Jumper

[cmdr_zoom]

I get the story that this movie wants to tell - the pretty young rebel (and his pretty young girlfriend) against the Bad Guys who want to kill him for his specialness. I even get that we're supposed to accept his unrepentant bank robberies as part of the adolescent power/freedom fantasy; you can't be a cool world traveller if you're tied to a McJob.

But if there's a sequel, I want to hear more about the teleporters who've used their power to commit rape and murder untouchably. I want to see the ones under the control and "protection" of people like the Mob and the CIA. I want to see some acknowledgment that this is more than just a kid's game, a "Catch Me If You Can" lark.

Comments

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

That attitude is what has sucked all the joy from, well, pretty much everything to do with fictional superpowers. "But real people would do unspeakable things with powers like this! We need to explore that or there is no literary value."

Feh. Feh, I say. If I want to explore the squalid excesses of Real Human Evil, there's plenty of true crime reporting for that. Kindly stop injecting it into my escapist continua as well, Mr. Moore.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know - and I doubt it'll happen in the next movie (if there is one). Introducing consequences that can't be escaped in a single jump, leaving them half a world away, diminishes the fantasy. It's too much like having to deal with grown-up problems.

I hope that wanting a little more moral depth in what is currently a rather shallow piece of entertainment doesn't put me into Hideaki Anno territory. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I don't find a rootless extreeeme thrillseeker who lives by stealing to be an appealing protagonist; mostly, I want to give him a smack and tell him to start thinking of someone other than himself.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

I think the trick is recognizing that rather shallow pieces of entertainment have their place, and not everything needs to examine matters of moral depth. Or, to put it another way, there's nothing wrong with finding the protagonist or the story of Jumper unappealing, but one should consider the possibility that it means one should shrug and move on to matters one is better-suited for demographically, rather than declaring that the protagonist or the story should be changed to suit one's taste. That's a bit like complaining that Westerns shouldn't have so many cowboys in them, when the real problem is just that you don't like Westerns. :)

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Point. *sigh*

[pjack.livejournal.com]

I recall enjoying the book. The title of which I'm forgetting; it may very well be "Jumper", or it may something else entirely, wholly unrelated to the movie.

And for what it's worth, I agree that a little depth and moral consequences would be a welcome addition to superhero-fluff. It doesn't have to get all dark and depressing; just touch lightly on some themes. Have the other Jumpers make fun of him for robbing banks, or something. :)

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

See, that's the thing: in the context of "superhero-fluff", I'd actually say he's a villain (of the petty and self-indulgent sort). That he's hunted by other shallow cliches (zealous Knights Templar, yawn) does not elevate him in my eyes. Maybe if he used his power for something other than globetrotting hedonism and (later) trying to stay alive...

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

I kept wishing I was seeing another movie. Maybe switch the view points. you could have one about the Irish guy trying desperately to survive while being hampered by the selfish and hedonistic newbie who keeps nearly getting him killed, or one from the POV of the Samuel Jackson Paladin showing him hunting amoral, hedonistic and down right evil jumpers.

Either would be better than this bit of fluff.

I think it helped Hayden Christiansen not at all to be surrounded by otther people who could act. His modest improvement since the films not to me named still left him embarrassingly flat in contrast to people who were at least trying to be interesting. I would have rather they'd kept the younger actors playing the characters as teens.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was getting at with my original post. I would have liked to see some acknowledgment that there are actual reasons for people to fear jumpers besides another tired refrain of "OMG teh Church is teh MAN, keepin' us down liek they did Galileo!"

But as I briefly acknowledged and ZG further reminded me, a movie built around the fantasy of "go anywhere, do anyone anything, being a thief and outlaw is Cool" is not going to touch on that. It's the wrong place to go looking for nuance. And those of us who aren't part of the target demographic should just try to forget it and move on.