Screenwriter John Logan writes a ticket to the future for THE TIME MACHINE

By: ARNOLD T. BLUMBERG
Date: Wednesday, March 13, 2002

John Logan, screenwriter for GLADIATOR and the upcoming STAR TREK: NEMESIS, had to think for about five seconds when offered the chance to adapt the classic H.G. Wells' SF novel, THE TIME MACHINE, for Dreamworks. Offering a new take on the original novel and a nod or two to the original 1960 George Pal feature adaptation, Logan stepped into the time traveler's seat with little trouble.

"Steven [Spielberg] had loved the George Pal movie and always wanted to do a version of it, and I love it as well and thought it was a heck of a good idea," says Logan. "I think we all looked at it as an opportunity to pay homage. We were all respectful of those sources, but we also realized that we would have to take this in new directions for a new audience, primarily because time travel has been treated so frequently. Every other episode of STAR TREK was a time travel episode."

Logan's plan was to go back to the novel and re-envision it for modern audiences. But where to begin?



"When we looked at the existing material, there were two primary areas that I focused on," says Logan. "Both in the book and even in the movie, the motivation for the time traveler was rather opaque. In the novel, it's a vague notion about discovering things about the future. In the movie, it's 'I'm really dissatisfied about the way the machinery of science has been used for war.' Neither of those I found to be particularly dynamic, so we invented a character and circumstances that allow a really dynamic reason for the time traveler - Alexander - to build a time machine in the first place."


That motivation involves a tragedy that befalls Alexander early in the film, prompting him to dare to shatter the laws of the universe and journey beyond his own time.

"We asked ourselves all those old questions," says Logan. "Why would you build a time machine? What would really compel you to devote your life obsessively to this one pursuit?"

One thing Logan did not contemplate, however, was any detailed exploration of the mechanics of time travel.

"The conundrums of temporal paradox were of very little interest to us," says Logan. "When I was ten and saw the George Pal movie for the first time, what excited me about it was the adventure of it. It was Rod Taylor, but it might as well have been Errol Flynn having this grand adventure. The reason we set the movie in the late Victorian era was to try to recapture some of that sense of fun and adventure. So we didn't want to get too incredibly caught up in the physics of it all, although part of the reason the time traveler is traveling into the future is to try to have central questions answered of what one can and cannot do. But we're eschewing the mind-numbing complexity of time travel."



Logan insists that audiences would be bored with temporal mechanics. Their minds are on far more important issues.

"What's exciting to them are those universal questions. What is the future going to be like, and how am I part of making that future? So those were the things I tried to keep central in my thinking."

Logan's involvement in the film extended well into pre-production, allowing him to shape the script around the emerging design aspects of the film.

"The whole physical look of the film was tied together with the characters," says Logan. "There would be no way to do a movie like this otherwise. We tried to stick to some rules. I'm the biggest science fiction fan in the world, I've seen everything, so we have to do things people have never seen before, and to a certain degree I think we've accomplished that."

While Logan trumpets the film's adventurous tone, he does admit that one element of the story has been left out from the George Pal adaptation.

"We all tried to recapture that spirit [of] a rip-roaring adventure, but on the other hand there is an emotional core to this story about this character's journey that is not easy and somewhat moving. We found the relationship between Rod and Yvette [Mimieux in the Pal film to be] disconnected and condescending. The childlike presentation in the movie and the book was a little uncomfortable to push a romantic relationship between those characters. There's certainly an affiliation between Alexander and a girl named Mara, but we avoided a romantic relationship."

Working with a production team that Logan refers to as a league of nations "[I was the] only American on the movie," he says Logan feels most proud with the development of the new Morlocks, the mutant antagonists that threaten the peaceful Eloi world of 800,000 years in the future.



"There's a very intricate social system where the Morlocks are preying on the Eloi, yet the Morlocks are characterized as these big hairy stupid brutes," says Logan, referring to the social dynamic seen in the original film. "How could they have had the intellectual capacity to build this system? We thought a lot about Darwin and how the human species could evolve into two races, and we began to divide the Morlocks into castes workers, spies, hunters."

But these mutant marauders would need a leader, and he arrived in the guise of actor Jeremy Irons.

"The Overlord, that Jeremy Irons plays, [is] the queen bee, the controlling intellect behind all of this," says Logan. "We were able to create an actual antagonist for our hero to speak with about this situation. I wanted Alexander to express his moral and scientific outrage about this society to someone, and for someone to be able to defend it. 'Who are you to question 800,000 years of evolution?' So I wrote a big fat juicy villain part, and Jeremy Irons came along like a gift from heaven to play it."

If it sounds like Logan enjoyed his trip into the distant future, you would be right. Having departed the halls of ancient Rome on his way to the 24th century, Logan appreciated the opportunity to play a role in bringing a classic sci-fi tale to the big screen once again.

"The fan part of me is just in heaven," says Logan. "We all dream about what the future might be, so to have a possible future presented for your edification and entertainment is exciting and interesting. We all look in the mirror and say, 'What am I going to be like in ten years? How are the choices I'm making now creating that person?' It's a universal human response, because we all know we're going to die, and the question of legacy is always a drumbeat in the background somewhere."

As audiences head to movie theaters this season to witness a historic journey through time, it's Logan's distinctive rhythm they'll be following to the far future and all points in between.