johnlink ranks JUMPER (2008)
The pretentiousness of this movie pisses me off. It’s like the producers thought that if they threw $80 million (or whatever the budget was) at a pile of crap, they could assume it would warrant a sequel. Diane frickin Lane is wasted in, literally, three minutes of screen time only to set up a sequel. Good movies earn their franchise status. JUMPER does not.
The basic plot involves Anakin Skywalker learning he can teleport. Jules Winnfield thinks this goes against what God wants humans to do, so he tries to kill Anakin.
I watched JUMPER (2008) on 1.15.09. It was my first viewing of the film.
NOTE: THIS RANKING UTILIZES THIS SITE’S ORIGINAL SYSTEMIC ARTICLE WRITING METHOD. THE METHOD BY WHICH THE RANKINGS WERE ARRIVED AT, HOWEVER, REMAINS THE SAME.
FILM
There could have been more here, actually. If you’re going to use the frickin Colesseum as a shooting site (or at least the CGI version of it), let us at least get a good look. I mean the movie is 90 minutes long. Give it some time to breathe. Let the moral implications of someone who can go anywhere they want play out. Instead, we get a childrens’ version of it with no real consequences other than Samuel L. Being pissed that a guy can teleport. SCORE: 3
MOVIE
Teleporting, in JUMPER looks a lot like Nightcrawler doing it in X-MEN, except without any blue. While cool, Nightcrawler was just one part of that movie, and it felt like it hold just as much of the fun factor as JUMPER did with it being the primary focus. On another bad note, the last act was pretty lame. Why the hell didn’t they just continue to jump around? Samuel L. had one machine which worked slowly. I know that’s a bit of logic that should have been dealt with in the writing, but find some answers during production. SCORE: 4
ACTING
I’m not sure what people see in Hayden Christiansen. He wasn’t horrendous, but the kid who played him as a teenager for the first ten minutes of the movie was more fun to watch. Samuel L. does his normal snearing and posing. He’s great when’s he challenged, but he’s incredibly ordinary in material like this. The only reason this score gets as high as it does is because of Rachel Bilson. I’m not sure if she’s good, or if I don’t notice she’s not cause she’s so cute. Either way, she should do more. SCORE: 5
WRITING
Note to writers… figure out obvious logic gaps before submitting your screenplay. Please. Because the studios might just make your script anyway, and that’s not good for anybody involved. They found a good first step to keep people from jumping, but we needed to be convinced why, once they got away, they just didn’t continue to keep moving. I know it’s sci-fi. I don’t ask for all things to be perfectly explained. But the characters’ actions SHOULD be. SCORE: 3
FINAL TALLY
FILM: 3; MOVIE: 4; ACTING: 5; WRITING: 3
3+4+5+3+0 = 15
FINAL SCORE: 3.75
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