All The Time Travel Movies

Over the last decade, I have been working on accumulating all the time-travel movies that exist.

I know that streaming has taken over the world, and although it is nice to be able to easily watch so many movies, it is frustrating not to know when a certain provider will have a specific movie. I also want to make a series of YouTube videos that go through every movie.

But, how do you find “every” time-travel movie that exists?

The Definition

Before you can study something, you must define that something. A movie is time travel if a significant plot piece uses time travel as an element. For example, Superman (1978) is a time-travel movie. Even though most of the movie has nothing to do with time travel, it is used to resolve a major conflict. While a movie like Spaceballs that uses “fast-forward” and “ludicrous speed,” are simply gags and don’t truly change the outcomes of the movie.

I also don’t consider alternate future time travel. For example, It’s a Wonderful Life is not time travel. George does not actually interact in the different timelines, only witnessing it. A time-loop movie like Groundhog Day does have the main actor actually experience the events of each day if he doesn’t have control over the time element.

I consider movies like Frequency and Interstellar time-travel, even though they are more about communication through time.

I do not consider movies like Arrival, Knowing, Minority Report, Next, or The Dead Zone as time travel because they are about precognition and no actual time manipulation in the past or future.

I also do not consider reincarnation or talking with the dead to be time travel. Therefore, Cloud Atlas, Infinite, Dead Again, and The Sixth Sense are excluded.

Finally, there is the Encino Man rule. A movie where someone is just in hibernation and wakes up in the future, I do not consider time travel. Is sleep time travel? So while Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery is not a time-travel movie, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me is clearly a time-travel movie as a time machine, and the main character is using it as a central plot device.

A time-travel movie is a film in which the plot involves characters or objects traveling to the past or future or experiencing time in a non-linear, manipulated, or distorted way, often through the use of technology, supernatural forces, or inherent abilities.

How to Find Them

Now I have a general idea of what makes a “time-travel” movie. I now need to actually find them. I used the TMDB API as a starting point. Seeing the massive amount of movies possible. I realized I needed another criterion. I’m not trying to collect literally ALL time-travel movies, at least not anytime soon. I wanted movies people had heard of and, preferably, got a wide release in theaters. I love indie movies like Primer and want to include those, but a made-for-TV movie on the hallmark channel is not a must-watch.

After getting a list of around 100 movies, I then used AI to ask if there were movies I was missing. It successfully repeated movies I already had and then movies I excluded by my definition, but it did find some hidden gems.

This wasn’t a simple task-it took me multiple hours of back-and-forth debate on whether the movie was about time travel. Then, my oldest child showed me this Reddit post by a user who watched 135 Time Loop movies. It had at least seventy movies that were not on my list.

So What’s The List?

I have listed below all 355 time-travel movies that meet my criteria. I only own 124 of these movies.

I welcome any and all discussion on the completeness and correctness of this list. I may include cryosleep or premonition movies to make it a clean 365 for a film a day.