Time Travel and You

With only 2 episodes left of “Loki'' on Disney+ we are all wondering how his time escapades will conclude. Since the release of Iron Man, the MCU has taken off to become the billion dollar standard in movie franchises. The Loki series follows the story of the God(s) of Mischief during the events of Avengers: Endgame when Loki inadvertently snags the Tesseract and escapes creating a variant version of the “sacred timeline”. Now, captured by the Time Variance Authority (TVA) and under the care of Mobius (Owen Wilson), Loki is off to hop through time fixing a variant version of himself causing...well, mischief.

Time travel plots have been a staple in sci-fi for years. Even before the advent of film, we have seen great stories like "The Clock that Went Backward" by Edward Page Mitchell, which appeared in the New York Sun in 1881. Of course, when speaking of film we can’t leave out one of the best time travel films ever made. Obviously we are talking about the 80s standard, Time Warp.

Wait, you’ve never heard of Time Warp? Starring Adam West? BATMAN?!

Surprising no one, there are LOTS of time travel films you’ve likely never heard of. That’s why we turn to the experts at The Never Heard Of It Podcast, who have put themselves through watching these films for some reason. For the whole month of July, and likely into August, they will be covering some films lost to the dark corners of time. Hosts Caleb and Michael Fight are fans of the genre in all it’s paradoxical glory, having done an entire theme month on the topic before.

They kick off the month with a listener request, Predestination (2014).

Predestination follows the story of The Barkeep (Ethan Hawke) a temporal agent who is given one final assignment to track down an elusive time criminal who may be responsible for shaping his entire timeline. This film, released in 2014, flew under the radar as it was up against some heavy hitters that year like Guardians of the Galaxy and Interstellar. Catch their review July 4th.

On July 11th they review the 80’s slapstick comedy, Time Warp. This movie was released 4 years before Back To The Future, but takes place during its real life release in 1985. Captain Mark Devore (Harry Johnson), returns home from a trip in space only to learn he’s been sent through a time warp and is now a year into the future, rendering him invisible to those around him. The film features Adam West and Gretchen Corbett. This will likely be similar in comedy to a previous film they reviewed, They Call Me Bruce, leaning heavily on the comic stylings of the early 80s.

Starting July 18th they dive into Time Sleeper, an indie film directed by Bisong Taiwo. Sarah has accidently discovered time travel by using a drug (I mean, we’ve all been there. At the very least, we know Anthony Mackie recently has in Synchronic) and now must travel back in time to stop the fatal accident that claimed her son. Indie films can often provide some unique takes on time travel, as they learned during their review of Primer.

The final film of the month, releasing on July 25th, is Time Crimes. This is another indie film that dives into the world of time consequences and paradox. A man accidentally stumbles into a time machine (people should really be more careful with those) and travels back an hour causing a ripple of disastrous consequences. This film was directed by Nacho Vigalondo who also directed another Never Heard Of It favorite film, Colossal.

August will bring a few more listener requests of time travel films as well! What’s your favorite time travel movie that you feel like people have never heard of, but should? Let us know! Head to TheNHOIT.com and fill out the contact form and send us your suggestions!

Michael Fight is the host of Never Heard Of It and The Storyteller Series. You can also follow him Twitter.

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