.) In order to save humanity from the impending apocalypse, the swashbuckling Captain Kirk (WIlliam Shatner) and his intrepid crew voyage back in time to the year 1986, where they hope to locate a soon-to-be-extinct animal that can respond to the mysterious probe. Pivoting the series' sci-fi into more comedic waters, "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" leans hard on the chemistry of its cast to buoy the severity of its environmentalist message. If you're going to watch one of the older "Star Trek" films, this is the one to seek out.

32. Peggy Sue Got Married

There is no time machine, per se, in "Peggy Sue Got Married." Instead, the titular character (played by Kathleen Turner) travels back in her own memories. Or maybe it's an especially vivid daydream. Who's to say? When you faint at your high school reunion, anything can happen! In any case, middle-aged Peggy Sue unintentionally travels back to her teenage days in the early 1960s, where she plays with the idea of breaking off her marriage to her high school sweetheart before it even has the chance to start. With a stellar ensemble cast, including Nicolas Cage, Helen Hunt, and Jim Carrey, Francis Ford Coppola's 1986 film is a bittersweet gem.

31. Back to the Future Part III

Very few films as excellent as "Back to the Future" are succeeded by a sequel that doesn't disappoint. And it's even rarer for such a film to produce two excellent sequels. Enter: "Back to the Future Part III," which catapults spunky skateboarder Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and the white-haired Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) back to the 19th century. The pair find themselves stranded in the Wild West, contending with saloon brawls, rowdy dames, and deadly gunfights. As always, the time-hopping duo must lay low while attempting to find a way back to their own time. There are adorable frontier romances, villains with the faces of modern-day bullies, and plenty of adoring references to old cowboy films. Although it doesn't always get the credit it deserves , "Back to the Future Part III" is a sweet-natured love letter to the Western genre.

30. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

In the first of three films charting the time-traveling/dimension-hopping adventures of Bill S. Preston (Alex Winter) and Ted "Theodore" Logan (Keanu Reeves), our titular doofuses are tasked with a harrowing objective: passing history class. Unbeknownst to these two Southern Californian himbos, the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, because at some point in the future, Bill and Ted write a rock song so great it actually achieves world peace. But in order for the dynamic duo to rock out, they first need a passing grade. Armed with a time machine helpfully supplied by an ally from the future (George Carlin), the pair journey through the past to amass a gang of history's most prolific figures. Lighthearted and energetic, "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" is a profoundly silly journey through history with two of cinema's most radical dudes who have charm (and air guitar riffs) to spare.

29. The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey

A wildly strange film on a list full of kooky adventures, Vincent Ward's 1988 fish-out-of-water time travel jaunt is truly an under-discussed, one-of-a-kind experience. The surreal and atmospheric Australia/New Zealand co-production was selected in competition for  the highest prize at the Cannes film festival and received eleven awards from the Australian Film Institute . With a dream-like approach to storytelling, "The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey" follows a psychic nine-year-old named Griffin (Hamish McFarlane) who has trippy visions of an alternate reality that looks completely different from his 14th-century mining village. With the Black Plague at their door, the villagers heed Griffin's warnings and follow his directions to dig deep below the earth. On the other side, the medieval peasants emerge into a bold and bizarre new land: 20th century New Zealand. Full of fantasy and imagination that flies in the face of the film's modest budget , "The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey" is an underrated classic.

28. Jubilee

"Jubilee" boasts one of the wackiest concepts as far as time travel films are concerned. Get this: Queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen herself, travels forward in time with the help of occult magic to visit 1970s Britain. Instead of a futuristic new world full of utopian progress, Elizabeth (Jenny Runacre) finds a crumbling country riddled with anarchy, social unrest, and debauchery. Directed by Derek Jarman (who also helmed the evocative 1986 biopic "Caravaggio"), "Jubilee" vibrates with undeniable punk rock energy, both critical and celebratory. So, the next time you're living your best nihilistic teenage dream, think to yourself: what  would  Queen Elizabeth I think?

27. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Released in 2006, Mamoru Hosoda's animated feature film follows the teenage Makoto (voiced by Riisa Naka), a high school girl who acquires the ability to literally jump into the past after stumbling upon a mysterious device in the science lab. Being a teen, Makoto uses her new gift for trivial, self-serving adjustments, acing pop quizzes and side-stepping embarrassing situations with ease. But when Makoto begins to realize that her adjustments have consequences for others, she resolves to only use her powers for good, and begins uncovering the mystery behind these strange abilities in the process. A decidedly personal (and relatable) approach to sci-fi fantasy, "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" captures audiences' hearts.

26. Time After Time

This 1979 film may share a name with a melodramatic ballad, but don't be fooled! "Time After Time" is way kookier than anything Cyndi Lauper could dream up. Behold, the plot: "War of the Worlds" author H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) hunts down infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper (David Warner), who has traveled to the 20th century after stealing the writer's time machine. With little interest in its pseudo-science and a romantic subplot that often gets in the way of the suspenseful thrills, "Time After Time" is an odd duck that manages to charm in spite of its idiosyncrasies. Then again, when your lead actors are having this much fun with a premise this bananas, you're bound to conjure up a good degree of movie magic.

25. Timecrimes

Easily scampering away with the best title on this list, "Timecrimes" follows Héctor (Karra Elejalde), a middle-aged nobody whose lazy day is ruined when a blood-soaked madman chases him into a secret lab in the woods. Inside, he meets a suspiciously unfazed scientist (played by writer-director Nacho Vigalondo) who casually instructs Héctor to hide in a big vat of sci-fi liquid. Sure enough, Héctor is launched back in time by one hour, forced to navigate (and solve) a string of disasters perpetrated by different iterations of himself. Few films on this list have a protagonist this stupid. But that is, in effect, part of the charm of "Timecrimes:" Héctor is just some dude who winds up at the center of an increasingly complicated web of cause and effect. Inventive, moody, and effective for its smaller scope and scale, "Timecrimes" is a pure delight.

24. Je t'aime, je t'aime

One of the older films on this list, Alain Resnais' 1968 film blends time travel with romantic obsession. From the director of "Last Year at Marienbad," the film sees a depressed young man named Claude (Claude Rich) reeling after the end of his relationship with Catrine (Olga Georges-Picot). Claude agrees to participate in a human experiment with a time travel device that promises to send its user back in the past by one year, for one minute. But when the machine malfunctions, Claude finds himself stuck reliving his nightmarish past out of sequence. Navigating fluidly through time, memory, and trauma, "Je t'aime, je t'aime" is arguably the most heartbreaking film on this list, an emotionally draining experience that must be seen (and wept over) to be believed.

23. Time Bandits

From the demented, hyper-imaginative mind of director Terry Gilliam, 1981's "Time Bandits" follows a young history nerd named Kevin (Craig Warnock) who is whisked away by six time-hopping criminals on an adventure to steal treasures from different historical eras, thanks to some convenient holes in the fabric of space and time. With whimsy to spare and an approach towards fantasy that charms both kids and adults alike, "Time Bandits" is simultaneously silly as hell and bursting with technical prowess, it contains the absurdism and production design that distinguishes Gilliam's cinematic output.

22. Safety Not Guaranteed

A bizarre ad shows up in the classifieds section of a local Washington newspaper. Someone is looking for a partner to travel back in time with them. They stress that it isn't a joke, and that they have only traveled in time once before. Tasked with covering the ad as an amusing fluff piece, a group of reporters, including the listless college grad Darius (Aubrey Plaza), set off to find and meet this clearly unhinged individual (Mark Duplass).There's no way that this lunatic actually invented a time machine, right? Unapologetically quirky, this indie rom-com could not be more twee if it tried. But sometimes adorable awkward dorks finding happiness and love while trying to journey through the ages together is exactly what the doctor ordered.

21. Il Mare

This 2000 South Korean romantic comedy follows a love story that transcends time itself ... literally. When Eun-joo (Jun Ji-hyun) in "Il Mare" abandons her seaside home for the city, she leaves a card in the mailbox for the next owner so that they can forward her any mail. Two years earlier , a young man named Sung-hyun (Lee Jung-jae) receives Eun-joo's letter. The pair soon realize that the beach house's mailbox can traverse time and space, and begin a really long-distance relationship. Remade stateside six years later as the Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock romance "The Lake House," Lee Hyun-seung's original is a captivating love story that is worth seeking out.

20. Predestination

Based on Robert A. Heinlein's short story, "Predestination" follows a time-hopping government agent (Ethan Hawke) who is hot on the heels of a serial terrorist equally unstuck in time. In his quest to catch the notorious Fizzle Bomber, the agent allies with a mysterious individual (Sarah Snook) who writes under the pseudonym "The Unmarried Mother." It is difficult, if not impossible, to dig into the "chicken or egg" delights of "Predestination" without giving away key plot details, so you'll just have to seek this one out to see for yourself. It's ambitious, imaginative, and a must-watch for anyone who enjoys a head-scratcher (you may have to whip out a corkboard and some red string once the credits roll).

Did  you  know that Wong Kar-Wai, the acclaimed Hong Kong director behind "Chungking Express" and "Fallen Angels," made a time travel pseudo-sequel to "In the Mood For Love"? If not, you do now. Spanning multiple timelines, real and imagined, "2046" follows a sci-fi author named Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung) as he writes about, and lives within, a hotel filled with memories. Like much of Wong Kar-Wai's work, "2046" is deeply interested in missed connections, the painful "what-ifs?" that haunt you long after they've come and gone. With aching melancholy, Chow Mo Wan recounts his experiences with the mysterious titular room and all the lost souls who pass through it. Many films can be summarized by the mournful thesis that "love is all a matter of timing," but few are able to tease out the visual poetry of such a statement quite like Wong Kar-Wai.

18. Source Code

Directed by Duncan Jones, who more than proved himself in the sci-fi genre with 2009's "Moon," "Source Code" tells of Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), a soldier dropped into the body of an unknown man aboard a commuter train en route to Chicago. Soon enough, he realizes his mission: There's a bomb on board, and he's the only one who can prevent the catastrophe from taking place. Reliving the last eight minutes of his host's life again and again, Colter must piece the clues together to thwart further bombings. More action-heavy than many of the films on this list, "Source Code" is a kinetic take on the time loop format grounded by a brilliant and demanding lead performance by Gyllenhaal.

The third feature film from "Knives Out" director Rian Johnson, 2012's "Looper" takes place in a future where mob bosses use time travel to dispose of bodies. Joe Simmons (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is one such time-traveling hitman, raking in the big bucks with dreams of retiring to a quiet life in France. Then, one day during a hit, Joe is shocked to come face-to-face with his future self (Bruce WIllis). A game of cat and mouse ensues, with mob intrigue, paradoxes, and determinism galore. A thinking man's sci-fi time travel thriller, "Looper" will satisfy viewers who enjoy world-building, masterful plotting, and inventive takes on the noir genre.

16. 16. Midnight in Paris

One of the many entries in the "Rachel McAdams is romantically involved with a time traveler" cinematic universe, "Midnight in Paris" follows Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), an aspiring novelist with his head in the clouds who accidentally stumbles through time while vacationing in Paris with his fiancé (McAdams). Brushing shoulders with literary idols, infamous artists, and starry-eyed creatives, Gil soon finds that the draw of the past easily outweighs his obligations to the present. Featuring an all-star ensemble cast and an undeniably charming romantic attitude, "Midnight in Paris" is an enjoyable viewing experience (especially if you cover your eyes and ears when the director/writer credits flash on screen).

15. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

What's a "Harry Potter" film doing on a list of time travel movies? Well, if you'll recall, the third film in the franchise features a third-act plot device called a Time-Turner that allows our wizarding heroes to rewrite history, saving the father figure of hero Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) from a fate worse than death. Sure, the Time-Turner primarily features in the story as a way for bookworm Hermione (Emma Watson) to attend multiple overlapping classes. But, as we'll quickly learn, rules (and the space-time continuum) are meant to be broken. Directed by Mexican New Wave wunderkind Alfonso Cuarón, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" follows Harry, Ron (Rupert Grint), and Hermione as they contend with yet another life-threatening development: the escape of notorious convict Sirius Black (Gary Oldman).

14. Donnie Darko

A moody teen named Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) narrowly avoids being incinerated by a plane crashing into his bedroom when he is lured outside by a giant, demonic-looking bunny rabbit. You know. Typical teen stuff. The rabbit, Frank (James Duval), informs Donnie that the whole world is going to end in less than a month. As Frank continues to pull the strings of Donnie's life, the teen is nudged to commit mischief, arson, and yes, time travel. Famously confusing, with tangential universes and deterministic quandaries galore, "Donnie Darko" is the kind of film that will make your brain hurt ... hopefully in a good way. Featuring one of the greatest soundtracks of the 1990s (INXS and Tears for Fears? In this economy ?), Richard Kelly's "Donnie Darko" is one of the defining films of the early 2000s.

13. Arrival

While Ted Chiang's 1998 short story was long thought to be unfilmable, director Denis Villeneuve has a talent for bringing high concept stories to the screen (there's a reason he was drawn to "Dune"). In Villeneuve's 2016 film "Arrival," a renowned linguist named Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is summoned to assist with a bizarre development: Twelve mysterious, smooth-edged alien crafts have touched down across the world. It's up to Dr. Banks to devise a way to communicate with the beings inside the craft and determine if the extraterrestrial visitors are friends or foes. As Dr. Banks discovers, the key to cracking the code may lie in the aliens' nonlinear experience of time. A quiet masterpiece that benefits from repeated viewings, "Arrival" is an intelligent and hopeful slice of science fiction.

12. Palm Springs

Some time travel films see folks hurtling forward (or backward) in time. Others, like 2020's "Palm Springs," have time travelers moving in circles over and over again. One of the most inventive spins on the time loop sub-genre, Max Barbakow's feature film debut follows Nyles (Andy Samberg), a man who has been attending the same wedding over and over again in sunny Palm Springs. After Nyles is shot with an arrow during an impulsive hook-up with Sarah (Cristin Milioti), the depressed maid-of-honor joins the nihilistic Nyles in perpetually sun-drenched purgatory. Released during the beginning of the pandemic when every day really did feel the same, "Palm Springs" embraces the Sisyphean metaphor inherent in the time loop structure.

11. Planet of the Apes

Now, look. If this film's inclusion on this list has you scratching your head, that can only mean one of two things: You haven't seen the original "Planet of the Apes" film,  or you've been living under a pop-culture rock and have somehow avoided stumbling across the iconic twist ending of the 1968 sci-fi classic. Indeed, as we learn at the film's end, our resilient hero George Taylor (Charlton Heston) hasn't actually traveled through space at all ... just time. Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, "Planet of the Apes" couches some genuine existential horror in the seemingly campy premise promised by its title. It's an oldie but a goodie that will reward the patient viewer with one of the greatest rug-pulls sci-fi filmmaking has to offer.

10. Interstellar

Are all movies set in space time travel movies? It's certainly a question worth asking. Aging in a relativistic biological space-time is one hell of a drug, after all. Without getting too deep into Albert Einstein's twin paradox , long story short: We age slower when we're zipping about in space. Christopher Nolan's 2014 sci-fi film "Interstellar" not only features some heartbreaking moments of time dilation, but a third act reveal that the power of love can bend the fabric of space and time itself. The film begins with an apocalyptic scenario: A global blight is turning Earth into a pile of ash and dust. A plan forms to find humanity a new home planet and a team, including former NASA test pilot Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), is sent out into the galaxy to scout the three potential candidates. Operatic, inventive, and brimming with intergalactic spectacle, "Interstellar" is an epic space saga of the highest quality.

9. 12 Monkeys

In the alarmingly not-too-distant future of 2035, mankind has been driven underground by a deadly viral pandemic. James Cole (Bruce Willis), a mild-mannered, soft-spoken convict, "volunteers" to act as a time-traveling guinea pig. His mission is to voyage back to 1996, the year of the outbreak, and discover its cause. However, when Cole is accidentally transported back too far into the past, his sweaty warnings about the impending disaster come across as the ravings of a lunatic, and he is promptly incarcerated in a mental health facility. There, he meets two individuals who will profoundly impact not only his life, but the future of the human race: a compassionate psychiatrist and a fellow mental patient who just so happens to be the son of a prominent virologist. Directed by the imaginative former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam, "12 Monkeys" balances its gritty surreal gait with an uncomfortable degree of plausibility.

8. Edge of Tomorrow

Arguably the greatest video game movie ever made (despite not being directly based on any one particular video game), "Edge of Tomorrow" (also known by its more plot-accurate title "Live, Die, Repeat") tells of a future in which mankind is engaged in an apocalyptic battle with an alien force that is giving humanity a real run for its money. Major Bill Cage (Tom Cruise), a smooth-talking PR man who's never held a gun (or piloted a mech-suit), finds himself on the frontlines of a naval landing meant to turn the tide. The catastrophic invasion quickly claims the life of the inexperienced Cage, who dies slathered in the corrosive blood of an especially large alien foe. Then Cage wakes up, startled to find that he is very much alive and apparently stuck in a time loop reliving the disastrous day of the invasion over and over again. With creative action set pieces and an inventive approach to the time-loop sub-genre, "Edge of Tomorrow" is a tremendous amount of fun.

7. Run Lola Run

On the face of it, "Run Lola Run" doesn't seem to be an obvious entry in science fiction cinema. The 1998 German film follows a young woman (the titular Lola, played by Franka Potente), whose forgetful boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreau) accidentally leaves a big chunk of change on a subway car that belongs to a dangerous criminal. It's up to Lola to rustle up the funds and rendezvous with Manni in 20 minutes to avoid disaster. Over the course of the film, we witness three different timelines of Lola's sprint, each deviating significantly thanks to the butterfly effect. Experimental, kinetic, and brimming with undeniable 1990s energy, "Run Lola Run" is a breezy, fast-paced meditation on chaos theory, determinism, and all the mind-breaking side effects time travel entails. "Run Lola Run" might not have a time machine, but its detailed, hyper-specific concern with the fallout of how small decisions shape our lives more than justifies its presence on this list.

6. La Jetée

Directed by the prolific experimental filmmaker Chris Marker, this 1962 French-language film may be short, clocking in at just under 30 minutes, but its influence on science fiction cinema is vast. "La Jetée" follows an unnamed man (Davos Hanich), a prisoner of a future war that has driven all survivors below the surface to survive the post-apocalypse. Tapped as a reluctant test subject to be launched back in time (presumably to learn more about and ultimately prevent World War III), the man is hurtled backward and forward through the decades in search of a solution to humanity's "present" predicament. If this brief plot synopsis sounds familiar, that's because "La Jetée" served as the source material for the aforementioned "12 Monkeys." Still, the 1962 film stands on its own and is absolutely worth checking out, even if you're only familiar with Terry Gilliam's quasi-remake.

5. Groundhog Day

One of the best "time loop" films and one of the best romantic comedies of all time, 1993's "Groundhog Day" follows a grumpy, self-centered weatherman named Phil (Bill Murray) who is dispatched to a small town to cover the titular rodent-related holiday. To Phil's horror (and our amusement), the cranky newsman finds that he can't leave the humble borders of Punxsutawney even if there weren't a snowstorm. Trapped reliving the same day over and over again, Phil's anger and despair eventually transform into something far more endearing and productive. A comedy classic that makes full use of Murray's dual mastery of crankiness and charm, "Groundhog Day" is a cinematic gem worth revisiting again (and again and again).

4. The Terminator

The original 1984 "Terminator" film is the real deal. Straddling genres with mercurial ease (Is it a slasher? Science fiction tech-noir? All of the above?), "The Terminator" follows Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), who finds herself the target of a nightmarish foe: a machine wearing the flesh of a man, tasked to kill her. Unbeknownst to her, Sarah is going to give birth to the leader of the human resistance in an impending machine-led apocalypse. And while the titular muscle-bound hunk of junk (Arnold Schwarzenegger) aims to kill her son before he can be conceived, an agent of the resistance (Michael Biehn) has been tasked to protect her. Textured, brutal, and methodical, "The Terminator" is the slow-stalking progenitor of its much more bombastic follow-ups. Respect where respect is due, we say.

3. Your Name

Do you know what all of these films about time travel were missing? If you answered "romantic comedy body-swapping" you are correct . Directed by Makoto Shinkai (who readers may know from his 2019 film "Weathering with You"), "Your Name" follows the story of two 17-year-old high schoolers, Taki (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and Mitsuha (Mone Kamishiraishi) who repeatedly switch bodies at random. To say much more, or how the story relates to time travel, would give too much away. Suffice to say, "Your Name" was a runaway commercial success , surpassing the international box office of "Spirited Away" and garnering critical praise to match. If you like to cry, "Your Name" is the film for you — a heartbreaking and visually stunning story that features some of the most strikingly well-realized teenage characters in cinema, animated or otherwise.

2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day

"Terminator 2: Judgment Day" holds a number of high-octane superlatives: it's one of the best time travel films of all time, one of the best sci-fi action films ever made, and one of the best sequels. Taking a decidedly punchier approach than its moodier horror-adjacent predecessor, "Terminator 2" sees John Connor, leader of the human resistance against the AI apocalypse, sending Arnold Schwarzenegger's unstoppable machine back in time to protect his younger self (Edward Furlong). After breaking John's survivalist mom Sarah (Linda Hamilton) out of a psychiatric institution, the trio set off to prevent doomsday before it can happen. Hot on their heels is the T-1000 (Robert Patrick), an advanced AI assassin capable of morphing its liquid-metal body to imitate anyone it pleases. Packing a genuinely emotional center into its back-to-back action sequences and time-defying special effects, "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" deserves all the praise it receives.

1. Back to the Future

Spunky teen Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) joins his senior citizen pal, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) for a nighttime science experiment: a test drive of a time machine that also happens to be a DeLorean. But an unexpected run-in with a gang of terrorists sends Marty fleeing to the year 1955. Through no fault of his own, Marty accidentally threatens his own existence by forming a love triangle with his own parents that would make Freud spin in his grave like a wind turbine. It's up to Marty to make his own parents fall in love and reconnect with the younger version of Doc Brown to find a way back ... to the future. Full of crackerjack silliness and goofy plotting, the secret strength of "Back to the Future" is its simple message that your parents, believe it or not, are people too. Bouncy and full of the charm that makes director Robert Zemeckis a pillar of the 1980s, "Back to the Future" is pure candy-coated perfection.

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The 23 best time travel movies of all time

From Back to the Future to Looper to Palm Springs, the time travel narrative traverses the film spectrum. Here are EW’s picks for 23 of the best. 

Despite time travel being considered more of a science fiction trope, there is something positively enchanting about the idea of being able to go back to another time or forward into the future, even if just for a moment. While this list deals with a mix of films, some of which consider the hazards of time travel (mostly through time loops), for the most part, these films see time travel as a net positive. Time travel is also a sphere that is mostly occupied by television, thanks to shows like Doctor Who , Quantum Leap , and Lost , even though the number of time travel movies has shot up over the past two decades or so.

Unfortunately, the earliest this list goes is 1962; while there are some time travel movies from the Old Hollywood days, they lack a lot of the imagination and thoughtfulness about the nature of time that the movies on this list bring. This list is a mix of straight dramas, killer action, rollicking comedies, and heartfelt romance — and sometimes, all of those elements exist in a single movie. This list is unranked, and mostly grouped together according to each movie's particular "genre" of time travel: conventional time machines, time loops, magical circumstances, and missions to save the past and the future at the same time. These are 23 of the best time travel movies of all time.

La Jetée (1962)

Kicking off an unranked list of time-travel movies chronologically seems like a good place to start, actually. La Jetée is also probably the most experimental of the films on this list. A French Left Bank short film set in a post-nuclear apocalypse future told through narration and photographs, this is not the first time-travel film by any means, but its impact on the time-travel movies that came after, like 1995's 12 Monkeys , cannot be understated.

A young prisoner (Davos Hanich) is forced to undergo torturous experiments to induce time travel by using impactful memories — and unlike those who came before him, he succeeds, but he ends up discovering a time loop in the process. This is an incredibly stylish telling of what is now a familiar type of story, but in 1962, it was absolutely revolutionary. Honestly, because of its unique technical and visual elements, it still is.

Watch La Jetée on Criterion Channel

Time After Time (1979)

Nicholas Meyer is behind not one, but two brilliant time-travel movies that made this list. For this particular film, he not only wrote the screenplay but also made his directorial debut. The tale of two 19th-century former friends, H.G. Wells ( Malcolm McDowell , unusually wide-eyed and adorable) and John Leslie Stevenson a.k.a. Jack the Ripper ( David Warner , never more menacing yet charming), as they chase each other through 1979 San Francisco thanks to Wells' time machine, Time After Time doesn't spend too much time on the science of time travel, and it's better for it.

This is, in essence, a romantic thriller, as Wells falls for quirky bank clerk Amy ( Mary Steenburgen , delightfully independent) while in search of his old friend turned enemy. It has chase scenes, interrogation sequences, gory murder (courtesy of Jack), and a delightful sense of humor as Wells learns to navigate the future. He thought it would be a utopia; instead, he finds a world in sore need of his idealism, kindness, and dedication to justice.

Where to rent or buy Time After Time

The Back to the Future trilogy (1985, 1989, 1990)

While it's true that the first Back to the Future movie is probably one of the greatest time-travel movies of all time, with its two sequels living in its shadows, all three are essential to understanding the character of Marty McFly ( Michael J. Fox ). The Back to the Future trilogy is an '80s version of a bildungsroman about a teenager who has to learn that there's much more to life than being, well, a teenager. The first film, confidently directed by Robert Zemeckis , is imbued with so much humor and heart, it's all too easy to get sucked into a plot that should be convoluted, but that works so awfully well.

Back to the Future Part II evokes a bit less feeling than the original, and it's significantly grittier, but it's still " another fantastic voyage " as EW's Ira Robbins wrote, flinging Marty and Doc Brown ( Christopher Lloyd ) into a slightly prescient future version of 2015. Back to the Future Part III , meanwhile, restores the heart, but its story is slighter as it wraps up Marty's saga, sending Doc off on a brand new adventure all his own. While the first Back to the Future movie is required viewing for any time travel enthusiast, stick around for the rest of the trilogy, too: Even if this franchise's view of time travel is riddled with potential paradoxes, they are entertaining paradoxes nonetheless.

Watch the Back to the Future trilogy on Tubi

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

"Be excellent to each other" is the reigning philosophy of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure , the adventurous, fun-loving, stoner time-travel comedy that spawned a franchise, including a third installment released in 2020. Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves absolutely triumph in the roles of lackadaisical teenagers Bill and Ted, respectively, as they journey through time to bring back legends in order to pass their history class.

If the film seems silly, that's because it is meant to be. Whereas the Back to the Future franchise intended to craft a legend, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure kicks off the journey with George Carlin as the duo's time travel guide and mentor, Rufus, who intends to enlighten the pair on their mission and destiny. In any other film, the two budding legends, with their free-wheeling ideals and misadventures, would bring down the fabric of time and space itself. However, Excellent Adventure is not a time-travel film that forces you to think too hard about its premise; instead, it invites you to just kick back and have a good time.

Watch Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure on Amazon Prime Video

Meet the Robinsons (2007)

Meet the Robinsons received mixed reviews when it first debuted, but of the 3-D animated movies that came out of Disney Animation in the 2000s, it's probably the most imaginative and outstanding of the bunch. Following a young orphan as he goes on a fantastic voyage into the future with another young boy who is a time traveler (kind of), Robinsons is stylish to a point and is filled with heart. It's probably also the most kid-friendly entry on this list, but its good-natured humor and complicated emotional palette will appeal to adults, too.

It also fits neatly into a more classic genre of time travel, with time machines, eccentric inventors, and kids looking to make an impact — not just on their time, but on the time they find themselves in, be it the near future or the distant past.

Watch Meet the Robinsons on Disney+

Run Lola Run (1998)

This is, in many ways, the time loop movie; debuting in 1998 to rave reviews, Run Lola Run , a German experimental thriller, is one you will not be able to shake, long after you've finished a viewing (or even a second, to catch what you missed the first time). The protagonist, Lola (Franka Potente, in a punishingly physical performance), is forced to relive a scenario, again and again, involving saving her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) from certain death.

Potente's performance alone is worth the watch, and of the films on this list, Run Lola Run is actually one of the shorter ones, using its 80-minute runtime to its full advantage. The other time loop movies on this list are also worthy viewing experiences in a lot of ways, but for a pure shot of adrenaline, you can't miss the film EW deemed "a masterful pop piece, humming with raw romance, youth, and energy." If you're interested in more of director Tom Tykwer 's work, he also codirected 2012's Cloud Atlas with the Wachowskis , which, while not a pure time-travel movie, certainly plays with the intertwined nature of time and memory.

Where to rent or buy Run Lola Run

Source Code (2011)

Duncan Jones made a splash with his 2009 feature directorial debut Moon , a moody, philosophical insight into possible lunar labor practices in the future. He followed that thoughtful film up with Source Code , which, while not a movie that could always be described as "thoughtful," could certainly be described as moody. Hitchcockian in a sense, Source Code follows the misadventures of a U.S. Army pilot ( Jake Gyllenhaal ), as he attempts to stop a terrorist attack on a Chicago commuter train — repeatedly.

Source Code does have something to say about the commodification of bodies and minds in the service of the so-called "greater good"; while Gyllenhaal's Captain Stevens' services are no doubt helpful, are they necessary, the film asks. Is it really a good idea to force someone to relive an incredibly stressful idea, over and over again? The movie has its funny moments, even in the thick of all the intense chase scenes through the train; EW noted back in 2012, "The director finds moments of humor in unlikely corners of that train of fools." Indeed. If you enjoyed a film like The Commuter (2018), but thought it could use a time loop and the potential of alternate realities, Source Code is your next mandatory viewing.

Watch Source Code on Showtime

Looper (2012)

Before Rian Johnson introduced us to Benoit Blanc or journeyed to a galaxy far, far, away , he made the tangled time-travel film fittingly called Looper . Starring Bruce Willis , Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a younger Bruce Willis, and Emily Blunt , Looper tells the tale of a contract killer sent after his next target: himself. This is a complicated film, and it is imperfect in a lot of ways, but its brutal appraisal of a possible dystopian future, and the efforts one man takes to prevent that future, are worth the amount of head-scratching you might find yourself doing throughout.

That Johnson likes his narratives to be impenetrable Gordian knots that only his designated protagonist can solve can perhaps be frustrating to the audience. However, if there's one thing that the Knives Out franchise seems to have reinforced, it's that not trying to unpack the mysteries of his work might work to your advantage as a viewer, because Johnson will probably have someone explain what just happened by the end, anyway. Like most of his films, Looper has a social conscience lurking within it as well. As EW's Lisa Schwarzbaum noted , "It's time to wipe the drops from our eyes or else get stuck in a loop, an endless cycle, a rut" about Looper 's core tenet back in 2012. It's a worthy takeaway from a film obsessed with self-fulfilling prophecies people find themselves within.

Watch Looper on Freevee

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Time loop movies need some incredible editing in order to really succeed, and Doug Liman 's enthralling Edge of Tomorrow certainly does so on that point. While Tom Cruise is the lead as a cowardly lion–turned–near-super soldier, all eyes are on Emily Blunt as Rita Vrataski, who rules this movie as one of the few heroes this dystopian, post-alien invasion world actually has left. While the quest Cruise and Blunt go on may be a bit convoluted, the film is so incredibly entertaining because it's so sharply cut, keeping up the pace even as we see similar things over and over and over again.

A tip of the hat must, of course, go to the action, which is as compelling as you would expect from a mega-star who seems determined these days to do all of his own stunts. In an era of often depressing science fiction, Edge of Tomorrow , as EW's Chris Nashawaty mentioned , is a fun, "deliciously subversive kind of blockbuster" to immerse your senses in for two hours, if nothing else.

Watch Edge of Tomorrow on Max

Interstellar (2014)

While this film might technically be considered more of a space opera than a time-travel movie, there's no reason it can't be both. Christopher Nolan 's Interstellar is a dazzling portrait not just of space travel, but of the love between a father and daughter that stretches over the thin fabric of both time and space. Matthew McConaughey as the astronaut father has never been so serious, but acclaim needs to go to Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway as Nolan's strongest women characters to date.

Interstellar varies between being almost too tense to stand, and, at other points, utterly relaxed. As a cinematic experience, it feels all-encompassing, using every possible outstanding special effect to draw its viewers in before the script hits them with emotional truth. While Nolan can certainly be considered " cold and clinical " as EW noted, his space-journeying meditation on the intersection between love and time is anything but.

Watch Interstellar on Paramount+

Palm Springs (2020)

Releasing a time loop movie during a global pandemic where life felt increasingly repetitive and bizarre was certainly a strategy for Hulu and Neon with Palm Springs , but it paid off. While the film was certainly developed long before COVID-19, the scenario of two wedding guests trying to escape the situational loop they've found themselves definitely resonated at the time, and it still does. Palm Springs may seem serious from the above description, but it is actually a fun sci-fi-tinged tale that is largely driven by the comedic skills of leads Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti .

EW noted that the movie avoids " true discomfort comedy ," and honestly, it's all the better for it. If Palm Springs had been angrier, it wouldn't hit home so hard, and it also wouldn't be nearly as entertaining. Instead, it's an often sweet rom-com that doesn't take itself or its completely made-up time loop physics too seriously. It was a Sundance darling for a reason, never quite letting up on the wild ride it takes its characters or its viewers on over the course of its 90 minutes.

Watch Palm Springs on Hulu

Somewhere in Time (1980)

Somewhere in Time might employ one of the strangest methods of time travel of all the movies on this list: time travel by hypnosis, of all things. (And self-induced hypnosis, for that matter.) Time travel on such shaky ground can't possibly hold up, and it somewhat doesn't, in the end. Science fiction great Richard Matheson adapted his own novel into a lackadaisical screenplay for this film, starring Christopher Reeve in a perfectly tragic role as the young man who gives his all for a woman (Jane Seymour) he can never really have.

In many ways, Somewhere in Time feels like a curio of the era from which it came, serving as a time capsule of how stories were told in the late-'70s and early-'80s. That is actually not a mark against it; this is a film that is just a peak tragic romance in a lot of ways; special nods must also go to Christopher Plummer as the young woman's cynical mentor, who seems to possess a certain foresight about the impossibility of Reeve's character. If you want a time-travel movie that is beautifully romantic, from its iconic score to its grand cinematography, you shouldn't stray from Somewhere in Time .

Watch Somewhere in Time on Tubi

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)

The tale of a grown, about-to-be-divorced woman forced to relive her high school days and her courtship with a dorky-cool musician, Peggy Sue Got Married might be one of Francis Ford Coppola 's most small-scale movies, but it decidedly has the most soul of his catalog of mostly epics. Peggy Sue ( Kathleen Turner , in an Oscar-nominated performance) just wants to leave Charlie (Nicolas Cage) behind, but her time-traveling coma dream conspires against her to force her to reconsider. (It forces Charlie to become a better person, too.)

The film combines the cynicism of a rightfully embittered '80s housewife with the unbridled idealism of a '60s teenager to make one heck of a sincere cinematic concoction. That the film starts at a high school reunion could mean it becomes awkward very quickly, but instead, it's completely joyful. Whether Peggy Sue Got Married started a tradition of "person has some sort of crisis and subsequently ends up in another time" movies is unclear, but it does have a rather clear descendant in one of our next entries.

Where to rent or buy Peggy Sue Got Married

Kate & Leopold (2001)

Doesn't everyone want a young Hugh Jackman from the 19th century to fall out of the sky and into their lives? Leopold (Jackman) is a foppish and geeky, if not perfect, gentleman who quickly has Kate ( Meg Ryan ) falling for him despite her modern understanding of the world. That so many time-travel movies somehow end up in romantic territory is an interesting phenomenon, but one that does make sense. There is something appealing about falling for someone whose time is not your own.

Kate & Leopold is decidedly not a perfect film, although it is the first of director James Mangold 's and Jackman's collaborations (see 2017's Logan for the much grittier future fruits of their labor). It's fluffy, it's light, and it creates a paradox without even really acknowledging it. Someone looked at the Meg Ryan comedies of the '80s and '90s and asked, "But what if we made them science fiction?" It works in spite of itself, with Jackman's physical comedy as he plays " a doll of a boyfriend " and Ryan's sardonic tone carrying the day.

Watch Kate & Leopold on Paramount+

13 Going on 30 (2004)

When a 13-year-old girl is crushed after being tricked at her own birthday party, she makes a wish to be "30, flirty, and thriving," quickly waking up the next day to find herself just that, in the body of Jennifer Garner . Instead of traveling back to the past à la the protagonist of Peggy Sue Got Married , Jenna (Garner, Christa B. Allen) ends up in a potential future, where she is all the things she wished for, but definitely not as happy as she thought she would be.

The 2004 rom-com is a magical time travel tale — there's literally "magic wishing dust" — but that doesn't take away from the hilarity that comes with a 13-year-old trying to navigate an adult woman's life. Of course, in the end, Jenna learns her lesson — it's okay to just be young, for a little bit longer — but the journey she goes on as she discovers not just herself but also her true love ( Mark Ruffalo ) is worth all the silliness in the end.

Watch 13 Going on 30 on Max

Mirai (2018)

This lovely little gem directed by Japanese animation visionary Mamoru Hosoda tells the story of a little boy who unhappily gets a baby sister and ends up learning a lot of lessons about the past and the future. Kun (Moka Kamishiraishi) gets a chance to meet not only the grown, future version of his sister Mirai (Haru Kuroki) but also members of his family at different points in their lives. Mirai is a delightfully imaginative film with some gorgeous animation that contains some " mind-boggling visuals " as EW's Christian Holub pointed out.

It is also a genuinely heartwarming tearjerker; while all ends well for little Kun, the meditations this film offers on the nature of family bonds over the course of multiple generations might just leave you in a state of reflection on your own ties that bind. While many time-travel movies tell their stories from the perspective of youth, few unveil them through the eyes of a rambunctious preschooler, and gaining that perspective, in this case, allows for a truly precious journey.

Where to rent or buy Mirai

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

If you know anything about Star Trek , you know the fourth film is "the one with the whales," but if you don't know anything about the franchise, you probably also know that this one is "the one with the whales." Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home often gets acclaim as the funny Star Trek movie, but it brings a lot more than just comedy. The original crew of the Enterprise fling themselves back in time to save humpback whales in the past in order to save the future from a strange probe that threatens Earth...and will stop, but only if it hears some natural whalesong.

The crew finds themselves in 1986 San Francisco, so it's great that Time After Time's Nicholas Meyer returned to the franchise not as director (he helmed Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan ), but as a screenwriter. Watching these characters from a literal utopia navigate a world not designed for them creates not only dynamic humor but great tension as well. As they almost always do, the Enterprise team breaks all the rules in order to save the future as well as the whales. Or, as EW noted in a tribute to the film: "It has heart, and passion — Save the Whales! — and a tremendous sense of fun."

Watch Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home on Max

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

Star Trek: First Contact doesn't particularly feel as much like a Star Trek movie as Voyage Home does, and EW, in fact, says it harnessed "a sleek, confident style fully independent of its predecessors." As a Trekkie, this may not be the most complimentary way of looking at it, but as a film fan, however, it might be the highest honor someone could bestow upon a movie within this franchise. Captain Jean-Luc Picard ( Patrick Stewart ) turns from a peace-loving diplomat to a Borg-slaying action star while the rest of his crew tries to get the inventor of the Warp Drive (the technology upon which the future relies) to stop drinking so much and actually invent the thing. James Cromwell, as the inventor, Zefram Cochrane, serves as the comedic relief for a remarkably serious and often scary film.

The Borg, '90s Star Trek 's biggest villain, are the main antagonists here, and they do provide some chilling action, even if the introduction that they can easily time travel would really wreck things for some future Trek series. Stewart manages the transition from his mild-mannered diplomat to traumatized warrior well, turning in one of his most ferocious performances. Star Trek: First Contact also gives us a look at a post-apocalyptic world in the midst of a recovery, and in that respect, it makes it both a thoughtful entry in the Trek canon and a time travel action-thriller with a brain.

Watch Star Trek: First Contact on Max

The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

What would a best time-travel films list be without including at least one of the Terminator movies? While an often brutal franchise with diminishing returns after James Cameron 's first two installments, the misadventures of an evil cyborg-turned-good (played to physical perfection by Arnold Schwarzenegger ) in a consistently dangerous world are always thrilling and entertaining.

Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor, mother of the future's savior (and much, much more), is also due an acknowledgment; while the films are remembered for Schwarzenegger's portrayal of the T-800, Hamilton is the heart of this franchise a great deal of the time, as she refuses to die or let her son face the same fate, either. The first two Terminator films are so much more than "scary robots take over the world, everybody dies" – they're action-packed, bloody thrillers with startling narratives, pioneering visual effects, and, of course, time travel as the catalyst.

Watch The Terminator on Max

Where to rent or buy Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

"Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke...I have only done this once before. SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED": This is part of the joke classified ad from which this movie was inspired. You might inspire a more risky movie from the tone of the ad, but what you get is a light comedy that served as the first leading film role for Aubrey Plaza . This Colin Trevorrow -directed film isn't so much about time travel as it is about the cultural assumptions that surround the concept, and those who think it might be possible.

In that sense, it's a meta-narrative on nearly every time travel story which has come before it, and quite possibly, that will come after it. EW called it " a fable of 'redemption' "; redemption, and the acts of salvaging something, anything, for the benefit of the future, is a regular time travel theme, from all those time machines to all those time loops. Safety Not Guaranteed manages to explore these themes with a lot of irony and a splash of heart.

Where to rent or buy Safety Not Guaranteed

Related content:

• The Terminator movies, ranked
• Back to the Future cast: Where are they now?
• Let's talk about the plot of Interstellar

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25 of the Best Time Travel Movies Ever Made

These films will have you flying through the years, decades and dimensions—and ready to do it over and over again.

Every item on this page was chosen by a Town & Country editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

From star-crossed lovers to harrowing action sequences, the plots to these films didn't stay in one dimension.

Back to the Future

What is a list of time travel classics a without a nod to Marty McFly and his friend Doc Brown from the 1980's classic, Back to the Future ? Although the second and third movie are equally as entertaining– it's hard to beat the original.

Somewhere in Time

Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour play the ultimate time-crossed lovers in this romantic drama that will have you rooting for time to be by their side.

The Lake House

Settle in for a mystifying romance and watch the relationship between the characters of Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves unfold — all while they are communicating with each other separated by two years of time.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Every marriage requires work, but when your husband has a condition that causes him to involuntarily time travel– your issues are outside the normal scope of relationship stressors. The romantic drama starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana follows a newlywed couple through the trials and tribulations of their unusual relationship.

Palm Springs

When carefree Nyles (Andy Samberg) and reluctant maid of honor Sarah (Cristin Milioti) have a chance encounter at a Palm Springs wedding, the two get stuck in a time loop that they can't escape.

Kate & Leopold

A 19th-century bachelor (Hugh Jackman) falls through time and meets a 21st-century woman (Meg Ryan). What more could you want in a time travel movie, honestly?!

Time After Time

No, not the Cyndi Lauper song: this is a time travel movie where H.G. Wells (Malcom McDowell) chases Jack the Ripper (David Warner) through time, and they end up in... 1979 San Francisco! When there, Wells falls for a bank clerk named Amy (Mary Steenburgen). There's a bit of everything: Romance, action, adventure, and obviously, time travel.

Source Code

When Jake Gyllenhaal finds himself inside the body of a man he doesn't know, he quickly figures out there's an important reason for why he's been sent back in time. The film's plot twists as well as the climax of his pressure-filled mission makes for incredible action and drama.

Donnie Darko

A cult classic ever since it's release in 2001, Donnie Darko takes a dark twist on teenage time travel.

Interstellar

Interstellar left audiences perplexed, bewildered, and all around baffled as it's characters journey through a wormhole in space.

Groundhog Day

Ever used the term groundhog day to describe a never-ending day? Well you can thank the 1993 film for that! Comedian Bill Murray stars as a weatherman who finds himself trapped reliving the same day over and over again.

In Loop , actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, and Emily Blunt star in the marvelous film that combines the the best traits of a mob drama with the intrigue of the space-time continuum.

13 Going on 30

As a thirteen-year old in the 1980's, all Jenna Rink wants is to skip over her teenage years and live as a sophisticated and self-assured 30 year old (who didn't want that?). But when she gets exactly what she's dreamed of, she realizes it's not everything she though it'd be. In a film which imbues the message "enjoy the journey not the destination" cliche, Jennifer Garner does an amazing job of keeping the role refreshing and sweet.

Predestination

The intertemporal plots of the film Predestination along with actor Ethan Hawke's marvelous performance will leave you wanting to view it over and over again.

The Family Man

Although the film Family Man is more about an alternate universe than actual time travel, watching Nicolas Cage portray an investment banking bachelor who gets thrust into the life of a suburban dad to teach him what really matters in life is just too good not to recommend it.

Doctor Strange

Marvel dips its toe into the world of time travel with the release of Doctor Strange, the story of a neurosurgeon who introduces the audiences to an entire world of alternate dimensions.

Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow takes the winning concept behind Groundhog Day and combines it with an action-fueled adventure starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt.

The film was met with mixed reviews from critics, however the plot's time travel complexities are extremely well done and will satisfy any sci-fi lover.

What would you do if you could go back in time and re-do any moment? We're sure you'd change a few corny pick-up lines, awkward conversations, and coulda-woulda-shoulda moments and that's exactly what you'll find in this romantic comedy meets fantasy drama.

The Adjustment Bureau

Matt Damon and Emily Blunt will captivate you as they protect their love from a mysterious group that is aiming to tear them apart.

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The 20 best time-travel movies – ranked!

As Adam Driver accidentally winds up 65m years ago , facing not just dinosaurs but an asteroid, we count down the best films about going backwards, or forwards, through the ages

20. Timecop (1994)

Regardless of what anyone says, I believe in my heart that Timecop was greenlit because someone showed a studio executive a picture of Jean-Claude Van Damme and said the word “Timecop” out loud, at which point they had to throw a script together as quickly as possible. Nothing about Timecop makes sense. It is the most 90s film ever made.

19. Tenet (2020)

I have to be careful here, because Tenet might not be a time-travel movie. Certainly time passes in it and some of the people are going backwards in time in it. But I’ve seen this movie twice now, and it mainly just seems to be about people mumbling everything, except for Kenneth Branagh, who gets to shout very loudly three times. Anyway, here it is.

18. Cavegirl (1985)

Finally, a film that uses time-travel for the correct reason; to allow a horny 1980s high school student to go back to prehistory so that he can convince a smoking hot, bikini-wearing cavegirl to have it off with him. You will note I’ve ranked this above Tenet .

17. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)

Weird to think that Austin Powers was originally a fish-out-of-water comedy, in which the promiscuous titular character had to navigate the (then) uptight world of the 1990s. That all fell apart for the sequel, where Powers was sent back to the 60s to shout his catchphrases at people who actually appreciated them. That makes it a time-travel movie, right?

16. The Butterfly Effect (2004)

God, this film. In summary: Ashton Kutcher plays a man who experiences blackouts, only to learn some years later that he can travel back in time and inhabit his younger self’s mind during the blackouts. But in doing so, he unleashes a world of unintended consequences. He becomes a murderer and loses limbs. Seek out the director’s cut if you can, because it ends with Kutcher’s character deliberately strangling himself in the womb with his umbilical cord. No, really.

15. The Tomorrow War (2021)

Wherein Chris Pratt is drafted into a war that takes place 26 years later, because the invading aliens have already killed all the soldiers who were alive at the time. It’s a great premise for a film – we all pay the price for the actions of other generations – let down by a truly confusing ending. Admit it, you forgot this film even existed, even though it cost $200m to make and only came out 18 months ago.

14. The Time Travelers (1964)

A 1964 movie made on the cheap with genuinely terrible effects, The Time Travelers is about a group of scientists who travel to the future, fight some mutants and then return. What sets it apart, though, is its crazed ending. The film ends with the scientists venturing into the distant future, whereupon the film plays through again, faster and faster and faster until it cuts away to a still of the galaxy. Are they trapped in a loop? Is free will an illusion? Did the producers just run out of money? We may never know.

13. The Adam Project (2022)

In which a young boy’s life is turned upside down when he is visited by an older version of himself from the future. The good news? He grows up to be a fighter pilot. The bad news? He also grows up to have all the cadences and surface-level snarky patter of Ryan Reynolds. What follows is a buddy movie where the two buddies are the same person.

12. Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

So seminal that it was namechecked in Avengers: Endgame . A flat-out comedy that primarily exists to allow a bunch of middle-aged men to act like teenagers, Hot Tub Time Machine is a film about an enchanted Jacuzzi that sends people back to the mid-1980s. Possibly a bit too bawdy for its own good, there’s a hint of a message about the unreliability of nostalgia here.

11. Flight of the Navigator (1986)

This family film involves a young boy who goes missing in a Fort Lauderdale ravine, only to show up eight years later having not aged. There are UFOs and rubbery little creatures and whatnot, but there’s a real emotional wallop to the moment when the boy realises that the world has moved on without him, right down to the scene (that plays out like a horror movie) where the boy realises that his parents have become unrecognisably ancient, even though they are probably only in their early 40s.

10. Primer (2004)

Some see Shane Carruth’s Primer as the gold standard of what a time-travel film should be. It’s the sort of movie that seems unnervingly realistic, from the down-at-heel engineers to the unshowy nature of time travel itself, where people in effect just get in and out of some boxes. Almost entirely unwilling to explain itself, for years Primer fans have come to rely on a series of graphs and charts to figure out what the film actually is.

9. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

A time-travel movie that may or may not have any actual time-travel in it, Colin Trevorrow’s Safety Not Guaranteed is a delicate wonder of a thing. A man places an ad in a magazine asking for a time-travel companion – “Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before” – and the respondents slowly come to realise that all is not quite as it seems.

8. Planet of the Apes (1968)

If you haven’t seen Planet of the Apes, then the fact that I’ve put it on a list of time-travel movies is probably quite a heavy spoiler, and for that I’m sorry. But what a reveal this is – what seems at first like a silly movie about Charlton Heston being persecuted by some monkeys quickly becomes something darker and much more sinister. That new Adam Driver movie probably could have achieved something similar, if it hadn’t blabbed its big secret in the trailer.

7. Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Endgame is a lot, so much so that it is effectively a time-travel movie bookended by two entirely separate movies. And, yes, it takes a lot of liberties with time-travel, from Tony Stark’s “Huh, I did it” invention to the lazy referencing of other time-travel movies as a shorthand for what the characters can do. Nevertheless, when they get to it, the film nails it. The Battle of New York is the obvious highlight, with Captain America fighting Captain America and the Hulk embarrassed by his unreconstructed former self, but the heart of the film really comes when Tony meets his father as a man and learns to let go of the past.

6. Interstellar (2014)

Interstellar is also a lot. But at its core is a simple ethical quandary: would you try to save the world if it meant missing your children’s entire lives? Matthew McConaughey has to touch down on a planet during a space trip. The problem is that every hour he spends there is equal to seven years on Earth. Is the trip important enough for him to miss seeing the wonder of his children grow into adults? Technically, if you want to be fussy about this, Interstellar is a time dilation movie rather than a time-travel movie. But it gets a pass, largely because McConaughey sells the agony of the moment so beautifully.

5. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

There are times when Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure feels like it was written by a toddler off his face on pop. But that’s a deliberate ploy, a way to camouflage all the careful rigour that underpins the script. The lead characters are initially reluctant to embark on their time-travel adventure, until they’re visited by versions of themselves from the near future who compel them to do it; a beautiful and hilarious example of predestination in action. Extra points are awarded thanks to the film’s total lack of interest in consequences. Swiping Abraham Lincoln and Napoleon from their respective eras has no bearing on world history whatsoever, which is probably quite lucky.

4. Looper (2012)

One problem with time-travel movies is that the rules always need to be explained upfront. In lesser hands, this can lead to all manner of clunky, stilted exposition. But when Rian Johnson dabbled in the genre with Looper , he gave us a masterclass in “show, don’t tell”. The sequence where poor Paul Dano’s character is tortured at two different points in time simultaneously, with the older version following instructions carved into the younger version’s arm, is arguably one of the most inventive uses of time-travel in the entire history of cinema. All that plus this is Bruce Willis’s last truly great performance.

3. The Terminator (1984)/Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

The lure of the first two Terminator movies were the killer robots running around murdering everyone. But they were very smartly built around a framework of pure time-travel. We only see the future in brief flashes, but what’s important is the present. It is very, very important that Kyle Reese (a guy from the future) has sex with Sarah Connor (a woman from the present), because only that will save humanity as we know it. It’s a hell of a pickup line, but the device also elevates what could have simply been a shonky B-movie into the realm of the classics.

2. Idiocracy (2006)

The smartest time-travel movies use the device as a mirror, telling us more about the times we live in now than the times the characters visit. Enter Idiocracy, Mike Judge’s stinging satire about modern times. An average person is cryogenically frozen and wakes up in the future, shocked to discover that the global IQ has fallen off a cliff in the intervening years. Surrounded by aggressive stupidity, he single-handedly saves the US from famine by suggesting that they use water – and not an electrolyte drink – to grow crops. We are conservatively 15 years from this happening in real life.

1. Back to the Future (1985)/Back to the Future Part II (1989)

The only conceivable first choice. The first two Back to the Future films (the third, which is basically just a western, is far less imaginative) have come to define time-travel as a genre. They deliver a complex set of hard sci-fi rules about what can and cannot happen during time-travel and – miraculously – manage to do it in a way that kids can understand. Good music, cool clothes, a million catchphrases and, in the case of the second film, an unnervingly prescient prediction of how Donald Trump would turn out. Just perfect.

• Science fiction and fantasy films
• Back To The Future
• Avengers: Endgame
• Interstellar

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The 35 Best Time Travel Movies

Ready for 1.21 gigawatts of sci-fi greatness?

These are the 35 best sci-fi films that explore the fluidity of time.

🤯 You love mind-bending science. So do we. Let’s nerd out over it together.

35. Timecop

Jean-Claude Van Damme is a cop who polices time. Don’t need to say more, but I guess I will. In 1994, time travel becomes a favorite pastime of criminals, and timecops like Van Damme must catch any chronal abusers and bring them to justice. As is often the case, Van Damme’s own time-muckery with the past creates different and divergent timelines that not even Doc Brown’s chalkboard could work out. But Timecop isn’t exactly a film that’s going for narrative clarity here.

34. The Final Countdown / The Philadelphia Experiment

Although most people would file this film under “flop,” The Final Countdown contains such an amazing premise it has to be recognized. The crew of the U.S.S. Nimitz enters a storm vortex and is transported to Pearl Harbor in 1941, turning a favorite imaginary war-game scenario into real life. Although the actual film elements aren’t necessarily memorable, it does give us an incredibly good look at the Nimitz (the film was shot on the actual carrier).

We tossed in The Philadelphia Experiment at the same spot, since it’s essentially the reverse of The Final Countdown .

33. Men in Black 3

By the time director Barry Sonnenfeld directed Men in Black 3 in 2012, the franchise was 15 years removed from its fun and campy original, and Men in Black 2 had sucked out much of the charm. That’s why MiB 3 , despite its faults, is still a surprising underdog of a film.

Agent J (Will Smith) goes back in time to stop an alien from mucking up the past and killing Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones/Josh Brolin). The film recaptures much of the original’s fun, and Josh Brolin’s portrayal of a young Tommy Lee Jones playing Agent K is simply awe-inspiring. Honestly, that acting work alone earns this spot for MiB 3.

32. Flight of the Navigator

Sort of like E.T. , but with time travel. What Flight of the Navigator lacks in a substantial plot, it more than makes up for in charm.

David Scott Freeman falls into a ravine and is knocked unconscious—for eight years. Although he doesn’t age, everyone he knows does, and he soon finds he’s part of something much larger. It’s a fun film that will never outshine any Spielberg classics, but its campiness is too genuine to ignore.

31. Time After Time

H.G. Wells, Jack the Ripper, and time travel ... that’s it . Just click the arrow.

30. Timecrimes

A film with perhaps the lowest budget on this list, Timecrimes is a Spanish-language movie that follows a typical time travel trope (many copies of one person causing major problems) but creates 92 minutes of truly enjoyable cinema. The fun moments of Timecrimes are the reveal after reveal after reveal, which snowballs into a fascinating plot.

29. Source Code

Source Code is like Groundhog Day and Edge of Tomorrow with a twist. Instead of going back in time as himself, Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) enters the body of someone else as he tries to stop a mass murder attempt. What the film lacks in depth, it more than makes up for in pulse-pumping action, and the premise itself is a refreshing take on the usual time travel idea.

It will likely never be considered an example of high science fiction, but as far as time travel goes, it gets good grades.

28. Donnie Darko

Perfect amounts creepy and perplexing, Donnie Darko is another strange example of time travel, which is why it belongs on this list all the more. Darko (Gyllenhaal again) is a high school kid with a less-than-sunny disposition. But when he begins seeing frightening hallucinations of a deranged and grotesque rabbit, things slowly begin to unravel, going from bad to weird pretty quickly.

For such a small-budget film (that was almost released straight to home video!) it’s made an outsized impact on science fiction and indie filmmaking. It’s a great movie, but also a polarizing one.

27. Safety Not Guaranteed

Director Colin Trevorrow’s debut film Safety Not Guaranteed follows three journalists—well, one journalist and two interns—on a road trip to meet the eccentric Kenneth (Mark Duplass), who placed an ad in a local newspaper looking for a time-travel companion. Although at its heart a romantic comedy, the film explores human perception of time and the indelible regrets, traumas, and even fantasies that fill our memories. Although the idea of actual time travel plays a significant role in the film, it’s used mostly as a symbol to analyze the importance of being present and always looking with hope toward the future.

26. X-Men: Days of Future Past

Smashing together the old X-Men guard with the new is what makes X-Men: Days of Future Past one of the more successful cinematic outings for the mutant team.

In the film, Kitty Pryde sends Wolverine back through time to stop apocalyptic events from unfolding. Maybe that’s not the most original plot, but it’s one that’s too fun to resist (if only for the Quicksilver scene alone ).

25. Predestination

Based on Robert Heinlein’s sci-fi short story “All You Zombies,” Predestination is a head trip, like any proper time travel film should be. With a strong performance from Ethan Hawke and a script that will keep you guessing, the film is one of the more solid time travel entries in recent years and is a film that garners a rewatch so you can catch every detail.

24. Star Trek: First Contact

The Next Generation ’s big screen outings are a mixed bag, to put it nicely, but the best film by far is the time-bending Star Trek: First Contact . Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the USS Enterprise-E travel to the past to prevent the cybernetic Borg from mucking with Earth’s history. It’s a good film all by itself, but even more excellent if you’re an invested Star Trek fan. We get to see huge, never-before-seen moments in the Star Trek universe, like humanity’s first encounter with the Vulcans, and the Borg are just an excellent adversary.

23. Army of Darkness

“Shop Smart. Shop, S-Mart.”

Depending on who you ask, Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness is either the best sequel to any film ever, or the worst—there isn’t much room in between. The chainsaw-toting Ashley “Ash” Williams is tossed back to medieval times where he must fight off a horde of undead monstrosities with only his ingenuity and his “boom stick.”

Even though it’s slapstick comedy with wonderfully B-movie action sequences, it remains an absolute joy to watch.

22. Doctor Strange

In this Marvel sleeper hit , Stephen Strange (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) becomes the Sorcerer Supreme, and in typical Marvel fashion, is tasked with saving the world. Although the visuals alone are worthing giving this movie a shot, its manipulation of time as a superpower rather than a world-altering plot device is what sets it apart from the rest.

21. Sleeper

Although not technically time travel (long stretches of cryo-sleep instead), Sleeper is Woody Allen’s sci-fi comedy that’s absurd, hilarious, and strangely poignant. Miles Monroe is a jazz musician and health-food-store owner who wakes up in the 22nd century after a botched gall bladder operation. The world is, as you’d expect, quite different, and Monroe is a hilarious character to explore it with.

Tenet is an “A for effort” addition to this list. The film has all the trappings of a Christopher Nolan flick—stunning cinematography, a star-studded cast, head-scratching plot points, etc., etc. And Tenet does take time travel movies one step further with the introduction of time inversion, the idea that objects and people can travel into the past at the same temporal pace that they can travel into the future. Although a fascinating concept, it’s also a confusing one, which is why Nolan spends much of the film’s 150-minute runtime explaining what’s going on. Tenet is a fascinating time travel story though ultimately one a bit lost in its own exposition.

19. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

This 2006 award-winning anime is a coming-of-age time travel story that even rivals Back to the Future . After schoolgirl Mokoto Konno discovers a time travel device that gives her the power to leap through time, she uses her new gifts for mundane high school stuff, passing tests, avoiding awkward conversations, and to address her chronic lateness.

When she learns what her time traveling does to others around her, and as the seriousness of her time jumping becomes more apparent, the film blossoms into an important story about loss and friendship.

Crime noir meets science fiction in Rian Johnson’s Looper , and the match is magical. In a future where time travel is invented and immediately made illegal, crime syndicates use the technology for time-hopping assassinations. But to tie off some temporal inconsistencies, the assassin must eventually become the target—and that’s where things get interesting. This isn’t flawless sci-fi, but it’s certainly inventive.

17. Run Lola Run

On its surface, the German film Run Lola Run is about a blazingly red-headed woman running through the streets of Berlin in an attempt to save her boyfriend’s life. However, the twist is that once Lola reaches a dead-end (sometimes literally) in one of her runs, the film starts over from the beginning and Lola runs through Berlin once again, only this time small changes in her path create largely divergent outcomes by the film’s end. Although time is more of a thematic device than a strictly plot-driven one in Run Lola Run, its ruminations on time and the exploration of the Butterfly Effect , the idea that small incidents can have lasting repercussions, makes Run Lola Run one of the most unique films on this list.

16. Avengers: Endgame

What happens when the big purple monster man annihilates half the population? Time travel, baby. Tony Stark and gang concoct a convoluted plan that’ll save the universe from being cleaved in two, including some very inventive scenes that play with time travel. Like most time travel plots, Endgame creates more questions than it answers, but it’s best to just sit back and enjoy.

Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough. 

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The 15 Best Time Travel Movies of All...Time

Terminators, teens, and every time-hopper in-between..

Science fiction offers up so many realms to explore. So many ideas. And one of the most probing and prevalent themes, usually always rich with creativity and concern, is time travel. It's a topic we can only theorize about but it's one that has ushered in some of the best sci-fi movies of all time. Ones that expand the boundaries of imagination and, often, chase us down some very cool rabbit holes.

Whether it's the story of a killer cyborg sent back in time to wipe out the future leader of a rebellion, the tale of some poor soul forced to relive the same day over and over in a time loop, or the fable of an investigator playing with time in order to solve a mystery, this particular sci-fi terrain is always fruitful. Here are the top 15 time travel and time loop movies of all time!

The Top 15 Time Travel Movies of All...Time

15. Palm Springs (2020)

We kick things off with a joyous, playful "time loop" flick from 2020 starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti. Palm Springs features the headlining duo as strangers who attend a wedding out in the California desert and get stuck in a day they can't escape. It's a funky and fresh spin on the format featuring two characters who run the gamut of emotions and experiences involved with being able to live forever, but never being able to move forward in time. J. K. Simmons co-stars.

Check out IGN's review of Palm Springs .

14. Predestination (2014)

Ethan Hawke joins Succession’s Sarah Snook and Preacher's Noah Taylor in this mind-bending thriller movie from The Spierig Brothers (Daybreakers, Jigsaw. It's about a temporal agent (Hawke) who embarks on a final time-traveling assignment to prevent an elusive criminal from launching an attack that kills thousands of people. Predestination is a twisty, turny timecop treat that keeps you guessing until the very end.

Check out IGN's review of Predestination .

13. Looper (2012)

Rian Johnson's Looper stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis as the same character from different times. As the young Joe, Gordon-Levitt is a mob assassin who kills victims that get sent back in time for him to dispose of while Willis' Joe is old Joe, who, fulfilling a "Looper" contract, is supposed to be sent back and killed by his younger self. But old Joe, upon his arrival in the past, has other things in mind - namely stopping the future from being destroyed by an entity known only as The Rainmaker. Looper is a thrilling, fascinating ride. Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels, and Paul Dano also star.

Check out IGN's review of Looper .

12. Happy Death Day (2017)

Happy Death Day takes the "time loop" concept and wickedly infuses into slasher horror movie as Jessica Rothe's Tree finds herself being killed over and over again by the same masked maniac. Once realizing she only has a few "deaths" left in her, she takes matters into her own hands and tries to figure out who's behind the mask. Happy Death Day is bleak and hilarious...and also happens to have a sequel, Happy Death Day 2U , that plunges wildly into sci-fi!

Check out IGN's review of Happy Death Day .

11. The Time Machine (1960)

The classic 1960 film adaptation of H. G. Wells' landmark 1865 novella tells the time-honored tale of a Victorian-era inventor, here actually named H. George Wells (and played by Rod Taylor), who uses a machine of his own design to travel to the far-off future, discovering that humanity is now become two new species - the enlightened Eloi and the monstrous, underground-dwelling Morlocks. The Time Machine is a dazzling, family-friendly slice of pioneering imagination.

10. Source Code (2011)

Sleeper hit Source Code, from Moon's Duncan Jones, unspools a unique spin on "time loop," following a U.S. Army Captain, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who's sent, over and over, into the digital recreation of a real-life train explosion, his mission being to find out who the terrorist culprit is. It's a clever, devious mystery that also stars Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, and Jeffrey Wright.

Check out IGN's review of Source Code .

9. Time After Time (1979)

Time After Time 's bonkers hook -- that being Malcolm McDowell's H.G. Wells using his time machine to track a fleeing Jack the Ripper (the late David Warner) to 1979 San Fransisco -- actually makes for an entertaining, oft emotional film. This playfulness with both sci-fi and real history forms a fun, irresistible yarn that has to be seen to be believed. Wrath of Khan's Nicholas Meyer directs while Mary Steenburgen co-stars.

8. The Terminator (1984)

This entry is a bit of a cheat since we're also lumping T2: Judgment Day into the mix. Hey, same continuing story, same director! That being said, James Cameron's gritty, great sci-fi bloodbath, The Terminator largely popularized the idea of going back in time and killing someone to change the present (along with larger, dystopian concepts of a world-ending A.I. uprising). Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800 and Michael Biehn's frazzled future freedom fighter use our present era (okay, 1984) like a battleground in this sci-fi firestorm.

Check out our guide on how to watch the Terminator movies in order .

7. About Time (2013)

Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams star in this delightful time-tinkering rom-com from Love, Actually's Richard Curtis, as Gleeson plays a young man with the ability to time travel who tries to change his past over and over in order to improve his life, and also win the girl of his dreams. Bill Nighy co-stars in this beautifully sincere film featuring phenomenal chemistry and an intriguing take on hereditary time-hopping abilities that make About Time worth watching.

6. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

The "time loop" concept went big with alien apocalypse flick Edge of Tomorrow (confused so much with the film's tagline "Live, Die Repeat" that Blu-ray box art waaaay emphasized the latter). Mr. & Mrs. Smith's Doug Liman directs this terrific Tom Cruise vehicle, about humanity losing war against an invading alien army that always seems to be several steps ahead. Once Cruise's over-his-head army public affairs officer gets a taste of their cosmic precognitive power, he finds himself dying over and over in battle, unable to escape the day. Emily Blunt and Bill Paxton co-star in this keenly-crafted, funny alien actioner.

Check out IGN's review of Edge of Tomorrrow .

5. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

Two teenage metalheads from San Dimas, California recklessly, and hilariously, mosh through time, collecting (okay, mostly kidnapping) famous historical figures from in order to ace a crucial test in one of the most entertaining movies from the '80s, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure . Smart and dumb collide in fabulous ways in this roller-coaster of sublime idiocy. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter embodied these dense-but-sweet wannabe rockers to a "T," fast forming an iconic comedy duo.

Check out our guide to the best Keanu Reeves movies of all time for more.

4. Primer (2004)

Shoestring budget indie film, Primer, which acts as a no-frills psychological thought experiment about the accidental discovery of time travel, is one of the most cerebral takes on temporal tampering ever. It's a stimulating, challenging chronicle of two engineers who dabble in time travel, testing its limits, only to discover the awful ramifications and consequences of fourth-dimensional meddling. It's twisty, math-y, and full tilt fascinating.

Check out IGN's review of Primer .

3. Groundhog Day (1993)

There were certainly "time loop" stories -- in film, TV, and literature -- before Harold Ramis' Groundhog Day , but this early '90s hit popularized the concept to the degree of being considered the "Grandaddy" of the subgenre. Mercilessly funny and surprisingly endearing, Groundghog Day pushed the format in new directions. All of this is accentuated by Bill Murray's exceptional performance as a shallow TV weatherman, Phil Connors, who gets stuck in a repeating February 2nd nightmare with no true explanation (other than perhaps the universe forcing him to become a better human). Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott, and Scooter the Groundhog co-star.

2. 12 Monkeys (1995)

Director Terry Gilliam's insane, lavish visuals stuck mainstream pay dirt with the inventive, star-studded 12 Monkeys (which also became a pretty great TV series 20 years later, by the way). Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt (who received an Oscar nomination) headlined this warped, serpentine tale of a future prisoner, from a wasteland world all but wiped out by a virus, sent back in time to track the plague's origins. "Science ain't an exact science" Willis' Cole is told as he clumsily, and harshly, arrives in both the right and wrong times, piecing together the puzzle, thinking the disease may have begun as the brainchild of a mental patient (Pitt) from a wealthy family. 12 Monkeys is freaky, funky, and full of surprises.

1. Back to the Future

Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future is not only considered one of the best front-to-back movies of all time but it laid the groundwork for time travel in a way that's influenced just about every sci-fi property since. And yes, we're cheating here again, like we did with Terminator, and also including the film's two sequels in this entry too (same story, same director!).

All the ingredients came together in all the right ways for this pivotal pop-culture milestone, tracking young Marty McFly's adventures through time as he tries to set things right for himself and his family (lest he and his siblings wind up erased or his own future kids wind up delinquents). Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd create a time-hopping team for the ages (inspiring the gruesome guffaws of Rick & Morty) as Marty and local disgraced inventor (every town's got one, right?) Doc Brown. Back to the Future is the apex of witty, exciting sci-fi.

Upcoming Time Travel Movies

Time keeps slipping into the future, just like time travel movies will always be a thing. There are a few upcoming time travel movies of note, and we went ahead and listed some of the most exciting ones below, along with their release dates.

• The Flash (June 16, 2023)
• Kung Fury 2 (November 17, 2023)

Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN, a member of the Television Critics Association, and co-host of We Enjoy Wrestling . Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler .

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32 Movies Great Movies About Time Travel With Completely Different Rules

Prepare for some serious stipulations.

Is there ever a bad time to watch a time travel movie? Some of the best sci-fi movies in history have tackled this frequently explored topic, and new wrinkles in the fabric of the concept have made the subject more exciting over time. So why don’t we take a look at the different rules these flights of fancy have introduced? Should you be stuck in a time loop, we apologize if this list is starting to get old.

Back To The Future

Everyone loves to talk about how Back to the Future’s time travel works , but there’s one aspect we take for granted throughout the whole trilogy. Doc Brown ( Christopher Lloyd ) may have given Marty McFly ( Michael J. Fox ) the keys to travel through the past, present, and future; but you seriously need to consider the exact spot you’re traveling to. Otherwise, you might find yourself altering history in some intriguing ways. R.I.P. Twin Pines Mall. 

Time After Time

A novel adventure starring the father of time travel H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell), Time After Time actually introduced an interesting mechanic to temporal transport. Let’s just say that if you don’t use the Time Machine properly, you could find yourself stuck in your final destination. Or worse, falling through the time-space continuum, without a way back home.

The Terminator

The Terminator's time travel will forever be a head-scratcher, as the existence of John Connor is the ultimate ontological paradox. How else can you explain Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) being sent back to the 1980s to save the world…and make sure the person who sent him is born in the first place?

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

The oldest method of time travel in the Star Trek movies, 1986’s The Voyage Home saw Captain Kirk ( William Shatner ) and his crew trying to save the whales through a time heist. This wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for the Enterprise crew using a Klingon Bird of Prey, a slingshot orbit around the sun, and a lot of engineering power to do it.

2004’s Primer is still hotly discussed among time travel aficionados, and it’s not hard to see why. The shenanigans in this test case involve multiple versions of a singular traveler (Shane Carruth) existing in a single timeline, which creates one of the most chaotic timelines ever depicted.

The Adam Project

Story-wise, The Adam Project is pretty cozy when it comes to how it handles time travel. But when it comes to traveling in style, the older Adam Reed ( Ryan Reynolds ) has a Time Jet that’s specifically coded to his DNA! Not many temporal travelers HAVE that, and it prevents so many mistakes other adventures of this sort use for story purposes.

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Avengers: Endgame

How Avengers: Endgame’s time travel works is rather unorthodox, to be honest. Instead of overwriting the past into a more pleasing result, the MCU’s finest are only allowed to use it in the name of stealing/returning the Infinity Stones. Timelines can still create tangent histories, and 2014 Gamora takes over for her slain variant in the films, but you can’t stop “The Snap.”

Lost In Space

If all time travelers had the device Older Will Robinson (Jared Harris) built in 1998’s Lost in Space , they’d have it made. While only one person can travel at a time, exact coordinates in time and space are required; so you can go to a very specific spatial location on the timeline. 

The Butterfly Effect

The Butterfly Effect's time travel works on rules similar to that of Quantum Leap . Evan ( Ashton Kutcher ) can indeed change history, but it’s only within his own life’s timeline. Unfortunately, thanks to the multiple trips leading to continued alterations to the fabric of events, it all adds up in terms of severe physical wear and tear. 

Hot Tub Time Machine

Hot Tub Time Machine is a very special case when it comes to time travel. To be fair, the comedy ensemble franchise gets points for having its protagonists travel only within their own bodies. As for how one can actually travel with said titular device, apparently you need an energy drink, the right hot tub with the right temperature, and some convenient writing. 

Real-time bodily damage. That’s probably one of the most unique additions to Looper’s usage of time travel , as we see people incur damage in the past, only for it to show up on their future selves. Poor Seth ( Paul Dano ) demonstrated that lesson the hard way in Rian Johnson ’s sci-fi masterpiece. 

Star Trek: Generations

What if you could wish really hard to create an alternate timeline? Or what if you could send yourself back to your best memory, and never leave? That’s what The Nexus from Star Trek: Generations could do, and both Captains Kirk (William Shatner) and Picard ( Patrick Stewart ) got a taste of that sweet life, before ultimately using their new power to stop the villainous Dr. Soren (Malcolm McDowell). 

Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure

If you ever want to bring a figure from history home for dinner in the present, do it in the universe of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure . There are little to no consequences, especially when it comes to our heroes (Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves) whisking away two medieval princesses to become betrothed in the 1980s. Seriously, how did that not start a war?

The Time Traveler's Wife

“Chrono Impairment” is a seriously rare affliction, but it’s enough of a headache that it prevents Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana’s clock-crossed lovers from ever enjoying a normal life. Such is the nature of The Time Traveler's Wife , which invented that affliction to send Bana’s character Henry on unpredictable trips at unforeseeable intervals throughout his life. 

Indiana Jones And Dial Of Destiny

For Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny's time travel to actually happen, the world of Harrison Ford’s iconic archeologist needed specific hardware. Aided by some very precise calculations to try and take the Nazis to where they were trying to go, it wasn't as simple as jumping into a car and gunning it to 88 miles per hour. 

Star Trek: First Contact

For a franchise that uses temporal transit as much as the Star Trek series does, there sure are a lot of different ways to go back in time. And if you’re not satisfied with The Voyage Home’s method of a slingshot orbit around the Sun, then you can always do what Star Trek: First Contact did. While I wouldn’t personally recommend waiting for a Borg invasion to cause a temporal wake you can just hitch a ride on; you do you. 

Ok, so technically Tenet’s shenanigans involving time is “time inversion,” rather than time travel. Which only makes the journey, and the resulting reality The Protagonist (John David Washington) lives in all the more complicated. It also makes for some classic Christopher Nolan mind melts.

Would this really be a sci-fi party if author Michael Crichton didn’t show up? Timeline’s time travel is a lot of fun, if you consider using a “human fax machine” to send yourself to medieval times “fun.” In which case, try not to abuse it too much, as every trip has the chance to leave you with transcription errors in your reassembled DNA. Again, we’re working with a fax machine here.  

Somewhere In Time

It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for Christopher Reeve fans! Somewhere in Time just had to be on this list, as it's pretty unique in how it sends a person back through the ages. In the case of Reeve’s playwright Richard, all he needs is a really powerful hypnotic focus to zoom back to 1912. 

Star Trek (2009)

It’s kind of fitting that the 2009 Star Trek reboot would use time travel, given that the series has continually danced with that concept on TV and in movies. For this J.J. Abrams-directed venture, the destructive and inexact force of a black hole is what’s used to accidentally alter time so vastly that William Shatner turns into Chris Pine.

Déjà Vu

Tony Scott’s 2006 action-thriller Déjà Vu is a big movie with a relatively limited scope. With intelligence gathering, and ultimately one human transport, that can only go as far back as four and a half days, Denzel Washington’s work was kind of cut out for him on this caper.

The Tomorrow War

The Chris Pratt-starring time travel ensemble adventure The Tomorrow War has some pretty huge stipulations when it comes to recruiting an army for the future. The largest among them was, of course, you had to be dead according to the records of the future hellscape that pitted humanity against some very nasty creatures.

X-Men: Days Of Future Past

Going from here to there in the then and now in X-Men: Days of Future Past requires a serious amount of power. With Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) going back to his past body, the key to how it all happens lies in the phasing abilities of Kitty Pryde (Elliot Page). So this story uses a very physical, and incredibly vulnerable, method to execute its vision.

Out of all the time travel universes we’ve seen on screen, perhaps the one I feel the most sorry for is the one shown in 12 Monkeys . The basic rule of this Bruce Willis epic’s temporal transit is “hope for the best,” thanks to the method of being shot through time and intending to land in the right place going wrong more often than you think.

Midnight In Paris

Reminiscent of many other vehicular-based time travel films like Back to the Future , any character that travels through time in Midnight In Paris just needs to catch the right ride, at just about Midnight. The experience is bespoke to whoever is traveling, as the period of time that suits them best also dictates the method of transportation provided.

The Final Countdown

Dropping an aircraft carrier from the 1980s into the moments before Pearl Harbor, The Final Countdown delivers a moral dilemma plenty of time travelers have tangled with. But the real difference with this underrated sci-fi movie is the fact that the time-traveling storm that is responsible for the trip is inescapable. You’re going home, whether you want to or not.

Sharing a similarity with the romantic classic Somewhere In Time , Richard Curtis’ About Time allows any potential traveler to jump into the past with merely intense concentration. However, certain caveats are in play, like the recommendation of not traveling past certain life milestones, or the fact that only the men of the Lake family can actually use this gift.

Donnie Darko

Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) can’t exactly travel through time in Donnie Darko , but he does have a special temporal ability that’s kind of funny and kind of sad. With the ability to open a wormhole between the present and the past, Mr. Darko can send objects through time; the skill that gives Richard Kelly’s movie its bittersweet ending. 

Kate & Leopold

Kate & Leopold’s usage of a localized time portal is a method as old as time. However, the big difference with this Meg Ryan/Hugh Jackman rom-com is that the journey Leopold (Jackman) takes to the “future” of 2001 robs us all of elevators. Also, there’s a ticking clock on this specific portal’s usage, which only complicates things further.

Groundhog Day

Perhaps the movie that nailed the time loop into the consciousness of the world, Groundhog Day brought us a charming Bill Murray rom-com mixed with a time travel story. Its misanthropic lead needed to change, even as the world around him stayed the same. The rest was sci-fi history in the making. 

Happy Death Day

What happens if you make a Groundhog Day-style time loop into a deadly game? You get a movie like Happy Death Day , in which our initially unlikable lead Tree (Jessica Rothe) is being stalked through a single-day time loop. The big kicker in this variant is that, unlike your standard time loop, Tree has a finite number of cycles before she possibly dies for good.

Where does one start with director Joseph Kahn’s Detention? Well, how about the fact that the teenagers in play (including a pre- Hunger Games Josh Hutcherson) use a stuffed bear as a time travel capsule? Or the fact that a mother/daughter pair can body swap on a permanent basis, and with no consequences? 

And with that, our supreme sampling of time travel trips has come to a close. Which more than likely has left you with a want to watch some of these movies again, or for the first time. That's totally natural, because this is a subgenre that always leaves us with one question: is there ever a bad time to watch a time travel movie?

Mike Reyes is the Senior Movie Contributor at CinemaBlend, though that title’s more of a guideline really. Passionate about entertainment since grade school, the movies have always held a special place in his life, which explains his current occupation. Mike graduated from Drew University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science, but swore off of running for public office a long time ago. Mike's expertise ranges from James Bond to everything Alita, making for a brilliantly eclectic resume. He fights for the user.

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Future Tense: The 20 Best Time-Travel Movies

By Gavin Edwards

Gavin Edwards

“Time travel hasn’t been invented yet. But it will be,” Joseph Gordon-Levitt says at the beginning of  Looper. That’s the thing about time travel: Once you invent a time machine, you just have to use it to travel back to the U.S. Patent Office on the first day it opened, so you can register your invention and serve as inspiration for an endless stream of movies. For decades, Hollywood has been treating the space-time continuum like it’s just the daily rushes for editors to cut together.

Over the past few summers, for example, X-Men: Days of Future Past sends Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine back in time 50 years, while Edge of Tomorrow puts Tom Cruise in a temporal loop, letting him relive the same battle over and over. So crank up your flux capacitor and check out 20 of the best time-travel movies.

[Editor’s Note: A version of this list was originally published in 2014]

‘Donnie Darko’ (2001)

“Do you believe in time travel?” Jake Gyllenhaal, in his breakout role, plays a disturbed teenager who starts getting warnings about the end of the world from a guy in a rabbit costume. This cult film by Richard Kelly is a puzzle about alternate universes and suburban vortexes; no matter which cut you watch, you still get a moody, trippy slice of high-school alienation and the best use ever of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World.”

‘The Lake House’ (2006)

This romance scores by having one of the weirdest time-travel gimmicks ever: Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock send letters to each other via a mailbox at a rental house — even though she is writing and reading them exactly two years after he is. (Many time-travel movies don’t make sense if you think about them too hard; this one doesn’t make sense if you have an autonomic nervous system.) Reeves and Bullock are appealing together, although it seems like a missed opportunity not to put them on a bus that, should it go over or under 50 mph, travels back to the Renaissance Era or something.

‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ (2004)

The best Harry Potter movie happens to be the one with the most time travel. Coincidence? Hermione has been granted special permission to use a Time Turner because she wants more hours in the day to take a heavier courseload. But the climax of the story is Hermione and Harry’s mission back in time a few hours to save Sirius Black and a hippogriff — revising what we’ve seen before like a crack film editor splicing in new material with Final Cut Pro.

‘Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me’ (1999)

In the second installment of Mike Myers’ James Bond spoof, groovy secret agent Austin Powers has to go back to his native environment, the swinging Sixties, in pursuit of Dr. Evil. Since Powers goes cross-eyed (literally) when he tries to consider time-travel paradoxes, nobody in the movie takes the premise too seriously. Austin’s description of the 1990s to Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham): “Everyone has their own flying car, entire meals come in pill form, and the Earth is run by damn dirty apes.”

‘The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey’ (1988)

Trying to escape the Black Plague in 1348, English villagers dig a tunnel and end up in 20th-century New Zealand, switching from black-and-white to color like Dorothy traveling to Oz. (If you object to the notion of 14th-century villagers finding a way to travel forward in time 600 years…well, in the present day, we haven’t invented time machines either.) Suffused with surrealism and religious faith, the movie succeeds in making clear how strange our modern world actually is.

‘Peggy Sue Got Married’ (1986)

This Francis Ford Coppola movie, dismissed by some as a rehash of Back to the Future ( both feature a protagonist traveling back to the doo-wop era) is actually a small gem, rueful and thoughtful. Kathleen Turner finds herself transported back to 1960, her senior year of high school, trying to figure out how her choices as a teenager helped form her identity as an adult — and hoping she can turn “She Loves You” into a hit before Lennon and McCartney get around to writing it.

‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ (1989)

There are many other goofy time-machine journeys through the past, from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court to Mr. Peabody & Sherman;  none of those, however, have brilliantly slack-jawed performances by Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves. The premise: Two SoCal teens need to locate famous figures of Western civilization so they won’t fail history and their band, the Wyld Stallyns, can stay together and become the musical foundation of a future utopia. The most inspirational moment comes when Ted (Reeves) philosophizes with Socrates by quoting Kansas: “All we are is dust in the wind, dude.”

‘Safety Not Guaranteed’ (2012)

Mark Duplass plays the grocery clerk who’s invented a time machine and places a classified ad looking for somebody to travel back in time with him; Aubrey Plaza plays the magazine intern who shows up on an assignment to investigate that ad. Guess who forges an unlikely connection? This indie movie explores the enduring fantasy of time travel: you get to live your life again, only better. What gives the film life — aside from great performances by Duplass and Plaza — is that it’s not clear until the end whether they’re indulging that fantasy, or whether his time machine actually works.

‘Galaxy Quest’ (1999)

You may remember Galaxy Quest as a genius Star Trek parody featuring the cast of a cheesy outer-space TV show (Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman) thrust into a real interstellar adventure — and not as a time-travel movie. But one of the central pieces of technology in the film is the Omega 13 device, which turns out to be a time machine, albeit not a particularly flexible one: It sends its user 13 seconds into the past. That may be the smallest increment of time travel in any movie, but it turns out to be just enough time to save the day.

‘Planet of the Apes’ (1968)

If you need a spoiler alert for a 45-year-old movie with one of the most famous plot twists in history, you may want to build your own time machine and head back to an era before this movie was released. (Remember to bring your copy of Grays Sports Almanac. ) Everyone else knows that the brilliance of the Statue of Liberty scene is the revelation that yes, this Charlton Heston sci-fi classic is actually a time-travel movie: Charlton Heston’s astronaut has not journeyed to a galaxy far, far away, but only two millennia into Earth’s future. (The time-travel elements of the franchise became even more pronounced in the sequels: in 1971’s Escape from the Planet of the Apes, three future apes travel back to 1973 and end up testifying at a presidential commission.)

‘Time Bandits’ (1981)

Terry Gilliam’s relentlessly inventive time-travel caper stars a young boy and six dwarfs who have swiped a map of the universe and are using it to steal everything they can. Best cameos: Sean Connery as Agamemnon and John Cleese as a daffily aristocratic Robin Hood. God was played by the distinguished British actor Ralph Richardson, who got so into the role that he rejected some of his dialogue, telling Gilliam, “God wouldn’t say that.”

‘Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home’ (1986)

The Star Trek franchise, both on TV and on the big screen, has featured so many time-travel stories, working every possible angle, that eventually the Deep Space Nine show had to introduce a Department of Temporal Investigations just to keep everything straight. This romp was one of Starfleet’s best journeys through time: Kirk and the Enterprise crew head to 1980s San Francisco to bring a humpback whale to the future, and are befuddled by 20th-century concepts such as punk rock, computer keyboards, and exact change.

‘Run Lola Run’ (1998)

The crimson-haired Lola (Franka Potente) gets a phone call from her boyfriend: He’s lost a bag with 100,000 deutschemarks, and if he doesn’t find it or replace it in the next 20 minutes, his criminal boss will kill him. So Lola runs through Berlin, dodging bicyclists, causing car accidents, provoking flash-forward sequences of the destiny of various pedestrians, trying to find a way out. Each time she fails, the 20-minute time loop starts again — it seems to be powered by love and the absence of cash.

‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ (2010)

Probably the funniest time-travel movie ever made: John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, and Clark Duke head back to the 1980s while at a ski resort, revisiting a time when hair was big, outerwear was neon, and Poison was a big headlining band. (It’s also a time when Cusack was a much bigger movie star; the movie sidesteps that.) Best scene: Robinson having sex in a bathtub so he won’t disrupt the timeline, weeping because he feels guilty about cheating on his wife, even though she’s only nine years old in 1986.

‘Looper’ (2012)

“I’m a sucker for the time-travel genre,” director Rian Johnson told Rolling Stone. “If you’re a nerd like I am, it’s really fun to work out the map of how everything is going to work.” But he made sure this movie, about contract killers snuffing people sent back in time 30 years, didn’t feel like “algebra homework”;  instead, Looper has an aging hitman (Bruce Willis) confronting his younger self (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). For all its sci-fi inventiveness and thrills, the best scene is the two leads meeting at a diner: a young man looking his older self in the eye, determined not to turn into him.

‘Primer’ (2004)

A rigorous, graduate-level time-travel movie, full of confusing plot twists, technical jargon, and duplicate versions of characters trying to outfox each other. But it’s also a thrilling mind-bender, and as soon as you’re done watching it, you want to see the whole thing again to see if it actually makes sense. (It does). Made for an astonishingly low $7,000, director Shane Carruth’s debut is also one of the best movies ever about a tech start-up: When some engineer friends make a working time machine, they skip right over the ethical consequences in favor of the financial rewards.

‘Back to the Future’ (1985)

Funny, thrilling, unbelievably Oedipal: When Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) travels to 1955 and accidentally prevents his parents from getting together, his mother transfers her affections to him instead. Fortunately, Fox doesn’t have to pluck out his eyes — instead, he labors to make his parents fall in love, so that he will actually be born. Best subtle joke: McFly knocks down a tree in 1955; back in 1985, a shopping center has changed its name from the Twin Pines Mall to the Lone Pine Mall.

‘Terminator 2: Judgement Day’ (1991)

The original Terminator (1984) had a great premise: Arnold Schwarzenegger is a killer cyborg (just the way you like him) coming from the future to kill waitress Linda Hamilton so she can’t give birth to the eventual leader of the human resistance. But seven years later, director James Cameron upped the stakes with this sequel — not just blowing out retinas with bigger explosions and more CGI, but wrestling with the philosophical paradox of whether knowing the future removes humanity’s free will.

‘La Jetée’ (1962)

A gorgeous 28-minute film, told in a montage of black-and-white still photographs and narrated in French, about a man sent back in time to avert an apocalyptic war. He’s obsessed with his childhood memories of a beautiful woman and seeing a man die — inevitably, he gets tangled in the silken cords of time travel. This novella of a movie is pretty much perfect, which didn’t stop Hollywood from making a big-budget feature-length version: 12 Monkeys  (1995), directed by Terry Gilliam, and starring Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt.

‘Groundhog Day’ (1993)

Time travel doesn’t have to span hundreds of years to be a significant plot element in a movie, of course: it can be hours, or a handful of seconds. Characters can be caught in a loop, or spawn alternate universes, or even kill their grandfathers, depending on the rules the filmmakers set up: at press time, actual time travel was still fictional. The time travel in this Bill Murray comedy, while limited to a single day, still plays into one of the most fundamental reasons for its persistence: the notion that if we had a chance to do our lives over, we could do it better the second time. The movie’s great subversion of that fantasy is the lesson that you could begin your do-over right now, in the present tense, on February 3rd and beyond.

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The 15 Best Time Travel Movies Ever Made, Ranked

Trigger Warning: There are two 'Back to the Future' movies on this list.

Making a great time-travel movie, as it turns out, is not very easy. Quite a few films have tried and failed for a variety of reasons. There’s the logic, obviously, which can become an issue, but oftentimes a story might rest too heavily on the plot device, resulting in a lack of rich or memorable characters. But there are some truly phenomenal movies involving time travel that seize upon the premise and craft unforgettable and inventive stories, many of which have long stood the test of time.

With that in mind, I’ve looked back at the lexicon of films involving time travel and curated a list of the best of the best. Some are silly, some are sweet, and some are just a hell of a lot of fun. As with all lists, this one’s subjective, and there will undoubtedly be one or two of your favorites that don’t make this cut, but I’ve done my best to make the case for why these 15 films, in particular, are the best time-travel movies ever made.

RELATED: The Best Sci-Fi Movies of the 21st Century So Far

Most time-travel movies try to keep the actual mechanics of the time-travel simple, but that’s definitely not true of writer/director/star Shane Carruth ’s head-spinning 2004 film Primer . The indie drama revolves around two engineers who accidentally discover a mechanism of time travel while tinkering with entrepreneurial tech projects. Carruth doesn’t “dumb down” any of the science of the movie, and indeed charts have been made to explain the exact mechanics of what’s going on in this film, but it nevertheless remains one of the most scientifically intense time-travel movies ever made.

14. The Terminator

I mean, this has to be on the list right? Director James Cameron ’s groundbreaking 1984 sci-fi action flick is far more grounded and low-key than its sequel, but The Terminator still packs a punch all these years later. With a truly inventive premise, charismatic performance from Linda Hamilton , and proof that Arnold Schwarzenegger could act, The Terminator ’s influence reaches far and wide.

13. About Time

About Time is certainly the most emotional entry on this list. Writer/director Richard Curtis had previously melted hearts with Love Actually and Pirate Radio , but About Time brought the filmmaker back to his Four Weddings and a Funeral roots (which he didn’t direct, but he did write). The time-travel genre offers the opportunity to wax philosophical about death and regret, and About Time seizes it in a unique way by focusing on a very earnest relationship between a father and a son. The romantic comedy portion between Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams is the hook, but the relationship between time-traveling father and son Gleeson and Bill Nighy is this film’s tearjerking heart.

12. Back to the Future Part II

There are people who say Back to the Future Part II is a bad movie, and those people are wrong. Director Robert Zemeckis ’ original is untouchable, but for the first sequel the notoriously ambitious filmmaker doubles down on the time travel premise while also echoing the first movie in a brilliant way. First, we get a kitschy, Easter Egg-filled vision of the future, then we get to see the events of the first film recontextualized as Marty McFly has to go back in time once again to save the future—all while avoiding his other time-traveling self. It’s a tight rope walk of an extremely difficult sort, and one that only a director with this much vision and guts could pull off.

11. Idiocracy

You know, that movie that was ridiculous fiction until it kind of became reality. Filmmaker Mike Judge couldn’t have predicted just how spot-on Idiocracy would be over a decade after its release, but indeed Judge and co-writer Etan Cohen certainly had their finger on the pulse of what was happening in America at the time—enough to hit upon ugly truths that remain relevant today. While the central premise of a man being “frozen” for hundreds of years has been done before, the comedic precision with which Judge executes his dumbed-down vision of America’s future is what makes Idiocracy endure. And also the batin’ jokes.

Whether it’s in an indie noir-like Brick or a massive blockbuster like Star Wars: The Last Jedi , writer/director Rian Johnson has always showcased an impeccable mix of ambition and meticulousness, never allowing his reach to exceed his grasp. Looper marked Johnson’s first foray into the sci-fi genre, and he did so with vigor, offering up a twisty time-travel story rooted in character first and foremost. The film takes the premise of, “What would you do if you went back in time and met your younger self?” and spins it on its head, adding in terrifically tense action sequences and heady moral quandaries for good measure.

9. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

As the best movie in the franchise (fight me), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban also stands as one of the best time-travel movies ever made. Director Alfonso Cuarón shook up the aesthetic and narrative approach to the adaptation of J.K. Rowling ’s beloved book series, and while the foundation of the storytelling is all Rowling, Cuaron’s execution really makes this thing soar. From tremendous cinematography to aural motifs that clue the audience in to the shifting time scenarios, Azkaban is full of wonder, curiosity, and danger, and it’s an absolute joy to behold.

8. Star Trek (2009)

Director J.J. Abrams ’ 2009 reboot of the Star Trek franchise sidestepped the problem of “erasing” the legacy of the films/TV shows that came before by using one specific device: time-travel. This genius idea allows Abrams’ wildly entertaining film to both exist in the same universe as the previous Star Trek movies with Kirk and Spock and the whole gang, while also opening up new possibilities for the future—even though Abrams’ Trek focuses on Young Kirk, he exists in a new and changed timeline, so the future is not 100% set. That the film is able to explain this concisely while also serving as an incredibly entertaining adventure all its own is the minor miracle that is Star Trek (2009) , and while the sequel Star Trek Into Darkness hampered some of that goodwill, Abrams’ initial film still stands as one of the most effortlessly rewatchable blockbusters of the 21st century.

RELATED: 7 Must-Watch Time-Travel TV Shows

7. 12 Monkeys

While filmmaker Terry Gilliam is no stranger to time travel ( Time Bandits just missed the cut on this list), his 1995 film 12 Monkeys remains one of the most memorable entries in the genre. The sci-fi drama combines Gilliam’s more odd sensibilities with gritty and grounded time-travel, resulting in a dirty and unforgettable experience. Brad Pitt delivers a pretty phenomenal performance as a maybe-crazy mental institution patient while Bruce Willis plays a future prisoner sent back in time to discover the origins of a deadly virus that ravaged the Earth. Never one for the traditional, Gilliam keeps things delightfully strange throughout.

6. Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow is the perfect cocktail—a dash of Tom Cruise action, a sprinkle of Emily Blunt strength, a swirl of writer Christopher McQuarrie ’s unique sensibilities, and a heavy helping of director Doug Liman ’s wild ambition. Many have tried and failed to imitate the “stuck in a loop” premise of Groundhog Day , but Edge of Tomorrow takes that nugget and runs with it, keeping every single scene fresh even if we’re watching the same day play out over and over again. The secret sauce is having Tom Cruise play an out-and-out coward, which stands in contrast to the public perception of his onscreen persona and results in a wonderfully refreshing viewing experience. Edge of Tomorrow is the White Whale of Hollywood: a genuinely unique and wildly entertaining blockbuster.

5. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

1989’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure combined the sci-fi genre with the teen comedy to result in a wonderfully inventive—and hilarious—adventure. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are perfect as a pair of burnouts who use a time machine to complete a history report. The whole thing is an incredibly silly affair, but it’s made with such affection for its characters that it’s impossible not to love. There are terrific jokes aplenty, especially involving historical figures, and George Carlin ’s Rufus remains an icon to this day. It’s a movie that probably shouldn’t work, but totally does. Be excellent to each other, indeed.

4. Planet of the Apes

So Planet of the Apes is technically a time-travel movie, even though audiences who first laid eyes on the 1968 film didn’t know it until that final, jaw-dropping scene. Charlton Heston ’s astronaut Taylor hasn’t simply stumbled upon a planet made of apes, he’s traveled into a future Earth where apes have actually taken over the planet. The film is rife with socio-political commentary, which continued throughout its underrated sequels, and features one of the best Jerry Goldsmith scores ever created. But that ending, which paints the rest of the film in a whole new light, is what solidifies it as a classic.

3. Terminator 2: Judgment Day

We should have known, given Aliens and The Abyss , that director James Cameron ’s Terminator 2 wouldn’t just be any old sequel. Indeed, the ambitious filmmaker made a very different movie than the original Terminator , weaving in shades of a buddy comedy, PTSD drama, and family story into this sci-fi actioner. Terminator 2 is a minor miracle of a film, turning its own premise on its head to present a time-travel story that’s similar to the first Terminator , but different in key ways. It also feels positively epic. This one ticks all the boxes.

2. Groundhog Day

Star Bill Murray and director Harold Ramis famously butted heads while making Groundhog Day . Murray reportedly wanted the film to be more philosophical, while Ramis was always pushing the comedy. But it’s the push-and-pull between these two ideas that makes Groundhog Day a stone-cold classic. It’s hilarious, featuring some of Murray’s best comedic moments, but it’s also profoundly sad. The film doesn’t disregard the inherent loneliness of the premise—being stuck in the same day over and over again. It goes to some surprisingly dark places, but Murray’s humanity always shines through, and Andie MacDowell does some terrifically understated work as his foil. It’s a classic, full-stop.

1. Back to the Future

But there’s really nothing like Back to the Future , is there? Filmmaker Robert Zemeckis ’ 1985 original takes a universal idea—the fact that we’re never able to truly know what our parents were like when they were our age—and adds his usual dash of insane ambition by playing that out as a time-travel story. And given the hardships during production, it’s crazy the movie turned out as great as it did. Michael J. Fox is a revelation, Christopher Lloyd is perfect, and Lea Thompson is so good you forget she’s actually playing Marty’s mom. It’s hilarious and new and different and inventive, but it’s also rooted in universal truths that make it so relevant throughout the decades. And yes, it’s also a movie about trying not to bone your mom.

Best time travel movies of all time

Journey through cinema and science fiction history as we run down the best time travel movies of all time, from simple trips to other eras to time loops.

Mankind has been fascinated by the possibility of travelling to a different age for over a century. This hypothetical activity, now widely recognized in philosophy and fiction, was popularized by H.G. Wells’ 1895 novel The Time Machine. But it was cinema that made it a recurring science fiction premise in mainstream works. Such movies have kept evolving and taking time travel in wildly different directions, so we have ventured across time and space to bring you our ranked list of the best time travel movies of all time.

A good time travel movie doesn’t need to try too hard to take the subject seriously, as the core concept itself and the mechanics surrounding it remain a mystery and purely hypothetical. Of course, there are stories that leave massive plot holes throughout, but even time travel movies which go for more “realistic” approaches have to make up their own sets of rules. As a result, our list covers both movies that are steeped in the science of the genre and those which simply use time travel as a vehicle for shenanigans. One-way trips through black holes ? Parallel timelines ? Mind-bending paradoxes? It’s got a bit of everything.

For other great sci-fi genres, check out our guides to the best alien invasion movies , the best zombie movies , the best disaster movies , and the best giant monster movies of all time. If you’re in the mood for hands-on time travel fun, our list of the best time travel video games you can play right now is a must-read too. 

15. The Time Traveler’s Wife 

• Release date: August 14, 2009
• Cast: Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams, Ron Livingston

The original marketing of The Time Traveler’s Wife, based on the novel of the same name, was billed as a sappy romance movie akin to anything from Nicholas Sparks. While it does have its romantic moments, the movie’s commitment to a deep, compelling story of a man who cannot control his own movements through time is a well thought out original take on the concept. Think of it more as a romantic sci-fi drama.

As Henry DeTamble (Bana) travels through time, he cannot control when or where he appears. Luckily, at least, he often is among the same people, specifically, his future/present wife, Clare Abshire (McAdams). Their relationship develops and is bruised by his time shifts, which creates strain as well as successes for both of them throughout the movie. 

The Time Traveler’s Wife takes its premise seriously. It allows for the concepts of paradoxes by only ensuring that he directly affects what would, in theory, already occur. Henry is more enacting a prescribed timeline, rather than trying to fight it. It works, and it’s great.

• Release date: October 8, 2004
• Cast: Shane Carruth, David Sullivan, Casey Gooden

Primer is the quintessential movie for any fan of time travel. With a low budget of only $7,000, it grossed over $800,000 at the box office, making it one of the most successful independent movies of all time. It deserves its success as well, as it brings hard science to audiences in a way that, at first, seems impenetrable, but worms its way into our minds and keeps us analyzing the movie long after it’s over. 

When two engineers accidentally create a time travel apparatus during their own experiments, they begin using it for personal gain. As their ideologies on the preservation of time begin to diverge, however, their relationship is pushed to its limits alongside the fraying timeline they alter. 

Primer demands multiple viewings, each one illuminating hidden moments throughout the movie that hint at its own finale. Audiences looking for a dense, no-frills look at what time travel would mean if given to an average (albeit genius) Joe, will find it in Primer.

• Rent or buy Primer on Amazon.

13. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

• Release date: February 17, 1989
• Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, George Carlin

The Bill and Ted franchise are considered family hits for a reason. With the charm of two goofy leads that bumble their way through major historical moments, the movies rely on the time travel conceit to build out and support their silly sense of humor. While the historical moments are considered overly cliché by some, and it’s true that they often misrepresent the moments they are based on, the point of the movie is not to relish in accuracy, but to parody those that try to stick to history all too closely. 

In order to ensure a future utopian society created by the titular characters, Rufus travels back in time to the 1980s to help Bill and Ted pass a history class. In order to understand the perspective of the historic figures they are supposed to be researching, the trio travel through time to meet each of them. 

Without going into spoilers, decisions made by the pair of heroes as well as Rufus would, if not for the movie completely ignoring them, destroy history as it is known. While this is frustrating for anyone looking for a movie that takes paradoxes seriously, that doesn’t keep Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure from being a fun, engaging flick that should be watched with brains mostly turned off.

12. Deadpool 2

• Release date: May 18, 2018
• Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin

While many movies are poorly received due to their failure to properly respect their own laws of time, Deadpool 2 was given generally positive reviews from critics for intentionally doing the same. In true fashion of the character, Deadpool 2 pokes fun at time travel clichés and tropes, finding ways to both incorporate as well as deride them. 

After Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool joins the X-Men they take a young mutant, Russell, under their care. However, his actions in the future lead the mutant cyborg Cable to travel back in time in order to kill Russell and prevent his own tragedy from occurring. 

Multiple fourth-wall breaking jokes are made about the villains striking similarities to a certain futuristic machine that is mentioned later in this list. And also similarly, the movie strikes a balance in approaching the anti-hero trope that is often associated with these androids from the future. We’re looking at you Dragon Ball Z.

11. Source Code

• Release date: April 1, 2011
• Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga

Source Code is an exciting sci-fi thriller which shows a lot of restraint despite the sheer audacity of its premise: Army Captain Colter Stevens finds himself in someone else’s body and quickly discovers he’s part of an experimental US government program that wants him to find the person behind the bombing of the train where he wakes up. The catch is that he can only be there for the last 8 minutes before the bomb goes off, being stuck in that loop until he can catch the bomber.

Director Duncan Jones had already wowed sci-fi aficionados with the remarkable Moon (2009), so expectations surrounding Source Code were quite high. While the final result might not be a masterpiece, it ranks easily among the most interesting time travel flicks in recent times. It’s also relatively easy to follow despite its kooky premise thanks to its limited scale.

10. 12 Monkeys

• Release date: January 5, 1996
• Cast: Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt

Let’s be honest, if someone were to run up to you on the street and say they were from the future and had come back to stop a society-destroying virus, would you believe them? Well, at this point, we probably would too. But, that certainly wasn’t the case when 12 Monkeys came out in the 90s. 

When James Cole (Willis) is sent back in time from 2030 to stop a devastating virus from ever being spread, he is immediately captured and committed to an insane asylum, because that’s what would realistically probably happen. There he meets Brad Pitt’s Jeffery Goines, who is a staunch anti-corporate activist and an environmentalist. You can see where this is probably going.

With plenty of back and forth time travel for Cole, and a sincerely harrowing story about the dangers of trying to intervene in the development of a horrific future, 12 Monkeys creates a narrative that looks at the actual implications of time travel. It’s a must see for any action-thriller science-fiction fan.

9. Groundhog Day

• Release date: February 12, 1993
• Cast: Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott

There’s always been discussion surrounding Groundhog Day and whether it’s really a time travel movie, but you know what? It doesn’t really matter. A simple time loop can be more interesting than a straight-up time-travelling odyssey. In fact, this movie is more of a fantasy comedy that poses the question of what would a regular person do if trapped inside a time loop they cannot explain nor fix.

It's an endearing movie that, despite many creative differences behind the scenes, ended up resonating with audiences thanks to its smaller scale and impeccable comedic timing, all built around a script which is undoubtedly clever, but lacks pretension. Many movies in this list are downbeat or serve as cautionary tales, so we thought it’d be great to inject a healthy dose of optimism.

8. Predestination

• Release date: August 28, 2014
• Cast: Ethan Hawke, Sarah Snook, Noah Taylor

Predestination might be one of the most overlooked sci-fi movies in recent years, mainly because it didn’t get a very wide international release following its global premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas. Fanatics of time travel movies and loopy sci-fi thrillers made sure as many people as possible heard about it though.

The movie is based on the 1959 short story “All You Zombies” by Robert A. Heinlen, and follows a temporal agent as he pursues one criminal that has eluded him throughout time. The chase quickly turns into a mind-bending exploration of love, fate, and identity that questions the very foundations of time travel as explained in-universe. This one’s a big head-scratcher that requires your full attention, but it’s also far from a slog due to its (mostly successful) action thriller ambitions.

7. Tenet 

• Release date: August 26, 2020
• Cast: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki

We’re still trying to wrap our heads around some of the wilder mechanics featured in Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi thriller, so that alone gives Tenet some weight among the genre’s best. It’s true that some of the character arcs aren’t as fleshed out as they could’ve been, plus its spy-movie villain – played by Kenneth Branagh – can often be unintentionally funny, but it’s hard to find a bolder big-budget action thriller in recent times.

The story follows a former CIA agent who must learn to master “time inversion” and prevent a renegade Russian oligarch from starting World War III. The problem is the attack will come from the future. As the plot unfolds, weirder concepts come into play, and everything isn’t what it seems at first glance. This is a time travel movie unlike anything we had seen before, mainly because it takes a while to adjust to the mind-bending mechanics of its universe and how they play out in parallel to regular action.

6. Edge of Tomorrow 

• Release date: June 6, 2014
• Cast: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton

Edge of Tomorrow was one of the biggest surprises of 2014 thanks to a tight, action-packed script which masterfully mixed the alien invasion subgenre with time-travel shenanigans, so you’re killing two birds with one stone if you choose to watch this banger for the first time.

Based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need Is Kill, Edge of Tomorrow presents a near future in which most of Europe has been taken over by a hostile and unstoppable alien species. Major William Cage, a PR officer, is forced to join an operation against the aliens, only to end up experiencing a time loop that could be the key to defeating the invaders if he can convince the right people. Edge of Tomorrow is both funny and dark, but above all, a true rollercoaster ride.

5. Interstellar

• Release date: November 7, 2014
• Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain

Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, the man behind other “I lost my wife” movies such as Inception, The Prestige, and the more recent Tenet, Interstellar is a time travel movie that uses theoretical laws of physics to alter the perception of time for its protagonists. While Tenet may be a more direct time travel movie, Interstellar surpasses it in its writing, emotional character beats, and the spectacle of its space travel. 

After food sources on Earth have been depleted, Cooper (McConaughey) and a team of astronauts go out in search of a habitable planet beyond the solar system. During their journey, time shifts with them depending on the planets they are on, or how close they are to the black hole at the center of their travels. 

While none of the characters go back in time, they do experience time travel by how fast or slow their own perception of time is compared to the characters back home. And a particularly interesting point using the black hole does allow information and communication to be sent backwards, which we think totally counts.

• Release date: September 28, 2012
• Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt

Bruce Willis’ most recent foray into time travel, Looper is a mind-bending movie that attempts to tackle the grandfather paradox. Although it falls a bit short of this lofty goal, it still maintains a good narrative that builds to an intense climax that uses the universe’s rules against the main villain in unique ways. 

Time travel is ubiquitous in the world of Looper. Unfortunately, a crime syndicate has figured out a way to use this to “lose bodies” by sending their victims back in time to be killed by employees working in the past (or present, if you’re the employee). When Joe, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is hired to kill his older self, played by Bruce Willis, he fails to do so, setting off an intense chase for JGL to correct his mistake.

Ultimately, the movie sets out its own rules for time travel. When young Joe gets a cut, a scar appears on old Joe. This concept progresses through the movie to an ending that may not be temporally possible, but that works to bring closure to the loop.

• Rent or buy Looper on Amazon.

3. Avengers: Endgame

• Release date: April 26, 2019
• Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo

As the culmination of a storyline spanning over 20 movies, Avengers: Endgame had a serious amount of great moments to look back on in its finale of the Avengers’ stories. After having gone through far-flung cosmic adventures, as well as into subatomic realms, there was only one novel place the Avengers could go: Back in time. 

After Thanos wipes out half of all life in the universe with the Snap (or the Blip) in Infinity War, he destroys the Infinity Stones before being killed by a vengeful Thor. With the stones destroyed, the remaining Avengers travel back in time to collect them from various points in the timeline, so that they may restore the universe to what it once was. 

During their travels, the Avengers are met with spectacular fight scenes, heart-wrenching deaths, and great callback moments that reward long-time fans of the series. While it can be viewed just alongside Infinity War as a sequel, it needs to be seen after having watched all of the MCU in order to appreciate just how far the Avengers have come.

2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day

• Release date: July 3, 1991
• Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong

When it comes to famous time travel action movies,  Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the best of them all. With cutting-edge effects for the time that still hold up today, James Cameron’s sequel took what made the original great and expanded on it in ways that only few other sequels have ever managed to do. 

When a new Terminator, the T-1000, is sent back in time to kill John Connor, the one person responsible for protecting humanity’s future, the futuristic resistance also sends back Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator to protect him. Now there’s a great premise.

Schwarzenegger was able to bring humanity and empathy to the cruel, menacing robot that he had characterized in the first movie. Plus, Robert Patrick’s T-1000 became a villain that, to this day, is synonymous with the idea of unrelenting pursuit. The movie is pure blockbuster thrills bookended by a time travel story that could change the future of all humankind.

• Watch Terminator 2: Judgment Day free on Pluto TV.

1. Back to the Future

• Release date: July 3, 1985
• Cast: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson

We gotta go back! Back to when time travel as a concept was still fresh in popular cinema. Back when it hadn’t yet become a TV and movie trope that is often used as a plot device when all other options have been exhausted. Back to when the concept was held with reverence as well as with glee. 

Robert Zemeckis’ 1985 classic follows Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) as he travels back in time to the 1950s in order to rescue his mentor, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd). After Marty is accidentally rescued by his own mother in her teenage years, he has to work to ensure that not only can he make it back to the present, but that his parents get together so he’ll even exist. 

Back to the Future is full of time travel twists that wind their way into a viewer’s brain and beg to be dissected. This is a movie that’ll appeal to everyone – it has a nostalgic pull for older adults and it’s a great, fun way for a younger generation to connect to the sci-fi genre.

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15 Classic 1980s Time Travel Movies

The decade took the classic sci-fi premise that had been around for a while before and breathed fresh, outrageous new life into them.

The 1980s was an era of wild, free-wheeling, neon-lit adventures and cinema was no different. While action and romance movies were at a peak, perhaps no other genre benefited more from this experimental spirit than time travel films. The decade took the classic sci-fi premise that had been around for a while before and breathed fresh, outrageous new life into them.

Writers and directors saw time travel as a fascinating concept for both dreamers and nerds, not as a serious mechanical problem that needed to be eliminated but as an excuse for pure, pulse-pounding fun. If you've grown up loving these movies, sneaking into the theater to catch the latest twist on the possibility of changing one's past or future, then the 1980s was your golden age. The aughts may have given us time loops and complex multiverse theories, but the '80s went all in on leveraging simple analog technologies to spin time travel adventures.

Related: These are the Best Movies that Got Time Travel Right

These movies had all the ingredients, from flashing neon lights and Atari references to headset-wearing scientists in lab coats, that made them flavorful and enjoyable. There were also chatty memorable sidekicks and thrilling chase scenes through the past, present, and future. In the classic time travel movies of the '80s, stuff was simple (if ridiculous), the future was bright (if doomed), and anything was possible. So fasten your seatbelts because we’re about to go, well, back in time.

15 The Final Countdown (1980)

Fans of science fiction and war drama gather around because The Final Countdown is a movie that balances both genres with incredible ease. Starring Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen, this movie follows the U.S.S. Nimitz aircraft carrier that is dispatched on a routine training exercise but it mysteriously enters a time warp and winds up transported back to December 6th, 1941 – the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Now the captain and the crew find themselves in a race against time to stop the inevitable tragedy while also trying to make it back to the future intact. As far-fetched as the idea may seem, director Don Taylor makes sure it is executed with an earnest spirit.

This crowd-pleaser features plenty of ‘80s cheese but also gives us some genuinely memorable and exciting sequences aboard a real-life Pacific aircraft carrier.

14 Somewhere in Time (1980)

Set in 1972, Somewhere in Time follows the wistful love story of Richard Collier, a playwright played by Christopher Reeve, who is immediately entranced after seeing a picture of Elise McKenna, played by Jane Seymour. Physically, he’s staying at the Grand Hotel in Mackinac Island in Michigan, but his heart wanders to about to know more about this stage actress. He comes across an old pocket watch given by someone who claims it possesses the power to transport him to the 19th century. He carries out self-hypnosis and travels back in time to meet the woman he believes is the love of his life.

The movie is overall wholesome and sweet, with the Arthurian-style romantic fantasy never feeling rushed . The lead actors give superb performances to elevate this retro story of timeless love.

13 Time Bandits (1981)

As far as time travel goes, Time Bandits is among the most innovative and original movies ever made. The plot centers around a young boy and history nerd, Kevin, playing inside his wardrobe when he suddenly finds himself in the company of a band of time-traveling dwarves who have just stolen a map that allows them to hop around time and through history at will. Simply for adventure, Kevin tags along, with chaos following them as they bounce from the Napoleonic wars to the middle ages and end up in the lair of the supreme being himself. Now they must protect the map from him and his employees.

This satirical, madcap Terry Gilliam film reigns with anarchy and absolute ridicule, with every step on the time-traveling tour being more deliciously creative than the last.

12 Trancers (1984)

Time travel movies are always about changing the history of going back to find something you’d lost. Jack Deth is a trooper from Angel City, and his job is to hunt criminals. He follows the trail of a serial killer through time, from 2247 to the year 1985 in Los Angeles. Only after arriving in the past does he realize that his nemesis, Martin Whistler, has the power to transform ordinary citizens into murderous 'Trancers' – zombie-like creatures that are always under his control. Now Deth must fight time in a new era to stop the Trancer outbreak before his arrival dooms history itself.

Trancers features a brilliant synth-pop soundtrack, and with its dimly lit ‘80s alleyways and liberal use of perm wigs, this absurd time travel slasher-comedy delivers plenty of unintentional laughs along with some truly strange scenes and mend-bending plot twists.

11 The Philadelphia Experiment (1984)

Directed by Stewart Raffill, The Philadelphia Experiment charts the actual events of a secret 1943 experiment that intended to make U.S. Naval warships invisible to radar sensors. But as the mission goes awry, two test subjects are sent 40 years into the future. Once rescued by the Navy in 1984, the time-tossed sailors find themselves in a suddenly frightening new era and now they must find and stop the experiment’s creator from repeating the same catastrophic incident.

The plot itself is enough to peak interest, and with the fear and intrigue having unknowable consequences lurking overhead, the movie sure makes for an entertaining watch. Uneven and choppy but equally ambitious in nature, this conspiracy science fiction thriller features some really cool naval ship special effects, signature B-movie action, and a twist ending.

Related: Incredible Movies Based on True Stories

10 The Terminator (1984)

A movie that we’ve all watched and enjoyed as kids that further morphed into an astounding franchise, The Terminator is set in a post-apocalyptic future in a world ruled by tyrannical supercomputers. Amidst it all, a cybernetic organism called the Terminator is sent back in time to 1984 Los Angeles to systematically eliminate Sarah Connor, the woman whose unborn son will lead humanity’s resistance. To fight back, the authorities also send a soldier back to protect the would-be mother.

Naturally, The Terminator thrives as a thriller, introducing us to a tech-noir vision of a dark future where machines have turned on their makers. Accompanied by groundbreaking visual effects, a pulse-pounding background score, and iconic performances by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton, this sci-fi action flick is an instant classic.

9 My Science Project (1985)

Mingling some elements of heartwarming comedy with its science fiction beauty, My Science Project is a teen time travel movie that follows a pair of high school misfits, Michael and Ellie, who raid a military junkyard and stumble upon a mysterious package that contains a strange glowing orb-like structure that absorbs electricity. Their newfound device is as dangerous as it is intriguing because it blends the past, present, and future and threatens mankind.

The movie uses elements of the plot familiar to the time, with characters jumping back and forth in time and creating massive loopholes. From cheap extraterrestrial costumes to wacky ‘80s hijinks, this goofy comedy manages to serve some sweet moments as well as an enjoyable, spirited celebration of youth and the little mischiefs of curious minds.

8 Back to the Future (1985)

No list of time travel movies can be complete without the mention of Back to the Future . The movie, directed by Robert Zemeckis, is an absolute joy from start to finish. It is a brilliant comedy adventure that follows a teenager who is accidentally sent 30 years back in time, where he meets his teenage parents and unwittingly threatens his own experience by getting involved in their private lives.

The characters of Marty McFly and Doc Brown are hilariously adorable and have continued to stay with us for decades. Moreover, the movie’s seamless special effects, lighting pace, and lots of the ‘80s and ‘50s charm to spare serve as a wildly imaginative tale that presents a vision of the small American town that is both celebratory and authentic. Back to the Future set the gold standard for ‘80s sci-fi and nostalgia, setting up the stage for a new generation.

7 Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)

Starring Nicolas Cage opposite Kathleen Turner, Peggy Sue Got Married weaves a wonderful and memorable tale of sweet nostalgia, love, yearning, and redefining one’s self because it is never too late. The story revolves around Peggy Sue Bodell, a 43-year-old housewife who has decided to divorce her cheating husband, Charlie. But as she attends her 25th high school reunion and passes out there, she awakens in her own 18-year-old body in 1960, right before she meets Charlie. Having reconsidered and regretted all her life choices, she now has a second chance at senior year. And Peggy Sue must decide what to change and what to leave the same, all while dealing with the chaotic emotions of her teenage self.

Both the lead characters deliver a career-defining performance under Francis Ford Coppola’s direction and create this funny and poignant comedy drama.

6 Flight Of The Navigator (1986)

An underrated time travel classic that comes out on its own because of its immersive story and head-scratching plot twists, Flight Of The Navigator is a Disney adventure that follows 12-year-old David, who is stunned unconscious in the forest near his home. When he wakes up, he realizes that he has been transported to the future, from 1978 to 1986. But the strange thing is, he hasn’t aged a bit. Meanwhile, a NASA scientist stumbles upon a UFO near town, giving David the opportunity to figure out what exactly got him here and how to get out.

The premise lets you believe that there are aliens out there with abilities unknown to man, which makes for an interesting watch. Moreover, the visuals, the overly silly humor, the ‘80s intro and David’s confusion are perfect for a movie that deals with so many genres at a time.

Related: Underrated Sci-Fi Movies of the '80s, Ranked

5 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

It is the 23rd century, and it turns out that a dangerous alien power is threatening planet Earth by soaking up the oceans. Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise must travel back to 1986 San Francisco and find the humpback whales causing this disaster. From hysterical '80s culture clashes to the crew's ridiculous Cuban-heel-clad dash across the city, the movie packs an endless amount of laughs while also delivering a satisfying amount of space adventure.

Everything about this live-action cartoon feel-good adventure is simply flawless – from the exhilarating naval battle to action sequences to mind-blowing techno babble. One of the franchise’s most delightful and remarkable installments, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , is all about having fun while saving the world.

4 Millennium (1989)

Showcasing a refreshing and comical clash between people from the future and the present, Millennium follows Bill Smith as he tries to get to the bottom of an accident between two jetliners. Upon close inspection, he discovers a band of time travelers from a future Earth who have captured people from the present to repopulate it, leaving a series of disturbances and an unidentifiable object.

Based on the novel by John Varley, the movie features an intriguing game between Smith and Louise, a stunning operative from the future. Cheryl Ladd and Kris Kristofferson are pretty decent in their roles, and while Millennium does not have a ton of special effects compared to the rest of the movies, it so happens to offer a nostalgic glimpse of the late '80s.

3 Warlock (1989)

Witch hunter Giles Redferne goes about his witch-hunting business in 17-th century England. He captures the warlock, but with help from otherworldly forces, the conjurer banishes himself to present-day Los Angeles, where he uses his dark powers to prey on victims and churn up trouble. Until Redferne follows him to the 1980s and tries to stop him. Julian Sands shines as the suave but sinister title character in this horror-action mashup.

Richard E. Grant portrays the confounded hunter trying to make sense of his surroundings with an effortless charm, while Lori Singer plays Kassandra, the beautiful woman who assists him on the quest. While formulaic, Warlock delivers a heavy dose of ‘80s excess alongside an engaging witch-vs-warlock dynamic and some innovative visuals that still hold up today.

2 Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

Another classic science-fiction comedy, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure , centers around two lovable metal-head dimwits, Bill and Ted, who are tasked with passing their history final or risk failing out of high school, with one having to get enlisted. They seek help from Rufus, a traveler from the future in possession of a time machine. Bill and Ted rack their brains and decide to go on an excellent adventure through history with the hopes of recruiting the perfect historical figures for their class presentation.

Effortlessly good-natured and sublimely stupid, this bizarre comedy helped redefine time travel movies, the theme of excess, and the kind of fun that became synonymous to the late ‘80s. What’s more, is that it features breakout performances from Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter as the ultimate high school slackers.

1 Back to the Future Part II (1989)

Back to the Future Part II returns as a wacky sequel, and Marty and Doc Brown bless the big screens with more exciting adventures. In the movie, Doc Brown travels to the future to bring Marty up to speed on some heavy events coming his family’s way. Soon, they are both off to 2015 to set things right, only for their meddling to make way for more risks. From Marty’s future son almost being imprisoned to his father being murdered, the duo tackles problems right and left.

With its mind-bending multiverse anomalies, hoverboards, Jaws 19 references, and self-tying Nike sneakers, the movie delivers a more breathtaking time travel escapade that may not match the magic of the original, but it is still full of non-stop surprises .

100+ Best Time Travel Movies

A list of the best time travel movies from the 1940s to the 2020s.

Table of Contents

Time travel movies fascinate us.

Playing with the laws of time is more than an amusing plot device. It’s also a method of covering important themes of redemption, morality, progress, and our place in the universe.

Paradoxically, at the heart of most time travel films — indeed, a fantastical genre if there ever was one — are real and practical questions such as:

• Can we overcome our past mistakes?
• How do we break vicious habits?
• How do our actions affect future generations?
• Is love eternal?
• How much of our reality in an illusion?
• Is it too late? Can we alter fate?

Here we’ll survey the whole time span of time travel films throughout Hollywood history and how these movies address those questions above. Let’s move through time!

Old Time Travel Movies

A connecticut yankee in king arthur’s court (1948).

Based on a Mark Twain novel from 1889, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court is a funny musical about time travel. It stars Bing Crosby — the 1900s singer most famous for his rendition of “White Christmas” — as a mechanic who in the year 1912 bumps his head on a crowbar and is thrown back to Britain in the year 528 AD. Film critics generally agree it is the first time travel movie ever made. In terms of historical importance, it’s a whimsical story that works because it plays off fun and universal fantasy: What kind of chaos and fun would you have if you could travel in time? Bing Crosby shows us.

The Time Machine (1960)

Director George Pal was the first filmmaker to bring H. G. Wells’s novel The Time Machine to Hollywood. The movie plot stays close to the original novel. A scientist in the Victorian era builds a machine that brings him to the year 802,701, where he finds a very different Earth dominated by two tribes at war. Like the book, the movie is an archetypical voyage-and-return story where the journey changes the narrator and his perspective on the world and where it is going. The film is perhaps most important in retrospect, though, for introducing us to technological machines that can traverse time, a trope that would be widely embraced in action and sci-fi movies.

The Time Travelers (1964 )

The Time Travelers is a B-movie from the 1960s. Despite existing on the fringe of pop culture, the film has an amusing campy flavor, and given the film’s small budget, it showcases admirable ingenuity. It’s about a group of scientists who accidentally open a portal to the future with disastrous consequences. The future is an atomic wasteland with mutants, and like the protagonist in The Time Machine , the scientists must find their way back to the present day. Many fans of this film believe director Ib Melchior deserves more credit within the sci-fi genre, and the film did inspire the TV series The Time Tunnel (1966) and remake Journey to the Center of Time (1967).

Jubilee (1978)

Derek Jarman’s Jubilee is an avant-garde film born out of the punk rock era in Britain. The premise: Queen Elizabeth I (born in 1533) is transported by an occult figure to the United Kingdom in the 1970s. There she encounters a new world of gangs, totalitarian police, and a far-reaching dystopia of wretchedness. While the story has more of scrapbook feel than a coherent plot, Jarman’s unique film uses time travel as a device to make political and cultural commentary stating that across all time, whether punks or royalty, we all get corrupted by power, perhaps especially the outcasts. For more on Jubilee and its unusual history, read “A right royal knees-up” by Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian .

Time After Time (1979)

Nicholas Meyer’s Time After Time has a fantastical plot: the serial killer Jack the Ripper finds a time machine made by the author H.G. Wells. Then Jack the Ripper uses it to travel to modern America—San Francisco to be exact. H.G. Wells must use the time machine as well and track down Jack the Ripper before he causes too much chaos. This film is a prime example of a time travel story that tickles the imagination with whimsy and playfulness for the sake of entertainment.

New Time Travel Movies

Somewhere in time (1980).

Somewhere in Time , starring Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymour, is perhaps the most romantic time travel movie ever made. Christopher Reeve plays a young playwright in college. After the performance of his first play, an old woman comes up to him and hauntingly says “come back to me” while handing him a watch. A decade passes. He still has the watch. What did this old woman mean? Why did she give him this watch? As Reeve investigates, he eventually figures out how to travel back in time after talking to a physics professor. As he’s warped back to time, he meets this old woman again in her younger form. The movie is most remembered for romantic lines such as “I cannot find the words. Except for these: ‘I love you.’ Such would I say to him if he were really here.”

Time Bandits (1981)

Writer and producer Terry Gilliam describes his motion picture Time Bandits as the first installment of his “Trilogy of Imagination,” with  Brazil  (1985) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen  (1988) as the second and third installment. All three films deal with time, aging, and escapism. Time Bandits is the only one of the three films to use time travel in the plot, and when director Terry Gilliam was asked why, he said that time travel was a “ metaphor for a child’s imagination ” and their “cosmic megalomania” — which is a beautiful statement about a beautiful and enchanting film.

The Philadelphia Experiment (1984)

The title of this film refers to a notorious incident that may or may not have happened at the Philadelphia Naval Yard in 1943—conspiracy theorists insist it happened, while the US Military denies it ever took place. Briefly, it involved an experiment with electromagnetic forces in which a ship, the USS Eldridge, disappeared from the radar.

In this cinematic retelling of the story, which takes the original rumored incident and fictionalizes it to add a time-travel element, David (Michael Pare) and Jim (Bobby Di Cicco) star as two sailors who jump ship in the middle of the experiment, only to find themselves transported to the year 1984. Faced by an angry mob at a restaurant, they take a woman named Allison (Nancy Allen) hostage at gunpoint and escape. Jim’s physical condition deteriorates to the point where he ceases to exist, but it is revealed he was somehow able to return to 1943. David stays in the year 1984 and gradually falls in love with Allison.

Terminator Franchise (1984 – 2021)

The Terminator franchise is undeniably influential in the time travel genre and as one of the most important legends within the the greater sci-fi cinematic canon. The franchise began in 1984 with the release of James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd’s The Terminator , a story about two time travelers from 2029 — Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) and The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) — going back to the 1980s to battle out the future of humanity. In sum, Kyle Reese has traveled back to the 80s to stop artificial intelligence from taking over the world and nuking most of humanity out of existence on August 29th, 1997 by protecting Sarah Connor and her unborn child John, who will lead the resistance against artificial intelligence in the 2020s. The Terminator, a cyborg or cybernetic organism, is there to kill Sarah and Reese and to ensure the child is never born so the self-aware computer system Skynet can rule the planet.

Although the first Terminator film was a blockbuster success, the sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day cemented the franchise’s place in pop culture and is considered one of the best sequels ever made in Hollywood. In Judgment Day , Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator character is sent back to the 90s, but this time as a hacked version designed to protect rather than kill Sarah and John Connor. The success of the sequel was due to the comical and heartwarming dynamic between Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator character and the young child John Connor (Edward Furlong) and the riveting sci-fi comic-book action.

With the launch of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003, James Cameron left the franchise due to an internal dispute . Although Terminator 3 is still a fun and amusing movie, it marks the rapid commercialization of the franchise that led to a slew of additional sequels that many found to be lackluster: Terminator Salvation (2009), Terminator Genisys (2015), and Terminator: Dark Fate (2019), as well as a spinoff TV show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Fox. In 2019’s Dark Fate , James Cameron returns to providing a background writing credit and serving as a producer, and the plot is actually a direct sequel to Terminator 2 and ignores the mythology created in the other versions.

Regarding the impact the franchise had on time travel, this quote has had the most staying power: “there’s no fate but what we make for ourselves” — and throughout all the films, the sense that we can control our destiny is at the heart of the narrative. For a detailed analysis of the actual science and absurdity of time travel in these films, read this conversation with a theoretical physicist .

Trancers (1984)

Trancers (also released as Future Cop ) is an example of a sci-fi action time travel movie. In a strange case of morphic resonance , it was released just a month after The Terminator and shares a similar storyline. Jack Deth, played by Tim Thomerson, is a Los Angeles cop from the 23rd century who hunts “trancers” (futuristic zombies). His most wanted criminal and the creator of these trancers has escaped by traveling back to the 1980s, so Jack has to travel back in time to catch him and stop his evil dominance. The movie had many sequels and adaptations; however, it never became the same kind of pop culture phenomenon the Terminator franchise became.

Back to the Future Trilogy (1985 – 1990)

Director Robert Zemeckis made one of the most memorable blockbusters of all time with Back to the Future (1985). The next two films in the trilogy, Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Back to the Future Part III (1990) were also roaring, action-adventure flicks adored by fans and with high accolades on the ranking site Rotten Tomatoes.

What made these big Hollywood motion pictures work so well? Entertainment journalist Emily VanDerWerff explains how Back to the Future is just a super, super fun movie:

We all have a favorite big, dumb, fun movie that’s loud and raucous and less interested in any thematic depth than in giving us a great time. Such movies exhaust any critical objections and simply leave you spinning around, with a giddy smile on your face. For me, that movie is and always shall be  Back to the Future , a movie I consider literally perfect. Tell me about its imperfections. Point out to me its plot holes. Lecture me on how time travel doesn’t work like that. I don’t care. It’s a weird little science-fiction incest comedy that, to me, sets the standard all other popcorn movies must match, the one that leaves them all feeling a little bit lacking.

That is indeed the appeal — they’re just cinematic adventures that don’t purport to be anything else. Naturally, in terms of the logic of the time travel within the films, it’s a mess, but who cares? The Back to the Future franchise is important as time travel movies, because they provide a marvelous and comedic spectacle in a unique approach to science fiction.

The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988)

In this, the first big-budget collaboration between Australian and New Zealander filmmakers, Griffin (Hamish McFarlane) is a nine-year-old psychic boy whose abilities enable him to view alternate realities. He is able to look back and envision England in the 1300s, where the Black Plague threatens to kill everyone in a small, snowy village, so some of the men begin digging into the ground in a desperate attempt to find “the far side of the world.” The find it, indeed—but it’s a giant city in the 1900s, which causes the film suddenly to switch from black and white to full color in the manner of The Wizard of Oz. The tunnelers take their Old World beliefs with them as they attempt to navigate this strange new city—for example, when they see a submarine surface, they are terrified because they think it’s a giant sea creature coming to attack them.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

In this, the first film of a successful 1980s franchise, Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are a pair of high-school would-be musicians in San Dimas, CA who are tasked with a high-school history project requiring them to describe how three prominent historical figures would describe life in San Dimas in the 1980s. They are visited from the year 2688 by a man named Rufus, whose time capsule resembles a phone booth. During their journeys to the past, Bill and Ted are able to transport Napoleon Bonaparte, Princess Elizabeth of England, Socrates, Sigmund Freud, Joan of Arc, and Abraham Lincoln to San Dimas in the 1980s, causing their high-school project to be a rousing success. Their time machine also allows them to travel into the future year of 2688, where they realize that they not only became successful musicians—they are the most admired men in history.

Forever Young (1992)

The narrative setup of the film involves cryogenics more than zipping through the space-time continuum. A test pilot is transported from 1939 to 1992 and falls in love. One lover of the film praises the way the storyline transcends many genres: “The movie, every bit a sci-fi film, manages to be a pretty engaging chick-flick as well. What I like most about it is that it manages to balance both genres fairly convincingly, and in the process, we are left with a nice piece of fiction, although something that won’t go down as a classic film by any stretch of the imagination, still manages to have great pacing and keep its audience’s attention until the final, beautiful moments.”

Groundhog Day (1993)

Groundhog Day is a classic time travel film and perhaps the greatest fantasy comedy in cinematic history. Bill Murray’s character is forced to relive the same day, February 2, over and over again. He’s stuck in a time loop with no way out. The film is comical and heartwarming. It also captures an important paradox of time for all of us—how do we break out of our own habits and beliefs and see the world as something new? While all might not be stuck in a literal time loop, our daily routines can frequently put us in a metaphorical time loop that Groundhog Day lays bare and inspires us to break and be open to the new.

Timecop (1994)

Jean-Claude Van Damme stars as a world-weary cop in the year 1995 who must travel in time to prevent a corrupt US government and its Time Enforcement Police—an organization set up to prevent any sort of time travel that will subvert the government’s stranglehold on such technology. His first journey takes him all the way back to the year 1863, where he must bust a Civil War conspiracy where gold intended for Robert E. Lee’s army is stolen, forward to the year 2004, when the same gold is used to finance a corrupt Senator’s campaign. Roger Ebert wrote, “More than most movies about time travel, ‘Timecop’ invites you to meditate on the logical contradictions of the genre.”

12 Monkeys (1995)

Bruce Willis stars as James Cole, a prisoner in the year 2036 who is trapped in a tunnel underneath Philadelphia after a worldwide plague wiped out most of humanity back in the mid-1990s. As part of the one percent of humanity who survived the pandemic but also as a prisoner whose life is not deemed to be worth much, Cole “volunteers” to travel back in time to stop a maniacal animal-rights activist (Brad Pitt) from releasing the virus that almost exterminated humanity. This involves Cole first being scrubbed clean and then placed in a plastic time-travel device. But since time travel has not yet been perfected, he is first sent back to 1990, and then even further back to 1914, before finally landing in Baltimore in 1996, right before the outbreak. Without revealing the ending, director Terry Gilliam reveals why Cole’s mission may not have been successful: “[It] seems, in the short term, to be a disaster. But in the long term, it’s good for the people 40 years in the future, because they’ll reclaim the world. It’s like agriculture, you gotta chop the plants down, dig ‘em into the ground, and in the future great shoots will sprout up.”

Retroactive (1997)

A time-travel road thriller by director Louis Mourneau, Retroactive stars Frank Whaley as Brian, a brilliant physicist obsessed with time travel. James Belushi plays Frank, a sociopathic computer chip thief. After Frank and his wife Rayanne (Shannon Whirry) pick up a female psychiatrist whose car broke down on the roadside, Frank flies into a rage when he learns that Rayanne has been cheating on him and kills her. But Brian’s flux capacitor allows Rayanne to travel back in time 20 minutes before her murder several times—with things only getting worse until she finally gets it right. According to a review in Gizmodo , “ Retroactive does have some interesting thoughts to share about the similarities between time travel and psychotherapy. Karen explains to Frank and Rayanne that the essence of psychotherapy is examining your past life and imagining what you would do differently given a second chance.”

Blast from the Past (1999)

This romantic comedy film by Hugh Wilson is the most realistic time travel movie on the list because, well, it could actually happen. Brendan Fraser has lived his whole life in a bomb shelter, and now at the age of 30, his dad—played by Christopher Walken—allows him to leave the bunker. Fraser’s character is indeed a blast from the past, as he knows nothing about society and current pop culture; all he knows is what he knew 30 years ago when he went into the bunker. While technically it’s not a time travel movie, it does deal with time distortion as well as typical time travel plot devices, and it’s a rather fun and heartwarming movie that contrasts a radically changing society with the difficulty humans have dealing with it.

Donnie Darko (2001)

Donnie Darko is a cult film and has a rich philosophical backstory about time travel and alternative timelines. The director of the film, Richard Kelly, goes so deep on the topic he even wrote a companion book called Philosophy of Time Travel , which explains the metaphysics of the film in greater detail. The plot while rather complex has divided critics since release — but the movie resonates both as a highly esoteric sci-fi movie and fun coming-of-age tale.

Primer (2004)

Abe and Aaron are two engineers who spend their spare time developing entrepreneurial tech projects out of Aaron’s garage. During an experiment with electromagnetic reduction of an object’s weight, they stumble upon the “A-to-B” causal loop effect, meaning that objects suspended in the weight-reducing field can travel back and forth in time in a repeating loop. Abe builds a device he calls “The Box,” big enough for one human, to test whether it will enable him and Aaron to travel back and forth in time. It works—in six-hour intervals, which are long enough for them to do things such as successfully bet on stock-market manipulations. But since they begin to notice adverse effects of the experiment, such as ear bleeds and their handwriting progressively worsening, they develop a “failsafe” box that enables them to travel backward in time four days to prevent the cumulative negative effects of their time traveling. However, the failsafe box fails — and proves to be anything but safe.

The Butterfly Effect (2004)

Ashton Kutcher stars as Evan, a troubled man in his 20s who suddenly discovers that he is able to travel back in time merely by reading his childhood journals. He attempts to travel back to change things so that he and everyone he knows in the present is in a happier and better place. But just as the scientific concept of the “Butterfly Effect” dictates, changing even one tiny thing can have unintended and even disastrous consequences. For example, during one spate of time-traveling, Evan accidentally kills his girlfriend and winds up in prison and must devise a way to escape. The film was a box-office success and led to two sequels: The Butterfly Effect 2 (2006) and The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations (2009).

Kate & Leopold (2001)

Kate & Leopold is a typical Hollywood romance movie about an English duke time traveler from 1876 who falls in love with a woman from 21st century New York. Like most time travel stories, Kate & Leopold is filled with inconsistencies and has a terrifying premise . Regardless, the movie was a mainstream success in the early 2000s because it used time travel to portray a perfect love that transcended time and space. Real love can be hard and sad. So what better way to idealize romance than bringing it outside time? This is why the subgenre of time travel romance works so well with audiences.

13 Going On 30 (2004)

Jenna is a 13-year-old girl in 1987 who dreams of fitting in with the “cool kids,” who at her school are a clique known as the Six Chicks. Her best friend, Matty, builds her a Barbie’s Dream House and sprinkles it with “wishing dust.” But Jenna’s interest in Matty is only platonic. When the Six Chicks pull a prank on Jenna—promising to bring the boy she has a crush on at school—they instead bring Matty, which causes Jenna to feel betrayed and to kick Matty out of the house. She is so enraged by her betrayal, she bangs her head against the closet and wishes she was thirty—causing some of the wishing dust to fall on her head and for her to be transported 17 years into the future to the year 2004, where she is 30 but still feels as if she is 13.

Southland Tales (2006)

Southland Tales feels more like a puzzle (or cinematic hieroglyphic) than a movie, which is a nice way of saying it’s an incomprehensible mess. Directed by Richard Kelly of Donnie Darko fame, Southland Tales is by almost all accounts an “ego-fueled folly” and a terribly, terribly bad movie . Despite Southland Tales ‘ unwatchable nature, it features a blockbuster cast of pop-culture darlings:

• Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) plays amnesiac action star and Mandy Moore plays his wife.
• Amy Poehler’s character is a punk neo-Marxist.
• Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a porn star named Krysta Lynn Kapowski (aka Krysta Now).
• Justin Timberlake plays an Iraq War veteran addicted to a drug called Liquid Karma.
• Seann William Scott plays a cop.

Actors aside, Southland Tales is not a conventional Hollywood blockbuster. Consider the film cost over $17 million to make and generated less than $300,000 in theaters. Southland Tales is more in the tradition of the aforementioned arthouse time travel film Jubilee from Derek Jarman than The Terminator franchise, offering esoteric cultural and political prophecy through a heap of images that begin in media res and lack a comprehensible storyline to anyone but the most patient cinephile.

How is time travel related to the story? Suffice it to say that Seann William Scott’s character notices his reflection is delayed in the mirror and some kind of black hole thing opened up in a desert that is causing a wave of chaos. There are nods to the rip in the space-time continuum from Donnie Darko as well.

Southland Tales can be interpreted more generously . The movie isn’t just a science fiction time travel film, it is the ultimate postmodern time travel film. Why? Because it presents a Gen Z version of time where traditional notions of narrative and time have been eroded to the point of no return, and we all live in the amnesia-inducing and ahistorical nowness of social media feeds. There is no time to traverse, just content blocks to bounce endlessly and mindlessly through, which is how the movie moves in a way.

Indeed, it might be said if Southland Tales was released as 15- to 60-second clips posted to TikTok and Instagram Reels instead of as a linear film in theaters, it might be a viral success. For the movie is just a weird scrapbook of skits of lip-syncing, conspiratorial thinking, stunts, dancing, extremist politics, dress-up, and surveillance footage all tinged with an ooze of faux-sexuality and drugged-up schizophrenia.

Deja Vu (2006)

Filmed in New Orleans, Déjà Vu stars Denzel Washington as a New Orleans police officer who is enlisted in a new government project called Snow White. He is shown a video screen and told that it allows him to look at images from four days and six hours ago from any possible angle. What he is not told but discovers on his own is that a screen is actually a time machine that allows him to view and manipulate events as they actually are happening four days and six hours ago, so he marshals his energies to prevent a bombing and save a woman’s life.

Timecrimes (2007)

A man named Hector looks through binoculars deep into the woods, where he sees a woman who appears to be naked. When he searches in the woods for her, he finds her lying naked on a rock. Suddenly, a man with a bandaged face appears and stabs Hector with a pair of scissors. The man begins to chase Hector through the woods, but Hector escapes into a house which he thinks is abandoned, only to realize there’s some strange machinery there. The “strange machinery” turns out to be a time machine, causing Hector to travel back in time one hour—where he must engage in battle with his own self an hour in the future. Through a series of disasters, he realizes to his horror that the naked woman he saw in the woods was his own wife.

The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009)

In this cinematic adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s novel of the same name, Eric Bana stars as Henry DeTample, a man whose ultra-rare genetic disorder enables him to time-travel while his patient wife Clare waits for him at home, unaware of why he constantly goes missing. Since he is the time machine himself, he can only travel back so far as his birth but not before. He uses his strange powers to travel back in time and save his mother from a car crash that would have killed her.   Roger Ebert  wrote, “If you allow yourself to think for one moment of the paradoxes, contradictions, and logical difficulties involved, you will be lost.”

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

Three friends, seeking a vacation, travel to a run-down ski lodge for a few days, only to discover that the hot tub is actually a time machine that transports them back to the year 1986, when they’d previously spent an extremely unpleasant night at the same resort in the same hot tub. But since they want to make sure that one of the friends’ nephews will be born, they have to recreate the steps of that fateful night without changing a thing. Reel Views wrote, “An attempt to flavor The Hangover with a little Back to the Future , this film argues that what happens in the ’80s stays in the ’80s, but does so with middling results.”

Source Code (2011)

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Colter Stevens, a soldier who was mortally wounded in Afghanistan but wakes up in the body of a man named Sean on a Chicago subway train. Colter realizes to his horror that as Sean, he is part of a top-secret governmental time-travel experiment designed to find the terrorist who bombed the train and to prevent it from happening. He relives the last eight minutes of Sean’s life over and over again in his attempt to thwart the bombing. Reel Views wrote, “ Source Code is what might happen if one cross-bred Groundhog Day with 24 and The Matrix .”

Looper (2012)

In a dystopian future, time travel is controlled by organized crime, and a “looper” is someone who kills criminals who time travel to the past from the future to alter history. Bruce Willis stars as Joe, who is sent back to the past, only to confront his former self, who is tasked with assassinating his future self. But both versions of “Joe” survive, sending the crime syndicate who controls time travel into a frenzy to remediate the situation before it gets out of control.

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 91 Ocean View, WA 99393. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED.

In a film that is about time travel but seems to contain no actual time travel and is based on a real-life ad placed in a magazine in 1997, a journalist named Jeff (Jake Johnson) takes it upon himself to track down the prankster who placed the ad. Two interns assist him in his quest and are able to save two lives—but it remains unclear whether any time travel actually took place in the process. Because of this, Roger Ebert hailed Safety Not Guaranteed as a sterling example of how “to make a time-travel movie containing no apparent paradoxes.”

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

The slogan of this Tom Cruise film is Live Die Repeat , and this captures the contribution of this film to the time travel canon. Edge of Tomorrow is a retread of Groundhog Day applied to a high-tech military confronting an alien invasion . Cruise’s character, Major William Cage, wakes each day to relive the same massacre and must figure out a way to overcome it. Director Doug Liman fought for the time travel element of the film and recalls in an interview with Collider that the movie studio wanted to remove it :

When you try and develop a movie with a world that involves time travel, you quickly realize that humans are never going to travel through time because there are so many paradoxes. You can hardly get through a screenplay. At some point during the development of the screenplay of the first film, Warner Bros said to me, ‘Does he need to travel through time? Maybe he could just battle aliens.’ I was like, ‘Well if you want me to make this movie, he does. I’m not interested in aliens, I’m interested in the repeating the day part.’ Doug Liman

Thankfully Warner Bros allowed the film to keep the time loop element, and many people consider it one of the best action films of the 2010s, an assessment we concur with. Edge of Tomorrow is a tremendous cinematic accomplishment for the way it balances humor, incredible sci-fi special effects, action, and stellar acting performances with a refreshingly clever screenplay.

Time travel in the film is facilitated by a super organism alien that is so advanced it has a different understanding of time as well as the ability to traverse it. When Tom Cruise’s character kills a special breed of this alien, the chemical-blood element seeps into his body giving him the ability to repeat time as well. The film does not fixate much on the mechanics or physics of how this works but as a result, it feels believable enough.

Predestination (2014)

Predestination reaches into the core of the paradoxes inherent in the very idea of time travel. It stars Ethan Hawke as a temporal agent with the ability to inhabit time loops and to stop crimes before they happen. In the process of sending Hawke’s character back to 1970 in an attempt to avert a 1975 attack by a character known as the Fizzle Bomber…then back to the 1960s…and then forward to the 1980s… it becomes unclear whether or not Hawke’s character and those of several other prominent players are actually the same person. In the process, time-travel quandaries such as the Predestination Paradox , the Bootstrap Paradox , the Temporal Paradox , and the Let’s Kill Hitler Paradox are all explored. A review on Astronomy Trek states, “this cerebral sci-fi thriller navigates through multiple twists of fate as the story’s tragic key character is gradually revealed to be [a] self-created entity trapped within a closed loop in time.”

Reset (2017)

Produced by Jackie Chan and directed by Korean filmmaker Yoon Hong-seung, Reset is a time travel movie in Chinese with English subtitles. The film has an emphasis on time travel realism with a focus on wormhole technology and parallel universes but is thoroughly an action thriller about a young mom who loses her son and then is forced to travel through time and different universes to get him back. GirlsWithGuns  praised the film for its “fresh and original concept, exactly the kind of thing which Hollywood desperately needs in the genre of late” — and it’s a unique contribution to time travel cinema from a non-English perspective.

When We First Met (2018)

When We First Met is a good example of a time loop movie used as a narrative structure for a romantic comedy. It applies the Groundhog Day formula to figuring out who you love, and the day repeated over and over again is Halloween. Our time traveler, Noah — played by Adam DeVine of Comedy Central’s Workaholics fame — keeps going back in time to try to make a girl fall in love with him. Many parts of the film are cliché, and time travel physics are naturally a mess, but it’s an amusing and heartwarming film for a rainy day.

See You Yesterday (2019)

What if Spike Lee produced Back to the Future instead of Steven Spielberg? And what if that film captured the same fun and whimsy of the Back to the Future franchise but addressed racism and police violence instead? This is exactly what is accomplished in See You Yesterday — social relevance is merged with the fantastical and imaginative power of a sci-fi time travel movie. As a time travel movie, and as a philosophical statement, the movie does an incredible job of being playful but also delivering a real-world message, which critic Carla Hay at the Culture Mix describes thus: “ See You Yesterday shows people, no matter what their age, that life is not about changing the past but how we move forward.”

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

The culmination of the first three phases of Marvel Studios films (aka The Infinity Saga), Avengers: Endgame is the second highest-grossing movie of all time with a $2.7 billion tally. With half the population wiped out by Thanos, the Avengers attempt a daring trip through time in an attempt to reverse the Mad Titan’s destructive actions to bring balance to the galaxy. Directors Anthony and Joe Russo revisit several important time frames in the MCU and challenge the normal time travel rules by having younger and older versions of characters directly interact. Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeeley establish some basic time travel laws that hold up within the context of the film while also poking fun at the Back to the Future time paradox. Endgame is the culmination of 21 films so prepare to spend some time on an extended marathon session to fully appreciate all the references.

Palm Springs (2020)

Palm Springs is a Hulu original film and arguably the most original comedic take on the Groundhog Day formula since, well, Groundhog Day in 1993. Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti star in the film as a pair of 20-somethings stuck in a time loop together on November 9th, the wedding day of their mutual friend. It’s a unique time travel film because of how successful the gonzo, often nihilistic humor is throughout the film’s 90-minute runtime. Palm Springs is also successful in provoking the viewer to ask interesting questions about their own life, like how much fun would you have if you could live the same day over and over again with no consequences for your actions? Likewise, what existential dread would you feel living a life with no responsibility? The film joyfully brings you to that adventurous thought experiment.

Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

In this, the third film in the Bill & Ted time-travel series that came out nearly thirty years after the 1991 sequel Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, the time-traveling aspiring rock stars find themselves as middle-aged and stuck in the near future where they still have been unable to find the musical success which will enable them to save the world. They are then suddenly transported to the year 2067 and are confronted with their elderly and dying selves. They must return to the past in a hurry to sing and record a hit that will save the universe — but the song will happen with the help of their daughters, Billie and Theadora. As a time travel movie, Bill & Ted Face Music is particularly fun because they travel back in this movie to put all the best musicians that ever lived into a supergroup.

The Adam Project (2022)

Ryan Reynolds stars in this sci-fi/drama film from Netflix that explores time travel and multiverses . The Adam Project is most successful as family-friendly movie with heartwarming laughs. The charming plot involves an older version of oneself visiting the younger version and the two teaming up to save the world. It is typical formulaic Hollywood, but it works as a fun little ride of a movie.

The Flash (2023)

In The Flash , the scarlet speedster discovers that he can travel through time using the “speed force” that give him his superpowers . The Flash, who is Barry Allen in his everyday life, decides to use his newfound time-traveling ability to go back in time and prevent the death of his mother. Naturally, his actions have dire consequences. The Flash tries to explain time travel in a novel way, presenting it as an action that changes timelines not just in a straight line towards the future, but in a way that alters events in all directions of space and time. So Barry doesn’t just change his past, he changes the history of events years prior to the date he travels to, and in locations he’s never even been to. This way of looking at time travel gives the filmmakers unlimited freedom to change whatever they want within the DCEU even if it doesn’t really make a lot of sense.

More Time Travel Movies

• Cyborg 2087 (1966) takes place in the year 2087, where governments are now using totalitarianism to control the population. A group of “free thinkers” send a cyborg time traveler back into the past to target the person they believe is responsible for their dystopian society.
• Planet of the Apes (1968) a great deal of this popular franchise has aspects of time-bending woven within the plot.
• Je t’aime, je t’aime (1968) is a 60s sci-fi time travel film from France. A suicide survivor just released from the hospital agrees to participate in a mysterious time travel experiment. He is sent back in time and forced to relive his most painful memories.
• The Final Countdown (1980) this Kirk Douglas film tells the story modern aircraft carrier thrown back to 1941 near Hawaii.
• Cavegirl (1985) follows a high-school boy who gets lost on a class trip and ends up entering a time portal that sends him to the Stone Age. He falls in love and must fight off murderously jealous cannibal cavemen!
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) Kirk and his crew travel back from the 23rd century to San Francisco in the 1980s to avert a situation that could destroy life on Earth.
• Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982) a dirt-bike racer wanders off course in the desert and winds up being transported to the year 1877.
• Flight of the Navigator (1986) opens with a young man discovering that he has been the face of a missing-child poster for the past eight years. The plot weaves together alien spaceships, time dilation, and mind transfers.
• Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) the second installment in this stoner series featuring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter.
• Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) is a 1960s-inspired film that follows a cheeky British spy who fights his nemesis throughout time in an effort to save his future self. Dr. Evil has invented a powerful new time machine and is determined to sabotage Austin Powers’s future.
• Frequency (2000) centers on an NYC detective whose firefighter father died in a tragic accident thirty years earlier. The detective ends up finding a faulty radio that opens a channel of communication across time between him and his late father.
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) in the third installment of one of the most successful literary and film franchises of all time, Harry Potter and his friends use the Time Turner, an hourglass that sends you back one hour in time for every time you turn it upside-down and reset the trickling sand. This proves to be a lifesaver for Harry, who learns to his dismay that the evil Lord Voldemort has escaped Azkaban prison and is seeking to kill him.
• Click (2006) features a workaholic husband and father, played by Adam Sandler, who discovers a magic remote-control device that allows him to control time and fast-forward through any moment in life that he wishes. He soon discovers devastating disadvantages to this technological miracle.
• Premonition (2007) is a supernatural thriller about a woman whose husband dies suddenly. The storyline weaves throughout the widow’s experiences in the days leading up to his death. She attempts to piece together clues to identify his killer and save herself.
• Triangle (2009) is set on a cruise ship caught in a time loop.
• Star Trek (2009) a Romulan ship called the Narada and Spock’s vessel simultaneously go into a black hole and are sent back in time, but 25 years apart.
• Haunted – 3D (2011) marks India’s first 3D feature film release. This supernatural horror flick focuses on a realtor responsible for selling a haunted house. He experiences sinister paranormal presences and travels back in time to prevent them from ever coming alive.
• Sound of My Voice (2011) deals with charismatic cult leader that claims she is a time traveler.
• 11 A.M. (2013) is a Korean sci-fi thriller that dives into a futuristic underwater marine laboratory where a time machine is invented. Surveillance-camera footage offers the lab workers clues on troubling mysteries of the past.
• About Time (2013) at age 21, a man named Tim (Domnhall Gleeson) realizes he’s able to travel back in time and fix his life, so he travels back in time to get a girlfriend—but it doesn’t quite end well.
• Interstellar (2014) this Christopher Nolan film deals with time travel from light speed travel and intergalactic exploration. More of a study of aging in time vs. on Earth than time travel, it still touches on many tropes of time distortion and travel.
• X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) Wolverine is sent into the past with a daunting mission: He must change history and, in the course, assure a better future for both humans and mutants.
• Lucy (2014) stars Scarlett Johansson as a young woman who is kidnapped and forced to conceal and smuggle drugs into Europe. An accident punctures the powerful drugs into her bloodstream, causing her to develop psychokinetic powers such as time travel and telekinesis.
• Doctor Strange (2016) features many time loops, which director Scott Derrickson says isn’t technically time travel: “Well, we don’t time travel in the movie. He reverses time, and time resets. But there’s only ever one timeline, and so it’s a movement of that timeline back and then forward.”
• Synchronicity (2016) is a cyberpunk movie inspired by Blade Runner . A man needs to travel back in time to stop an attractive young woman and a wealthy tycoon from stealing his invention.
• Time Trap (2017) this low-budget sci-fi movie was made popular through distribution on Netflix. A critic at Inverse describes the movie: “Time Trap  is the perfect indie gem to see storytelling in its most simple form. The exposition takes a found-footage angle, making it feel all the more real, even when the footage is found in the suit of an 8-foot-tall spaceman. Yes, it’s cheesy, but it strikes the perfect balance of mindless fun and thought-provoking concepts.”
• Happy Death Day (2017) takes the Groundhog Day formula and applies it a slasher and serial killer film. Watch this one if you’re looking for a horror movie with time travel.
• The Man With The Magic Box (2019) is a Polish sci-fi dystopian film set in 2030. A janitor finds a time-traveling device and accidentally gets himself stuck in 1950s communist Poland.
• In the Shadow of the Moon (2019) is a science-fiction movie from Netflix in which Rya, the protagonist, travels back in time in nine-year intervals to kill the people responsible for the mess the world has become in the present.
• James vs .  His Future Self  (2019) James’s future self travels back in time to prevent the invention of a time machine, which leads to a battle between future and past versions of the same man.
• 2067 (2020) is an Australian science fiction film where time travel is used to fix climate change.
• The Tomorrow War (2021) a man gets drafted to travel into the future, where he must do battle in a war where humanity is forced to confront everything that went wrong in the past. This is one of the newest and most exciting time travel movies released in a while.
• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) An aging Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is drawn into an adventure that involves his goddaughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and an artifact that is said to hold the secret to time travel.

History of Time Travel Storytelling

Time travel storytelling as a science fiction phenomenon began with Enrique Gaspar’s book The Time Ship (1887) and became mainstream in the late 1800s because of the success by H. G. Wells’s novel The Time Machine (1895). In terms of cultural memory, it might be said the fever dream tour of the past and future in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843) is the most imprinted time travel story in Western consciousness.

As far as Hollywood’s impact, Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future franchise (1985 – 1990) has a great deal of pop culture clout. The ancient idea of infinite loop or eternal return popularized in Groundhog Day (1993) has become a mainstay plot device of modern cinema. And of course there is the Terminator franchise (1984 – 2021), which defined action movies and made Arnold Schwarzenegger into a star.

Like ghost movies , time travel movies transcend any one genre. Time travel is used in everything from romance films to comedies to arthouse cinema to Marvel superhero movies to thrillers and, of course, to science fiction. No matter the genre, though, basically all time travel films require a suspension of disbelief, as they’re full of plot holes and hardly scientifically accurate .

Meet The Author

Chris Laverne

Chris likes weird movies more than horror movies. He studied media, philosophy and literature at Hampshire College. His writing for Creepy Catalog tends to use cinema as a portal for understanding larger societal trends.

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17 Underrated Sci-Fi Movies About Time Travel

Everyone and their mother knows about time travel movies like  Back to the Future  and  Avengers: Endgame , but what about the underrated time travel movies ? It's a sci-fi subgenre with plenty of room to maneuver; there have been virtually countless time travel movies since the dawn of filmmaking. Some films fare better than others - the less said about 2002's  The Time Machine , the better - but we're here to focus on some of the hidden gems and/or underrated films of the genre.

From low-budget gems like  Primer  and  Timecrimes  to big-budget blockbusters like  Men in Black 3  and  Deja Vu . From comedies to anime to the foreign arthouse, time travel keeps reliably cropping up. There's a lot of room to maneuver in this particular subgenre, so get ready to dive deep. Remember to vote up your favorite underrated films about time travel.

Does it count as time travel if the only thing traveling back and forth in time are voices? The answer is an unquestionable yes, and though  Frequency  uses its time travel to tell a by-the-numbers murder mystery, that doesn't make it any less worthy. Buoyed by grounded performances from Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviezel,  Frequency  ends up being more than the sum of its parts. 

There's nothing wrong with a classic thriller, especially when there are time travel hijinks involved. And if you thought Quaid and Caviezel weren't enough, let's bring Andre Braugher and Noah Emmerich to the party. The fact that it was directed by Gregory Hoblit, a man responsible for two of the most underrated thrillers of the past 25 years ( Fracture  and  Primal Fear)  is just a bonus. If you're a fan of any of these Hollywood players or time travel in general, you should give  Frequency a look.

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Upon release in 2006,  Déjà Vu  was a minor hit for Tony Scott, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Denzel Washington. Critics were mixed on the film, and it has ended up as a footnote in the career of one of America's most celebrated actors. But  Déjà Vu  deserves better. Every film that comes out of Hollywood doesn't have to reinvent the wheel, and sometimes you're just in the mood for a competent, well-made drama. This one happens to be about a man who travels back in time to stop a domestic terrorist strike from decimating New Orleans.

If you keep your expectations at a reasonable level, there's a lot to admire about  Déjà Vu . With a cast that features Washington and a host of gifted performers like Val Kilmer, Paula Patton, and Bruce Greenwood as well as competent direction from Scott,  Déjà Vu  is the kind of big-budget filmmaking that has gone away in the wake of Hollywood's neverending hunt for the next blockbuster franchise. Besides, who doesn't like watching Denzel do his thing?

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Flight of the Navigator

It may be hard to imagine now, but there was a time not so long ago when the Walt Disney Company was floundering. Before Michael Eisner and Frank Wells came in to turn the company around in the mid-'80s, the House of Mouse was in serious financial straits and the creative side of the company wasn't faring much better. One of the first projects released during the duo's successful tenure was 1986's  Flight of the Navigator . This was a few years ahead of  The Little Mermaid  and  Honey, I Shrunk the Kids  setting the box office on fire to bring Disney back to the top, but that doesn't make  Navigator  any less worthy.

Flight of the Navigator  is more a story of accidental time travel due to time dilation more than anything else, as the 12-year-old protagonist travels to a planet 560 light years away, and back, causing him to age just over two hours in a span of eight years. He sets off on an adventure to return back to his own time, and family-friendly fun is had by all. To be frank, it's heady stuff for a kid's movie and the special effects were top-notch for the time. A remake has been rumored for years, but for now let's stick with the undeniable charm of the original, thank you very much.

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Predestination

Based on Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 short story, "'—All You Zombies—'", 2014's  Predestination  struggled to make back its minuscule budget of $5 million at the box office upon release and that is a crying shame. Starring Ethan Hawke and Sarah Snook,  Predestination  is a heady sci-fi thriller that's a bit hard to pin down. It's hard to sum up all of its twists and turns in the limited space here, but suffice it to say,  Predestination  is a hell of a trip.

This is a film that demands rewatching in order to decode what it's trying to say with its themes on gender and fate, and even then it can be difficult to decipher at times. But that's okay! The journey is fun enough to make it all work. As Richard Roeper said in his review , "As soon as the credits rolled on Predestination , I wanted to watch it again. It was even more of a mind-dance the second time around."

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The Final Countdown

A few years before the iconic '80s song was released,  The Final Countdown  hit theaters. The film is about a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that travels through time to the day before Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. It also stars two titans of cinema, Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen, as they ham it up in a B-movie blockbuster.  The Final Countdown  doesn't take itself too seriously and it doesn't expect its audience to, either. 

The real star of the show is the massive amounts of actual Navy aircraft aboard the real aircraft carrier the filmmakers got to use for the production. The USS Nimitz , which is astonishingly still in use to this very day, served as a shooting location for  The Final Countdown  and it is glorious to behold. There are more than a dozen genuine aircraft vehicles that appear in the film and it lends an authenticity that is hard to fabricate. Come for Douglas and Sheen, stay for some awesome Navy realism.

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It's certainly very shocking that a film called  Timecrimes  has something to do with time travel. But let's just focus on that title for a second, here.  Timecrimes ? That is an awesome title for a movie! And  Timecrimes  itself is a saucy little low-budget thriller. The Spanish film tells the story of a man who becomes part of a time loop thanks to an experimental time travel machine. That's not all, as he also must stop his other selves (who exist in the same plane of existence thanks to the time travel) from continuing to exist.

It's a bit much to wrap your head around, but it all makes sense when you're watching it. Made for under $3 million,  Timecrimes  is an effective little thriller that you can't help but admire. And if that English-language remake ever actually gets off the ground, perhaps the original will find a bigger audience than it did upon release back in 2007.

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Time Bandits

If you're in the mood for a kooky sci-fi fantasy featuring an all-star cast,  Time Bandits  has you covered. Co-written and directed by Monty Python's Terry Gilliam,  Time Bandits  features Sean Connery, John Cleese, Shelley Duvall, Katherine Helmond, and Ian Holm in an adventure that could only be dreamed up by the man who brought you films like  Brazil  and  The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus . Seriously, Time Bandits  is nothing if not a whole mess of fun.

Made for kids (and everyone who used to be kids) with vivid imaginations,  Time Bandits follows 11-year-old Kevin as he becomes embroiled in a loopy time travel escapade. You know what kind of film this is going to be when an armored knight on horseback comes billowing out of Kevin's closet. It is so much fun. And hopefully you like dark comedy, because the ending of  Time Bandits  has a grueling fate in store for Kevin's parents.

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Time After Time

At a fundamental level, using time travel as a storytelling device lets the audience suspend disbelief a little bit more than they usually would. Case in point: 1979's  Time After Time . Based on the novel of the same name, this film follows famous British writer H.G. Wells - author of timeless novels like  The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds  - as he uses a time machine to pursue Jack the Ripper into the future of 1979 San Francisco. It sounds more like fantastical fan fiction than a Hollywood studio film, yet here we are.

Though this movie has largely been forgotten to time, it actually works! Obviously, the film isn't to be taken all that seriously, and that ends up working in its favor.  With charismatic leads as affable as Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen, it's easy to see why it succeeds. It's just delightful. And it's clear to see some people have fond memories of  Time After Time  as Kevin Williamson, of  Scream  and  Dawson's Creek  fame, brought a television version to screens in March 2017.

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Primer , Shane Carruth's 2004 sci-fi debut made on an estimated budget of around $7,000 , was one of the first cult hits of the internet age. A cerebral tale of two men who accidentally discover time travel in a garage and subsequently try to exploit it to earn heaps of money, this micro-budget movie was less of a word-of-mouth success and more of a find-via-blog success. Still,  Primer  feels like an underseen classic in the age of endless streaming services.

Perhaps that has something to do with the density of both the plot and the dialogue.  Primer  doesn't try to hold your hand, and it makes no apologies for it. To do so would be a disservice to both the film and the audience. More about humankind's ethical dilemmas and less about the time travel itself,  Primer  is a movie that is both hard to explain and impossible to forget.

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Some time travel films are light and breezy, meant to delight fans both young and old with capricious tales of science fiction.  Synchronic  is not one of these films. Unless stories about cancer and missing children are "light and breezy" to you. Alas,  Synchronic  remains a criminally underseen film from Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (who are absolutely perfect choices to direct episodes of Disney+ MCU show  Moon Knight ). 

New Orleans paramedics Steve and Dennis, played by Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan, become embroiled in a weird mystery surrounding Dennis's missing daughter and a new drug that somehow causes its users to travel in time. Benson and Moorhead manage to keep everything dark and moody despite the odd premise of the film, and it ends up being a ride worth taking.

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Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

Bill & Ted's Excellent Excellent Adventure  is the well-regarded original, while  Bill & Ted Face the Music  is the unexpected franchise revival. This means  Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey  is the unfortunate middle child too often dismissed as inferior. In many eyes, however,  Bogus Journey  is unfairly maligned by the movie-going masses. The screenplay may not be as tight as  Excellent Adventure  and it may lack the nostalgic punch of  Face the Music , but don't go sleeping on  Bogus Journey .

It's a juvenile comedy that also spoofs  The Seventh Seal -  what more could you possibly ask for? It has something for everyone, provided you go into a viewing with the right mindset. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are as game as they were in  Excellent Adventure,  but it's ultimately William Sadler who steals the show as Death incarnate. Roger Ebert put it best in his positive review , saying it is for "lovers of fantasy, whimsy, and fanciful special effects. This movie is light as a feather and thin as ice in spring, but what it does, it does very nicely."

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Men in Black 3

Men in Black  will forever remain a '90s classic and, well, the less said about  Men in Black II , the better, but  Men in Black 3  has quickly become an underrated movie - even though it grossed a monstrous $624 million at the worldwide box office. The sci-fi threequel follows Will Smith's Agent J as he goes back in time to team up with Agent K's younger self to save the world from evil aliens. 

Josh Brolin is delightful as he does his best young Tommy Lee Jones impression as Agent K, and Jemaine Clement is just tons of fun as the villain, Boris the Animal. Is it a bit derivative of the first two? Yes, but sometimes you're just in the mood for some popcorn comfort food and  Men in Black 3  is certainly that. Besides, it's much better than 2019's soft reboot,  Men in Black: International .

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In the Shadow of the Moon

The problem with releasing a genre picture on Netflix is that they usually get lost in the shuffle. If it isn't something Netflix thinks it can market to a wide audience, it just sort of gets released with little-to-no fanfare. This certainly was the case with 2019's  In the Shadow of the Moon . From director Jim Mickle, known for little-seen critical darlings like  Cold in July  and  We Are What We Are , this sci-fi thriller is about a cop who tries to stop a serial killer who reappears every nine years to strike again.

We don't want to give the twist away as to how this involves time travel, because doing so kind of ruins the whole point of the film. If you've got a Netflix account, it's worth a watch and is just waiting there for you.  The Detroit News ' Adam Graham puts it best : "[W]hen you least expect it, In the Shadow of the Moon  delivers a powerful message about the roots of hate and the dangers it poses to society. Don't let this one stay in the shadows for long."

• # 133 of 167 on The 160+ Scariest Psychological Thrillers
• # 53 of 141 on The 140+ Best Recent Thriller Movies, Ranked
• # 132 of 326 on The 300+ Best Netflix Original Movies Of All Time

What is there to say about  La Jetée ? From the fact that it is a 28-minute-long French film from 1962 almost entirely made up of still images, it's safe to assume all but the most fervent cinephiles haven't seen it. Of course, if you're game for its aesthetic, all there is a lot to love about  La Jetée.  And if you're a fan of  12 Monkeys , a film it directly inspired , then you're sure to have a good time.

The film follows a prisoner in post-apocalyptic Paris right after World War III as he is used as a test subject in a time travel experiment. Throughout the events of the film, the protagonist is sent both back in time before WWIII and way out into the future, where he meets a race of technologically advanced beings. Had it been shot traditionally, it isn't hard to see an alternate timeline in which  La Jetée  became one of the most popular foreign films of all time.

• # 67 of 97 on The Best French Movies That Are Absolute Masterpieces
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• # 48 of 58 on The Best Surrealist Films

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Time travel and anime seem like they were made for each other - though couching the time travel in a coming-of-age story for young adults is a bit of a twist on the formula that's easy to get behind. And with a title like  The Girl Who Leapt Through Time , you kind of know what you're getting yourself into. This film is your average young adult fare with a sci-fi twist, which totally works.

There's not much else to say about  The Girl Who Leapt Through Time  without giving the whole plot away. It's a film that was pretty much universally adored by critics and audiences alike as its infectious energy can't be denied. If you recall the plights of your teenage years with any sort of whimsy, jump into  The Girl Who Leapt Through Time . You'll be glad you did.

• # 294 of 447 on The 400+ Best Animated Kids Movies
• # 90 of 101 on The Best Movies Of 2006
• # 26 of 66 on The Greatest Animated Sci Fi Movies

The History of Time Travel

The History of Time Travel  is a 2014 movie written and directed by then-film student Ricky Kennedy. It's a mockumentary that tells the story of the men who created the world’s first time machine and the unintended ramifications it has on world events. If this were all the film was, there wouldn't be much more to talk about. But  The History of Time Travel has more up its sleeve than being a fake documentary about false events.

The brilliance of the film resides in its clever use of time travel ramifications. As the film goes on, subtle changes begin to appear on screen as more information about the time travelers' exploits is revealed. Of course, the people being interviewed don't realize these changes are happening to them because, why would they? We wouldn't be aware of changes to our past because they would just become our history (at least, in the universe of this film).  The History of Time Travel  is quite low-budget and it shows, but it is still a rollicking good time for anyone in the mood for a new take on time travel.

Je t'aime, je t'aime

2001: A Space Odyssey  is often heralded as a film before its time - and rightly so - but there was another 1968 sci-fi film that dared to break the mold and challenge viewers to think outside the box. A supposed influence on Michel Gondry's landmark  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , Alain Resnais and Jacques Sternberg's  Je t'aime, je t'aime  is about a suicidal man who volunteers for an experiment that causes him to experience his past through a series of disjointed memories.

Je t'aime, je t'aime  is not a happy film. By the end, we discover that our protagonist has killed his terminally ill partner to ease her pain and he ends the film about to perish from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. We do not get to see whether he actually makes it or not, but that is beside the point.  Je t'aime, je t'aime  is a heady film about love, loss, and mental illness. It is both a relic of its time as well as highly forward-thinking in both its subject matter and its technique.

• Entertainment
• Time Travel
• Watchworthy

As they say in well-written scripts, "You mean... like time travel?" + also a few bizarre stories about real people who have claimed, despite every law of physics, they have traveled through time.

The most memorable time travel movies

Posted: March 7, 2024 | Last updated: March 7, 2024

There are fun travel movies, often involving road trips. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby did it over and over. Sometimes, though, the travel isn’t across the globe, or even across space. They are across time. Time travel has been an oft-used trope of science fiction and other fantastical genres for years. Some of the biggest movies of all time involve time travel, but they aren’t the only memorable ones. These are the most memorable time travel films. If you don’t have time to read them now, well, maybe you need a time machine of your own.

'Back to the Future' (1985)

The quintessential time travel movie. One of the biggest hits of all time. The progenitor of two very good sequels. (Yes, we like the third movie.) Marty McFly goes back in time in a DeLorean thanks to his friend Doc Brown and ends up intertwined in the life of his eventual parents back in 1955. Plus, all that Huey Lewis!

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'Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure' (1989)

Another film that spawned a trilogy. This comedy is on the sillier side. Bill and Ted are dimwitted high school students who use their time machine to collect important historical figures so they can avoid failing. One of the breakthrough roles for Keanu Reeves, it’s indeed most excellent.

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'Terminator 2: Judgment Day' (1991)

This time around, we had to go with a sequel in a series. The Terminator is a good movie, but a bleak horror film. Terminator 2 got a bigger budget and a much larger scope. It’s an epic ‘90s action film, the one that really made this a franchise with legs. It also helped take Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career to the next level.

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'12 Monkeys' (1995)

Based on a French short film, Terry Gilliam made time travel trippy and grim. In the future, humanity has almost entirely been wiped out by a disease. Bruce Willis is sent back in time in order to figure out the cause of the disease, but he’s sent to the wrong time and ends up in a mental hospital. That just makes his quest that much harder.

'Army of Darkness' (1992)

After spending two movies dealing with evil spirits in a cabin in the woods, Ash finds himself traveled back to medieval times, but that doesn’t give him a break from all the ghouls that torment him. Army of Darkness is a slapstick horror comedy from Sam Raimi and star Bruce Campbell, but that works better than you might think. Hail to the king, baby.

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'Interstellar' (2014)

Christopher Nolan loves to mess with time and create notable imagery. Interstellar was daunting even to people who watched Inception , as much for its lengthy run time as its heady plot. That being said, it delved headlong into a scientific notion of time travel, and the cast is also quite impressive. Time has been kind to the reputation of  Interstellar .

'Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me' (1999)

In a way, Austin Powers travels through time in the first film, but that’s more due to cryogenic freezing. In the sequel, he actually travels through time. The Spy Who Shagged Me was a massive hit, and while a lot of it feels like rehashes of the first film, there was enough fresh stuff to keep the movie fun.

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'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court' (1949)

Mark Twain’s novel has been adapted several times, something loosely. This 1949 version is fairly faithful, and it also has quite the cast, led by Bing Crosby. With Crosby involved, they turned the film into a musical naturally.

'The Final Girls' (2015)

If you like horror comedies, this under-the-radar film is one worth seeking out. A group of friends find themselves transported into a 1986 slasher film called Camp Bloodbath . The star of that film happened to be one of the character’s mother, who happened to die a few years earlier. As such, they are technically traveling through time and into a film.

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'Last Night in Soho' (2021)

Edgar Wright has done horror-movie pastiches in the past, but they were often loving comedic takes on the genre. This time, he made a straight-up horror film. A young woman in modern London travels back in time when she sleeps, but then she quickly realizes the past that she romanticized was far from ideal.

'Kate & Leopold' (2001)

A fish-out-of-water romantic comedy, this time that fish isn’t just some fancy city folk in the country. No, he’s a duke from the 1800s, and he’s played by Hugh Jackman. You’d think that would be detrimental to Meg Ryan falling in love with him, but you’d be wrong.

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'Hot Tub Time Machine' (2010)

Hey, the ‘80s, right? Hot Tub Time Machine is a raunchy comedy that is mostly a series of jokes about how the ‘80s were different. It’s not going to win any Oscars. However, it is called Hot Tub Time Machine , and it did spawn a sequel. It’s not a great movie, but it has a good cast and some memorable jokes.

'Avengers: Endgame' (2019)

Well, Avengers: Endgame is one of the highest-grossing movies ever, and the culmination of over a decade of films in the biggest movie series in the world. We’d call that fairly memorable. It’s hard to spoil a film that a ton of people have seen, so we’re OK with mentioning the fact that the surviving Avengers decide to use time travel to try and defeat Thanos after failing to do so initially.

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'Looper' (2012)

What if time travel was verboten and also kind of banal? That’s the world of Looper . Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a hitman who kills people sent back from the future by the future mob. However, someday he will have to “close his loop,” which is to say kill the future version of himself. Then, when his future self shows up — played by Bruce Willis — he manages to escape, and that really complicates things.

'Source Code' (2011)

Source Code kind of ratchets up 12 Monkeys to a whole new level. A train has been exploded by a bomb, and Jake Gyllenhaal is sent into a digital recreation of the event to try and identify the perpetrator. He has to go into the same eight-minute stretch over and over, with things bending and shaping over time.

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'Star Trek' (2009)

When they decided to reboot  Star Trek , they also decided to add some time travel into the mix. This made for a time-and-space hopping story, for starters. However, it also allowed them to have Leonard Nimoy show up to play older Spock, giving this movie two different Spocks!

'Men in Black 3' (2012)

Men in Black was really good, but Men in Black II was lackluster. In order to add some spice back into the proceedings, time travel was added into the mix. Will Smith’s Agent J has to go back in time to try and save K from death. Then, he runs into young K, played by Josh Brolin doing a great Tommy Lee Jones impression.

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'Time Bandits' (1981)

Another Terry Gilliam film for the list. This is a lighter film than 12 Monkeys , though more a fantasy adventure than a comedy. It’s a story about a boy who joins up with, well, time pirates essentially. The crew of a ship travel through spacetime to steal treasures throughout the ages.

'Timecop' (1994)

Hey, it may not be all that good, but Timecop delivers what it promises. It’s a silly Jean-Claude Van Damme action movie involving time travel. Basically, it’s what you expect from a movie called Timecop . It was a big hit, though, and it also featured a memorable end to Ron Silver’s character.

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'Tenet' (2020)

Nolan saw people’s reaction to Interstellar and thought, “Ah, clearly I made that film too straightforward.”  Tenet is trippy and basically everybody is going to have trouble following it at least in fits and starts. It involves people experiencing time forwards and backwards simultaneously. John David Washington fights a backwards version of himself. Tenet is bonkers, but it’s also a ton of fun. Sometimes you just want to go along for the ride.

'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny' (2023)

After all these years, we got one last Indiana Jones movie. Harrison Ford has often come across like playing even, say, Han Solo, is akin to pulling teeth for him. However, he always seemed to genuinely love playing Indy. In the past he was present as the Ark of the Covenant melted Nazis, and he met a centuries-old knight and found the Holy Grail. In "Dial of Destiny," he also finally time travels. The film is merely fine, but it is nice that Ford got to bid adieu to the character.

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10 Underrated Time Travel Movies from the 1980s

April 3, 2024 by Billy Oduory

Billy Oduory with ten underrated time travel movies from the 1980s…

With timeless blockbusters like Back to the Future setting the highest standards for 1980s sci-fi, many great films from the decade that didn’t hit similar heights in theatres failed to receive the credit they deserved. The creativity and innovation that went into 1980s sci-fi still transformed the whole movie industry and time travel films were not left behind. Films like The Final Countdown and Timerider , which weren’t instant hits when they were released, have continued to gain popularity in recent years as more people now appreciate the charm of 20th-century creativity.

With the surge in demand for classic gems from the decade, these underrated 80s time travel films have received the credits they deserve in public forums such as IMDB. For a modern audience wishing to travel back in time, the attraction from the past has to be something more than a typical time travel narrative, which is why these films have earned a cultic following for their eccentric stories and impressive cinematography that makes them feel like they were way ahead of their time…

Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982)

While testing a new bike, Lyle Swann (Fred Ward), a dirtbike racer, strays into the field of a time travel experiment in the desert and is thrust back in time, finding himself in November 1877. The stubborn rider doesn’t realize the change in his surroundings until he is set upon by a gang of outlaws who would really love to lay their hands on the nice ride from the future. As Swann Grapples with his new reality, he finds refuge in the friendly town of San Marcos and now has to find a way to save the town from the outlaws and survive long enough for the scientists to come to his rescue.

Directed by William Dear, Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann has everything fans would expect from a classic Western, while still telling the interesting story of a time traveler. Despite its modest rating, the film boasts of impressive action sequences and a charismatic performance by Fred Ward as he brings life to the character. The blend of romance, crime, and sci-fi complements the intricately written film turning it into a worthy cult classic. 

My Science Project (1985)

Michael Harlan (John Stockwell) has nothing to submit for his final science project, so he breaks into a government aircraft boneyard and steals a strange-looking globe hoping to use it to impress his teachers. However, when he plugs the globe into a power source, he discovers that it has strange abilities including sucking the power grid dry and causing time travel. His project, which unleashes chaos on the school and his hometown, turns out to be a piece of alien technology. This is a coming-of-age comedy with a touch of Sci-Fi that transcends the traditional premise of time travel films to tell the human story.

Directed by Jonathan R. Betuel, My Science Project offers a humorous take on time travel. The film’s quirky premise and endearing characters make it an enjoyable watch for audiences of all ages, which explains its enduring popularity. With its blend of adventure, humor, and nostalgia for 1980s high school culture, the film offers a delightful trip down memory lane.

Trancers (1984)

Serial killers still make the most dreaded villains in TV and films, but a serial killer traveling through time takes the idea of dark comedy and time travel to a whole new level which explains why Trancers is now a whole franchise. The serial killer, in this case, is Martin Whistler (Michael Stefani) a 23rd-century criminal mastermind who discovers a way to turn people into senseless killers known as Trancers, whom he wants to use to destroy humanity. When his evil plans are thwarted by the relentless detective Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) the serial killer uses a special drug to travel back in time to 1985 to continue his reign of terror, but Jack Deth won’t let him off that easily.

Directed by Charles Band, Trancers brings zombies and time travel into its action-packed storyline, making a simple-sounding storyline interesting. Moreover, despite its modest IMDb rating, the film has gained a cult following over the years, appreciated for its imaginative storyline and entertaining performances. With its blend of gritty noir elements, futuristic dystopia, and time travel shenanigans, the film offers a unique and enjoyable experience for viewers craving a dose of 1980s nostalgia.

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)

Starring a young Nicolas Cage and Kathleen Turner, Peggy Sue Got Married is the comedic tale of the second chance at a better life for 43-year-old Peggy Sue who is planning to divorce her cheating husbands but feels trapped and regrets the decisions she made in her teenage years. While attending her high school reunion party, Peggy collapses and finds herself transported back in time to her senior year of high school with the chance to relive her past and make better choices all over again.

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, this charming romantic comedy offers a whimsical take on the time travel genre. Peggy Sue Got Married features one of Cage and Turner’s best performances in a romantic comedy. With its nostalgic 1950s setting, witty dialogue, and heartfelt exploration of regret and second chances, the film offers a delightful blend of humor and sentimentality that a modern classics fan will enjoy.

The Final Countdown (1980)

Filmed on the real-life aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, The Final Countdown tells the story of sailors and a civilian observer on the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that gets sucked back in time to December 7, 1941, just a day before the Pearl Harbor attack, while on a training exercise. After discovering the Japanese fleet planning to attack the US fleet, the commanders and the sailors are torn between changing history by preventing the most devastating attack on US soil in WWII or letting history take its course.

Being Don Taylor’s last film, The Final Countdown was a great way to sign out for the talented director as it features an epic combination of action and historical drama. Its impressive special effects and suspenseful storyline keep viewers hooked as they present the thrill of an epic war film as well as a travel drama. The film explores the ethical dilemmas and the consequences of altering history.

The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988)

The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey follows a group of villagers from 14th-century England who, while tunneling through the earth on a mission to make a sacrifice and save the world from the Black Death, inadvertently find themselves transported to modern-day New Zealand. Struggling to comprehend their new surroundings, the villagers embark on a quest to find a way back home, all this time, relying on the visions of a “gifted boy” called Connor (Bruce Lyons). 

It is a visually stunning film that seamlessly blends historical drama with elements of fantasy and science fiction, making it feel way ahead of its time while retaining the charm of black-and-white cinema. The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey won multiple awards in Australia and New Zealand for its thought-provoking storyline and eccentric performances by the cast and is only now receiving global recognition as seen in its improving IMDB ratings.

Flight of the Navigator (1986)

While walking through the woods to pick up his little brother on July 4, 1978, 12-year-old David Freeman stumbles into a canyon and disappears, only to reappear eight years later, having not aged a single day. An experiment by NASA doctors reveals that David was abducted by aliens who took him to a strange planet and used him in part of a scientific experiment on humans. David’s time with the aliens turns out to have more consequences on the future of humanity than previously thought and his adventures with the aliens are far from over. 

Directed by Randal Kleiser, Flight of the Navigator has become a cult classic over the years with Disney announcing that its remake is in the works. It was one of the very first Hollywood films to use CGI resulting in impressive visual effects that stand out from other 1980s Sci-Fi films. With its heartwarming themes of friendship and self-discovery, the film remains a beloved favorite among classic film fans.

Time Bandits (1981)

Time Bandits is a Terry Gilliam cult classic that has earned a top spot in the fantasy comedy genre over the years because of its innovative approach to telling a time travel story. The subject of the film is a young history nerd called Kevin who gets caught up with a group of time-traveling dwarves who have stolen a time-space map from their boss known as the Supreme Being. Kevin gets the chance to relive some of his best moments in history including the Napoleonic Wars and the Titanic and also meet legends like Robin Hood and King Agamemnon. However, his fun trip threatens to ruin his life back in 1981 as the stolen map catches the interest of a villain known as Evil.

Time Bandits is one of the best Terry Gilliam films and fans continue to enjoy its witty humor and innovative storytelling despite its moderate IMDB ratings. With its blend of adventure, satire, and philosophical undertones, the film offers a thought-provoking exploration of themes such as greed, mortality, and the nature of reality that still captivates a modern audience.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

Directed by Leonard Nimoy, The Voyage Home is one of the most overlooked Star Trek films as far as ratings go, but it features one of the most captivating storylines with unconventional humor that many people are beginning to appreciate. The film follows the crew of the USS Enterprise as they travel back in time to 20th-century Earth to save the planet from an alien probe. This film holds a special place in history as it was dedicated to the crew of The Challenger Space Shuttle.

Environmentalism is at the center of the film’s message as the main story rotates around preventing the villains from contacting Humpback whales which are extinct in the year 2286 when the movie is set. Its modern-sounding themes and engaging storyline make it a standout entry in the series.

Somewhere in Time (1980)

The idea of a romantic relationship that transcends time itself is one of the few things that time travel films and that is exactly what Somewhere in Time brings to life. The film follows Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) who becomes obsessed with the photo of the actress Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour) while residing at The Grand Hotel in Mackinac Island, Michigan. Collier believes that the woman is the love of his life and he must find a way to go back in time to 1912 to be with her. With the help of an old pocket watch and a little self-hypnosis, Collier manages to manifest himself back in time to meet the actress, but their romance isn’t as straightforward as he imagined.

Also starring Christopher Plummer, Somewhere in Time is a timeless romantic classic in which the chemistry between Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve is intoxicating. Seymour later admitted that she fell in love with Reeve on the film set, although they didn’t end up together as is the case with their characters. With its timeless themes of love, longing, and destiny, the film continues to captivate audiences decades after its initial release.

SEE ALSO: 10 Most Underrated Sci-Fi Movies of the 1980s

What 80s time travel movies are worthy of a spot on this list? Let us know on our socials @FlickeringMyth …

Billy Oduory

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Timberlane Films: Maverick Scientist - Old West Time Travel

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A huge list of Time Travel Movies and TV shows I have seen

A List Of Time Travel Movies And TV Shows I have seen some good some not so good. I often update these so feel free to check back.

• Movies or TV
• IMDb Rating
• In Theaters
• Release Year

1. Back to the Future (1985)

PG | 116 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi

Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent 30 years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the maverick scientist Doc Brown.

Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Michael J. Fox , Christopher Lloyd , Lea Thompson , Crispin Glover

Votes: 1,303,072 | Gross: $210.61M

2. Back to the Future Part II (1989)

PG | 108 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi

After visiting 2015, Marty McFly must repeat his visit to 1955 to prevent disastrous changes to 1985...without interfering with his first trip.

Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Michael J. Fox , Christopher Lloyd , Lea Thompson , Tom Wilson

Votes: 571,218 | Gross: $118.50M

3. Back to the Future Part III (1990)

PG | 118 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi

Stranded in 1955, Marty McFly learns about the death of Doc Brown in 1885 and must travel back in time to save him. With no fuel readily available for the DeLorean, the two must figure how to escape the Old West before Emmett is murdered.

Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Michael J. Fox , Christopher Lloyd , Mary Steenburgen , Tom Wilson

Votes: 479,745 | Gross: $87.73M

4. 100 Million BC (2008 Video)

R | 85 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

A scientist leads a team of Navy SEALs back in time to the Cretaceous Period to rescue the first team he sent back during the 1940s. Things go wildly when he accidentally brings a giant dinosaur back into Los Angeles.

Director: Griff Furst | Stars: Michael Gross , Christopher Atkins , Greg Evigan , Marie Westbrook

Votes: 4,772

5. A Kid in King Arthur's Court (1995)

PG | 89 min | Adventure, Comedy, Family

A Little League player is sent back into medieval times where he is given the task of saving Camelot.

Director: Michael Gottlieb | Stars: Thomas Ian Nicholas , Joss Ackland , Art Malik , Paloma Baeza

Votes: 6,777 | Gross: $13.41M

6. Aftermath: Population Zero (2008 TV Movie)

0+ | 90 min | Documentary, Sci-Fi

Ever wondered what the world would be like without any humans?

Star: Reg E. Cathey

Votes: 1,492

7. Planet of the Apes (1968)

G | 112 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi

An astronaut crew crash-lands on a planet where highly intelligent non-human ape species are dominant and humans are enslaved.

Director: Franklin J. Schaffner | Stars: Charlton Heston , Roddy McDowall , Kim Hunter , Maurice Evans

Votes: 192,500 | Gross: $33.40M

8. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

PG | 90 min | Adventure, Comedy, Music

Two rock-'n-rolling teens, on the verge of failing their class, set out on a quest to make the ultimate school history report after being presented with a time machine.

Director: Stephen Herek | Stars: Keanu Reeves , Alex Winter , George Carlin , Terry Camilleri

Votes: 141,392 | Gross: $40.49M

9. Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)

G | 95 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

The sole survivor of an interplanetary rescue mission searches for the only survivor of the previous expedition. He discovers a planet ruled by apes and an underground city run by telepathic humans.

Director: Ted Post | Stars: James Franciscus , Kim Hunter , Maurice Evans , Linda Harrison

Votes: 51,081 | Gross: $19.00M

10. Blast from the Past (1999)

PG-13 | 112 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

A naive man comes out into the world after spending 35 years in a nuclear fallout shelter.

Director: Hugh Wilson | Stars: Brendan Fraser , Alicia Silverstone , Christopher Walken , Sissy Spacek

Votes: 71,425 | Gross: $26.49M

11. Deja Vu (2006)

PG-13 | 126 min | Action, Crime, Sci-Fi

After a ferry is bombed in New Orleans, an A.T.F. agent joins a unique investigation using experimental surveillance technology to find the bomber, but soon finds himself becoming obsessed with one of the victims.

Director: Tony Scott | Stars: Denzel Washington , Paula Patton , Jim Caviezel , Val Kilmer

Votes: 327,033 | Gross: $64.04M

12. Demolition Man (1993)

R | 115 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller

A police officer is brought out of suspended animation in prison to pursue an old ultra-violent nemesis who is loose in a non-violent future society.

Director: Marco Brambilla | Stars: Sylvester Stallone , Wesley Snipes , Sandra Bullock , Nigel Hawthorne

Votes: 192,797 | Gross: $58.06M

13. Donnie Darko (2001)

R | 113 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, a troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a man in a large rabbit suit who manipulates him to commit a series of crimes.

Director: Richard Kelly | Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal , Jena Malone , Mary McDonnell , Holmes Osborne

Votes: 848,241 | Gross: $1.48M

14. Doctor Who (2005–2022)

TV-PG | 45 min | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi

The further adventures in time and space of the alien adventurer known as the Doctor and his companions from planet Earth.

Stars: Jodie Whittaker , Peter Capaldi , Pearl Mackie , Matt Smith

Votes: 245,926

15. Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)

G | 98 min | Action, Sci-Fi

The world is shocked by the appearance of three talking chimpanzees, who arrived mysteriously in a U.S. spacecraft. They become the toast of society, but one man believes them to be a threat to the human race.

Director: Don Taylor | Stars: Roddy McDowall , Kim Hunter , Bradford Dillman , Natalie Trundy

Votes: 38,914 | Gross: $12.30M

16. Family Guy (1999– ) Episode: Back to the Pilot (2011)

TV-14 | 22 min | Animation, Comedy

After travelling back in time with Stewie to the events of Family Guy: Death Has a Shadow (1999), Brian unwittingly alters the future for the worse by warning his past self about 9/11.

Directors: Dominic Bianchi , James Purdum , Peter Shin | Stars: Seth MacFarlane , Alex Borstein , Seth Green , Mila Kunis

Votes: 3,088

17. Family Guy (1999– ) Episode: Road to the Multiverse (2009)

TV-14 | 30 min | Animation, Comedy

Brian and Stewie explore a series of alternate universes.

Directors: Greg Colton , James Purdum , Peter Shin | Stars: Seth MacFarlane , Alex Borstein , Seth Green , Mila Kunis

Votes: 4,546

18. Flashforward (2009–2010)

TV-14 | 42 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

A special task force in the FBI investigates after every person on Earth simultaneously blacks out and awakens with a short vision of their future.

Stars: Courtney B. Vance , Joseph Fiennes , Jack Davenport , Zachary Knighton

Votes: 62,047

19. Flight of the Navigator (1986)

PG | 90 min | Adventure, Comedy, Family

In 1978, a boy travels eight years into the future and has an adventure with an intelligent, wisecracking alien ship.

Director: Randal Kleiser | Stars: Joey Cramer , Paul Reubens , Cliff De Young , Veronica Cartwright

Votes: 51,578 | Gross: $18.56M

20. Frequency (2000)

PG-13 | 118 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery

An accidental cross-time radio link connects father and son across 30 years. The son tries to save his father's life, but then must fix the consequences.

Director: Gregory Hoblit | Stars: Dennis Quaid , Jim Caviezel , Shawn Doyle , Elizabeth Mitchell

Votes: 115,523 | Gross: $45.01M

21. Goodnight Sweetheart (1993–2016)

Not Rated | 30 min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

British sitcom in which an unhappily married man discovers he can time travel back to 1940s war-torn London where he masquerades as an MI5 agent and part-time songwriter whilst courting the local barmaid.

Stars: Nicholas Lyndhurst , Victor McGuire , Christopher Ettridge , Elizabeth Carling

Votes: 3,323

22. Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

R | 99 min | Comedy, Sci-Fi

A malfunctioning time machine at a ski resort takes a man back to 1986 with his two friends and nephew, where they must relive a fateful night and not change anything to make sure the nephew is born.

Director: Steve Pink | Stars: John Cusack , Rob Corddry , Craig Robinson , Clark Duke

Votes: 186,101 | Gross: $50.29M

23. Kate & Leopold (2001)

PG-13 | 118 min | Comedy, Fantasy, Romance

An English Duke from 1876 is inadvertently dragged to modern day New York where he falls for a plucky advertising executive.

Director: James Mangold | Stars: Meg Ryan , Hugh Jackman , Liev Schreiber , Breckin Meyer

Votes: 88,964 | Gross: $47.12M

24. Life After People (2009–2010)

TV-PG | 45 min | Documentary, Sci-Fi

What would happen to planet earth if the human race were to suddenly disappear forever? Would ecosystems thrive? What remnants of our industrialized world would survive? What would crumble ... See full summary  »

Stars: James Lurie , Steven S. Ross , Gordon Masterton , Tanya Wattenburg Komas

Votes: 1,557

25. Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993–1997) Episode: Soul Mates (1996)

TV-PG | 44 min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama

H.G. Wells warns Lois and Clark that they must go back in time to break a curse put on their past lives; otherwise, Lois will die of a terminal disease after they consummate their marriage.

Director: Richard Friedman | Stars: Dean Cain , Teri Hatcher , Lane Smith , Justin Whalin

26. Lost (2004–2010)

TV-14 | 5,445 min | Adventure, Drama, Fantasy

The survivors of a plane crash are forced to work together in order to survive on a seemingly deserted tropical island.

Stars: Jorge Garcia , Josh Holloway , Yunjin Kim , Evangeline Lilly

Votes: 593,430

27. Sliders (1995–2000)

TV-PG | 60 min | Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

A boy genius and his comrades travel to different parallel universes, trying to find their way back home.

Stars: Jerry O'Connell , Sabrina Lloyd , John Rhys-Davies , Cleavant Derricks

Votes: 20,326

28. Planet of the Apes (1974)

TV-PG | 47 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Two astronauts and a sympathetic chimp friend are fugitives in a future Earth dominated by a civilization of humanoid apes.

Stars: Roddy McDowall , Ron Harper , James Naughton , Mark Lenard

Votes: 5,388

29. Retroactive (1997)

R | 91 min | Action, Crime, Drama

A psychiatrist makes multiple trips through time to save a woman that was murdered by her brutal husband.

Director: Louis Morneau | Stars: Jim Belushi , Kylie Travis , Shannon Whirry , Frank Whaley

Votes: 6,693

30. Stargate SG-1 (1997–2007) Episode: Window of Opportunity (2000)

TV-PG | 44 min | Action, Adventure, Drama

Col. O'Neill and Teal'c realize they and their friends are trapped in a time loop.

Director: Peter DeLuise | Stars: Richard Dean Anderson , Michael Shanks , Amanda Tapping , Christopher Judge

Votes: 2,802

31. Seven Days (1998–2001)

42 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi

An ex-CIA is the point man for a government organization dedicated to time traveling to correct errors that occurred in the previous week.

Stars: Jonathan LaPaglia , Don Franklin , Justina Vail , Nick Searcy

Votes: 3,941

32. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

PG | 119 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy

To save Earth from an alien probe, Admiral James T. Kirk and his fugitive crew go back in time to San Francisco in 1986 to retrieve the only beings who can communicate with it: humpback whales.

Director: Leonard Nimoy | Stars: William Shatner , Leonard Nimoy , DeForest Kelley , James Doohan

Votes: 91,316 | Gross: $109.71M

33. Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

PG-13 | 111 min | Action, Adventure, Drama

The Borg travel back in time intent on preventing Earth's first contact with an alien species. Captain Picard and his crew pursue them to ensure that Zefram Cochrane makes his maiden flight reaching warp speed.

Director: Jonathan Frakes | Stars: Patrick Stewart , Jonathan Frakes , Brent Spiner , LeVar Burton

Votes: 131,866 | Gross: $92.00M

34. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993)

PG | 96 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy

When journalist April O'Neil discovers an ancient scepter with magical powers, the Turtles must cow-a-bunga their way back to 17th century Japan to rescue her from the evil clutches of Lord Norinaga.

Director: Stuart Gillard | Stars: Elias Koteas , Paige Turco , Stuart Wilson , Sab Shimono

Votes: 36,370 | Gross: $42.66M

35. Terra Nova (2011)

TV-14 | 46 min | Adventure, Drama, Mystery

Centers on the Shannons, an ordinary family from 2149 when the planet is dying, who are transported back 85 million years to prehistoric Earth where they join Terra Nova, a colony of humans with a second chance to build a civilization.

Stars: Jason O'Mara , Shelley Conn , Christine Adams , Allison Miller

Votes: 85,974

36. The Day Time Ended (1979)

PG | 79 min | Adventure, Horror, Sci-Fi

Aliens visit the solar-powered house of a middle-class family, and the house is suddenly sucked into a time warp that transports it back to prehistoric times.

Director: John 'Bud' Cardos | Stars: Jim Davis , Christopher Mitchum , Dorothy Malone , Marcy Lafferty

Votes: 2,021

37. The Final Countdown (1980)

PG | 103 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

A modern aircraft carrier is thrown back in time to 1941 near Hawaii, just hours before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Director: Don Taylor | Stars: Kirk Douglas , Martin Sheen , Katharine Ross , James Farentino

Votes: 26,831 | Gross: $16.65M

38. The Philadelphia Experiment (1984)

PG | 102 min | Adventure, Drama, Romance

A United States Navy destroyer escort participates in a Navy "invisibility" experiment that inadvertently sends two sailors forty years into the future.

Director: Stewart Raffill | Stars: Michael Paré , Nancy Allen , Eric Christmas , Bobby Di Cicco

Votes: 16,716 | Gross: $8.10M

39. The Time Machine (2002)

PG-13 | 96 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Hoping to alter the events of the past, a 19th century inventor instead travels 800,000 years into the future, where he finds humankind divided into two warring races.

Director: Simon Wells | Stars: Guy Pearce , Yancey Arias , Mark Addy , Phyllida Law

Votes: 130,209 | Gross: $56.68M

40. The Time Machine (1960)

G | 103 min | Adventure, Romance, Sci-Fi

A man's vision for a utopian society is disillusioned when travelling forward into time reveals a dark and dangerous society.

Director: George Pal | Stars: Rod Taylor , Alan Young , Yvette Mimieux , Sebastian Cabot

Votes: 44,728

41. Thrill Seekers (1999 TV Movie)

PG-13 | 88 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller

A reporter, learning of time travelers visiting 20th century disasters, tries to change the history they know by averting upcoming disasters.

Director: Mario Azzopardi | Stars: Casper Van Dien , Catherine Bell , Theresa Saldana , Peter Outerbridge

Votes: 2,741

42. The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

PG-13 | 107 min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

Henry DeTamble, a librarian, possesses a unique gene that lets him involuntarily travel through time. His wife, Claire Abshire, finds it difficult to cope with it.

Director: Robert Schwentke | Stars: Eric Bana , Rachel McAdams , Ron Livingston , Michelle Nolden

Votes: 157,709 | Gross: $63.41M

43. Time After Time (1979)

PG | 112 min | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi

H.G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper to the 20th Century when the serial murderer uses the future writer's time machine to escape his time period.

Director: Nicholas Meyer | Stars: Malcolm McDowell , Mary Steenburgen , David Warner , Charles Cioffi

Votes: 20,590

44. Timecop (1994)

R | 99 min | Action, Crime, Sci-Fi