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In this episode, we revisit another forgotten superhero movie from the early aughts. Nic Baldwin of the In Love With Movies podcast is the guest to revisit this little-known film starring Hayden Christensen and Samuel L. Jackson. It's got some moments, but it's unfortunately not the same kind of unrefined gem that the similar Push was.
Listen to Nic on the In Love With Movies podcast or follow him on Twitter
Help support the show by buying or renting this movie on Amazon
Want to tell us what you think? Have any questions or comments for Perry about superheroes in media or comics? Leave a voice message to play on the show. You can also apply to be a guest on the show.
Patrons get to listen to episodes before everyone else and they also get access to my exclusive companion podcast, the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club. If you want to join in, please consider supporting us through Patreon!
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Transcript
Confrontation and Electrical Threats
00:00:14
Speaker
Look, uh, if you're not the police and not under arrest, I think I'd like you to leave. You need some help with that? Been a while since you used a door, huh? Oh, I know who you are.
00:00:43
Speaker
I know what you are. This conversation's over. This conversation's not over. Do you answer my question? Tell me. How'd you last this long, huh? Who's helping you? Jumperous.
00:01:16
Speaker
It's kind of hard to jump with a thousand volts of electricity passing through your brain, huh? Who's protecting you? Give me an answer so I can go home. I hate jumpers.
Consequences of Actions
00:01:46
Speaker
I think you could go on like this forever. Living like this with no consequences. There are always consequences. Where you going, huh? I got you now.
00:02:14
Speaker
You can hide behind the wall, go anywhere, do anything, not anymore!
Introduction to Superhero Cinephiles Podcast
00:02:57
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. I am your host, Perry Constantine, and welcoming a new guest and a fellow podcaster, and that is Nick Baldwin. Nick, how you doing today? I'm doing pretty well, Perry. Thanks very much for the invitation to be on this. I saw your blast. I think someone else, one of my past guests, I think actually shared it with me on Twitter. And I was like, oh, that sounds like right up my alley talking about our love of superhero movies. Oh, really? Who is that?
00:03:23
Speaker
Ooh, Sy Islam, I want to say. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sy's been on, we've had him on twice so far. In fact, he's scheduled to come back on. We're going to be talking about Ms. Marvel in a few episodes. Oh, that's even more cool, because I did not realize he'd actually been on. I thought perhaps he just was like, oh, this sounds like something to be up Nick's alley. And so then he shared it with me, maybe having not been on it. As I was just saying to you before we started recording,
00:03:49
Speaker
I have listened to a couple of episodes, but I had not located the one Psy was on. So I will have to go digging through your back catalog even more, Perry, to go find my friend Psy. Him and his co-author on Leaders Assemble, they both came on together to talk about Iron Man 3 the first time. And then Psy alone came on and we discussed Moon Knight. And then he's coming back on alone, assumed to talk about Ms. Marvel.
Nick Baldwin's Podcast Journey
00:04:16
Speaker
Well, even better than for your listeners who are debating whether or not to go find my podcast, my wife and I have a podcast it's called in love with movies. So that's in love and then comma with movies. If you search for that, that way, either on YouTube or just about any, uh, you know, place you can find podcasts, you'll find Danny and Nick, Nick and Danny. Uh, and we're the hosts of that, but yeah, we had Cy and Gordon, his, um, coauthor for leaders assembled on recently.
00:04:46
Speaker
I actually know cyan Gordon because I'm in the field of IO psychology with them when they wrote their book on leadership. Uh, but yeah, they came on and I want to say it was four or five episodes ago now in our back catalog. They came on and they talked about, um, we were talking about captain America. So if you are a listener who enjoyed listening to Perry, talk to cyan Gordon about Ironman three, please, by all means, come find in love with movies and you'll get to hear, uh, Gordon and Cy.
00:05:14
Speaker
go very deep nerdy into all things comic books when we are discussing Captain America, sorry, Captain America the First Avenger. I was always very impressed. Both of them have just so much more knowledge than I do when it comes to the actual comic books themselves.
00:05:32
Speaker
but I've probably watched more generic movies than they have. So. That impressed me about them as well because I got the email from, I think it was Psy, it was either Psy or Gordon who, I can't remember which one sent the email and they're pitching their book. And I was thinking to myself when I read the email, I'm like, I'm not sure if this is a good fit. I'm not sure if these guys are just, are actually superhero fans or if they're just. Oh, they are. And then they came out and they're like, Oh, okay. Yeah. These guys are legit. They know what they're talking about.
00:05:58
Speaker
Yeah, Gordon, especially he's got so many deep cuts that I'm just like, it goes goes over my head even. So listeners will also be tickled because my wife is normally the person who's much more fun to listen to as my co host and.
00:06:12
Speaker
I think she was struggling to keep up with the conversations around comic books even more than I was.
Podcast Format and Guest Discussions
00:06:20
Speaker
The running joke on our podcast is that we do the podcast just so that my wife has to watch more movies. It's a good way of doing that. So we've done it a little bit, but why don't you tell people a little bit more about yourself, your podcast and that kind of stuff.
00:06:37
Speaker
Sure. So the podcast, like I said, is in love with movies. The basic pitch is the comma separates the first and second halves, right? So the first half we discuss something having to do with love. If it's just my wife and I, we'll sort of pick a love topic. We can sometimes talk about past loves or we'll talk about lessons learned from love. Or, you know, we have an episode talking about the five love languages, which is something a lot of people are familiar with. And then the second half is always us discussing some movie.
00:07:07
Speaker
if we have a guest, that movie is picked by the guest. And then the first half is just us basically discussing their relationship, their feelings about their relationship, the experiences that they've had and the lessons that they would impart. And none of us are experts. We're all just sort of being like, we are people who are in love or, you know, love, love, love, love in all its forms. And so we share our experiences there. And then we share in the second half, our love of movies. I'm a firm believer that sort of,
00:07:34
Speaker
your experiences with movies, when you found them, how you watched them first is a huge, and I seem to remember you talking about this on some of the episodes that I listened to, it's like so very defining, like when you first watched it, we'll talk about some of the rose-cuzzled or colored glasses that I still had for the movie we were discussing today, Jumper, and the reasons for that I could get, we'll get into,
00:07:57
Speaker
But the second half has been always sort of like just sharing a way to get to know the person either mean, getting to know my wife, if she's sharing a movie, my wife getting to know me, if I'm sharing a movie or our guests, you know, sort of what their love story is with a particular movie and why it has a meaningful impact to them. We've had some really cool conversations. Some people have some, especially when we get to have couples on, they'll have like really unique conversations about their history with a particular movie.
00:08:24
Speaker
Uh, you know, there might be some overlap with your listeners and fans of the YouTube channel late to the party. They do a bunch of like trailer reaction videos and we were lucky enough to have late to the party on for an episode where they discuss their history with interstellar.
00:08:38
Speaker
And it's a really kind of cool and interesting story that I won't spoil or so people can go listen to that over there. Okay, very cool.
Impact of Childhood Movies
00:08:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, we've talked about that a lot of times on here, especially back when Derek was still still around we took in some of our earlier episodes. We talked a lot about this idea of how
00:08:56
Speaker
If you see something, you know, comic book or movie or TV show, if you see it at the right age, like that, that shit's going to stick with you for the rest of your life. And the example Derek used is he had you he had introduced his I think his nieces and nephews to
00:09:13
Speaker
the Harryhausen, Sinbad movies back when he was very young. And it's like, you show that to most people their age and they would not, because they're like, I think they're about maybe in their late teens, early twenties now. You show that to those people now, they will not be charmed by them at all. But you get them at like four or five years old, they're going to love that shit forever then. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think that's very
Nostalgia in Film Perception
00:09:37
Speaker
true. And the movie that always comes to my mind when I talk about that is
00:09:40
Speaker
I still haven't gotten her to watch it yet, but there's a movie on my list from my childhood. I don't know if you've seen it, the page master, and it is this queer animated film. I remember, yeah, I never actually saw it, but I do, I was, I do remember like seeing, I remember, I really wanted to see it when I was a kid, because there were like all these commercials on it, on TV and stuff. And I remember being like, oh, that looks so cool. And just one of those movies that I just never got around to seeing. And if I'm being honest, if you were to watch it now, it will not have the magic for you that it had for me too, so.
00:10:09
Speaker
The one example I remember we used was the Dark Crystal, because I remember when I was in college, everybody talking about how amazing the Dark Crystal was. And then I watched it, I'm like, this is not that, I don't get it. But it was one of those, you had to get it at that right time. If not, then you're never gonna understand it. Yeah, yeah, I think that's true of a lot of movies. And then when we look back on them, and this can start to bleed into jumpers. So like when we look back on them and why they were important to us,
00:10:38
Speaker
I think that describes a lot too. So one of the reasons I decided to pick Jumper, we were talking about it before we started recording.
Movie Comparisons: Jumper vs. Push
00:10:45
Speaker
For one thing, I was listening to some of your back catalog and I noticed the movie Push because it's one that's sort of, you know, I wanted to go a little bit outside of the box and it was easier to find one that was superhero adjacent without necessarily being, you know, truly a Marvel or a DC type of thing. And so Push, I saw that you did that and I was like, oh, well, I'd love to hear, you know, Perry's thoughts on Push.
00:11:05
Speaker
As we were saying before, and it reminds push and jumper to me are very similar and I was as I was rewatching jumper for this. I realized I think there's some of the things that I in my mind and my memory had conflated the two.
00:11:18
Speaker
So you were talking about how you thought push was sort of underrated and we didn't get into it. But I, I think some of the cool things about push that I now remember are a bit of the world building. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Sort of creating this space and there's these not just, oh, we've created these superhero type people, but like, here's a lot of backstory to go with them. I remember that being the case about jumper.
00:11:40
Speaker
having rewatched it.
Defending Hayden Christensen's Acting
00:11:43
Speaker
I think that's the thing that is missing the absolute most. And I have like a little bit of light Wikipedia research that I did to dig into that. But what I remember about Jumper that still does hold up was Hayden Christensen. So I am an unapologetic Star Wars fan.
00:12:00
Speaker
Um, I wouldn't necessarily consider myself like a specifically prequels fan. Uh, but, you know, I don't think, I think there's a lot that's good in those prequels. And I think Hayden Christensen, if you watch those movies, they're not a great example of his acting. I think of anybody who's a good enough fan or a big enough fan rather of Star Wars, they would have to admit to themselves that George Lucas is a brilliant man in many ways.
00:12:22
Speaker
but he is not an actor's director. And I think that someone like Hayden, who was still so early in his career and maybe didn't have quite the level of ability as like a Natalie Portman or a Ewan McGregor to throw him into this huge big budget thing that's going to have a bunch of people looking at him with a microscope. And the only person there to direct him is George Lucas, who's famously been quoted as basically only giving the direction of faster, louder. And that's really not useful.
00:12:52
Speaker
Um, and it's why you end up getting this fast speaking, uh, angsty, you know, loud teenager whiny Anakin, as opposed to the real person. But if you watch movies like, uh, have you ever seen shattered glass? So that's a movie. I haven't, but I have heard a lot of people, uh, talking about that.
00:13:12
Speaker
So, shattered glass is one that I think showcases this stuff. How about life as a house? No, I actually, you know, I was, I could have sworn I had seen him in something else, but I'm just looking over his, and I was just looking up his filmography now, because, and the only thing I've actually seen him in, other than that, that I recognize on his list is outside of the Star Wars stuff, and now Jumper, was virgin suicides, but I don't remember his role in that.
00:13:41
Speaker
I totally forgot about he was supposed to be in Virgin Suicides. It must have been real small too. It must have been even earlier on. I imagine so, yeah. So Life is a House is another really great one that I would recommend because obviously this isn't Superheroes. I won't talk about it too long. But I have personal attachments and dad things and stuff that go along with that. It's a story about a father and son and sort of finding their
Critique of 'Jumper's' World-building
00:14:00
Speaker
way together. It is not the best written in terms of pacing. But I think he has a lot of opportunity to act.
00:14:11
Speaker
shortfall is that it's still a lot of the same stuff from Star Wars, even though it would have happened before, but it's just sort of like angsty teens showing a lot of, you know, powerful, angry and sad emotions. But he does that well. And then Philip Glass or Shattered Glass, where he plays Philip Glass, who's this reporter, he does a really good job in that playing kind of this understated creepy where there's like this anxiety of his character always going to like afraid that he's going to get found out.
00:14:40
Speaker
but also like, sort of, not producing, what's the word I'm looking for? Projecting, projecting confidence and the ways that he gets away with all kinds of things in that story, and it's based on a true story, like with him just having projected this confidence, but he does this subtlety where it's like, he's projecting confidence, but you can kind of see it in his eyes that he's like, please don't call me on this kind of thing. And he does that so many times through the movie that I think he's just underserved. And so the other reason Hayden Christensen's on my mind is,
00:15:10
Speaker
his return to Darth Vader in the Obi-Wan show, which I could give you some back and forth and some goods and bads about that show as well. But I'm just glad to see him getting some other chance. And my hope is that he's been positively enough received that he'll take his time and dip his toes back into acting. Because I think even movies like Jumper that have a lot of flaws were just poorly picked projects that I think he could have.
00:15:37
Speaker
Like he, I think actually his acting in this is pretty strong. Um, and, and it's, and it gives him more to do than just angsty teen, even though there is a lot of that too. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so Hayden Christensen is the big reason, uh, for those I like to on our podcast, give like, I start always with credits. So like some just basic things, Hayden Christensen there, Sam Jackson is also in this and Sam Jackson is kind of just doing Sam Jackson. So it's not like,
00:16:07
Speaker
not even a mailed in performance, but it's also not, you know, it's not Django Unchained. He's not winning Oscars for it. But he does a lot of fun. Before we go too deep in the movie though, a few other things I wanted to quickly talk about before we go too deep in a jumper. First thing I wanted to ask is what is kind of like your intro point to superhero movies, superheroes in general, that kind of stuff? Yeah, absolutely. Love that.
00:16:34
Speaker
So I am old enough that I didn't see it in person, but probably the first superhero movie that I can remember seeing is 1978 Superman. Right. So, you know, just the straight, um, you know, Marlon Brando as, um, Jor-El. And that's probably even the earliest thing I can remember. Cause I don't have a specific memory of the first comic books or wanting a comic book or having a comic book, but I do know that like,
00:17:03
Speaker
at various points cleaning out my closet and my room back at my parents house. I can remember finding Superman comics that I remembered reading specifically around like the death of Superman arc and the reign of the Superman.
Nick's Superhero Film Origins
00:17:14
Speaker
I can remember having without even having really read the stories, I had the posters. There was like this series of posters for all the different reigns of the Superman. So if you if anyone's familiar with that, you've got Superboy.
00:17:25
Speaker
You've got cyborg Superman and you've got steel like all these characters came out of that run of comics And they apparently at some point done some like centerfold types of posters Yeah, there's a huge media blitz around the death of Superman and the reign of the super stuff
00:17:42
Speaker
Oh, huge. This is comics in the 90s. They were just like, how can we get you to have to buy everything? And it probably came in something that had that plastic hologram or whatever they called it. Yeah, like 20 different variant covers for each one. They even had the Super Nintendo video game for The Death and Return of Superman. I remember playing that as a kid. Yeah. Ooh, man, the merchandising. Merchandising. They did it all.
00:18:07
Speaker
Um, so yeah, Superman, that's probably me on board. And then I'm a big Spider-Man fan too. I had some early spider, some 90s Spider-Man comics and stuff that I then was pushed away as I think some people are of like, Oh, that's kids stuff or that's not manly enough or what have you. Uh, and then somewhere after like even I've gotten into grad school and then it was, I started, uh, reading the walking dead because now all of a sudden like it was prestige, right? It's okay for you to be into comics because it's this prestige thing.
00:18:37
Speaker
And now I have a series of Star Wars books and DC books and Marvel books that I just get every single week at my local comic shop. So I've re-entered that space since then. So what are some of the books you're reading right now that are really grabbing your interest out of curiosity? Yeah, sure. So now that I've done some of the other stuff, the ones that really actually interest me are ones that
00:19:06
Speaker
I have discovered that are more off the beaten path. So one that's sort of a superhero topic, but for your adult listeners, it might be a more interesting exploration and departure. Not to plug another podcast, but one that I have been tearing through recently is Comic Book Couples Counseling Podcast. They do kind of something similar to us in terms of like they talk about love and relationship stuff, but they specifically relate it to some comic book characters.
00:19:34
Speaker
In addition to doing DC Marvel types of characters that we all know, they'll do more indie stuff. So there's this comic book called Sex Criminals. Oh, right, yeah. I've heard of it, but I've never heard of it. It's a fraction, right? Yes, yep, uh-huh.
00:19:49
Speaker
So Matt fraction chips at our ski. Yes. Okay. So you, you're familiar with it at least anybody, I know the name and yeah, it's one of those things that I've, I've been here. I've heard a lot of good things about it, but other than hearing people saying like, Oh, it's Matt fraction. It's chips are ski and it's really good. And that's the, that's all I know about it. And so it's one of those things that it's on my list and I'm like, I'm keeping an eye out for whenever it comes on sale on comicsology, then that's probably when I'll pick it up. That makes complete sense. And I absolutely.
00:20:17
Speaker
I recommend that it's one that I took it because they were talking about it and convinced me. I thought I liked it. I thought I'd give it a chance when I bought like a on eBay. I think because I like the physical copies when I'm reading comics personally. So I bought like a three or four dollar version of the first volume or something.
00:20:35
Speaker
and then liked that enough that I immediately splurged and spent almost a hundred dollars on hardcovers of the entire series. And I'm like halfway through it now. But the pitch for that, as I'm sure you probably know, Perry, if you remember at least the name, without spoiling anything, I will just say that like within the first issue, you meet these two characters and each of them has discovered in their youth that when they orgasm, the world freezes around them.
00:21:03
Speaker
that like at that climax the world becomes still and it is frozen and for a long time they think they're the only ones they eventually discover each other both having that superpower and I will say if you're hooked by that just know that like that's only the beginning of the crazy and where it goes from there is kind of like in the invincible comics where you just don't think anything new or strange could happen and then it takes a twist and you know surprises you as a reader with something new
00:21:32
Speaker
Very cool. So in fact, Patreon listeners will, by the time this episode comes out on the main feed, Patreon listeners will actually have already heard us talking about Invincible because the way the schedule works, that's actually gonna be coming out before this episode is.
00:21:48
Speaker
Awesome. Well, very good. So we'll talk more about Invincible in the Patreon show. Other thing I wanted to ask you, and this is something, a new thing I've started to doing on the show is just kind of asking people, what are you kind of interested in now?
Current Interests: Games and Shows
00:22:04
Speaker
What's the thing that's really kind of grabbed your attention right now at the moment? It can be movies, it can be TV shows, comics, video games, whatever. What are you currently like obsessing with or really into right now?
00:22:17
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. I'm actually, I think maybe I've the thing that's big. So I watch a lot of the shows, you know, Game of Thrones, I'm kind of watching and it's like not grabbing me as much. Same thing about Lord of the Rings. I really, really like She-Hulk, my wife and I watched that. But I think the thing that's kind of unexpectedly grabbed my attention is I've gone back to the Assassin's Creed video games. I was a big fan of those.
00:22:44
Speaker
and skipped a bunch of entries for a while as I kind of didn't love some of the more recent ones and found them on sale and then bought like all the ones that I had missed and it was Odyssey and now I'm in de Valhalla of like, oh my God, this is what I remember loving about these games, you know, and some of the storylines that are happening. So I'm pretty deep into that and probably spend a lot of my extra free time, you know, rating people and assassinating
00:23:12
Speaker
ancients from the video games. Yeah, I got really into the Assassin's Creed stuff with Black Flag, and that had grabbed me really hard. And then I went and I played Syndicate, and I'd gotten the first three on sale and played them a little bit here and there. And then I picked up Origin, and during Origin, I kind of drifted off from it. And I have Odyssey, but I haven't really, I haven't really dived into Odyssey yet.
00:23:42
Speaker
So I will say this origin is exactly the same one that caused me to drop off. Okay. Like, and I, like you, I thought black flag was probably its peak where they had figured out, you know, we've got the mechanics of the assassination cool stuff, but we also have larger exploration happening. And I think that they had still an interesting story going both sort of in the, the now time and the past time. Yeah. And so I think that was the last time that they had all of those things firing on all cylinders.
00:24:11
Speaker
syndicate and some others were fun, but they weren't really, you know, home runs, so to speak. And then Origins, they changed so much. And it never, it no longer felt like the same video game in terms of its gameplay, which I think is now a strength after some time. But they also, in my opinion, just totally bungled that story. I didn't care anything about the characters either in the sort of
00:24:32
Speaker
modern day or in how they depicted them with Egypt. And so that's why, yeah, I finished that one and then was kind of like, I don't need this Greek one. I didn't love the last one, whatever. So when you've got time, pick it up and you may become just as obsessed as me. Yeah. Cause it is, it's still on my, it's still on my PlayStation. Like I haven't deleted it yet. Cause I'm just like, I'm, I'm going to get back to it, but I just get like a bunch of other games. I'm like, I want to finish, focus on some other stuff first. But
00:25:00
Speaker
Yeah. And another thing I had with, with origin was just, uh, hold on. I was going to say, if you need to take care of that man. Uh, so yeah, the, the Assassin's Creed game, another problem I had with origins was just, there was so much filler with it. Like it's just this massive, huge map and there's like all these different missions and stuff. And I'm just like, at, at, at just going around, I'm like, this is just so repetitive and finally I'm just like, forget it. I'm done. Yeah. And it had a lot of like, not only was the stuff repetitive, but the side missions.
00:25:30
Speaker
the main mission never seemed to grab my attention enough to make me like just choose to do that like I'm okay if a video game gives you that option I'm someone who does like to go complete that stuff a lot of times but I also like want the main mission to kind of call to me like almost I need to the only reason I go do side missions is to level up enough to go do this awesome you know story mission and like I said I just like you know I don't know how you managed to get Kalia Patra to not be interesting but I
00:25:57
Speaker
that's how I felt about it when it came to AC Origins. Definitely, yeah, yeah. Another thing, one of the things that I'm definitely into right now is I think She-Hulk was gonna be my pick, because that is, that is just, I think I talked about this in the last episode too, the last one we recorded that
Refreshing TV Formats: She-Hulk
00:26:13
Speaker
is. So by the time people listen to this, She-Hulk will have already been over for a few months now, but man, that show was just so good. I just love that it's this,
00:26:23
Speaker
because one of the problems I had with a lot of the other Marvel shows, both on Netflix, now on Disney Plus, is that I think they're trying to, they're invested too much in the idea of like the season long story arc. And, you know, this whole idea of, we're not doing a TV series, but we're doing like, you know, a six hour, eight hour, 13 hour movie basically is how a lot. And so there's always like this middle part that feels very kind of soft and just kind of like middling.
00:26:51
Speaker
And I don't feel that a lot with She-Hulk, like it's got this episodic feel to it. It's almost like, you know, Ally McBeal was back in the day, but with Superpowers. So it's so much fun watching it. Yeah, I completely agree. Yeah, I've been enjoying it so far. And I think we're only three, maybe four episodes in for listeners. So if it like totally goes off the rails and people are listening to this by then and they're like,
00:27:17
Speaker
Oh man, what are these dudes talking about? Just know that we were only talking about the first few episodes, but it's still very good so far. Yeah, I think episode four is the most recent one that came out. The one with Madison. I'm not sure if you saw that one yet. And the stage magician. Yes, okay, thank you. I do remember that specifically, yes. And oh my God. Two ends and one why, but it's not where you think. Yes, yes. Oh my God. Yeah.
00:27:47
Speaker
Uh, so that's, that's good. And I'm glad you're going to be talking to Cy about, um, about miss Marvel too. Cause I thought that was probably one of the stronger shows too. There was some middling for me in the middle of that, but man, those first like two episodes of that were just killer. Uh, and I know Cy had like sign, I actually were texting back and forth and stuff about, you know, some of the stuff that was happening there and, and,
00:28:15
Speaker
you know, me asking like, oh, is this like really kind of, cause I is, you know, connected to that culture in a way that I obviously am not. And so, you know, just, I love when something like that can in a interesting way and not in a force feeding or preachy kind of way cause you to want to go like learn more about a topic, especially a topic in history. And so, you know, the, um, the issues with, you know,
00:28:43
Speaker
the so many families being broken apart and people being, you know, hurt down and hurt. Yeah, the partition. Yeah. Yeah, the partition. Thank you. That interested me so much. And right after I finished watching the show, there was a podcast that came out called Partition that's all about like the history of that. So I haven't listened to it yet. So I don't know if it's good or not or anything, but it is on my feed. That's something I'm really looking forward to to dig into. Yeah, I'm writing that down now.
00:29:12
Speaker
because Psy sent me some stuff to read because I was like, man, this is crazy that this happened. Or like, I remember I had the same experience when I was watching, I don't know if you watch the TV show since we're all about superheroes here, you probably have, but Watchmen, HBO
Historical Portrayals in 'Watchmen'
00:29:24
Speaker
series. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. The Tulsa Massacre. Yeah. I literally, especially because of obviously what that show is, I thought to myself, oh, this must be some
00:29:35
Speaker
you know, the horrors that they are depicting here. There's no way that this actually occurred in our real world. It must be some mistake. And sure enough, it doesn't take long for you to figure out with some Googling and some digger-deeping or deeper digging.
00:29:49
Speaker
that that's not true at all like that it did in fact happen and worse. Yeah, yeah it was that was one of the things because Derek had known about all that history and he had said you know when we talked about he's like he's like this is something that I knew about that you know about the most and I'm like no actually I didn't know about it either and but yeah we did uh we did a three episode deep dive into Watchmen so uh so if anyone missed that that was uh it was
00:30:13
Speaker
like around like the episode 14 or 15 or something like that. We did three episodes, one episode covering each of the three episodes of the TV show. So yeah, that was awesome. Yeah, we went really deep into that show. So definitely check that out if you're interested.
00:30:30
Speaker
um but yeah that was that was another example just such an amazing way of utilizing culture and history in completely unexpected ways and there was a lot of that in this model that you're right it did make me want to track down some more of the the information i had some other issues with it just as far as like i think like it felt like they kind of lost focus a little bit when they were moving to
00:30:52
Speaker
going from New Jersey to Pakistan. I felt like that was more of a season two thing than a season one thing, but that's a large discussion. You'll hear me talk about that with Sy when he comes on. So, but now we've done kind of like the pre-roll stuff. So let's jump into, to Jumper. Jumping into Jumper. I love that. Now I remember when this movie came out, 2008, it was, it was actually when I first came to Japan and I remember seeing previews for it and stuff and just kind of like,
00:31:21
Speaker
thinking like, oh, it looks interesting. But it wasn't one of those things that really grabbed me enough to think I want to go see this in the theater. And so it's just one of those movies that and then after it came out, there were a bunch of these types of movies like these kind of like
00:31:34
Speaker
a young adult slash teen sci-fi superheroish movies. Like you mentioned Push, also there was another one like I Am Number Four, I think was another one of those and Chronicle too. And there's a lot of these types of things that were happening around that time, this kind of like pre MCU, early MCU era where they're trying to, it feels like they're trying to find this, the next big thing and nothing's really landing.
00:32:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think a lot of it was probably like, at this point, X-Men and the first Spider-Man movies or so would have come out. And I suspect just knowing how studios often operate, they were probably like, nerd, the kids love them superhero movies. Let's make as many superhero movies as possible. And then they went off to go find the rights for those things and many of them
00:32:24
Speaker
were owned by Warner Brothers or other studios or Sony owned all the interesting Spider-Man stuff. And as you said, especially later on, Marvel Studios was starting to become a thing. So they were holding on to their properties really tightly. So I think that, yeah, lots of people were scrounging. And that's where, I don't know if you've found this, but some of your listeners may know, this is actually based on, Jumper is based on a 1992 novel. Yeah.
00:32:52
Speaker
that, like, I'm sure as they were like, well, this is, you know, somebody, somebody had some production assistant or some, you know, researcher who was just digging through old archives of, you know, trying to find anything that was superhero adjacent so that they could buy the rights to it, or maybe even already had the rights, who knows.
00:33:11
Speaker
these rights could have been purchased in like 1995 and then nobody made them until 2008. Well, I mean, it's only, it was the author's second rule. He didn't come out with the sequel until 2004. So there's like almost a 12 year gap between the first book and the second book. But since this movie came out, he released like two other books after that. I saw that. I was like, it was funny. This movie obviously didn't generate enough to warrant the money for a sequel in terms of the movies. But yeah, like he wrote a book that was
Expanding 'Jumper' Universe
00:33:41
Speaker
all about the other character in this, and I'm forgetting the character's name now. Oh, goodness, played by Jamie Bell, the guy who was in Billy Elliot. Oh, Griffin. Thank you, Griffin. Literally, like, Jumper Griffin's story or something like that. And as I was looking things up about the novel, the character of Griffin doesn't even exist in the novel. Oh, really? Yeah, right? I'm just like, what?
00:34:05
Speaker
uh apparently yeah like he this was popular enough and that character was popular enough that he was like i'm gonna write a story now about griffin and sort of like make it be something that exists in the same world as these that was also that didn't have him before and yeah that was also the basis there was a video game tie-in and that and it was uh griffin's story like the hunt for is like his parents killer was also like the basis for that video game
00:34:30
Speaker
Oh, that's awesome. I didn't know about that or forgot about it. Cause that actually sounds familiar, but I'm not, I did not find that in my, my digging. No. Yeah. It's weird how everyone's getting interested in Griffin. Cause I don't know. I'm not sure about you, but I had never, um, Griffin didn't like, none of the characters really grabbed me that much. So it feels weird to me that they were going to be like, we want, we think Griffin's so awesome. We're going to do a video game and a tie-in novel about him.
00:34:57
Speaker
Well, I'm sure it was at the time, a lot of that stuff was green lit before they knew how, when there's merchandising, merchandising. Yeah. And there's also a TV spin-off apparently too, called Impulse. It was on... YouTube. I saw that too, and it was only on YouTube's premium. And I was like, oh man, the only thing that anyone knows YouTube premium for is...
00:35:20
Speaker
Cobra Kai, and it's only because like, I feel like most of the world didn't even know it existed until Netflix picked it up, so. Oh yeah, yeah. Although I was that guy who was doing the like occasional, I would buy for one month the YouTube premium subscription to watch the first two seasons of Cobra Kai, so. Well, apparently it had gotten this series, Impulse, it had gotten 20 episodes, it had two seasons, 10 episodes each. And fairly recently, like it came out in 2018.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah, I saw that. So I didn't even realize, I didn't even realize YouTube was still doing original programming. Right? Yeah, I thought the same thing when I read it. There were so many interesting things. This movie I could go on and on to about some of the stuff that happens, good and bad. Yeah. But like, I almost think the story behind other pieces to it is fascinating to me. Like, you know, you mentioned there's this spin-off TV series, there's a spin-off video game I didn't even know about.
00:36:17
Speaker
um you know the fact that uh you've got people behind this that you know it just is so fascinating because like the apparently the other thing is i read the the whole plot of the idea of there being this these paladins right that was not in the book at all either oh okay
Film vs. Book: 'Jumper' Adaptation
00:36:39
Speaker
like essentially the character that Samuel Jackson plays was just an NSA agent. So like that's supposed to be a nod in the first scene where he like fake introduces himself as an NSA agent. I see. But for whatever reason, I guess they decided like maybe because it was still too close to 9-11 that they didn't want to like make NSA people look bad or they just felt that people were more into secret societies at the time. Cause I feel like secret, you know,
00:37:06
Speaker
cloak and dagger types of organizations was a thing but to me that like hurts this story too because one of the weakest points is they like create this whole idea of the paladins and we kind of talked earlier about like
00:37:17
Speaker
this movie does not do a good job with world films. Yeah, yeah. That was my biggest thing. Push really impressed me because it was this movie that wasn't really well received at the time. And I watched it and I'm like, okay, yeah, I can see why people didn't respond to this movie. It's definitely got a lot of soft areas. It definitely kind of, you know,
00:37:37
Speaker
It loses my interest about halfway into it. But the world building is so well done. And I'm just like, I want to see like, I want to see like a TV show set in this world with these concepts. All of that was done so well and using a different setting like what was it? Hong Kong, I think.
00:37:55
Speaker
That was also really cool. Being an expat myself, I think that's a really interesting thing to move into a different area instead of always like New York or nondescript US city that's actually Vancouver or something like that. So I thought it was really cool to say like, no, we're gonna put this in Hong Kong. And again, they didn't do much with that concept, but just the idea of it was something different that a lot of other things weren't doing.
00:38:23
Speaker
Yes. And this one, I think it's cool that I love that they shot in so many different locations. They really took advantage of the teleporting aspect of that and, you know, moving around. I've read they'd actually filmed on location like 20 different cities or something like that. Oh, and it looks gorgeous. And they did a great job with like however they make the teleporting look. And then, yeah, the cinematography of like we are filming an actual city and you can sense that. Yeah. Yeah. All of that was really, really good. But
00:38:53
Speaker
The biggest problem with Push was it had a great world building, but it had not so great characters and not so great story. This one, it didn't have great world building and the characters were decorated and the story was just like, I don't even know what the story is. If you put a gun to my head and you ask and you demanded I tell you what this story is, I just be like, pull the trigger, I can't do it.
00:39:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I feel very similar. Like I said earlier, I think by I conflated some of my memories of time as jumper, and then also my rose colored glasses that I will die on the hill that Hayden Christensen did a pretty decent job of this acting in this.
00:39:40
Speaker
but he also didn't have a lot to go on. Like that character is not fleshed out. It's the same problem with the prequel trilogy, right? He's a good actor. You can see there's talent there, but it's just like, he's just given such bad material to work with. And I'm just like, because I had re-watched the prequels,
00:40:00
Speaker
I think it was like last year, my wife was interested in going through and seeing all the Star Wars stuff. Now it's all on Disney Plus and it has Japanese subtitles. She was interested in going back and going and going through and watching all the movies. So we went and we did that and watching the prequels and getting to the the Anakin stuff, I was just like,
00:40:18
Speaker
God, he's so fucking annoying. And I'm like, but it's not his fault because it's just like, that's the way the character is written. The character is written to be an irritating little shit. And I'm like, he's good in that, but it's just like, I wish you had better material to work with. Yes, so much so. And I actually think this is one where there's still not a lot done, but he shows ranges. Like there's scenes where he's opposite Diane Lane, or there's the scene where
00:40:48
Speaker
Like he, he flips back to his dad's house and clearly is like stashing stuff there. And there's that moment where he's been gone for eight years. His dad has not actually seen him in person, but like has kept hearing him. And you can just tell like, and you know, Michael Roker, who like was not really a name by this time either, also doing a phenomenal job. He's running up there and he's like, you know, desperately saying like, you know, I basically, I think you are there. I know you can hear me. Like, just tell me if you're alive or tell me I'm not crazy or something like that.
00:41:14
Speaker
Yeah. And then Hayden has this moment where, you know, he stops and he's thinking and it's just kind of like you're looking at his face and you see this like. Confliction within him because, you know, there's these mixed emotions of like, I do not have a good relationship with this man. There's a reason that I left in the first place. Um, but you know, like, I don't want him to think he's crazy. Like he doesn't deserve that kind of thing.
00:41:37
Speaker
And like all of that's there. And then the funny thing to me is like, there's more in both of those actors' faces that's being presented than is ever explained or shown in any way for like a backstory. They're just kind of like, uh, I think there's a line somewhere in there before he's even, you know, Hayden Christensen. He says something like, well, my home life wasn't much of a home or my dad wasn't much of a dad. And like, that's all you have to go on. You don't really see him ever.
00:42:02
Speaker
be particularly mean or anything. He doesn't seem to understand it, but like there's no depth to that. There's no character development. You have no idea like if he abused him or whatever. And even the idea that they may be set it up as like, oh, and that's why the mother left, but they pull the rug out from underneath that idea when they make a
00:42:22
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, it's there's so many ended up being one of these paladins that clearly only left for that reason. It's like, what the heck?
Direction and Script Issues in 'Jumper'
00:42:28
Speaker
There is such a dearth of talent in this movie, both behind and on camera. I mean, it's yes. Christensen, as we've been talking about Max Thoreau, you know, playing, playing David at 15. You know, Rachel Billson's in this. Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Bell, Diane Lane.
00:42:45
Speaker
Teddy Dunn from Veronica Mars, Michael Rooker, even Kristen Stewart at the end of there. But it's just like, there's so many good actors in this. And it's just like the, and such a good director, like Doug Lyman is such an underrated director. I mean, I will die on this hill. Born Identity, Edge of Tomorrow, where I prefer the re-release title of it.
00:43:12
Speaker
Uh, live, die, repeat, live, die, repeat. Yeah. I thought that was a much better title of it. Um, but yeah, these, and Doug Lyman, I mean, the original born identity, the first born identity movie, like I will die on this hill, but that movie is the best one of that trilogy. The other two, I fucking despise Paul Greengrass and his, and as I've never heard of a tripod style of directing.
00:43:34
Speaker
It's just like, it annoyed, like I, I want, when I see an action movie, I want to actually be able to see the action and, and in born identity, that was, it was brilliant. Like the way he shot it, the way he filmed the action, all of it was perfect. Then we get, and this is another tangent and, but Paul Greengrass just like, he's like, I'm going to have the camera, you know, moving all around the place. So you have, you have no idea what the hell is going on.
00:43:59
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, and then I always thought it was such a travesty that Lyman got those movies taken away from him. And he hasn't really been able to have this breakout really since. But he has this. And you can see, even though he's got a terrible script, the movie, like you were saying, the movie looks beautiful. He does a great job utilizing all these locations and filming them in a way that looks amazing.
00:44:27
Speaker
but also even the script talking about the people behind this, because like all through it, there's people that are like, you see what all other movies these people have done and they're like stellar work. Like the names I wrote down, David S. Goyer is like someone who pinned for Dark Knight trilogy. Dark Knight trilogy, the Blade films. Yes, thank you. Yeah, yeah. But also Simon Kinberg had did a draft of the script as well or did some work on it and he did the, and you know, it's funny because both of them, they've got,
00:44:57
Speaker
both of those writers, they've got amazingly good stuff like Goyer in the Dark Knight trilogy or the first two Blade movies, or then you've got Kinberg and Days of Future Past or X2, but then you've also got Goyer with
00:45:13
Speaker
the crow city of angels and late trinity and, and jumper now too. And then, you know, Simon Kinberg, which yeah, he did, he did days of future past, but then he did apocalypse and dark Phoenix. And, and, and both of them, they both kind of, they both tried their hands at directing and it was awful both times too. So, so you got a real mix there with those two. But I mean, Doug Lyman, when I think about it, I think this is the first time I've seen a bad movie of his.
00:45:44
Speaker
Yeah, my wife and I on our podcast, one of the things we always do with our guests is we like ask for a rating at the end, but then we also say, would you renew your vows? Like regardless of what you rate it for you personally, would you watch this again kind of thing? And I turned to my wife after we watched this this past week and I said, I don't think I ever need to see this again. So I'm not returning, I'm not renewing my vows to this movie. Like my memory of it was way better than. Yeah, it's just, I'm not even,
00:46:15
Speaker
Like I said, I found myself drifting off. And the weird thing is it's under 90 minutes. It's not a very long movie. Right? But it is one of those movies where it feels so much longer than it really is. Yes. Yes.
00:46:29
Speaker
Yeah, which is sad because of all this talent behind it. But yeah, you go watch this movie and you're like, oh, now I understand why it was forgotten to the animals of movie. Yeah, which makes me wonder why they because like I was so surprised when you said that they didn't have the Griffin character in the novel at all. So I'm just kind of like. There was like, what was the story? Yeah, because they didn't have the character. They didn't have the paladins. It was like, right. I think they basically took the idea of a teenager who
00:46:59
Speaker
you know, has this power and that's it. If I remember correctly, um, oh God, I wrote something down here. Oh, maybe it was just, I like, basically from what I remember, cause I was reading the Wikipedia page, it says like the first set up, like the first part where it's not even Hayden Christensen, which by the way, it takes like 15 minutes before the main actor is on the screen for longer than
Deviation from Source Material
00:47:21
Speaker
three seconds. Yeah. Like there's this moment where it's like zooming in on Hayden and he's like,
00:47:24
Speaker
clearly doing a voiceover to set up then what is 15 minutes of some completely different actor, which is funny in itself. But apparently like that set up the idea of like, this is his backstory, that was the same, and then nothing else, like no, you know,
00:47:41
Speaker
Paladins, no, none of the same actors, characters, et cetera. And so I was just like, wow, what is this? And that's another thing is I feel like Hollywood often just is like when we're scrambling for, you know, superhero movies are popular right now. We've got to come out with more superhero movies. They take some kernel of an idea and then they just like do whatever they want to it. I just feel like I just feel studio notes.
00:48:03
Speaker
all over this thing. Definitely. All over this thing. Yeah. I mean, well, like another thing I'm trying to figure out is I can't understand why Samuel L. Jackson even dyed his hair because there's one scene where it's like the hair dye starts getting smeared on his face. And I'm like, didn't somebody notice this when they were filming it? Oh, man. Yeah, that's another valid question. Why? What was that choice?
00:48:29
Speaker
Maybe, I don't know, was Dennis Rodman a thing in 2008 or is that later on? No, that's what I'm trying to figure out. Like I don't get why he's doing this. And I'm not sure if that's a decision by the studio, if that's something that Jackson did himself. Like he just shows up on set one day and he's like, I decided to dye my hair white. I mean, that very probably, very probable. So. I'm mother effing Samuel Jackson. You're not gonna tell me not to. Well, I mean, I think, yeah, because I'm looking up the story of the original book now.
00:48:59
Speaker
Um, apparently his, his mother was murdered on a business trip by terrorists because her plane was hijacked. Oh my God. I didn't get that part. And, uh, and he went to, and he went out basically for revenge, trying to find the terrorist who was responsible. Okay.
00:49:17
Speaker
And it's like that's a much more interesting story, especially when you got the NSA aspect of it as well. It seems like such a much more interesting story than what we got and it feels like they, I don't know who said that who felt like we needed to have, because
00:49:34
Speaker
I remember you made the point about maybe it was too close to 911 but I'm this is 2008 it's, we're already, we definitely had things yeah yeah so it's not that close to it so I don't think that I wonder, I don't know why they felt that they had to have this whole idea of this secret society which is.
00:49:51
Speaker
And again, I don't understand what the purpose of this society is, or another thing too is when Samuel when Jackson, you know, Roland when he meets David for the first time, the way he talks about jumpers, it almost feels like
00:50:08
Speaker
they're not, jumpers aren't the only type of super powered characters in this universe. Yeah. Kind of like in push, like, and I think that's where a lot of the conflation in your mind came through with push because push had these different categories of powers. And so you had like the, you had the pushers, you had the, I can't remember all of them, but you go back and re-listen the episode. The fears or something like that. Yeah.
00:50:33
Speaker
And the way Roland talks about pushers in this, like he says, oh, he's a pusher or he's a jumper. See, I'm already conflated. He's like, he's like, oh, he's a jumper and all this. I'm like, wait, so does that mean there are other types? But then they're never mentioned at all. There's like this whole world building aspect to it that is just completely ignored. Cause I'm just like, cause at first I'm intrigued by the idea of like, okay, he's working for this organization. They're trying to go after these guys, but
00:51:02
Speaker
Why? I don't, that's, it just never makes any sense to me because he says like, your, this power is only reserved for God. And I'm just like, this doesn't even begin to make sense. Yeah. There's like this weird sort of pseudo religious aspect to things, but they don't really connect any of that to these, like, I wonder, this is around the same time as like league of extraordinary gentlemen and stuff like that too, which go look that movie up everyone. And that like is the last movie that sadly, uh,
00:51:32
Speaker
But, um, yeah. And so like speaking of studio notes, it makes me wonder if there was like a note that was like, well, what if his mother was still alive and could you maybe make this open for sequels? Like it feels like someone took the plot and initially and said, well,
00:51:51
Speaker
Not only are superheroes cool right now, secret societies are cool right now. We want this to be a franchise because that's the only thing we want to do right now is create franchises. And by the way, we have Diane Lane in some deal where she has to do more movies with us. So why don't you make her be in this so that when the sequels happen, she has to sign longer. And I feel like it almost feels to me like there was this solid thing probably built on that terrorist plot you're talking about or some aspect of the original novel.
00:52:21
Speaker
And then someone said, no, we need to make this so that there's a secret society and that it can be having sequels. And then they went back and they were like, okay, we're going to like.
00:52:30
Speaker
create these paladins and we're gonna do this subplot you know like mother secretly still being alive that's always interesting it's not redundant or overdone um and it feels like those rewrites were done like in a weekend and that's why the world building is just like not there because it was just like ah we don't have time to think about any depth of this we have to you know we're starting filming on monday
00:52:52
Speaker
Friday they told us to make it a franchise so now we have to figure it out. Well especially that scene at the end when we find out that his mother is still alive and he goes to see her and and she says well I was a paladin and I couldn't and my choices were either were either to kill you or to or to leave you and but then she says and then he but the thing that killed I'm like okay that's
00:53:15
Speaker
you know, cliche, but understandable story point. But then I think at the end when he's like, so what are we going to do now? And she says, well, I'm going to give you a head start. Like, wait a minute. So you left your son because you didn't want him to die. And now you're saying that you're going to come hunt him down. Like I couldn't. Yeah. You left your son at five years old because you didn't want to have to kill him. You heard about him being arrested and therefore showed up to help break him out of Italy randomly.
00:53:43
Speaker
And then when he shows up on your doorstep, all of a sudden the change tune is, I'm coming for you. You know, here's your five seconds type of thing. That's so inconsistent. It's so inconsistent. And it's just like, and not enough is explained about how these jumpers exist, why they
Franchise Setup Failures
00:54:02
Speaker
exist. Cause with the mother disappearing, I had gotten this, I thought they were building up to the whole thing of like, she was a jumper too. That's why he's a jumper or something like that. But there's no,
00:54:13
Speaker
Not even that small bit of explanation, none of that is there. So I just find myself thinking, I'm like, I mean, at least in Push, there was an attempt to explain things to some extent. They're just like, no, we don't want to explain anything. You're just- Yeah, I feel like they were just like, oh, dude, we have Darth Vader, because I'm sure they wouldn't have like really been thinking of his name. They're like, that kid from the Star Wars movies is in this. We got Diane Lane and Sam Jackson.
00:54:41
Speaker
This is definitely going to sequel. We don't have to bother to explain the backstory because we're going to have more movies to do that. It feels like that was the sentiment. Like we're going to get sequels so we don't have to worry about trying to do any world building. We'll do it in the next one. Yeah. Yeah. And then surprise when you don't do a good job world building, you don't get a next one. Right. Exactly. It's very much like
00:55:02
Speaker
It reminds me of a lot like Batman V Superman and like where they're focused so much on, we have to build up for all the sequels. I'm like, well, you kind of forgot that you still have a story you have to tell in this movie. Yes, yes. And that's where you end up with things that are like, and I actually think that had they done more with the mother plot and the whole Martha thing in different ways, that could have been interesting. But instead, like the moment when he first says, like, why did you say that name? I literally remember thinking to myself,
00:55:31
Speaker
Like I had to remind myself that Bruce Wayne's parents, his mother's name was Martha, because out of nowhere, he's just like, why did you say that name? And I'm like, why do you care that he said that name? You've done nothing to set this up for me. I remember seeing that in the theater. I'm just like, it was, it was a surreal moment. Cause I'm just like, this is not happening right now. This is not happening right now. Yeah. Even the, cause they like let it happen and he keeps going, you're not sending my name. And then I was like, Oh yeah. Both of their parents' names are Martha.
00:56:00
Speaker
okay is that really the thing that we're hanging this entire turn on yeah yeah uh yeah anyway yeah yeah um i mean this isn't that bad i will say that it's not as bad as it's not as offensively bad as uh as batman v superman but it is just bland right it's just like there's there's nothing there and it's just
00:56:23
Speaker
And it's just, it plods along. It's very, for a Doug Lyman movie with so much action in so many different locations, it should move a lot faster than this. Yeah. It should be like the born identity. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And it just unfortunately doesn't. And it's like, yeah. And that's the thing is like, I actually do think there's kernels of ideas there. Like I, even despite them having done a shitty job of making me care and inconsistency with characters, I still leave the movie being like,
00:56:53
Speaker
Well, I want to know more about this history of the Paladins. When did they start? Are they clearly they're kind of implying that it maybe started way back in, you know, medieval times, you know, medieval times. Yeah. And it's like, have they been there for tracking these jumpers since way back then? And what is all of that? They set up so many different avenues for what the main story can be here. Like, you know, you've got the idea of,
00:57:23
Speaker
There's even this one aspect in the beginning when he's in his swanky New York apartment and he sees on the TV that there are these people who are trapped and they don't have any help. And then he gets up and he walks, he takes the umbrella and the doorman says like, oh, it's not gonna rain. He's like, oh, well, you never know. And it seems like they're setting it up to him going out there to help people.
00:57:45
Speaker
and then he just goes to London to sleep with some random chick and I'm just like why why why set that up so much and then just do this complete 180 twist and like there's so many different and the whole idea is it sets up this idea in that one scene of what and I figured out I'm like okay I see what we're doing here he's selfish he's only using his powers for personal gain he's gonna go on a heroic journey he's gonna realize he has to use his powers now
00:58:09
Speaker
He doesn't, it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. But then there's the whole idea of like, he leaves his father. It's like his mother left him. So I was like, okay, he has this power. He can go anywhere in the world. So he's gonna try and track down his mother and find out why she left. And that's just like a postscript at the end of the movie. But even like, oh, well he reconnects with his school time crush. So he's going to use his powers to impress her and to,
00:58:36
Speaker
but he just takes her on a plane to Italy and then it's like it's it's it's gone or then he meets then you get the paladin stuff saying oh there's the secret i society and Roland even mentioned somebody's helping you with this and it's like no no yeah yeah he's like oh there must be somebody else and that reminds me of there's a line when Griffin says like welcome to the war or things like that and so there's like this implication that there's this army of jumpers out there but then
00:59:02
Speaker
Two ten minutes later Griffin is saying like nah, man. This is my fight I'm fighting it alone and fuck you you can't do anything with this and it's like well Then what war were you talking about? Yeah, why did you make it seem like you wanted to recruit him? Like why are you following him? What is going on? It feels like they had ten different scripts and they just took elements from different ones and put them and cobble them all together Yeah, yeah for sure and it's uh, so frustrated. Yeah
00:59:31
Speaker
Cause like you said, any one of these things, I remember I was thinking the same thing when I was like, oh, I forgot about this whole, maybe he goes and saves people and does nice things when it shows at the very beginning. You know what I mean? Well, I mean, it's so weird. Cause that is like the perfect, I'm not sure if you know about save the cat, right? Yes. Yeah. And the, yeah. That is the perfect save the cat moment right there, right? He's the selfish guy. He's stealing all this money. He's buying, he's wasted spending on himself and then, but
00:59:57
Speaker
He goes to, he goes to this, um, you know, this hurricane ravaged area to help people out. And that right there, save the cat moment right there, right there. And you just walk past it. Yeah. And then they could even have set that up. Like you said of like an interesting hero's journey where he like comes to realize that he should be using his powers for good. And they even, I think do like a, the, the, the girlfriend or whatever could have served.
01:00:20
Speaker
for that purpose to help drive that narrative, but they just don't do that either. She's just worried that he's breaking into places. She's never being like...
01:00:29
Speaker
you know, she never finds out about his powers. And then it's like, you should use this for good. And then that becomes the thing that convinces him. No, she just like finds out about his powers. And by that time, they're blowing up her apartment. Like, I mean, yeah, that's the thing, like, there's also this whole setup where you could do it as like, you know, a love story type thing where he's using his powers to impress her, like, you know, with the thing like taking her, but then that's just dropped very quickly to focus on the, the paladin chasing him thing. And then with the paladins thing and like talking about, Oh, cause there was,
01:00:59
Speaker
there's this line that Griffin says something about like, he tried to move a whole building with his jump. There's some other guy that tried to move a whole building with his jump and he's dead. So like, A, there's another side plot of like, are there more jumpers? Does Griffin know the other jumpers or is it just him? And then B, they have that big moment where Hayden then it's like kind of, that's the only line, but then there's like kind of this implied big moment because Hayden manages to move the entire room, like a huge section of
01:01:27
Speaker
building. And so there could have also been this cool plot of like, you know, Hayden is the most powerful jumper that ever existed. And he's going to explore that. But again,
01:01:36
Speaker
No, never actually go anywhere into that. It's just like a line in a moment and vaguely connected. Yeah. God, I don't understand why someone didn't think like maybe we should connect some of these story threads together because there's so many different ways you can use any one of these could be the focus of a whole movie and could be a pretty good damn good movie. But like, I just, I'm just, kills me out because he, he go, because I'm hung up on that hero thing because I'm just like, he, okay.
Romantic Subplot Critique
01:02:05
Speaker
So I remember watching it and he I'm like okay so he's gonna do the hero thing and then he's gonna come back and he's go back to be the self so he's got that aspect of goodness then he goes away goes off to London and then he comes back he's like oh I guess you're right I didn't need the umbrella I'm like oh so you're just an asshole that I guess is what we're truly like you're just a douche and there's absolutely no reason we should care about you as a character and and that reminds me
01:02:28
Speaker
Cause a lot of times my wife and I, because of the nature of our podcast, when we're watching movies, something we just end up discussing a lot of times is how romantic relationships are depicted in movies. This romantic relationship should throw red flags for any woman. Like they do not set up that they're actually dating in high school. It sort of seems like he just maybe has a fling for her and you can't tell if she's just being nice or is actually into him. And then he disappears for eight years, shows up again and says, Hey, want to go to Italy?
01:02:57
Speaker
red flags, red flags everywhere. You should not be getting a- Especially when he's being so, he's being so vague about what he does for a living. I mean, you're, I mean, so he's 15, so that's eight years later. So he's what, like 23, 24, something like that now. So you got this guy who's like clearly didn't finish high school and has disappeared for eight years. Now he comes back, he's splashing all this money around. He's like, oh, I'm in banking.
01:03:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's a believable story. Come on. Yes. Yes. And there's no reason she should even leave with him, let alone fall in love with him. Like, oh my god. That's the thing that kills me. She knows it too, because she points it out. She's like, you were terrible at math. You failed algebra. How the fuck are you in banking at 23 years old? And it's just like, I wouldn't lie to you. And then she's like, oh, OK.
01:03:55
Speaker
right you had a traumatic experience where you gave me a a snow globe so clearly you're a trustworthy person yeah yeah oh man oh yeah just it's just so bad it comes up a lot too especially i feel like in the mid 2000s just every relationship that exists is because again like i feel like studio notes there's there's so many movies that it's like
01:04:18
Speaker
you can just feel like they were like, ah, people want there to be a boy girl, you know, boy meets girl. There's always gotta be a boy meets girl or there can't be. And so you have movies that like don't need it, don't deserve it, don't have it there. And it's just like a boy meets a girl anyway. You know what I mean? And then they fall in love for absolutely nothing that is justified by what is depicted on the screen. Like they fall in love because they fall in love. Yeah. There's, there's no evidence of any sort of real
01:04:43
Speaker
romantic connection between them because like, and again, Christensen is a good actor. Billson, maybe not as good, but she's decent enough. She's okay. She's okay. I mean, she's, but like, if you see her in things like, you know, she was good in The Last Kiss. She was really funny in her appearances on How I Met Your Mother. So she's got some talent. Like, she's not a worthless actress is what I'm saying. She's got enough to play believable characters.
01:05:09
Speaker
but it's just like there's- If they gave her anything to work with. But like her and Christensen, they just have no, it's very similar to, you know, him and Natalie Portman in the Star Wars movie. It's like, you know, Anakin and Padme, they've got both great actors, but just like no chemistry, nothing. There's nothing there. And I felt the same thing with him and Rachel Billison because it's like, both of these guys can clearly act, but it's just like, there's not enough,
01:05:37
Speaker
that's making me buy their relationship at all? Correct, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not like- I know we're bad at tangents, but like side tangent too. I think Natalie Portman hasn't had chemistry with anyone since Lay on the Professional. That's a hot take. Oh, wow. You can listen to our episode about the Thor, the most recent Thor movie. I, there's, yeah. I think she's a brilliant actress, but like, whew, she is not, not good. And Hayden, yeah, again, Hayden and Bilson in this is just like,
01:06:05
Speaker
Yeah, there was nothing, nothing on the page for them. It's like, I showed up back in your life, so we're in love still, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But even the whole idea with the schoolyard bully coming back too, and I'm just like, this is like, this feels like this is five years too late for this moment to happen. Yes. It just, it feels really weird. But again, that's another story point. Like, you know, him going back and resolving old grudges and people would be like, why are you being such an asshole now?
01:06:32
Speaker
but there's so many different things. And yeah, the whole point about her, her character only exists in this movie so that Roland has something to hold over David's head. That's it, that's the only reason. It's right out of Spider-Man 3 where it's, you know, the only reason Mary Jane shows up at the end there is so the villains can kidnap her.
Representation of Women in 'Jumper'
01:06:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And that's sad, frankly. And that's a reason that we have
01:07:01
Speaker
people who have levied very legitimate complaints against the movies that have existed and the movie industry and the fact that there's men that, I mean like, I'm sure you've heard the stories of like the previous Disney exec that was saying over at Marvel, you know, no, we can't do a Black Widow movie because you don't see female-led superheroes. And it's just like,
01:07:25
Speaker
what like and that's the attitude towards women or the attitude is oh the woman can be in the movie but she has to be effectively like yours was saying like she's a pretty object that he cares about exactly yeah purpose that she serves yeah you know what is it the um is it Becknell or Bechter test uh the the Bechdel test i think it's Bechdel test yeah okay yeah Bechdel test so like it sounds like you're familiar with it it's basically idea of like you you know the do you have
01:07:50
Speaker
women on screen discussing anything other than the men of the movie. And like, nope. Not only does she not have like that discussing other men, she doesn't have a scene with another woman. No, no. The only other women in this movie are the woman he sleeps with at the bar, his mother and his estranged sister. And that's it. That's it.
01:08:16
Speaker
Yeah, Kristen Stewart, that like apparently his half-sister or something, that he, you know, like throwing in there at the end. And that was funny because this was before, this would have been before those movies, the Twilight movies. Oh, really? Okay. I feel like when they open the door for her, there's almost this framing of like, hey, look, it's the chick from Twilight. And like, that wouldn't have been a thing when this movie first came out. Okay, so yeah, that came out the same year, apparently, as this. Yes, it would have been right at the same time, I think. I wonder then if maybe that coming to think of it,
01:08:46
Speaker
maybe there was enough distance in between them that they were like, because if this came out after, but like only a couple of months, maybe that made a huge difference. I wonder if maybe like, again, cause it seems like they were so focused, like you talked about before, they're so focused on setting things up for a sequel or like a franchise here. So I wonder if they're like, well, she's in this vampire movie. We know it's really popular book. So it's going to be a really popular movie series. So let's get her in now for the sequel because then the sequel can be like,
01:09:13
Speaker
his mom, her and her mom hunting him down, which doesn't make any sense, but that you could see that they're going down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, that would have been, and again, would have been more interesting than what you get from this movie. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Yeah. No, no women. And then I think there's like, he has a conversation with like a friend of hers when he's looking for at a bar or something like that, but it's like literally other than Billson's character, even Diane Lane, who's a brilliant actress in her own right as well, like has,
Teenage Wish Fulfillment Theme
01:09:41
Speaker
two and a half scenes, you know what I mean? And all of them direct interactions with him. Why do they keep wasting Diane Lane in superhero movies, what I want to know? Yes, yes. We'll stay away from the Superman thing once again. Yeah, it's too bad. But I don't know. I think that's all I have to say about jumpers. Anything else you wanted to mention?
01:10:11
Speaker
So we talked about Millie being unbelievably trusting. I will say like, I think, and this is again, I think almost a criticism of the like studio execs we've been talking about. I will say like me, part of the reason I'm sure I love this is it is like teenage boy fulfillment fantasy. Oh yeah. Yeah. Like, and that is it. Like it is just, you don't need to know anything further than I can go anywhere in the world that I want to literally in an instant.
01:10:37
Speaker
And I have all the money in the world that I could possibly want. And I can sleep with any woman that I possibly want. And that is just like, that was as far as anyone actually got to in terms of the movie. And it's so telling. That is the best part of the movie, actually. When he's doing his jumper thing and he's going to all these different places, right? He's surfing in one part of the world. He's having lunch on the Sphinx, another car.
01:11:01
Speaker
Yes. And he's like, I remember, and even now I can see that, you know, me being a guy on the verge of 40, like watching it now, I could be like, I can think back and like, oh yeah, that would have been really cool to have that power when I was that age. And it's like this whole idea of like, because one of the big, like when you're young, you're adventurous, you want to travel, but you don't have the fucking money to do it. So it's like, that's such a cool idea. It's like, okay, he can go anywhere in the world. He doesn't have to worry about the money because he can just, boom, he's there.
01:11:30
Speaker
And I'm like, that's such a, there's so many different stories you could tell with just that concept. And again, they just waste it. Yeah. Cause yeah. Oh, absolutely. Just like you said, it's, it's like, that's just like so much, so much whoosh fulfillment. And like, I think you summarize it perfectly as to why. So I won't even restate that, but, um,
01:11:53
Speaker
Oh, other things that are just random inconsistent. They clearly meant for Samuel Jackson's knife that he keeps killing the jumpers with.
Unexplained Elements and Folklore
01:12:01
Speaker
He's ceremonially peeling it out of this piece of leather and then stabbing them. And it's zero explanation. There's never a name for it. There's no explanation as to why it matters. Or if jumpers can only be killed by this knife, it has to be silver for werewolves or something. And then one last thing I will just give is a criticism
01:12:22
Speaker
It is like, there's this inconsistency about whether or not it's okay to like jump in public. Like at one point they're like, Oh, you know, be, be discreet about this behavior. You know, you being in discreet is what causes the paladins to find us. And then in the next scene, they're like both just jumping in broad daylight in and out of crowds or like jumping a car for a cool chase scene. And it's just like, okay, either this is a thing that we need to keep secret.
01:12:47
Speaker
or it's a thing that we flash in front of people for fun. It can't be both. But that's another thing too.
Secret Societies and Missed Training
01:12:52
Speaker
And that goes back to the whole idea of like this whole war aspect, this whole like underground people, because there's never, the way Griffin's talking about it, like showing in the ropes, like this is something, it's almost like he's like, didn't, who did, why didn't somebody teach you this? Didn't the, you know, the head of the jumper league or whatever come in and explain the rules to you? And it's just like, and he's like, the way he's talking, it seems like they're,
01:13:14
Speaker
There should have been someone who sought him out. So it's like there's this whole aspect of it. It's like, why don't you do this? Is there a group? Was there a manual? How is he supposed to know? I just don't understand what's going on here. And actually, now that I'm clicking, I'll bet you.
01:13:32
Speaker
We were talking about Assassin's Creed earlier, thinking about the timelines of things. I think the first Assassin's Creed game came out around 2008. So I believe so. Yeah, 2007, somewhere like that. Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe it was even 2006. I went to, I would have gone to college in like 2006. And I remember probably my sophomore years when I was playing that first Assassin's Creed game. And I was one of the people who was obsessed with it at the very beginning.
01:13:55
Speaker
But that always has this storyline of like these two competing forces, the assassins versus the Templars. And they're both secret societies, you know, and you're supposed to quote unquote be rooting for one over the other. That again, like it seems like they're setting that up, as you said, like, like, you know, he should have been trained by an assassin and somebody should have taken them under their wing. And why didn't that occur?
Squandered Story Potential
01:14:18
Speaker
Because otherwise,
01:14:19
Speaker
you are gonna get caught by these Templars. You should know that these Templars exist. You should know- Which is another story that could have been here, right? The whole Buffy type of thing where he wasn't, they got her late in life. She wasn't flagged as a potential early on. So she doesn't have the same, like something like that. Like that's another thing you could have done here. And it's just like, there's so many different stories that,
01:14:46
Speaker
they had so many different story ideas and they just didn't pick one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the best summary of this movie. So much squandered potential, too many story ideas and not enough choosing. So actually the first Assassin's Creed game that did come out in 2007. I just looked that up. Awesome. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, they probably were again with those like
01:15:07
Speaker
last minute scramblings of oh we gotta you know create a i'm sure they're probably like hey this game is really popular right now let's i'm pretty sure that's exactly where the paladin idea came from because the whole time i'm watching like when he's getting you know he's freaking out about god and everything like that i'm thinking myself like okay
01:15:24
Speaker
white hair, you know, part of some ancient order of assassins or whatever they are. They call themselves paladins. I'm like, this is, they're the Knights Templar basically is what they're trying
Rushed Production and Script Issues
01:15:34
Speaker
to say. Or like the, you know, the pop culture version of the Knights Templar. And so, and now that we, now that he made that connection to set, like that totally clicks, that totally tracks, like they're like, well, Templars are the villains in Assassin's Creed. Let's just make them the villains in this, in this movie. And we'll call them the paladins instead.
01:15:52
Speaker
Yeah, and then someone was like, oh, but do we think they might come after us since we're so close to those video games? If we actually just call them templars? Yeah, they might. Well, let's go ahead and use a like Google machine. Yeah. Yeah. Paladin. Boom. There we go.
01:16:09
Speaker
Oh God, it's just, yeah, it's got such a feel of being written by committee. And it's like, by a committee of people who were more, who were just, I can just imagine that it's a bunch of people sitting around in a hotel room and they're like, look, we got to finish this up so that we can snort some cocaine. And it's exactly what I feel like is happening here. Cause it's just like, everything is just so slapped together and rushed in this script. Yeah. Yeah.
01:16:40
Speaker
We got to get it out, man. We've got all these great people signed on for it. So we just have to have something. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, don't worry. They've already greened out the sequels. All we need is to, we'll figure out the rest later. We'll back into this thing.
Relief and Acknowledgement of Potential
01:16:54
Speaker
Well, this has been a fun conversation, Perry. I really appreciate it. Well, thanks for coming on. I was worried about this because I'm watching, because I remember you saying the emails that you'd had this,
01:17:07
Speaker
you know, yeah, this soft spot for this film and you're, and I'm like, and after I watched it last, I'm like, oh God, this is gonna be an interesting conversation then. I'm gonna come in and wanna tear this movie apart. I'm gonna just totally destroy his favorite movie. Yeah, it's not gonna be good. No, thankfully that's not the case. I'm glad I revisited it though. Cause again, like I have these fond memories and now I can just permanently registered in my brain as like, yes, a good example of how Hayden Christensen has not been given a good enough chance.
Podcast Promotion and Audience Engagement
01:17:37
Speaker
and there is nothing else really truly routine about this movie. And now hopefully you can separate it from Push a little bit more in your memory. Yeah, I might have to go rewatch Push now to be able to, but I'll probably, I'll give it a couple of years. That way I won't conflate them again 10 years from now. All right, Nick, why don't you tell people where they can find you and your show and all that stuff? Yeah, absolutely. So once again, if you enjoyed hearing me talk about movies, my wife is way funnier and way more entertaining to listen to even than I am.
01:18:06
Speaker
Come find us on any podcast platform or YouTube and that's just at in love with movies That's in love comma with movies. You can also find us on social platforms Instagram Twitter at sign the letter N Love with movies. So at in love with movies, but just the letter N instead of the word and
01:18:28
Speaker
Uh, and then, you know, if you want to find me and talk about movies or suggest movies that, uh, you think I should see based on what you've learned about me here on my, uh, socials are at Nick loves movies. That's N I C Nick L U V love Nick loves movies. Um, so find me there on those things. And if you do want, uh, to hear.
01:18:49
Speaker
Perry, maybe C.V. can convince his significant other to come talk about movies with him, too. Go ahead and at him and then in love with movies and be like, Perry, we want to see you on in love with movies. And then maybe we'll be able to figure that out, too. Well, we'll talk about that off mic. But yeah, thanks. Thanks so much for coming on. And we'll have links to all that stuff in the show notes. So if anyone didn't catch it, just go to the show notes and all that stuff will be there.
01:19:11
Speaker
But that does it for this episode of Superhero Cinephiles. Superherocinephiles.com is the website, SuperCinemapod on Twitter and Instagram. And remember, you sign up for the Patreon, you get each of these episodes a week in advance, plus you get access to the companion podcast, the book club where we talk about comic books and all that fun stuff.
01:19:29
Speaker
And if you're a Patreon subscriber, Nick, by the time you hear this, we haven't recorded it yet, but by the time you do hear this, Nick will have already been on. So you can go back and listen to us talk about the first invincible book, I believe. So we'll- Yes. Yeah. So yeah. Thanks so much for listening and we will talk to you next time.
01:19:51
Speaker
If you enjoy the Superhero Cinephiles, then you'll also love my companion podcast, the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club. All my Patreon subscribers get access to this exclusive podcast where I review superhero comics and graphic novels. Not sure what comics you want to read next or what you should dive into? I've got you covered on that. I'll be doing reviews, recommendations, and also talking to you about useful entry points.
01:20:11
Speaker
If you're interested in reading some comics but don't know where you should start, plus you'll get access to all episodes of the main show a week before everyone else. On all of this for as little as just a dollar a month, all you have to do is go to patreon.com slash SuperCinemaPod and you can sign up at any subscription amount to get started. Thanks so much for your support and please don't forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:20:55
Speaker
Thank you for listening and as always good night. Good evening. God bless.