| Les Maîtres du temps | |
| Director: | René LalouxTibor Hernádi (technical director) |
| Producer: | Miklós Salunsinsky |
| Starring: | Jean ValmontMichel EliasFrédéric LegrosYves-Marie MaurinMonique ThierrySady Rebbot |
| Music: | Jean-Pierre BourtayrePierre TardyChristian Zanesi |
| Cinematography: | Zoltán BacsóAndrás KlauszMihály KovácsÁrpád Lossonczy |
| Editing: | Dominique Boischot |
| Studio: | TélécipTF1 Films ProductionWestdeutscher RundfunkSüdwestfunkRadio-Télévision Suisse RomandeBritish Broadcasting CorporationPannónia FilmstúdióHungarofilm |
| Distributor: | Compagnie Commerciale Française Cinématographique |
| Runtime: | 79 minutes |
| Language: | French |
Les Maîtres du temps (The Masters of Time, Time Masters; Herrscher der Zeit in German; Az idő urai in Hungarian) is a 1982 independent animated science fiction film directed by René Laloux and designed by Mœbius. It is based on the 1958 science fiction novel L'Orphelin de Perdide (The Orphan of Perdide) by Stefan Wul.[1]
The film centres on a boy, Piel, who is stranded on Perdide, a desert planet where giant killer hornets live. He awaits rescue by the space pilot Jaffar, the exiled prince Matton, his sister Belle and Jaffar's old friend Silbad who are trying to reach Perdide and save Piel before it is too late.
A man named Claude drives a vehicle across the planet Perdide. He sends a message to his friend Jaffar, telling him that his wife Annie was killed by indigenous monster hornets. After a crash wrecks his vehicle and he cannot extricate himself, Claude lets his son Piel down from the wreckage and hands him an interstellar transceiver, telling him that it is named "Mike" and will talk to him, and to do whatever Mike tells him to do. After Claude sends Piel to the Dolongs, a nearby forest which repulses the hornets, the vehicle explodes.
On his spaceship, Jaffar receives Claude's last message. Before heading for Perdide, he decides to seek out his friend Silbad, who has experience in living on Perdide. Jaffar's passengers, Prince Matton and his sister, Princess Belle, have been deposed from their planet; they bring with them a treasure the Prince took along to fund his restoration. Matton hates being diverted.
Jaffar, Silbad, Matton and Belle begin communicating with Piel to give him advice. On Silbad's planet, they witness the metamorphosis of an organism into multiple empathic, sentient homunculi, two of whom, Yula and Jad, stow away on Jaffar's spacecraft seeking adventure. Unbeknownst to everyone, Yula and Jad play with and then dispose of the treasure via the airlock. Matton nearly convinces Piel to drown himself in a lake, but is discovered by Belle. She stuns Matton and talks Piel to safety.
Jaffar plans to use the gravitational pull of the Blue Comet to reach Perdide. In order to rendezvous with it, Jaffar pilots his craft to the planet Gamma 10. Matton escapes in a shuttlecraft to the surface of Gamma 10, which is inhabited by identical angels. They capture both Matton and Jaffar, who followed in a space lifeboat, and intend to throw them into the amorphous being which controls the planet. Although they cannot rescue Jaffar, Yula and Jad forewarn him: As they contact the being, its victims get dominated by it, lose all sense of individuality and become angels. They instruct Jaffar and Matton to resist being assimilated by exuding all the hate and contempt they can muster. Matton leaps into the being and sacrifices himself, destroying the creature and causing the angels to revert to their original forms.
Rescued by Yula and Jad, the former captives are taken onboard Jaffar's ship. Meanwhile, Piel befriends a local creature, a hyponiterix, which accompanies him. A patrol cruiser of the Interplanetary Reform catches up with Jaffar's ship, pursuing the royals and the treasure Matton stole. Jaffar considers that the rescued spacefarers from Gamma 10 should hijack the Reform cruiser and take it for themselves. During the discussion of this plan, one of the rescued from Gamma 10, Onyx the Digeed of Gnaz, is revealed to be able to change his shape to resemble any object. Onyx will impersonate the missing treasure, allowing the escapees to access the Reformist ship.
Jaffar's vessel is boarded, and as he presents the "captured" pirates and the fake treasure to the Reform commander, no one can converse with Piel, who begins to wander without supervision. Jaffar's crew later attempt to contact Piel, who has lost his transceiver and the hyponiterix inside a cave filled with predatory tentacles. Despondent, Piel wanders back to the lakeside, which takes him out of the forest, and is attacked by the hornets which killed his parents. Jaffar's ship closes on her destination, but the planet is being transported through time by a race of aliens known as the Masters of Time. Perdide and everything on it, including Piel, is sent back 60 years through time.
The effect of time travel renders the unprotected crew of Jaffar's ship unconscious. They awake in a space-station, where they have been treated, but Silbad is dying. Yula and Jad telepathically discover that Silbad is actually a now-elderly Piel. At the time Perdide was displaced, Piel was nearly killed by the hornets before a passing spacefarer, who was investigating this recently appearing planet, came to his rescue. However, due to his trauma, Piel lost his childhood memories. Shortly after this revelation, Silbad dies. His funeral is attended by a Master of Time.
The motion picture story is based on the novel L'Orphelin de Perdide (1958) by the French writer Stefan Wul.
In the original novel, the character of Piel was also named Claude, like his father. Laloux changed this to distinguish father and son.[2]
The BBC (who were co-producers) aired an English-language dubbed version in 1987 and 1991 called Time Masters, featuring, amongst others, the voice of Ray Brooks.
Directed by René Laloux, the film was produced largely at the Pannonia Film Studio in Hungary. The visual design was based on the art of Mœbius, otherwise known as Jean Giraud.
Several versions have been released on DVD: