*** Official TIMELINE Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[SarahG]

There's a new trailer out for this. You can see it here: http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/t/timeline.php

I'm looking forward to seeing this, mostly because of Donner.

 

[Steve_Tk]

One of the trailers looks great. But some of the TV spots I've seen do not promote the movie well at all.

I'm waiting for a review of someone who has not read the book.

 

[Mikel_Cooperman]

I read that they did play down the whole Time travel angle of the film which doesnt make a lot of sense.

 

[John_Lee]

I read the book and my first thought was "this doesn't need a movie treatment." All of the interesting parts of the story dealt with the specific theories and mechanisms of the time travel machine. The story of what happened when they got there was entirely pedestrian.

 

[SarahG]

But some of the TV spots I've seen do not promote the movie well at all.

I haven't seen any TV spots. Why so bad?

 

[Lars_J]

Phil Florian, (very late reply, but I just stumbled on this thread)

The "original" in such a time/transport fax must be destroyed due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It basically states that one cannot observe all aspects of a particle without affecting it. So sure, you might be able to read in a human body in data form (location, velocity, rotations for all particles), but the act of doing so will destroy the state of the original atoms, and thus completely scramble his/her pattern. That's why they had "heisenberg compensator" technobabble on ST:TNG to explain how their transporters got around that.

Anyway, quantum teleportation is a real phenomenon, and it is limited by the same problem. Observing the particle to be "teleported" changes the original.

Here is a link that describes it a bit: http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/Gener...tTeleport.html

 

[Carlo_M]

I read that they did play down the whole Time travel angle of the film which doesnt make a lot of sense.

If this is true I'll be a little disappointed. I did enjoy the book. And yes I recognized it was more treatment than novel, but I think you have to expect that from Crichton nowadays. Even in his prime he never an overly verbose novelist.

 

[Dan Rudolph]

The book played down the time travel angle. In fact, technically, there wasn't any time travel. IIRC, they travelled to a parallel universe that got a late start.

 

[SarahG]

I'd like to read this before seeing the movie, but I'm pretty sure I'll never get to it

 

[George See]

I really loved this book, i'm hoping the movie isn't a dissapointment. I will say visually what i've seen in the trailers is very close to what I pictured in my mind. So at the very least I will enjoy the visual aspect of the movie.

 

[SarahG]

I saw my a commercial for this last night for the first time. It was very cool, a "what if you could stop time" theme with some good action scenes.

 

[WillG]

I'm really hoping that this will be good, after "Sphere" was botched on film, I had diminshing hopes for a good Crichton adaptation. Just by seeing the trailer once, I can already see there is at least one significant character change. Add to the mix that Richard Donner(who will always have my respect for Superman) hasn't made a good film in awhile........I'm hoping it's good

 

[SarahG]

Was Sphere realy that bad?

 

[George See]

Was Sphere realy that bad?

I wouldn't say so, if you take the movie separate from the book it was pretty good. Any time you start making movies out of books though the book will always be better. But I enjoyed watching Sphere, and I enjoyed reading it. If we keep this up though we'll look like that other book/movie thread

 

[WillG]

Well the reviews I read in the NY Post and the NY Daily News are pretty crappy. Not that I take reviews as gospel, but in this case, they seem pretty reliable. Too bad, was hoping that Donner could make a comeback.

 

[Michael Reuben]

I just saw it, and it's awful. Astonishing that so many talented filmmakers could come up with such a listless affair. Avoid at all costs.

M.

 

[David Rogers]

I looked at clips available online, and all the trailers. This went from a "maybe" to a "hell no" after viewing the promotional material. I counted far too many stupid changes from the book to even consider bothering watching this piece of celluloid crap. Off the top of my head:

* Changed one of the students to be the 'lost' professor's son. Why?

* Altered one of the students from a well researched and practiced expert on medieval culture and languages into a novice and unpracticed dabbler. Why?

* Female character had short hair, altered to long hair in the movie. This was a not insignificant point related to medieval culture's treatment of women and how hair length played.

* Quantum Faxing technology changed from that to a simple one-point time travel technology (book postulated access to infinite number of alternate universes that were effectively time travel; movie changes it to a single destination machine).

Once again, why bother purchasing a property if you're going to hack it into pieces?

Oh right, because crap doesn't sell unless people think it's really going to be at least a tv dinner instead of the crap it has become.

ps: and yes, Sphere really was that bad. Book had its moments though.

 

[Carlo_M]

That's too bad. I found the novel entertaining, but as most Crichton readers will tell you, he writes less of a novel and more of a treatment nowadays. You would think this would make the transition to screenplay easier, but apparently it didn't work in this case (I haven't seen the movie but I've heard similar opinions to yours). I can tell you that if they had stayed fairly faithful to the book the result might have been more satisfactory.

In the book, the past is more interesting than the future. Actually if I had to rank the interesting aspects of the book, I'd put them in this order:

1. The past (the story and characters)
2. The technology/theory behind the "time travel"
3. The present (i.e. the people in the present-day)

 

[Robert Crawford]

This thread is now designated the Official Discussion Thread for "Timeline" please, post all comments, links to outside reviews, film and box office discussion items to this thread.

All HTF member film reviews of "Timeline" should be posted to the Official Review Thread.

Thank you for your consideration in this matter.


Crawdaddy

 

[George See]

Not only was it completly unfaithfull to the book, it had horrible acting, little or no character development, no back story, no sub plots. None of the political posturing, The french leader and the english leader were turned into pretty much just uninteresting stereotypes. As a movie i think it fails totally, I don't even see how people who didn't read the book could follow this. Deckers character had to be confusing for someone who didn't know any better. I didn't expect a perfect translation of the book, I know better...but I at least expected a good enjoyable movie. This wasn't it. Why in the world would they take out some of the more exciting stuff like the Jousting, the whole Mill scene? That's just beyond me, I mean the mill scene is classic hollywood stuff already written..a dangerous covert sneaky operation to get into the mill, all kinds of fighting and then a big explosion...isn't that what hollywood likes why cut it? And how in the world they managed to take an interesting bunch of characters and turn them into boring stereotypes that I didn't care about at all is beyond me. I really can't find one redeming quality here not even the landscapes were impressive, you hardly saw inside either of the 2 castles, the town was pretty lame. I never once felt like i was in the past, it seemed more like a bad renasance faire. Did anyone take anything of redeming value away from this? I guess this is more of a rant/review than a discussion, and I guess the only reason i'm so hostile is because I really wanted this to be a great movie.
:frowning: