Hello everyone and welcome back to this long running series. I attached myself to the At Odds with Wrestling podcast, especially to their Patreon exclusive podcast. Each and every week without a major wrestling pay per view, the hosts alternate assigning each other something wrestling related to discuss. This week’s assignment is the 1994 science fiction cult classic, Timecop. 

Now, the first and most obvious question will be, what does this have to do with wrestling? The movie is not about wrestling, nor does any wrestler appear in the movie. However, the owner and head booker of All Elite Wrestling, Tony Khan has introduced Timecop to the wrestling world. AEW has live television, but also tapes matches before or after those live shows to air at other times on other shows. Tony will come out to explain the wibbly wobbly timey wimey nature of TV airdates, and he will compare that to his favorite movie – Timecop. Thus Timecop has entered the wrestling narrative and now we will all watch and discuss it. 

This week was my first time ever viewing Timecop. I knew about it of course, but there are just so many movies that I’ve never seen. Many movies that family and friends assume I must have seen if not once, at least a hundred times. Timecop came out when I was a junior in high school and that was peak 90s extreme in comics and wrestling. There wasn’t time to watch movies when I had to buy everything from Image Comics plus whatever else Wizard magazine suggested, then also make time for the Monday Night War and stay up on whatever night ECW aired that week. 

Also I feel that as we get older, and especially if one goes to college, most of us pick a form of media that now has to be serious. I have friends who would only listen to deep meaningful music for years and avoided fun pop songs. I did the same with movies, then later (and for longer) with books. Why watch direct to VHS trash when I could watch cinema like My Beautiful Launderette or Babette’s Feast. Both of which are actually good, which is why I remember them, but also there’s room in our lives for the serious and the silly. 

Which brings me to this week during which I finally watched Timecop for the first time. And I had a blast. Super simple synopsis: Time travel is real and requires government oversight because too many people could have access to the technology and change the timeline. Jean Claude Van Damme is going to start working for this brand new time monitoring police agency but on the same day someone breaks into his house, beats him up, and the house explodes killing his wife as well. Fast forward 10 years later and Van Damme is very good at his job. He has to fix time travelers messing things up, including his own partner. That is how strong his character is, he won’t even adjust time for something that could benefit himself. However, not everyone has that same strong quality and we find out that a Senator has been sending himself and agents through time to change the course of history which results in increasing his wealth and power in the government. Van Damme risks it all to shut down this corrupt politician and along the way maybe helps course correct history in ways that give this movie a happy ending. 

It’s dumb, it’s cheap, there are giant plot holes, there are things that make no sense, it is very quickly edited. There is no room for subtlety. None of that is a complaint. Here’s the set up, let’s go, and there is a ton of punching, kicking, and semi futuristic gunshots along the way. This is a first ballot all time “guy movie”. 

I’ve seen hundreds of movies that I “had to see” or “mean something” that didn’t give me a tenth of the joy I had watching this. I started texting male friends, I finally watched Timecop. These texts were responded with either “about time” (no pun intended) or “I’ve never seen it” in which case I was now championing the movie. 

There’s no deeper meaning. There’s not a scene in which two women talk to each other. It looks like it was shot with made for cable in Canada quality. But sometimes you just want to watch a guy do splits and kill bad guys. The story makes a perfect loop. Which means for as much Swiss cheese bubble gum as the plot may be, there’s still a good story here. 

If anything the movie means more today than in 1994. The bad guy flat out says that the public will believe any lie with enough TV time. Timecop doesn’t get into the multiverse but there are heavy implications of alternate timelines and not just one that has been altered. Even a Timecop can’t afford a big beautiful house unless it’s a fixer upper. But most of all I think there is a lesson to be learned in the use of time. Using time to one’s greedy advantages leads to defeat. Accumulating wealth or power, or pretending to be something your not in the quest to appear “serious”, only leads to misery in the end. The split side of this is using your time for love, for friendship, for making your own life and the lives of those you care for better. The riches of coming home to smiling faces outweigh stealing gold coins in the 1800s.