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Movie: "Jumper"
Feb. 15th, 2008 10:59 pmI've settled on the perfect description for Jumper: it's an anime movie, the kind that comes after a series instead of before it. If you've ever seen movies like Escaflowne or X you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you never have, I'll give you an easy breakdown:
Take a tv show. One season, two seasons... say it's pretty cool and it's got interesting characters, and so they make a movie about it. But instead of making it a longer "episode" (Cowboy Bebop) or a coda to conclude the story, instead they remake the series: condence hours upon hours of character development and story and background and world-building and they crunch it into an hour and half of shallow, pointless characters and an incomprehensible plot surrounded by fucking awesome animation.
It also had crazy fun supernatural action scenes, an unbelievable love story based on childhood romance (oh, how well do anime fans know that trope), beautiful imagery, a never-explained band of fanatics out to exterminate the protagonist and everyone like him, and said protagonist was a dickhead. This is an anime.
Even though I enjoyed it, I'd still give it a 6/10 (my enjoyment factor and my sense of criticism are not codependent). Ultimately, Jumper was not a very good movie. But it is an amazing story concept, and it'd blow your mind as a tv show. Hell, it would your mind as a book series. There's so many ideas here, so much to draw from and play with. If the producers had the budget for a weekly series (which, looking at this movie, they would never), then I'd gamble that we could have something really original and cool. There's something very Highlander about the idea of people born with teleportation abilities living among us in secret and fighting a war against witchhunters. And given that I adored Highlander (which was also like an anime), of course I'm going to like this story. Given a decent writer and a better, longer plotline, you could really have something here.
The movie only covers the most shallow of ideas: robbing banks by never opening the vault, jumping to vacation beaches without paying for the plane flight, effortlessly moving from your American apartment to a European bar or a desert hideaway. Free money, free adventure, even free sex. The jumpers act like spoiled children and, somewhat like a self-fulfilling prophecy, get hunted down before they mature enough use their ideas for really cool stuff.
Could you jump into a space station?
Could you visit the bottom of the sea?
The surface of the moon?
Could you help stranded people?
Could you rescue hostages?
Could you become a world-class assassin?
Could you be the best motherfucking spy in the history of human espionage?
Could you be Santa Claus?
We don't get any of that. None of these characters ever sit down and think about what they really can do. It's all just shallow, immature stuff. Which would be fine for a little while, but people are never satisfied and I think even someone with the world at their fingertips would get tired of exotic vacations and start looking for more creative uses of their abilities. Like I said: it would make a cool tv show. It would make a cool novel series.
But it makes a lame movie.
EDIT: Apparently it's based on a book by Steven Gould. I don't think I want to read it, though... because if the book is like the movie, and not like what my wild imagination dreams it COULD be, then I'll only be disappointed. Maybe I'll skim it in the library stacks or something.
EDIT 2: Still thinking about being Santa Claus?
Take a tv show. One season, two seasons... say it's pretty cool and it's got interesting characters, and so they make a movie about it. But instead of making it a longer "episode" (Cowboy Bebop) or a coda to conclude the story, instead they remake the series: condence hours upon hours of character development and story and background and world-building and they crunch it into an hour and half of shallow, pointless characters and an incomprehensible plot surrounded by fucking awesome animation.
It also had crazy fun supernatural action scenes, an unbelievable love story based on childhood romance (oh, how well do anime fans know that trope), beautiful imagery, a never-explained band of fanatics out to exterminate the protagonist and everyone like him, and said protagonist was a dickhead. This is an anime.
Even though I enjoyed it, I'd still give it a 6/10 (my enjoyment factor and my sense of criticism are not codependent). Ultimately, Jumper was not a very good movie. But it is an amazing story concept, and it'd blow your mind as a tv show. Hell, it would your mind as a book series. There's so many ideas here, so much to draw from and play with. If the producers had the budget for a weekly series (which, looking at this movie, they would never), then I'd gamble that we could have something really original and cool. There's something very Highlander about the idea of people born with teleportation abilities living among us in secret and fighting a war against witchhunters. And given that I adored Highlander (which was also like an anime), of course I'm going to like this story. Given a decent writer and a better, longer plotline, you could really have something here.
The movie only covers the most shallow of ideas: robbing banks by never opening the vault, jumping to vacation beaches without paying for the plane flight, effortlessly moving from your American apartment to a European bar or a desert hideaway. Free money, free adventure, even free sex. The jumpers act like spoiled children and, somewhat like a self-fulfilling prophecy, get hunted down before they mature enough use their ideas for really cool stuff.
Could you jump into a space station?
Could you visit the bottom of the sea?
The surface of the moon?
Could you help stranded people?
Could you rescue hostages?
Could you become a world-class assassin?
Could you be the best motherfucking spy in the history of human espionage?
Could you be Santa Claus?
We don't get any of that. None of these characters ever sit down and think about what they really can do. It's all just shallow, immature stuff. Which would be fine for a little while, but people are never satisfied and I think even someone with the world at their fingertips would get tired of exotic vacations and start looking for more creative uses of their abilities. Like I said: it would make a cool tv show. It would make a cool novel series.
But it makes a lame movie.
EDIT: Apparently it's based on a book by Steven Gould. I don't think I want to read it, though... because if the book is like the movie, and not like what my wild imagination dreams it COULD be, then I'll only be disappointed. Maybe I'll skim it in the library stacks or something.
EDIT 2: Still thinking about being Santa Claus?
