In the year 1899, Dr. Alexander Hartdegen (Pearce) is a young inventor teaching at Columbia University in New York City. Unlike his conservative friend David Philby (Addy), Alexander would rather do pure research than conform to a culture in which all men wear "identical bowler hats". After his sweetheart Emma (Guillory) is killed by a robber, he devotes himself to building a time machine in order to save her. When the machine is completed four years later, he travels back to 1899 and prevents her death by the robber, but now she is killed by a horse and carriage.
Seeing that one means of Emma's death has been replaced by another, Alexander goes to the year 2030 to find out whether her life can be saved. At the New York Public Library, he talks with Vox 114 (Jones), a holographic AI librarian, but finds no information on time travel. He then continues into the future until 2037, where detonations on the Moon are destroying the city. When he restarts the machine to avoid falling debris, he is knocked unconscious and travels to the year 802,701 before waking up.
At this point in time, human civilization has reverted to a primitive lifestyle. The survivors, called "Eloi", live on the sides of cliffs on what remains of Manhattan. Alexander stops the time machine and is nursed back to health by a woman named Mara (Samantha Mumba), one of the few Eloi who speak English. One night, Alexander and Mara's young brother Kalen (Omero Mumba) dream of a frightening, jagged-toothed face, and the next day, the Eloi are attacked and Mara is dragged underground by ape-like monsters called "Morlocks" that hunt the Eloi for food. In order to rescue her, Kalen leads Alexander to Vox 114, which is still functioning.
After Vox tells Alexander how to find the Morlocks, he enters their underground realm through an opening that resembles the face in his nightmare, but he is captured and thrown into an area where Mara sits in a cage. There he meets an intelligent, humanoid Über-Morlock (Irons), who explains that Morlocks are the evolutionary descendants of the humans who stayed underground after the Moon broke apart, while Eloi are evolved from those who remained on the surface. Über-Morlocks are a caste of telepaths who rule the monsters that prey on Eloi.
Meanwhile, the Morlocks have brought the time machine underground. After the Über-Morlock explains that Alexander cannot alter Emma's fate because her death is what drove him to build the time machine in the first place, Alexander gets into the machine to return home. However, he suddenly pulls the Über-Morlock into the machine, which carries them into the future as they fight. The Über-Morlock dies by rapidly aging when Alexander pushes him outside of the machine's sphere of influence. Alexander then stops in the year 635,427,810, revealing a harsh, rust-colored sky over a wasteland of Morlock caves.
Finally accepting that he cannot save Emma, Alexander travels back to rescue Mara. After freeing her, he starts the time machine and jams its gears, creating a violent distortion in time. Alexander and Mara escape to the surface as a huge explosion destroys the Morlocks and their caves. With the time machine gone, Alexander begins a new life with Mara and the Eloi. The film ends with two scenes in the same location displayed in parallel: While Alexander shows Mara and Kalen a field that was once his home, Philby and Alexander's housekeeper sadly discuss his absence and Philby throws away his own bowler hat.
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