The History of Time Travel is a 2014 sci-fi docu-fiction movie written and directed by Ricky Kennedy, a film student from Texas. The story is told in the form of a fake "documentary" (aka mockumentary).
We learn of a scientist named Richard Page and his family. Starting in the 1940s, Page dedicates his life to creating a time machine but never manages to finish it. When his son picks up his fathers work, he finally manages to complete a time machine during the 1980s.
The "documentary" then goes on to tell us how this time machine has been used multiple times throughout history to change the timeline. And while it's a pretty interesting idea to expore these events through interviews with various experts, the "documentary" itself, every time we learn of a new change in the timeline the "documentary" continues as it it were from that new timeline... contracting what was said just minutes ago, as that was from a different timeline.
The end result is a "documentary" that's a patchwork of interviews taken in different timelines, which makes no sense whatsoever by the rules of time travel as they're explained in the "documentary".
This would have been a far superior movie IMO if the History of Time Travel was told from the perspective of the final timeline, basing its knowledge of the different previous timelines on the notes of the inventor after it somehow ended up in the final timeline. It could tell the events from each timeline without the "documentary" itself having to jump between timelines. And it could even leave open the question of whether all these events did in fact take place of they were just the imaginations of a madman, as no one alive in the last timeline would have been aware of the previous timelines by the time de "documentary" was made.
But at least the story is original, you say? Well... not really. One might argue that the story of "The History of Time Travel" is a bit of a mixture of that of movies "Primer" and "The Butterfly Effect (both from 2004) as well as videogame "Red Alert" (1996). And each of these sources this movie is likely to have been inspired by tells a more convincing time travel story.
Add to this questionable special effects and acting, and I simply cannot score this movie higher than 3/10.
We learn of a scientist named Richard Page and his family. Starting in the 1940s, Page dedicates his life to creating a time machine but never manages to finish it. When his son picks up his fathers work, he finally manages to complete a time machine during the 1980s.
The "documentary" then goes on to tell us how this time machine has been used multiple times throughout history to change the timeline. And while it's a pretty interesting idea to expore these events through interviews with various experts, the "documentary" itself, every time we learn of a new change in the timeline the "documentary" continues as it it were from that new timeline... contracting what was said just minutes ago, as that was from a different timeline.
The end result is a "documentary" that's a patchwork of interviews taken in different timelines, which makes no sense whatsoever by the rules of time travel as they're explained in the "documentary".
This would have been a far superior movie IMO if the History of Time Travel was told from the perspective of the final timeline, basing its knowledge of the different previous timelines on the notes of the inventor after it somehow ended up in the final timeline. It could tell the events from each timeline without the "documentary" itself having to jump between timelines. And it could even leave open the question of whether all these events did in fact take place of they were just the imaginations of a madman, as no one alive in the last timeline would have been aware of the previous timelines by the time de "documentary" was made.
But at least the story is original, you say? Well... not really. One might argue that the story of "The History of Time Travel" is a bit of a mixture of that of movies "Primer" and "The Butterfly Effect (both from 2004) as well as videogame "Red Alert" (1996). And each of these sources this movie is likely to have been inspired by tells a more convincing time travel story.
Add to this questionable special effects and acting, and I simply cannot score this movie higher than 3/10.