Lysander at the movies--Timeline

Lysander · Post by **Lysander** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 7:21 pm

**

One star because the book it was based on was very, very awesome.

One star because the movie, on it's own, would be passable.

-three stars because of what the movie did to the book. And I don't want to hear any bitching about how the movie is always worse than the book and I can't hold that against it. BULLSHIT. This movie is a goddamned travesty. Words cannot describe the terrors that lie within if you have not read the book before, because oyu will not just understand. Let me just take a few examples, however:

book: Chris/professor, no relation.
Movie: Chris son of professor
movie: anonamous doctor g uy
book: Beverly-something I can't remember, somewhat tired doctor chick.
Movie: annonamous guy named Cramer.
Book: Dianne Cramer, executive in charge of public relations.
Movie: annonamous guy named Gomez.
Book: annonamous girl named GOmez.
book: Kate, best at climbing in the entire group, vreourceful, intelligent, injinuative, and all-around awesome.
movie: Kate, generic air-head Blonde who seems destined to do nothing but repeat the exposition everyone else said two seconds ago in a slightly higher tone of voice for two thirds of the movie.
Book: Lady Claire, a terrifyingly intellgient woman who was slightly (read: rather) sluttish and extremely good at being manipulative.
Movie: lady Claire, other generic airhead who acts as a pathetic leech for Merric and nothing more, though the plot of the movie supposedly revolves around her.

"I consider myself a feminist writer. Really."--Pinnokio, screenwriter for _Timeline_.

And it gets worse. The technobable in the book made *sense*, especially after they take approximately 30 pages explaining it so that you (specifically) will not be confused. The movie has one of the cheapest and most obvious desu ex machinas to drive the so-called plot I have seen in a long time, although not quite as ridiculous as Edgar Allan Poe's _the Pit and the Pendulum_. Finally, teh movie does what I like to call the cardinal sin in adaptations: taking out good scenes from the book, then adding their own scenes in other places which consist of pointless waffling and boring re-stating of already-established facts. Troll scene, anyone? This movie's beginning is one of the worst I've seen, and it's because of the pacing; the pacing at the beginning of the movie is absolutely horrid--they zip through a delirious person being discovered in the desert, said person being delivered to a hospital, him suddenly dying, an MRI finding something wrong with the body, and a few "ITC" employees hinting at things being somewhat amiss--in the space of approximately 30 seconds. Disgusting. And then the next ten minutes are about Chris bemoaning the fact that he hates archiology but looooooo0ooo0o0o0o0oves Kate!1! Ugh. Pathetic, absolutely pathetic. And just to make everything completely tragic, they went and reversed themes. The movie deals with teh idea that things have to happen a certain way and so that's why we are not allowed to interfeer. The book is about the fact that it is impossible for a person to interfeer, because their presence in the time period and the actions they perform and influence on the timeline is what causes certain recorded actions to occur in the first place--so in fact, if they were not present, than history could not have proceeded the way it had--as Donnigur puts it in his monalogue near the middle, the fabric of reality will refuse to allow you to cause a paradox.

This movie was so bad I couldn't even make fun of it. Just give this one a miss, folks. Seriously.

This has been... Lysander at the movies!

AArdvark · Post by **AArdvark** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 3:24 am

I agree totally. I had no idea there was a movie out when I read the (ebook) suddenly a week later at the local video store, there it was! I fought my way past overweight housewives and other suchlikes to get a copy for to rent.

What a letdown. I will put it in the bad transition from book to movie category. I remember the blurb on the dvd cover, something like 'Braveheart with a sci-fi twist' or somesuch nonsense. OK, the battle scenes were good. I will give them credit for that. But the PLOT, Mr. director, the plot!

It felt rushed, really. like they just threw this hokey sounding time travel thing around a really good 13th century castle siege.

I will offer a similar book/movie destruction for comparision. "Christine" by Stephen King and the movie by John Carpenter.

THE
EEEEEEEEBERT
AARDVARK

Lysander · Post by **Lysander** » Tue Nov 23, 2004 11:19 pm

On the ferry back from my regional drama tournament (tied for second with a monalogue from the Breakfast Club) this movie was playing, so I watched it, thinking I could at least make fun of it.

I was, once again, shocked. I thought I was prepared for the horrid plot holes and rushed exposition and blatant shovanism and just all-around scank-nastyness of this movie. I was mistaken. Timeline has become the first movie in history to not only surpass my wildest expectations of awfullness, but to do it twice in a row. I'm expanding my rating system just so that I can give this one a 2 out of 10, and those two points are only because of Michael Chriton's brilliance in writing the book the movie is supposedly based on, and that's a pretty shaky reason to give this movie credit for anything. It runs neck in neck with Resident Evil: Apocalypse and the Street Fighter movie as the absolute biggest letdowns in movie history.

I didn't like it much.

Jack Straw · Post by **Jack Straw** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 5:56 am

So wait. How many stars? Don't understand, don't understand.

Lysander · Post by **Lysander** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 6:35 pm

One star out of five, slave to standard movie ratings. Just divide by two, not that hard.

AArdvark · Post by **AArdvark** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 7:19 pm

Certainly no tone of Crichton's best works, but passable. I didn't buy the wormhole theory. He should have left that part less explained. Even H.G. Wells invented a time machine and mostly said; "Hey it works, let's just go now."

In defence of the movie, they did use trebouchets to great advantage visually. I actually built a desktop model of one and can attest that they work well. Plot kinda sucked out tho.

THE
THROW ME
HALF A MILE
AARDVARK

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 2:29 pm

John Doe has the upper hand!

Lysander · Post by **Lysander** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 12:10 pm

Aaardvark wrote:I didn't buy the wormhole theory. He should have left that part less explained. Even H.G. Wells
invented a time machine and mostly said; "Hey it works, let's just go now."

See, that's the movie again. The movie was teh one that came up with thaT stupid deus ex machina wormhole thing. The book had it juch better explained, they were trying to create teleportation but instead stumbled onto how to go to different quantum universes, and through extention time travel. What got to me was how limmited an application of it they were using; in quantum physics literally everything is possible, so they should have, like, gone to a universe made of nothing but hundred-dollar bills and make them all rich, if all they cared about is money. Or they could set up a shuttle service for people to live in different universes; don't like the fact that Bush won the ellection? Go to the universe where Riot of the Blood Howard Deen is president! Etc. What also got to me from the books were the ear translators. They weren't really explained at all, and I guess I can kind of see why the movie had those taken out. Even if they compromised by having all the bad guys speak real English, which was... annoying.