Introduction
Time machine is an old narrative that was both written and filmed. Of great concern is the fact that over the years, the movie has become increasingly distant from the Novel, in the process, affecting its focus on the theme of the story.
For instance, communism and capitalism conflict, the present age presents exploitation of workers, while the future presents a world in which one group preys on the other. This paper will try to investigate the key differences between the two and explore their effect on theme.
Key differences in the movie and the novel
The time Machine, film by George Well, is a factious fascinating futurist movie and novel. The setting is based on a small area near London suburb, although this is unusual as time moves from one setting to another.
They narrate about the fourth dimension in human life, which is separate from length, height and width. The protagonist in both the novel and movie narrates about their invention of a time machine that would take them to the future or past at will.
The movie and novel have several major conflicts that remain a huge contrast. Firstly, the novel’s protagonist has no name, while the movie’s protagonist has, in the name of George, yet they are supposedly performing same tasks.
The protagonist becomes the narrator in the novel and takes over narration for one week during which his time machine moves him through the future to year 80270.
The number of visitors in the new eve meeting in the novel differs from the one in movie; the movie adds a new person context. Further differences are observed when the movie presents Eloi group as normal human beings even though in the novel, they are described as having undergone several transformations that makes them significantly distinguishable from a normal human.
The movie presents Weena, the Eloi girl George helps from drowning, to understand English, while in the novel it is well documented that communication was quite difficult as the Eloi are uncultured and uncivilized, looking like adults and children at the same time. Furthermore, we see Eloi killing a Morlock, and a Morlock carrying a whip, something missing in the novel.
We also see the talking rings in the movie, which narrates the past of both Eloi and Morlock. This is not the case in the novel as there are no rings to narrate anything; in fact, the protagonist tries to explore the origin of these to groups.
How these differences are faithful or unfaithful to the theme
Themes that is clearly portrayed in both the Novel and Movie and are critique of capitalism and pessimistic of technological advances. One of the few positive themes is on relationship, as well as sympathy, which seems to survive all these transformations and time to join the weak Eloi to the protagonist against Morlock.
The key differences brings confusions regarding them, for example, the fact that Eloi looks more like humans than the Morlocks does not make sense, Since in the novel they are completely different from normal human. It therefore does not support the theme. However, despite these differences the theme of love for humankind remains, as the protagonist sympathizes with Eloi and defends Weena.
As much as the protagonist criticizes capitalism, he still realizes that communism is also affected since, the Morlocks considers Eloi as food and not fellow beings, in effect exposing social class, and effects of communism. These differences are therefore faithful and unfaithful to the themes of the story.
Conclusion
The movie and novel contain several key differences thereby exposing conflicting themes, such as critique of both capitalism and communism. Depending on the theme chosen, differences between the time machine movie and Novel are either for or against those themes.