Jumper (2008) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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I ain’t the worst that you’ve seen. Ah, can’t you see what I mean?

Jumper is a unique story that mashes up superhero storytelling with sci-fi conceits. And it would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for the atrocious two-dimensional characters. It seems like the filmmakers might have been more concerned with creating a new franchise than telling a compelling story.

First Impressions

The trailer for this film shows a young boy discovering he has the power to teleport anywhere. He grows up, leaves an abusive home, and travels the world–doing what he wants. That is until he finds out that someone is on to him. He discovers that there are others who also share the same power, and there appears to be a war between the teleporters, or at least someone trying to stop him. Things begin to get very serious for the young man as he learns what it means to be a Jumper.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

Young David Rice (Max Thieriot) is infatuated with a girl at his school, Mille (AnnaSophia Robb). Knowing that she wants to travel the world one day, he gets her a snow globe with the Eiffel Tower inside. School bully Mark (Jesse James) grabs the globe and tosses it onto a frozen river. When David tries to retrieve it he falls under, shocking his classmates who believe he has died. Just before he drowns, a power manifests within him and he teleports into the stacks of the town library, a place he frequents. He wanders home, late, and is given an earful from his abusive father, William (Michael Rooker). He “jumps” back to the library after grabbing some supplies from his room. David walks past Millie’s house and leaves the snow globe on a swing for her.

Older David (Hayden Christensen) narrates the events, as young David practices teleporting in the park and then robs his first bank. A black man with white hair, Roland (Samuel L Jackson), claiming to be from the NSA shows up to investigate. Eight years later, the adult David lives a life of luxury in an expensive penthouse with loads of hidden money and various expensive consumer goods. He is skilled with his power now, teleporting around the room, or even a few feet on a couch in order to reach a remote control. David jumps to London for the day where he picks up a woman in a bar. He then teleports to Fiji to surf, Cairo to have lunch on the Sphinx, and then back home.

Entering his apartment he is greeted by Roland who wants to know how a criminal can steal without opening doors. David tries to run, but Roland uses an electrical stun stick and cable to zap David so he can’t jump. Freeing himself, David leaps back into his childhood room, where his father shouts through the padlocked door for him to stay. David decides to visit Millie (Rachel Bilson) who is now a bartender at a local bar. He gets into a fight with a drunk Mark (Teddy Dunn) teleporting him into a locked bank vault and leaving him. David invites Millie to Rome with him. They take a 10-hour plane trip, where Millie admits to David she doesn’t want to be lied to. Roland interviews Mark, which allows him to connect the dots and track the young jumper to Rome.

David and Millie make love in the hotel and then visit the Colosseum, which has just closed. David breaks into the tourist attraction and allows Millie inside–still not having told her about his powers. Inside David meets Griffin (Jamie Bell), another twenty-something jumper who has been keeping an eye on David for a while. Griffin tells him about a group, led by Roland, called the Paladins who hunt and kill jumpers. Suddenly, they are attacked by two men with stun batons and stun nets. When Griffin leaps away, David realizes he is able to follow him via the jump scar–a slight warping in the space where the jumper left. David returns to Rome and leaves with Millie, but he is arrested by the police for sneaking into the monument. At the police station, he is shocked when his mother Mary (Diane Lane), who he has not seen since he was 5, shows up, and frees him, telling him to leave in 30 seconds.

David gets Millie on a flight back to Michigan and visits Griffin–who relates the history and danger of the Paladins. David leaps home to find his father dead (by Roland, ‘natch) and then visits Mark in jail to find out what he told them. David suggests a team-up with Griffin to stop Roland, hoping to do it before Millie’s plane lands. But he was not paying attention to the time, and she is already back and at her apartment where Roland has laid a trap. The Paladins have a device that can hold open the portal of the jump scar allowing them to travel after the Jumper. Roland follows David back to Griffin’s lair and they all fight, destroying Griffin’s home.

Griffin plans to take a bomb through the portal and blow up Roland, but David can’t let him kill Millie, so they fight–leaping across various landscapes in the world. David traps Griffin in some power lines so he can take the fight back to Roland and save Millie. Leaping into her apartment, David is caught, but he uses his willpower to jump the entire apartment into the river. David saves Millie by jumping her into the library and then jumps–and abandons–Roland in the Grand Canyon, saying he is not like other Jumpers. David tracks down his mother, who the audience already realizes is a member of the Paladins. She and David’s (half) sister Sophie (Kristen Stewart) left when David was 5 so Mary didn’t have to kill her son. She says she will give him a head start. David takes Millie’s hand and they teleport someplace warm.

“You think you could go on like this forever, living like this with no consequences?” – Roland

History in the Making

Approximately a quarter of the films reviewed to date on Sci-Fi Saturdays have been based on previously published material and Jumper is no exception. Like many adaptations of books (sci-fi or otherwise), it deviates from the original story wildly. Not just because of translating the story into film, but also to make it bigger. Both stories start out similarly, but the film deviates once audiences are introduced to adult David. Everything from there on out is mostly different than the book. The film introduces the character Griffin, the group of Paladins, the concept of Mary still being alive (and being a Paladin herself), plus the whole world traveling/adventure angle to the story, which makes for some exciting set pieces but at the cost to the characterization of David. Much of the film feels as if it’s concerned with getting to the next moment and there is no reflection on the present moment or introspection for character growth. In growing the story, book author Steven Gould created a prequel novel to tie into the film called Jumper: Griffin’s Story to provide more backstory on this character that was created for the film.

The changes to Jumper may stem from the filmmaker’s believing that the story was almost a superhero film, and wanting to capitalize on that genre by making it “cinematic” or “global.” Since 2000, and the release of X-Men, at least 40 films based on superhero comic book properties had been released, proving to be a popular genre. In 2008 alone, the next wave of superhero films would dawn with the release of DC Comics The Dark Knight, continuing Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and the first two films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. Jumper is very much in the vein of a superhero film but without comic book characters. Two other examples from the era include Will Smith’s Hancock–an outright superhero film, and Push, with Chris Evans. It was an opportunity to create an intellectual property that belonged to the studio and was not beholden to decades of fan expectation and comic book history, yet still had the fun, action, and adventure of these comic book films. It was a win/win proposition.

Genre-fication

Speaking of superhero films, they will receive no proper articles on Sci-Fi Saturdays. So, while films like Captain America: The First Avenger, Superman: The Movie, and Fan4stic all have elements of science-fiction stories, they truly belong to their own genre. That’s primarily because prototypical superhero films can also be dramas, fantasies, or action/adventure stories. Jumper breaks this mold by being a science-fiction film first and a superhero film second. That’s not just a distinction that I make so I can write an article about it. The film doesn’t have the normal tropes of the classic superhero films–even though it does invoke some superhero tropes. For David, Griffin, and other jumpers there’s no secret origin story. None of them wear costumes or have catchphrases. And none of this is based on an actual comic book character or series. Jumper does invoke superpowers and has good versus evil (well, more accurately, evil versus lesser evil). It also has plenty of action. It goes even further with a comic-inspired moment where David asks Griffin if he wants to do a Marvel Team-Up, like in the comics. Marvel Team-Up is a series of comic books where two heroes join forces for an issue (usually Spider-Man and a guest, but for a while, The Human Torch) to stop a bad guy. That’s about as overt a reference as you can get.

The teleportation superpower, a common trait for magic users and comic characters like Nightcrawler or Doctor Manhattan, provides part of the science-fiction conceit to the film. The power to jump through space is never explained but appears to be a trait shared by multiple humans across the planet. Perhaps it’s a mutation of some sort that affects a very small percentage of the population. It’s not some kind of scientific anomaly or the by-product of some modern discovery, since Roland indicates the Paladins have been killing jumpers “since medieval times.” Most people with this power seem to be able to teleport themselves along with another person. David watches Griffin wield the ability to teleport any moving object with him, like a car–which allows them to zip through downtown Tokyo traffic. “If it moves, I can jump it,” he says. Griffin also relates the story of another Jumper he knew to David. One that tried to move a whole building with him, but was killed. It’s unspecified how he knew this story if the guy died (maybe he too had had a team-up), but the strain apparently killed the Jumper.

Societal Commentary

Jumper makes one theme perfectly clear: what would happen if there were no consequences to your actions? Based on a young adult (YA) novel, there is a primary level of wish fulfillment in the story. A young character discovers he has superpowers which allows him to come and go from locations without notice. He can steal money or anything else he needs and is never seen. He lives a life free from want, getting whatever he wants, whenever he wants it. But soon he is discovered. Roland finds him, but instead of coming in with a squad of Paladins, the bad-ass em-effer wants to scare David first. He shows up and tells David, “There are always consequences.” Before David jumps away again. This is the consequence of not being prepared. But also it does show that living the life that David does is a lie. Which is something that he already knows. He leaves IOU notes at each of his crime scenes. Yet there’s never any indication that he made good on any of those. He’s a character with a conscience, but one that never grows. He has a conscience at the beginning of the film (leaving notes) and also has one at the end (not killing Roland–or allowing him to be killed). Any growth is ultimately him realizing that the world is a more complex place than he realized.

David starts the film as a bullied and abused young boy. While nothing shows that he was withheld from having things, as soon as he gets his powers and leaves, he begins to take everything he wants, like a kid in a candy store. As an adult, he has more than he needs, continuing to be greedy and glutinous with his powers. But somehow audiences are supposed to sympathize with him that he’s really a good person because he leaves notes saying he’ll pay back the money he’s stolen. All the time only thinking about himself. Even his asking Millie to Rome is about himself, since now he can provide her dream of travel to her–he thinks he will be her knight in shining armor. He barges into Griffin’s life, turning his existence upside down. He attracts the attention of a Jumper kill squad that wants to kill him for no other reason than he’s different, an “abomination” as Roland calls him. By the end of the film, there’s not much change in David. He still uses his powers as he wants, but now he has the girl by his side. He chooses not to kill Roland–the man who has been gunning for him the entire film–telling him that he’s different, and as such deserves to live. But then leaves the Paladin on a ledge in the middle of the Grand Canyon. The only thing he discovered was that he needed to be more careful with his powers. Oh, and that his Mom is still alive and that she’s hunting him too. Things do have consequences, which feels like an incredibly trite and superficial ending to a film about people with great powers.

The Science in The Fiction

The Paladins in Jumper have discovered a technology that helps them capture and kill their prey. It’s a modern technology derived from science. Their stun sticks, wands, and nets provide electrical charges to incapacitate jumpers making it difficult for them to concentrate and leap to another location. They also have portable machines that are able to hold open the wormholes that the jumpers teleport through. This makes things easier to take out jumpers as we see Roland and his team capture one fugitive without much effort (and then brutally stab him). Somehow, this lucratively funded, secret global organization, has trouble being able to trap and kill Griffin and David. One wonders how Paladins were able to stop Jumpers in the Dark Ages or the Renaissance without the same level of technology. Maybe it’s Roland’s hubris that is the stopping point. He wants to get up close and personal, stabbing the Jumper with his big and ancient-looking knife. No guns for this guy.

Late in the film, David learns a new trick inspired by a story that Griffin told him earlier. With a minimum of effort, and while under the strain of the Paladin shock-nets, he is able to level-up his power and leap Millie’s entire apartment into the nearby river, freeing them. Since no explanation is given for how the powers work, this is just another “mind over matter” type of situation. Normally he pictures where he wants to end up and his body somehow takes him there. For situations like this, he must be able to expand his consciousness to “grab” the space around him and take the structure with him. Since the characters leave a small fluctuation in space-time behind them–called a jump-scar–perhaps they are forming a wormhole between two locations. These scars allow other Jumpers to follow, but they are also the anchor point that the Paladin technology can grab onto and hold open, allowing a normal person to follow as well. Just who is funding this research and why?

The Final Frontier

Jumper ends with a non-ending, leaving itself open to more stories and maybe a new franchise (as well as numerous questions). David finds his mother Mary, who is still alive, and asks her why she left. She explains that she is a Paladin and her choice was to leave her 5-year-old child or kill him. There wasn’t another choice, such as to retire and move. Maybe she was really sick of her husband’s abuse and wanted to get away from him too. Today it seems like a Percy Jackson type of situation where the boy with powers is “hidden” from authorities by living in an abusive situation where no one would think to look. Either way, she loves her son enough to help free him in Rome but says she will have to hunt him. And now that Roland has seen her picture as David’s Mom, is Mary safe from Roland? Oh no, what ever will happen? Good question since no other sequels materialized.

Several actors from this film continued into full-fledged superhero titles. The most prominent is Samuel L. Jackson, who made a cameo in Iron Man later that year as Nick Fury, a super spy who recruits superheroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe onto a superteam called The Avengers. Michael Rooker was cast as Yondu, an alien and adoptive father of Peter Quill (aka Star-Lord) in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. Diane Lane appears as Superman’s adoptive mother in Man of Steel. And Jamie Bell was cast as Ben Grimm, the Thing, in Fox’s worst iteration of the Fantastic Four films.

While Doug Liman brings the sensibilities of his previous two films, Mr. & Mrs. Smith and The Bourne Identity, to the special effects and stunt work surrounding the teleportation fights, the script just creates bland characters that do what they do only because it’s written for them to do that. Millie is too trusting, asking zero questions–but always saying she doesn’t want to be lied to. Mary’s story explains things but opens a lot of questions. In the end, David learns that there are indeed consequences to his action, but not a whole lot more. Liman would go on to make a much better sci-fi film several years later with the time travel action film Edge of Tomorrow. Jumper ends up being a fun distraction, but don’t expect amazing things from it.

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