The quintessential question from Jumper is here at #1. Doug Liman told me, “In the ten-year-old version of this movie Sam Jackson’s character, at some point, would have told us the story of a jumper that helped Hitler and it all would have been neatly explained for the audience.” Once again the press kit also offers up an idea on why people may hate jumpers by saying, “Someone with bad intentions could take a nuclear weapon and drop it in the White House, or do other evil things.”
Now that is some cool history.
Just imagine a scene like the opening of X2: X-Men United where Nightcrawler is popping all around the White House and damn near kills the President. Basically Jumper steals the idea of Nightcrawler, a Nightcrawler that is boring as shit and an ass hole to boot, and does nothing with it. At least nothing “Nightcrawler cool” with it.
Instead we get no explanation other than Jackson saying, “You all go bad.” Nice assumption Sam, care to give us some back-story? No? Okay, we’ll take your word for it.
These, of course, were just my top ten. I left out questions such as “Why did Summer Roberts change her name to Millie?” calling out Rachel Bilson’s acting prowess. “Why would anyone cast Hayden Christensen?” which was just too easy. “Why does Hayden go see Rachel immediately after learning he is being tracked?” “Shouldn’t they be called teleporters?” and “How do the Paladins track the jumpers?”
The questions go on and on and it really hurt a movie that actually built up an interesting mythology and then forgot didn’t care to tell the audience.
Yup, Jumper could have been good, but it wasn’t. To quote Ray from In Bruges, “If I grew up on a farm. And was retarded. I might like Jumper. Buuuuut I wasn’t. So I don’t.” Well said Ray… Well said.
Now go see In Bruges and help Focus realize they need to release their films wider if they want to make any money. Also the release and publicity of good films will only encourage the bigger studios to make better ones. Everyone wins with that equation.
