Ok Ryan Reynolds is back in a brand new role and movie where he plays a sassy guy with
razor sharp one liners.
No it’s not Deadpool?
No it’s not the Hitman’s Bodyguard It’s The Adam Project.
A timey wimey wibbly wobbly movie that sees the titular character travelling back in time
to team up with his younger self.
The Wrexham football club co-owner Ryan Reynolds has reunited with Free Guy director Shawn
Levy and I am pleased to say that just like that movie, The Adam Project is great.
Now whilst Free Guy was a better Ready Player One than Ready Player One, The Adam Project
delivers a movie that wears it’s 80’s sci fi influences on its sleeve.
It is a glorious amalgamation of things like ET, The Last Starfighter and Flight of the
Navigator.
Throughout this video we’re gonna be breaking down the entire thing but there will be heavy
spoilers ahead and I don’t want your future self to have to go back to you right now watching
this to tell you to stop what you’re doing.
It’s on you buddy and with that out the way, thank you for clicking this, now let’s
get into The Adam Project.
Ok so the movie opens in 2050 with Adam stealing or taking back a fighter jet in order to travel
back in time.
Throughout the film we learn that time travel was accidentally invented by Adam’s father
Louis in 2018.
He ended up dying and it massively effected his childhood and adult life.
Now Though Adam initially wants to rescue his wife Laura the entire point of the film
eventually is to stop time travel from being created as we discover that 2050 is basically
the terminator timeline times t-1000.
This is because a friend of Adam’s known as Sorian basically did a back to the future
2 and she went back in time in order to tell her old self to buy Bitcoin and secure a Bored
Ape so she becomes mega rich.
We’re just kidding but not really.
Because of her future knowledge she can wrapped tape around Time travel and made it so that
it belongs to her.
The way time travel works in the film is that there is one set timeline and if you go back
and change things then it effects all future events and basically wipes things clean from
the moment that they were changed.
If someone were to travel back in time, dance on Titanic and move it out the way of that
iceberg then when they returned home their memories of that being the true history would
start to solidify as if that’s the way it always happened.
This is why Adam can meet his younger self and not remember it happening to him.
If he were to return to 2050 the events that played out would then become his memories
and so on and so forth.
You can affect the past which in turn affects the future and it’s more things become fixed
points rather than an MCU Multiverse time split.
This gets lipservice paid to it in the film and hilariously Young Adam has a child-like
wonder over the equipment and weapons questioning if it is a lightsaber with it kind of being
more like a TVA time stick.
Now a big twist comes in the film when we learn that the timeline we see is actually
one that’s already had somewhat of a do-over and that the young Adam exists in a one where
Sorian has already gone back and changed things.
We’ll talk about this later on but it’s very important to bear in mind.
Now whilst Adam wants to go back to 2018 he initially lands four years later in 2022.
He introduces himself to his younger version who’s played by Walker Scobell.
Walker is brilliant in the film and for such a young guy he does a great job of recapturing
the franctic, almost ad-libbed dialogue that Reynolds is famous for.
You really can believe that they’re the same character at different points in their
lives and it helps the elevate the film a lot as they start to work together.
Now Adams young self is just as mouthy as he is but he’s small and weak and thus is
easily susceptible to bullies and we find him being tormented by them leading to him
being collected by his mother and we learn that his father passed away a year ago and
has had a detrimental effect on him.
Luckily he will get a quick lesson in growing up as his older self lands in his back garden
leading Young Adam to follow his dog Hawkin, you know named after Stephen Hawking.
We get a pretty cool scene where the Young Adam realises just who this man is and Older
Adam explains he’s here on a rescue mission and he needs him as each ship is coded to
the DNA of the pilot.
He needs him to power it up but just as Young Adam helps the Older one, the older one also
helps the young one.
After the death of his Dad, Adam very much was like a person who watches the videos but
they don’t subscribe, there, but not really there.
He was a complete jerk to his mother and Adult Adam regrets this massively as he realises
how nice she was to him.
It’s a poignant moment and Reynolds delivers several heartfelt moments where he decides
to be the father figure that his past self lost out on.
Eventually he comes to realise he might be trying to rush Adam through years of growth
and he also visitis his mother at a bar.
Was really wondering whether they’d do a back to the future where she’d try and get
it on with him but luckily they dodge that bullet even if Sorian doesn’t.
We’re getting ahead of ourselves but what Adam Project does excellently is that it has
these sentimental moments that make it more than just a time travel story.
There’s also cool thematic pieces and even a fight to the song good times bad times by
Led Zeppelin
It’s an apt choice and as Robert Plant talks about losing his love Adam is saved by his
wife Laura who sadly does not get enough screen time.
The song also discusses the idea of what it is to be a man and doing the right thing,
both things Adam struggles with across time in the movie.
Along the way Adam confronts a bully, we get some cool hoverboard riding soldiers and also
one that is a bit like the speeder bike chase in Return Of The Jedi, lightsaber and all.
We also get an explanation as to what happened to Laura as she is clearly not dead like Adam
was told.
We learn she found something strange in the jump logs which was a time jet that returned
from 2018.
This was never have supposed to happen and though they could’ve just went back to watch
Infinity War opening night, something fishy was happening.
The real reason it seemed like it never went there in the first place is because Sorian’s
tips to her younger self changed the time stream meaning it wasn’t the same time that
she went to.
She not only invested heavily but she managed to gain control of the time programme and
she used this for personal gain even if her head seemed like it was CGI’d badly onto
her body the entire time.
Now Sorian by going back in time changed everything and this robbed the entire world, including
Adam of the lives that they were meant to lead.
It’s here that he is urged to go back to 2018 and end time travel but in doing this
it would mean that Laura and Adam never met as they only crossed paths on the programme.
Thus Adam thinks that they needed Sorian’s intervention in order to fall in love and
it puts him in a bit of a moral quandry.
However Laura is adamant that they are meant to be and their marriage is a sort of fixed
point as we see at the end of the movie.
Now this moment cuts even deeper as they are attacked which leaves Laura having to make
a final stand.
From this point on the two Adam’s go back to 2018 and it’s here they meet their father
played by Mark Ruffalo.
Eerily he says most of you will die before you finish your life’s work which is the
exact same thing that happened to him.
Interestingly they get into a debate over the origin of the phrase It’s Later Than
You Think as technically it IS later than Louis thinks as both Adam’s are from the
future and his story is later than he thinks.
Louis despite being told that the past and future have already been ruined by Sorian
refuses to help put the genie back in the bottle as he’s worried that it might further
destabilise the time stream.
Fortunately, the theme of Young Adam needing a father figure arises again as Older Adam
says that his younger self needs him so their missiong becomes to defeat Biff I mean Sorian.
Realising that he spent too much time on time travel he decides to go with the second chance
he’s been given and thus the three set out to destroy it once and for all.
This all leads to a confrontation in a super cool fight as Sorian threatens young Adam
in the hopes of getting the drive that can unlock everything.
While maths ruined the future, here it saves the day due to the metal in the armour piercing
bullets being magnetic.
Louis counted on this and as it travels into the generator it goes through Sorian’s past
self in order to do this.
It’s a moment akin to the ending of looper and because of the future having to rely on
the past, Sorian’s younger CGI de-aged self dying means her older version has to die too.
Now sticking to the rules of time travel how they should be, Louis refuses to hear how
he died.
Sadly it seems like this is a fixed point in time and that he was always meant to die
either way.
We catch young Adam and his mother at the end of the movie and she’s going through
the insurance papers.
She says she wants to do it how Louis did and the whole hug between young Adam and his
mother doesn’t work unless he goes.
It’s really heartbreaking and watching Louis accept his fate whilst delivering a speech
about how much he loves his son really means a lot.
He trusts in the strength of his son and knows that no matter what they’ll make it.
Now 30 years takes a long time to correct and thus they have some time together before
they return to their own times.
In the back garden they all play baseball one last time and I’m not…I’m not crying
you are.
You are you stupid punk.
Young Adam promises to give his mother a hug so hard it could break her ribs and its such
an emotioanl ending about loss, acceptance and remembering the good times amongst the
bad.
Watching them disappear is a great way to say goodbye.
Now back in their presents we watch as a Young Adam tells his mother he loves her after pretending
to mug her and old Adam meets Laura.
Now when they’re playing catch Adam wonders if they’ll remember the adventure they went
on because as we learned earlier, memories alter to fit the past.
It does kinda break the rules a bit but I think that Old Adam definitely remembers Laura
as he says that he found her.
The memories being kept is further cemented by young Adam hugging his mother which he
wouldn’t remember to do if he’d forgot everything.
All in all it’s a really good ending and as for my thoughts on the movie, I really
enjoyed it.
I don’t think it’s really inventing time travel and doing anything we haven’t seen
before but it still had a lot of dramatic and great action moments.
Though Reynolds is great and often times he has to carry movies, I think that the whole
cast here are really good and Zoe Saldana, Mark Ruffalo, Walker Scobell and well everyone
handles the material really well.
I’m excited to see what Reynolds and Levy do next as they’ve had two great original
IP films back to back and it’s nice to see them hitting home runs like this on new properties.
Overall The Adam Project was great and it gets an…
8/10
Now obviously I’d love to hear your thoughts so make sure you comment below and let me
know.
If you enjoyed the video then please hit the thumbs up button and on screen right now we
have a breakdown of The Batman which you should definitely go check out.
If not then thanks for sitting through the video and I’ll see you on the next one.
Take care, peace