The 10 Best Time Manipulation Movies Ever Made
Time travel/time manipulation movies are some of my favorite movies of all time and they tend to only get better and better after multiple rewatches.
It takes a really good writer and storyteller to take the complexities of time travel and make a compelling story that’s entertaining and also challenges the audience.
Here are my picks for the Top 10 Best Time Manipulation Movies!
SPOILERS AHEAD…
10. X-Men: Days of Future Past (The Rogue Cut) (2014)
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 90% CRITIC RATING | 91% AUDIENCE RATING
“X-Men: Days of Future Past” features a dystopian future where mutants are on the brink of extinction and the remaining X-Men must fight against the unstoppable Sentinels before all of mutant-kind is wiped out.
Dr. Bolivar Trask used Rogue’s DNA to give the Sentinels the ability to steal mutant powers to make them more efficient killers.
In order to stop this all from happening, Kitty Pryde (Elliot Page) uses their powers to send Wolverine’s mind back to the 1970s in order to stop Trask from creating the Sentinels and save the future.
9. Avengers: Endgame (2019)
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 94% CRITIC RATING | 90% AUDIENCE RATING
“Avengers: Endgame” was the culmination of the MCU Infinity Saga and it delivered on every level.
After losing to Thanos at the end of “Avengers: Infinity War”, The Avengers must travel through the Quantum realm and travel back in time to retrieve the infinity stones and use them in order to bring back everyone that Thanos snapped away.
8. Looper (2012)
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 93% CRITIC RATING | 82% AUDIENCE RATING
“Looper” explores a world where time travel is used by the Mob to send people back in time to be assassinated by hired mercenaries called Loopers.
The film follows Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) living fast and enjoying life as a Looper until that fatal day came when his employers decided it was time to close his loop.
After learning that his older self intends to kill the Rainmaker as a child, Younger Joe makes the ultimate sacrifice to stop his future self from killing the Rainmaker’s mother after he realizes that his mother’s murder is the catalyst that turns Cid into the Rainmaker.
7. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 91% CRITIC RATING | 90% AUDIENCE RATING
“Edge of Tomorrow” takes the concept of films like “Groundhog Day” and elevates it to a new level in this time-bending sci-fi epic.
As Earth is under attack from these vicious monsters, we follow Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) as he gets stuck in a time loop and tries to use that power to find a way to defeat the Mimics before they wipe out every human on earth.
6. Interstellar (2014)
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 73% CRITIC RATING | 86% AUDIENCE RATING
“Interstellar” is set in a dystopian future in which humanity has used up all of the planet’s natural resources and their only hope of survival is to find another habitable planet using a wormhole created by 5th-dimensional humans to guide them to a new world.
The film follows former NASA pilot Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and a team of researchers as they travel through the wormhole and choose which of the three planets will be the new settlement for humanity. Along the way, the team encounters unexpected twists and turns and utilizes time dilation to increase the already ticking clock on humanity’s future.
5. Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (2013)
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 100% CRITIC RATING | 93% AUDIENCE RATING
“Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox” is one of my favorite time travel movies and brings one of my favorite comic storylines of all time to life.
After being taunted by his longtime rival Reverse Flash, Barry travels back in time and saves his mother from being murdered but when he returns to the present day, he notices that everything that he knew has been changed and the entire planet has become the battlefield for a war between the Atlanteans and the Amazons.
With the world on the brink of destruction, Barry must decide to go back in time and let his mother die or stand back and watch the world as we know it end.
4. Inception (2010)
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 87% CRITIC RATING | 91% AUDIENCE RATING
“Inception” is my second favorite Christopher Nolan movie of all time.
The film follows Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his team of extractors as they perform Inception on Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) while battling the defense of his subconscious, and trying to stay steps ahead of Cobb’s wife Mal (Marion Cotillard).
After Saito (Ken Watanabe) is fatally wounded the team must go levels deeper into the dream world to buy time to complete the mission and keep Saito alive.
In the waking world, 10 hours of reality equals 8.3 days in the dream world on the first level, 5.47 months on the second level, and 9.1 years on the third.
This time-bending masterpiece is filled with incredible performances from the entire cast, a brilliant script brought to life by Nolan himself, and Hans Zimmer’s captivating score is a driving force carrying you through the film.
3. Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 93% CRITIC RATING | 95% AUDIENCE RATING
'“T2: Judgement Day” is one of my top 5 favorite films of all time!
After the original T-800 failed to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), Skynet sends the shape-shifting liquid-metal T-1000 (Robert Patrick) back in time to kill John Connor (Edward Furlong) eleven years after the events of the first film.
In response, The Resistance sends back a reprogrammed T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to protect John from this new threat, and along the way, the two form an unexpected bond that leaves fans in tears when the T-800 was lowered into the smoldering metal.
Sarah Connor completely transforms from an innocent young woman working as a waitress in the first film into one of the most badass action heroes in movie history.
2. Tenet (2020)
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 69% CRITIC RATING | 76% AUDIENCE RATING
Christopher Nolan is always trying to push the boundaries of what can be done in a film and “Tenet” is a masterpiece of film-making and the art of manipulating time.
We follow the Protagonist (John David Washington) as he’s thrown into a mission to prevent World War III but not from the fear of a nuclear holocaust, but to stop Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh) and his partners in the future from using The Algorithm to reverse the flow of our planet’s entropy in an attempt to reverse the effects of the planet’s bleak future.
1. Arrival (2016)
ROTTEN TOMATOES: 94% CRITIC RATING | 82% AUDIENCE RATING
Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival” is a true marvel of modern cinema and stands as one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time.
When strange monolith-type spacecrafts arrive all over the planet, World leaders scramble to figure out their intentions and enlist the help of linguistic experts to find a way to communicate with them.
As Linguistics professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) learns more about these creatures and the way they communicate, she gains their ability to experience time non-linearly, an ability they want humans to use to help them in 3000 years.