Go back in time: Time travel movies to watch on streaming platforms on the island

Hollywood superstar Ryan Reynold’s newest film The Adam Project dropped on Netflix this week, promising a sci-fi trip using a well-known plot device: time travel. As we desperately wait for Reynolds to play anyone else but himself (seriously, the man will keep doing this until someone stops him), some suggestions that use the ol’ time traveling trope!

Here we go! Or did we already go? Is this the first time we are doing this? Are we caught in a time loop?!

Back to the Future (I, II, III)

To answer your first question, yes, it is on Netflix. To answer the second one, yes, you should see it again! A timeless (ha!) classic, Back to the Future is childhood nostalgia wrapped in a warm blanket and served on a Saturday morning with a side of hot cocoa.

Back to the Future tells the story of Marty McFly, a teenage Michael J Fox at the height of his popularity, who befriends a quirky scientist named Emmet Brown (Christopher Lloyd), affectionately called Doc.

One night Marty witnesses the impossible: Doc managed to create a time machine, mounted it on a DeLorean car and successfully tested it! His enthusiasm though is short lived as terrorists murder Doc and Marty is forced to escape using the DeLorean, accidentally going back in time in 1955! Now Marty must find a way back to his own time, to go back to the futu… OOOOOOH! Ok, now I get it. It took me 40 years but now I get it.

Revisit your childhood today before some studio decides that it is time for a gritty, dark reboot, where Marty is a war veteran suffering from PTSD and decides to go back in time to murder baby Hitler or something.

Batman Ninja

There are two types of readers. Those who read this and went “OH F**K YEAH” and those who are like “Im sorry, what now?”. Since The Batman with Robert Pattinson is all the hype now, a film that mixes Batman and time travel!

Batman Ninja is an animated film that answers the very simple question: how Batman and his gallery of rogues would look if they were in feudal Japan in the Edo period. I know, not a commonly asked question. In this film, the caped crusader finds himself accidentally travelling back to feudal Japan where he once again faces his Nemesis, the Joker. Besides the utterly bonkers premise, the animation is amazingly beautiful, mixing western animation style with the traditional Japanese anime. The voice acting is also superb. If you ever wondered how Bruce Wayne looks wielding a katana, now’s your chance.

Dark

I believe it is against the law to discuss time travel fiction and not talk about Dark, the German series that got everyone talking in 2017. To explain the plot of Dark is nearly impossible. Suffice to stay that it is a convoluted, time travel thriller focused on a single family, whose members discover a cave that can transport one back in time. It ran for three seasons on Netflix and despite its mind-bending plot, I cannot recommend it enough.

The Adam Project

If you like Ryan Reynolds, then this movie is definitely for you. The plot is simple: Reynolds plays a pilot from the near future who time travels to the past to get away from the dystopia we created and accidentally crash lands his jet near his childhood home, where he meets with his younger self. Now, the two of them will try and change the future.

Reynolds is more contagious than Covid. EVERYONE is this movie acts and feels like Reynolds. Everyone is quipping, everyone is a smartass. Super-annoying trend or welcome direction? I lean towards the first one but you decide.