What is your favorite time travel movie or show?

Live. Die. Repeat.
- All You Need Is Kill
- Edge of Tomorrow 2 when

Can't believe noone mentioned Primer

I heard about it but never watched it. Is it good? What is it about?
- Its very good. Its a low budget indie film. Its about two unremarkable engineers who work on toy projects in their garage accidentally discovering a type of time travel similar to the movie Looper. The film follows the realization, experimentation and ultimately the downfall of the engineers due to the power of their own discovery.
  Primer is famous for being extremely complex and hard to follow. The characters speak in real engineering jargon, and there's constant time travel paradoxes happening in the background which you don't pick up on without multiple viewings.
  If you like being intellectually challenged, its great.
  Should also be mentioned that the director is a massive POS, which is why I don't promote the movie even though I like it.
Came here to say this. That movie is fantastic. And it was made for basically nothing. It’s so smart.
- They begged borrowed and stole everything to make the movie, except spent $8000 to rent lights to film.
  They then went on to make $20m at the box
Top shit. You get 30 min in and go wtf is happening? Then it all hits you. Hard.

Back to the Future. All three of them, they're so good!

I've watched them so much, that when I started to learn english I just started to watch that movie in english, since i knew by hart half of what they were saying
I was worried when this wasn't anywhere near the top. These aren't even my favourite time travel movies, they're my favourite movies, period, and have been since I was 4.
- Me too!
My top movie. Only one my kid sat and watched all 3 when I fell asleep. Usually he'd go play video games.
Oh yeah, this is a classic! Christopher Lloyd was epic there. This was the first movie I noticed this actor.
A family dressed up as Doc and all three Marty's for Halloween and I loved it.

Groundhog Day.

Is this time travel though?
- He travels back it time one day once per day.
- Easier to put it in the 'time travel' genre than the ' divine intervention until you get things completely the way things should be' genre.
- It's an anti-time travel movie. Soooo... I guess it counts.

Dark

This show absolutely - if for nothing else but the casting that made you actually believe past/present/future characters were the same person.
- So true. I could not believe the actor who played old Ulrich Nielsen was not the same as middle aged Ulrich Nielsen.
Dark was absolutely incredible, one of the best pieces of media I've ever seen. Start to finish such a good story.
I feel like I missed a ton of details on my first watchthrough, but still enjoyed it a ton.
I'm curious if anyone has given it a second go, and if it added or removed from the experience?
- I have given it a 2nd-3rd-4th go, each time with a new friend who hasn't yet seen it. And, no joke, I still pick up on a TON of details I've missed before. It's just... so good

Terminator 2.

A perfect movie.

12 Monkeys.

No other "time travel" movie needs apply.

Primer, 12 Monkeys it's good but Primer is better.
It's so good, I got excited when a tv series was announced. Unfortunately the show was bollocks. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)
- I never bother with spin-off shit - it's always just money-grabbing and little else.

Bill & Ted. Be excellent to each other!

I love how casual they approach time travel. It makes no sense, is incredibly inconsistent, and the more you think about it the more you’ll hate it. But it’s a fun series everyone must watch.
Spoilers:
The time travel mechanic literally makes Bill and Ted the only people that matter, ever, in the history of time. The world belongs to Bill and Ted and this is their playground. I love how the characters recognize this in the movies too, so the writers obviously knew their time travel dynamic was goofy.
At least in the first movie:
Only people who can change their future actions that’ll have an impact on the future is Bill and Ted (time traveller who told them to pass a class influenced Bill and Ted to change their future actions)
If someone other than Bill and Ted interacts with a different time, it has effectively zero impact on their future actions and society is largely unchanged (ie stealing Socrates and Napoleon into the present didn’t really affect modern society, and nobody found it weird a blue phone booth existed in the 1700s?!)
Even though Bill and Ted are time traveling, any time they spend time traveling counts against an absolute timeline leading up to their presentation.
I think some of these dynamics changed in the second movie, and again in different ways in the third movie but don’t remember it’s plot enough to defend that claim.
Which one? Year? or you liked all?
- Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is my favorite, but I'll sit through any of em. I just love those characters, and genuinely try to live my life along the "be excellent to each other" philosophy.
Oh yeah, I watched it so many times.
If I can't choose Bill & Ted then I'd say Terminator 2.
- You can, its just a suggestion not a rule ;-) This way we can try and get more different titles posted here =)

Doctor Who, c’mon, people!

Waaaay to far down the list.
It's new who day tomorrow too! We get to see the toymaker and the next regeneration!
- About to watch it now!
  Edit: it was amazing!

Back to the Future

Dark https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5753856/

Check out Palm Springs.

I was surprised by how good this was. The premise seems very ... simple? They did a really good job with it though, very entertaining.

About Time

Great movie, so bittersweet.
Greatest feel good movie. It has an amazing message at the end

The first 2 seasons of Travellers were really good. The 3rd was fine. They had to wrap up the story after getting cancelled and, as usual with that sort of thing, it felt a bit strained and rushed.

I'm just happy they were able to wrap it up. They still did a better job than most series.
- Very true
Fuck yes, recently binged this and it was fantastic.
My favorite time travel show or movie. After repeated re watches it holds up really well.

Steins;Gate

IMDb link: https://imdb.com/title/tt1910272/
It's on Hulu, Funimation, and Crunchyroll
It has a really good dub
Edit: Might also be on Netflix in Japan and UK
Especially the visual novel.
Great choice
Was searching for this, probably has one of the best anime dubs so anyone can enjoy it
Absolutely loved both the visual novel and the anime for this.

Really enjoyed Looper. It leaves just enough to the imagination to be super interesting. that scene with what they do to the man in the past really stuck with me.

Sorry, but Looper is like the worst kind of time-travel movie. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
- I loved seeing JGL with BW's nose
- You’re absolutely correct that it makes no sense, but with all sci-fi films, you have to accept at least a small amount of nonsense to enjoy it. However, the least nonsense the better.
Looper was really good! I only got around to watching it a few weeks ago

Idiocracy

Not time travel but a good movie.
- Well he travelled forward in time :-)

12 monkeys is absolutely the best time travel show

Yeah movie was good but show not so much.
- It's funny, I'd argue the weakest season of 12 monkeys was season 1 where they were loosely following the plot of the movie. Season 2 onward is where they started doing their own thing and it became really good. One of the best finalies for a show too!
- Why not?

Russian Doll is a pretty good one

Never watched it what is it about?
- It's a time loop story like Groundhog Day

Safety Not Guaranteed.

Ok, 2 down, one to go. This is fundamentally my favorite time traveler movie of all time. The whole thing is just so spectacularly written and performed to make it a guessing game all the way through.
- @Adalast I think so too. I find it really poignant.
Oh i forgot about that one, it was very good indeed.

Predestination and 12 Monkeys.

They seriously need to give the people behind Predestination more monies....
12 monkeys always great.
I liked the short story that predestination was based on more. But movie was still good.

Technically not a time travel movie but it has a few elements of it: Interstellar (2014)

I'd argue that time dilation is a form of time travel.
- What I meant is it wasnt the main plot of the movie.
  It was a concern but not the primary.
Interstellar reminds me of Inception. Hard to follow and not much logic behind it.
- If this is your take stay away from Tenet

Coherence came out in 2013, and the movie is phenomenal. Such an awesome take on the whole time theory.

+1 was another very good one, and more fun than mine bending, but does a great job tackling it.

I'm currently watching Dark, but enjoying it for sure.

Dark and primer

Recently watched Primer and absolutely loved it. I keep seeing Dark recommended as a followup - I really gotta see this show.
- Is Dark a sequel? Or just a spiritual successor?

The ultimate mindfuck time paradox movie is for me "Predestination"

The movie is based on the short story All You Zombies by Robert A. Heinlein, and it does a great job preserving the spirit and internal logic of the narrative. When you take that into account, you'll realize how impressive the filmmaking is here. It's hands down my favourite time travel movie.
- It's crazy that generation of sci Fi writers just cranked out gems like machines that ran on meth for pennies and no recognition....
  Just the sheer amount of work they produce is insane. Compared to know where we rarely get a movie/show that's not based on something from over a decade ago
  Like, special effects are cool and are, but we need more low budget shit if it's at least new. Not every project needs a nine digit budget.
  Somebody else mentioned Coherence, and that's a great example of how scifi can be good without crazy effects. Or that movie where two dudes build a time machine to send messages back a day or two?

Future Man (2017-2020) is silly and fun, but actually surprisingly smart with its handling of time travel.

Dude this ended up being one of my favorites. It is crude humor and just a blast to watch. The character development is there and the story progress is fantastic to watch unfold. It was surprisingly delightful in all aspects.
That show confused the crap outta me. They did their best to make the MC seem completely worthless. And it felt like the writers were straight ripping on the target audience the whole time. Look no further than the opening scene to know what I mean

Time Bandits (1981) by Terry Gilliam

Such a great movie with an amazing ending.

What a classic, one of my favorite movies as a kid.

Primer and Dark are great. I also really enjoyed Tenet.

Primer is one of those movies that takes a couple watches to fully understand what's going on. Highly recommended for a movie that makes you think very carefully about time travel
Dark was neat. Lost interest after season 2 :/
- That's when it got really good though

Samurai Jack. Without a doubt. Everything from the first episode to the last

It's far from my favourite but since most others have been mentioned I'll give Kung Fury a shout. It's hilarious.

Terminator 2

The Time Traveler's Wife is an interesting twist on things, including free will. I haven't seen the series version.

Steins;Gate, the anime.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1910272/

I'll be rewatching it soon.

That isn't Back to the Future?

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

Solid choice. I've shown this one to non-trekkies who haven't seen TNG and they really enjoyed it even as a stand alone movie.
Hot take: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home > Star Trek: First Contact

Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, but that's a book.

It's not my favorite ever, but I'm currently watching a weird Canadian, 30 year old-woman-finding-herself comedy drama that is based around a magical therapist who uses time travel in his sessions. It's called Being Erica and it's on Hulu. I can't stop watching it.

Run Lola Run. It’s either time travel or an exploration in quantum immortality.

Amazing movie. Don't try to understand it. Just enjoy.
I love that they don't explain it and just make it entertaining
I may need to watch that again because I do not remember this aspect of it at all.

Travelers

Masterpiece

Primer (2004)

My favorite movie about time travel is Back to the Future, but the movie that I think did time travel best is Primer. If time travel works, it's probably like that.

Assassin 33 A.D: Black Easter.

It's a Christian time travel movie where terrorists go back in time to murder Jesus before he can be crucified (therefore preventing Christianity from ever existing) and an atheist skeptic scientist has to go back in time to rescue Jesus, and also rescue his own faith.

The movie is crazy and I love it.

Know what I'm watching on the next movie night.
Having never heard of Black Easter, I wrote a brief synopsis, supposing the three magi were Herod's assassins.
It's no more far-fetched then current extrapolations regarding the Magi.

Futurama

I did do the nasty in the pasty.
- Verily. And that past nastification is what shields you from the brains. You are the last hope of the universe.

Best choice.

Bodies (2023) on Netflix. I found it in my suggestions and thought the premise was intriguing so I decided to give it a watch. I ended up binging the entire season. It won't likely get a second season but it seems the writers planned on it just being a one off.

It's pretty good but it gets pretty slow in some of the middle episodes. Liked it. Didn't love it.

Dark or 12 monkeys. Bodies didn't start off great but that was also pretty good. Anything time travel has a 10x multiplier for how I judge it though tbh.

I really enjoyed the 12 monkeys series as well. The movie is great.

Timecrimes

Was looking for this! I think a lot of people have missed this one because it's in spanish, but it's really good!

Tv show: Tripped a great watch, low-ish budget but very well done. Starts off as kind of a stoner comedy but gets way deeper, while still being fun. Also it's more of a dimension travel show rather than time travel.

Movie: Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel probably my favourite time travel movie, heaps of fun and the actors & story are great.

Movie: Primer a pretty smart movie, I think the directors (who also starred) were scientists so the story is quite grounded in how time travel would (likely) work out.

Movie: Time Lapse a gripping movie about a camera that can show the future, mostly filmed in one house. A good watch.

Ok, so I kinda slipped right over your post looking for titles, but didn't realize that I had forgotten 3 of my favorites and you have them right here. FAQ, Primer, and Time Lapse. Time Lapse in particular I have been trying to remember the name of for years.
- I was originally just posting about the tv show Tripped, then the rest came back to me and remembered how great they were. Will have to rewatch them all again.
  Have you seen Timecrimes? it's a Spanish language film but absolutely fantastic, I highly recommend it.

Time Trap (2017). It’s a bit campy and a fun watch.

I hate that the end of the movie is the beginning of a much more interesting movie! I wanna see it!

Groundhog Day

Tenet. I know it became fashionable to hate it, but it's my favorite Christopher Nolan movie because it's just fun to watch, which is not common with Nolan movies.

I think John David Washington and Robert Pattinson have great chemistry. You need to be comfortable with being clueless about what's happening because the story is told from the limited perspective of the main character. If he doesn't know, the audience doesn't know. When he finds out, you find out. So what the movie seems to be "about" shifts a few times based on his perspective and his assumptions.

Yes, it's clearly just an excuse for Christopher Nolan to indulge in impossible looking practical effects scenes and I love it.

"indulge" is a great word here, I think that's a word I had trouble finding to describe this- it's very indulgent. For me, there's something about the simplicity of the time traveling mechanic that hits the right notes. :::spoiler Slight spoilers? Time traveling is just "inverting" in time, and there are no flashy special effects for the actual inversion, just walking through the "turnstile". When the protagonist steps out into the world after being inverted, the sense of familiarity combined with the eerie sense of something being off (everything moving backwards, haha) just struck a nerve for me, it felt so visceral :::

Donnie Darko

28:06:42:12

A novella, so against the rules: This Is How You Lose The Time War

Since it's letters exchanged between adversaries, it'd be rough to translate to visual media.

Rough, but not impossible. Isn't the Frankenstein's monster book a collection of letters as well? It's either that one or some other classical horror story..
Edit: Dracula. Thanks to the fellow lemming who replied below.
- Dracula, by Bram Stoker. Early films of the story took the events told in the letters and made it into a regular film. That process would miss a lot of TIHYLTTW
  However, there are techniques that could work well. I imagine lots of voice-over montages.
Recommended by Bigolas Dickolas!

Project Lazarus...and steins gate has already been said but both are fantastic.

While “The Butterfly Effect” was all right, Erased (both the anime and the live action series) really polished the concept and ran with it. It’s very rare for me to have praise for a live-action version of anything anime, but it gives strong S1 Stranger Things vibes while being incredibly different.

Time Machine, the 1960 one with Rod Taylor. I love that machine!

Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)

Making the reader understand nonlinear time by describing the way humans experience linear time (traveling along train tracks, at a set speed, only able to look forward) was absolutely brilliant. Hell, I still sorta remember that part and I haven’t read the book in decades.

The Time Machine (2002) and the Back to the Future collection.

Voyagers. Early 80s with a similar idea to Quantum Leap. I was at a very influential age and absolutely loved this show. It was cut short after the tragic death of the lead actor.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083500

Voyagers had been cancelled well before Jon Erik Hexum's death, he died (killed himself, really) on the set of his next show.

Terminator 2

Prisoner of Azkaban was for me the only good Harry Potter movie, because I dig time travel movies

I went to see it reluctantly with a date (I'm not a fan of HP), and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, precisely for how well the time travel part was done.
Ditto. Literally the only thing out of that franchise that I've enoyed

Doctor Who. “Modern” series or the “Old” ones. I just love it.

I really enjoyed these specials with Tennant and Tate.
- They are my favorite.
  https://youtu.be/WxB1gB6K-2A?si=_reE3cNkJGCzNk8d
- Yes, me too and I loved the last one with them bringing the Toymaker back. Really looking forward to more of Ncuti Gatwa.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time!! It's my favorite anime movie and time travel movie. It wasn't widely released in the US though so the dvd is EXPENSIVE.

Just because It hasn't been mentioned yet: Terra Nova. It's a shame it had to be cancelled because of Spielberg's ego.

Spielberg's ego?
- The series creators wanted to film the series in Hawaii. But another little dino project was also filmed on that location: Spielberg's Jurassic Park. Spielberg also happened to be a producer of Terra Nova. He didn't want Terra Nova to be filmed on Hawaii out of fear it would be too similar to Jurassic Park and he practically vetoed it away. This forced the creators to look elsewhere and i believe they settled on New Zealand. The problem however was that it was massively more expensive to film a series there. The costs eventually canned the series.

I'll tell you yesterday

Mega Time Squad (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5758726/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk)

No spoilers just watch.

Project Almanac

Omg, so glad this one is here. I am looking for 2 more before I post.

Goodnight Sweetheart is just the best.

Somewhere in Time, which someone already mentioned. I wish I liked it more, but it gets credit because the Jack Finney book Time and Again, which it is very loosely inspired by, is one of the best time travel stories ever.

And Continuum. Not because it's the greatest, but no one had mentioned it yet, and this thread could be a great reference for anyone in the future. No pun intended.

Synchronic starring Anthony Mackie was pretty good, I thought

I thought it was pretty good, but maybe a little rushed in the scenes where he's putting together what the drug is doing. Also, I saw this after seeing Spring and The Endless by the same writer/ director team and I really enjoyed those. If you haven't seen them and liked Synchronic, I highly recommend both.

Wanna guess what my favourite time travel show is?

Doctor Who of course ;-)
- Was it that obvious? Lol

Time cop

it isn't time travel, but Counterpart is a very similar trip.. incredible cast and story..

Phenomenal

Can't believe nobody has mentioned "Needle in a Time stack" (2021).

Oh wait. Yes I can.

But seriously though, I'll throw a real answer out there. It's not my favorite by a long stretch, but it's worth a watch IMO: Paradox (2016). The writing is bad, the acting is bad, and the special effects are literally laughable, but the story and concept are actually fairly fresh and interesting. Good if you're in the mood for a semi-thought-provoking B-movie.

Not my absolute fAvorite but I think most time travel fans would appreciate this absolute gem of a movie: I'll Follow You Down.

It's dark beautiful and underappreciated.

Better than movies, read Phillip k dick stories. So many of them became movies. Minority Report (2002) was a decent adaptation. Paycheck is truly great story, but terrible movie. A Little Something For Us Temponauts has not been ruined by hollywood yet. Its a really good time travel story.

You are welcome to start separate lemme post about favorite genre books, this posts is only about movies & tv shows. Thank you.
- There are two movies in there

Time Warp Trilogy — look it up on YouTube. Star Trek fan production, but some of the best time travel stories ever produced.

Soul Reaver (Legacy of Kain series) is a game series, does it count?

Thank you for posting this. That was one of my favorite games growing up, I thought I was the only one left who remembered it. That mechanic was genius, switching between both parallel worlds and making changes that affected both so that both stories could progress. It must have been conceptualized by a student of physics who wanted to hold and feel the multiple parallel universe theory. That game alone had to have inspired its generation into science.

Gunbuster

I can't believe no one else has said this already. smdh my damn head

Technically not a time travel show, but it is my favorite show of time travel: "White Tulip" (Fringe S02 E17)

That's a great one. Peter Weller is awesome!

Men in Black 3 (2017)

Sliders 1995-2000

Lots of great recs already. Coherence is good, unmentioned here I think https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherence_(film)

The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008) Really good Terminator universe tv series. Such a shame it was not continued.

Time Cop

12 Monkeys.

It wasn't the best show, but Sliders had an episode where they visited a time continuum of earth where women ran everything and men were meek and subservient. The episode highlighted what it would be like if there were sexualized expectations for men's clothes, if workplace harassment of men were normalized and was excruciatingly accurate in it. For a show 30 years ago that I watched probably 3 episodes of, it's still stuck in my head because of how far ahead of the TV curve it was with subject matter and writing.

Old man’s war by John Scalzi

Has that happened already? I thought Netflix was sitting on it.
- There's also no time travelling in Old Man's War. (listening to book 5 right now)
  He must've misread the title. Certainly misread the book.

Just finished season 2 of The Lazarus Project. Great series and plenty of time crossings to keep you thinking about the character journeys (who's where and when!).

Time After Time. Somewhere In Time.

Time After Time is underrated. Mary Steenburgen and Malcolm McDowell. McDowell, playing H.G. Wells, invents the Time Machine, and then Jack the Ripper uses it to go to the future. H.G. Wells follows him to stop him, and he meets Steenburgen in “modern” times (the then-current 1980’s.)
Fun movie - a sci-fi thriller, I guess you’d call it. Still one of my favorites, too.

Summertime Rendering (anime)

I don't wanna spoil stuff, just please give it a chance and watch the first ep. It'll be enough to hook you in.

All i say is that it's a rare example of an anime with a finished story, 1 season is all there is, and that enough reason to give it a chance.

Idk if this counts, but Alan Becker recently released Animation vs Physics, and ironically, it imcludes time travel. So I guess it does count.

Why is that ironic?
- Because physics. Yeah I'm bad at describing things. Please send me downvotes.

Back to the Future is the only correct answer.

I can’t count on my fingers how many times I’ve seen that fucking movie reprise on television. Way too overplayed that it ruined the film series for me.