10 Best Movies & Shows About Time Travel, Ranked

Time travel is a topic popularized by works of fiction and is used as a plot device for exploring the impermanence of life, the impossibility of second chances, and the inevitability of events. It’s also used to increase the stakes in a story and as a way of expanding the field on which characters may adventure.

There are a few different kinds of time travel that have been portrayed in movies and television, with varying levels of agency given to the characters. In some stories, events in the past can be changed, but not in others. Here is a list of 10 of the best movies about time travel.

10 About Time (2013)

Domhnall Gleeson plays a young man who discovers that he has the ability to travel back in time. He is a hopeless romantic and uses his ability to attempt to improve his love life.

When he meets the woman he will marry, he finds from this point on that time travel can be a blessing and a curse. It’s a sweet, touching movie about living in the present with the ones that you love.

9 Edge Of Tomorrow (2014)

The Edge of Tomorrow plays out like Groundhog Day in a futuristic war zone. Tom Cruise plays a man who keeps reliving the same day, which results in his death and resurrection that restarts the loop over and over.

It’s an exciting sci-fi, action-adventure movie that manages to make a relatively dated trope feel fresh again.

8 X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014)

This entry in the X-Men franchise begins in a future where mutants are being hunted down by robots. Logan (Hugh Jackman) is sent back in time to prevent the invention of these killing machines.

The film jumps back and forth between Logan’s mission and the present, where the older mutants desperately try to survive until the damage can be undone. Logan succeeds in his quest and wakes up back in a better future.

7 The Terminator (1984)

The Terminator is not only one of the most iconic time travel movies of all time, but widely considered to be one of the most influential films ever made. The Terminator is sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor before she can give birth to the future leader of the fight against the robots.

Another man is sent back to protect Sarah from the Terminator, and the two fall in love. It turns out that this man, Kyle, is the father of Sarah’s son. It’s an interesting twist on the genre, in that audiences first believe that changing the past is possible, until the end shows that these events always had to happen.

6 Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)

Here is an example of a sequel that just might be better than the original. The audience returns to characters they’re familiar with, but nothing is as it seems at first.

The Terminator returns, but has been reprogrammed to protect John, and Sarah Connor is being held in a mental hospital, even though the audience knows she is telling the truth about the cyborgs trying to kill her son. The Terminator successfully completes his mission to protect John, before terminating himself. It’s a surprisingly sweet return to a violent, action-packed story.

5 Back To The Future (1985)

Back to the Future tells the story of a kid coming to appreciate his parents through time travel. Marty McFly travels back in time to when his parents were his age, and struggles not to change the future irrevocably.

He struggles to return to the future, only to quickly embark on his next time-traveling adventure, to be seen in the next installment of the franchise.

4 Looper (2012)

Rian Johnson possesses the extraordinary gift of elevating whatever genre he chooses to work in. Looper takes place in a universe where contracted killers murder people sent back in time. Their contract is complete when they have “closed the loop” by killing their future selves.

Time travel is used as a means of changing the past in order to change the future, and the protagonist, Joe, of fights to find and kill his future self, who has returned with the intention of killing a young boy who will grow up to be responsible for the death of his wife. Joe meets and becomes close to the young boy and his mother, and makes a powerful decision that changes the future for everyone.

3 Arrival (2016)

Arrival is a powerful sci-fi drama about love and grief. The film explores the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, with the protagonist having strange dreams while learning an alien language that turns out to be memories of her future.

It’s beautifully written, scored, and acted and it leaves the audience with heartbreaking and thought-provoking questions that stay with everyone long after viewing.

2 Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban (2004)

The third installment in the Harry Potter film series marked a tonal shift from the previous two entries. Though still children, Harry, Hermione, and Ron had been through enough traumatizing experiences that a sense of danger and sadness hung over their heads, even as the story remained one of adventure and friendship.

The Prisoner of Azkaban is not overtly a story about time travel, but time travel is woven intricately and inextricably into the tale in a way that pays off wonderfully in the last act.

1 Dark (2017 – 2020)

Dark‘s three-season run is an excellent example of a concisely told story in an episodic format. It all begins with the disappearance of a young boy in the German town of Winden.

As characters search for answers, more questions are raised and the nature of time travel becomes more and more complicated and intricate. This makes for a truly masterful series finale that closes every loop and unravels every thread the show has introduced.

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