Arthurians, Time Cops and Time Chasers: Most of This Week’s Time-Travel Movies (#SFWApro)

ARTHUR’S QUEST (1999) is an unusual time-travel film for having Arthurian characters come to the present rather than modern-day characters traveling back to their era. After the fall of Uther (Zach Galligan), Merlin (Arye Grosse) hides little Arthur from Morgana (Catherine Oxenberg) in the present with kindly waitress Alexandra Paul, then returns a decade later  to find Arthur is a moody teen with no interest in fulfilling his destiny, regardless of the damage to history. A competent comedy, though not a first rate one. “After 15 years, you’ve found a shoe that fits—wear it.”

BUGS BUNNY IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT (1978) is a TV special in which Bugs’ trip to the Georgia Peanut Festival lands him in King Daffy’s Camelot (“I shouldn’t have asked Ray Bradbury for directions!”), where realizes what movie he’s in (“Well, I’m definitely not Joan of Arc!”) and outwits Elmer du Fudde and Merlin (Yosemite Sam) to become king himself. Typically goofy, down to the credits acknowledging Chuck Jones as the “plagiarizer” of Twain. While this is technically just a short, I’ll include it if space allows. With Mel Blancs doing everyone’s voice. “It’s funny, I somehow never thought of King Arthur as a duck!”

TIMECOP (1994) is surprisingly good despite starring Jean-Claude van Damme as the time policeman who realizes his agency’s senate watchdog (Ron Liebman) is using time travel to raise a war chest for his presidential run—and that in the process of eliminating his enemies, was responsible for the death of van Damme’s wife Mia Sara. Nicely plotted, even if van Damme is almost as wooden as Sarah and it handles the time paradoxes well. “I’m an ambitious, Harvard-educated visionary who deserves to be the most powerful man in the world.”

Apparently the government never improved its oversight program, as TIMECOP: The Berlin Decision (2003) has another TEC agent (Brandon Jason Lee) in 2025 fighting another corrupt watchdog, though a more selfless one seeking to fix time by shooting Hitler and the like. Less well written than the original (characters who get erased turn to dust a la Trancers) and heavier on chop-socky action scenes. However I did like the fact that while the alternative timeline mid-movie is war-ravaged, we never actually learn anything about it as nobody sees the need for exposition. “If a timecop does his job right, nobody knows except him.”

Unfortunately, I was only able to find TIME CHASERS (1994) in the MST3K edition, which confirms that even when they’re making fun of a really crappy film, I can’t stand to hear those guys yammer (and it strikes me a lot of their pop culture references will be incomprehensible as time passes). The film itself is a low-budget entry in the Dangers of Tampering With Time subgenre, as an ambitious researcher discovers that by selling out to a high-powered tech firm, he’s turned the idyllic future of 2041 (which looks suspiciously 1990s) into an urban hellhole of warring gangs; can he put right what he’s put wrong? This has a couple of good moments, but they’re outweighed by the dumb ones—why bother to take the hero back to 1777 to dump the body rather than just trapping him in the future say? It still deserves better than Crow and Robo. “Who said you were the right hands?”