The plot of
Timerider is that the government is developing a time machine. As part of this project they set up their time machine in the middle of a desert and then stand back to activate it remotely. Enter our hero who is riding a motorcycle in some kind of race and he's lost. He stops right next to the machine just as it goes off. He rides away not realizing that he's now 100 years in the past.
Siskel and Ebert gave this move thumbs down for two reasons, neither of which is fair. First, they point out that our hero never figures out that he's been zapped back in time. Really? He's unaware that he rode past a time machine, so which is more logical? "Gee, I've been zapped back in time by a century!" or "Boy, I've fallen in with some real hicks!" Obviously that latter makes more sense.
The second unfair criticism is that at the beginning of the movie he's wearing a necklace. This gets left in the past when he gets returned to the present. But the necklace is a family heirloom that he inherited. Which means that the necklace is a thing which was never made. The criticism is unfair because "the thing that was never made" appears in many time travel movies. An excellent example is from
The Terminator. Although the scene is cut from the movie the DVD extras include a scene where technicians from Cyberdyne Systems extract a chip from the terminator's crushed skull. The chip is a thing that was never made.
Spoiler Alert! Our hero from
Timerider is his own great grandfather!
As for
Predestination I consider it to be the best time-travel movie ever. To tell you anything about it would be to give away the entire movie. (Sorry!) Trust me. I will tell you this much. It has "the thing that was never made" in spades.
