Highest-Rated Movies about 'Altering History'

Back to the Future (1985), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), The Terminator (1984), Twelve Monkeys (1995), Donnie Darko (2001), Back to the Future Part II (1989), The Butterfly Effect (2004) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Altering History movies.

#1. Back to the Future (1985)

Storyline: Marty McFly, a typical American teenager of the Eighties, is accidentally sent back to 1955 in a plutonium-powered DeLorean "time machine" invented by a slightly mad scientist. During his often hysterical, always amazing trip back in time, Marty must make certain his teenage parents-to-be meet and fall in love - so he can get back to the future.

Plot Keywords: time travel, time machine, future, time travel comedy, altering history, clock tower, alternate history ...

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#2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Storyline: Over 10 years have passed since the first robot called The Terminator tried to kill Sarah Connor and her unborn son, John. The man who will become the future leader of the human resistance against the Machines is now a healthy young boy. However, another Terminator, called the T-1000, is sent back through time by the supercomputer Skynet. This new Terminator is more advanced and more powerful than its predecessor and its mission is to kill John Connor when he's still a child. However, Sarah and John do not have to face the threat of the T-1000 alone. Another Terminator (identical to the same model that tried and failed to kill Sarah Conner in 1984) is also sent back through time. This Terminator has been reprogrammed by the future Resistance on the orders of adult John. This Terminator's mission is to protect John and Sarah Connor at all costs. The battle for tomorrow has begun.

Plot Keywords: time travel, male nudity, villain turns good, mother son relationship, artificial intelligence, sequel, future ...

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#3. X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Storyline: In the future, the mutants and the humans who help them are slaughtered by powerful robots named Sentinels. Professor Xavier, Wolverine, Magneto, Storm, Kitty Pryde, and her friends meet at a monastery in China and Xavier explains that the invincible Sentinels were created using the DNA of Mystique that was captured in 1973 when she tried to assassinate their creator Dr. Bolivar Trask. Xavier tells that their only chance is return to 1973 using Pryde's ability to join Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr to convince Mystique to give up her intention. However, only Wolverine can withstand the damages of the time travel. Will he succeed in stopping Mystique and the Sentinel Program, and save the mutants and their human friends from annihilation?

Plot Keywords: time travel, dystopia, time paradox, super strength, supernatural power, sequel, dark future ...

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#4. The Terminator (1984)

Storyline: A cyborg is sent from the future on a deadly mission. He has to kill Sarah Connor, a young woman whose life will have a great significance in years to come. Sarah has only one protector - Kyle Reese - also sent from the future. The Terminator uses his exceptional intelligence and strength to find Sarah, but is there any way to stop the seemingly indestructible cyborg ?

Plot Keywords: future war, cyborg, time travel, robotics, loss of loved one, car chase, bare breasts ...

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#5. Twelve Monkeys (1995)

Storyline: An intense film about time travel, this Sci-Fi entry was directed by Terry Gilliam, a member of the comedy troupe Monty Python. The film stars Bruce Willis as James Cole, a prisoner of the state in the year 2035 who can earn parole if he agrees to travel back in time and thwart a devastating plague. The virus has wiped out most of the Earth's population and the remainder live underground because the air is poisonous. Returning to the year 1990, six years before the start of the plague, Cole is soon imprisoned in a psychiatric facility because his warnings sound like mad ravings. There he meets a scientist named Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) and Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), the mad son of an eminent virologist (Christopher Plummer). Cole is returned by the authorities to the year 2035, and finally ends up at his intended destination in 1996. He kidnaps Dr. Railly in order to enlist her help in his quest. Cole discovers graffiti by an apparent animal rights group called the Army ...

Plot Keywords: time travel, virus, mental institution, underground, psychiatrist, plague, madness ...

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#6. Donnie Darko (2001)

Storyline: Donnie Darko doesn't get along too well with his family, his teachers, and his classmates; but he does manage to find a sympathetic friend in Gretchen, who agrees to date him. He has a compassionate psychiatrist, who discovers hypnosis is the means to unlock hidden secrets. His other companion may not be a true ally. Donnie has a friend named Frank, a large bunny which only Donnie can see. When an engine falls off a plane and destroys his bedroom, Donnie is not there. Both the event, and Donnie's escape, seem to have been caused by supernatural events. Donnie's mental illness, if such it is, may never allow him to find out for sure.

Plot Keywords: surrealism, parallel universe, time travel, masturbation, schizophrenia, psychology, child pornography ...

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#7. Back to the Future Part II (1989)

Storyline: Marty McFly has only just gotten back from the past, when he is once again picked up by Dr. Emmett Brown and sent through time to the future. Marty's job in the future is to pose as his own son to prevent him from being thrown in prison. Unfortunately, things get worse when the future changes the present.

Plot Keywords: second part, year 1955, cartoon on tv, girl next door, kicked in the crotch, crotch grab, pepsi ...

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#8. The Butterfly Effect (2004)

Storyline: Evan Treborn grows up in a small town with his single, working mother and his friends. He suffers from memory blackouts where he suddenly finds himself somewhere else, confused. Evan's friends and mother hardly believe him, thinking he makes it up just to get out of trouble. As Evan grows up he has fewer of these blackouts until he seems to have recovered. Since the age of seven he has written a diary of his blackout moments so he can remember what happens. One day at college he starts to read one of his old diaries, and suddenly a flashback hits him like a brick!

Plot Keywords: time travel, love, child pornography, surprise ending, reading, dog, memory ...

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#9. The Time Machine (1960)

Storyline: On January 5, 1900, a disheveled looking H.G. Wells - George to his friends - arrives late to his own dinner party. He tells his guests of his travels in his time machine, the work about which his friends knew. They were also unbelieving, and skeptical of any practical use if it did indeed work. George knew that his machine was stationary in geographic position, but he did not account for changes in what happens over time to that location. He also learns that the machine is not impervious and he is not immune to those who do not understand him or the machine's purpose. George tells his friends that he did not find the Utopian society he so wished had developed. He mentions specifically a civilization several thousand years into the future which consists of the subterranean morlocks and the surface dwelling eloi, who on first glance lead a carefree life. Despite all these issues, love can still bloom over the spread of millennia.

Plot Keywords: time machine, post apocalypse, dystopia, steampunk, based on novel, time travel, london england ...

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#10. Source Code (2011)

Storyline: Army Captain Colter Stevens finds himself working on a special program where his consciousness can be inserted into another human being. The only catch is can only be there for 8 minutes at any given time. That morning, a bomb exploded on a commuter train just outside Chicago. He occupies the body of teacher going to work on that train and is confused as to what he is doing or why he is there as his last memory is of flying his helicopter on a combat mission in Afghanistan. Those in charge of the program explain to him that there is a bomb on the train, and that he must locate it. More importantly, he must identify the bomber as another bombing is expected later that day. He is also told however that he cannot change the past and can only gather information. As he develops a liking for his traveling companion Christina, he sets out to test that theory.

Plot Keywords: time loop, train, surprise ending, psycho thriller, suspense, memory, bomber ...

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#11. Back to the Future Part III (1990)

Storyline: Stranded in 1955, Marty McFly receives written word from his friend, Doctor Emmett Brown, as to where can be found the DeLorean time machine. However, an unfortunate discovery prompts Marty to go to his friend's aid. Using the time machine, Marty travels to the old west where his friend has run afoul of a gang of thugs and has fallen in love with a local schoolteacher. Using the technology from the time, Marty and Emmett devise one last chance to send the two of them back to the future.

Plot Keywords: year 1955, woman, girl next door, part of trilogy, teenage boy, kiss, irish ...

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#12. Frequency (2000)

Storyline: A rare atmospheric phenomenon allows a New York City firefighter to communicate with his son 30 years in the future via HAM radio. The son uses this opportunity to warn the father of his impending death in a warehouse fire, and manages to save his life. However, what he does not realize is that changing history has triggered a new set of tragic events, including the murder of his mother. The two men must now work together, 30 years apart, to find the murderer before he strikes so that they can change history--again.

Plot Keywords: altering history, ham radio, alternate history, amateur radio, paranormal phenomena, false accusation, warehouse ...

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#13. Somewhere in Time (1980)

Storyline: Young writer Richard Collier is met on the opening night of his first play by an old lady who begs him to "Come back to me". Mystified, he tries to find out about her, and learns that she is a famous stage actress from the early 1900s, Elise McKenna. Becoming more and more obsessed with her, he manages, by self hypnosis, to travel back in time where he meets her. They fall in love, a matching that is not appreciated by her manager. Can their love outlast the immense problems caused by their "time" difference? And can Richard remain in a time that is not his?

Plot Keywords: time travel, altering history, alternate history, deliberate cruelty, ghost, love triangle, mission ...

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#14. The Jacket (2005)

Storyline: The film centers on a wounded Gulf war veteran who returns to his native Vermont suffering from bouts of amnesia. He is hitching and gets picked up by a stranger, things go wrong when a cop pulls them over and is murdered by a stranger. The vet is wrongly accused of the killing and lands in an asylum. A disreputable doctor prescribes a course of experimental therapy, restraining him in a modified strength straight jacket-like device, and locks him away in a cadaver drawer in the basement morgue. During the course of his treatment, he gets flashbacks and visions of his future where he can foresee that he is to die in four days time; He just doesn't know how. And thus commences the classic race against time for this tortured veteran with an expiration date.

Plot Keywords: child uses a gun, time travel, premarital sex, insane asylum, strait jacket, christmas, alternate history ...

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#15. Time After Time (1979)

Storyline: It's 1893 London. Futurist H.G. Wells believes that the future holds a Utopian society. He also believes in time travel. He has just built a time machine which he is displaying to a group of skeptical friends, including surgeon Dr. John Leslie Stevenson. Unbeknown to Wells or anyone else among that circle, Stevenson is better known to the public as Jack the Ripper. Just as the police are about to capture Stevenson, he uses the time machine to escape, with Wells being the only one who knows what happened to him. Not telling anyone except his trusting housekeeper, Wells follows Stevenson in order to capture and bring him back to face justice. Where Stevenson has gone is 1979 San Francisco. There, Wells is dismayed to find that the future is not Utopia as he had predicted. But Wells is also picked up by a young woman named Amy Robbins. As Wells and Amy search for Stevenson, Stevenson conversely is after Wells to obtain the master key to the time machine. As Stevenson continues his ...

Plot Keywords: time machine, based on novel, london england, san francisco california, altering history, culture clash, bank ...

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