T.he Adam Project – with Ryan Reynolds and from today on Netflix – it’s part of those movies that make us become aware of how terrible the future could be, without being catastrophic in the strict sense of the term. Because it’s mostly fun: one sci-fi comedy stuffed with action interludes and not without a romantic and touching implication.
The Adam Project: the plot
You get to the point within the first 10 minutes. When Ryan Reynolds, pilot Adam Reed in 2050goes from slipping with a stolen spaceship into a warmhole – that we will later understand to be a channel for time travel – to look himself in the face at twelve. Asthmatic and super nerd whose father recently died.
The adult Adam he does everything he can to be hateful. But in this way he immediately clears the matter to his 12-year-old self (the unbelievable Walker Scobell): “Yes, time travel exists, you just don’t know it yet.” The adult Adam went back in time, but was wrong by four years, to save his wife Laura (Zoe Saldana), she also pilots, that he she suspects she was killed – in the future – from such Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener). Patent monopolist that allows you to travel in any era.
But this bailout is not the only thing at stake. There is also the fact that time travel is dangerous, it is destroying the worldsays Adam. And the technological discovery at its root, before it becomes an industry in the hands of Maya. Thus risking mixing timelines with catastrophic consequences for the future.
Hugs postponed and then recovered
The problem (another) is that the mathematical formula for time travel was actually discovered by Louis Reed, the father of the two Adam (Mark Ruffalo), who died in a car accident in 2022. Unaware of the tragic drift of his discovery, stolen by colleague Maya.
Really aware of the danger of interfering with the present from the future, at first Louis refuses to help his children. But then he changes his mind, and in a way he is the real solver of the story. But what he refuses to do is save his life: it will leave Adam an orphan anyway.
Much of the film revolves around Adam’s relationship (big and small) with his parents. The 12-year-old fails to show affection for his mother (Jennifer Garner) while the forty-year-old did not elaborate on the death of his fatherwhich he remembers as absent and totally absorbed in work and for this he hates him.
Running between 2050, 2022 and 2018 many of these emotional knots are untied: little Adam and his mother find a connection while theAdult Adam realizes that he has distorted the memory of his father all his life, so as not to suffer too much from his absence. And the scene in which the three promise to be more attentive while apologizing for shortcomings and carelessness, is for handkerchiefs. One of the moments, along with the ending and the many exchanges between the two Adamswhich make the film superior to many action without much soul.
Ryan Reynolds. (Netflix)
Can we change the future?
Everything we choose of Doing or not doing today will impact our future lives, but above all on the planet in its entirety. Louis Reed could save his life, but it does not do so because this would irremediably alter the future. She makes a very responsible choice unlike her colleague, financier and former friend Maya Sorianwhich keeps going back and forth to make political deals and financial speculation that will help her create an empire in the future.
Zoe Saldana is Laura in The Adam Project, the wife that Adam travels back in time to save
Like any self-respecting American blockbuster, in The Adam Porject are present morality and patriotismbut in some way they make us reflect on the weight that our behaviors and our choices have will have on the future world and on the life of the next generations.
Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo
Fun fact: Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo had already been a couple on the big one screen in 30 years in 1 seconda 2004 fantasy-romantic comedy of which they recreated an Instagram use and consumption scene to promote the release of The Adam Project. This is not the only reunion present on the set of this film: the director, Shawn Levyin fact, he had already directed Ryan Reynolds in Free Guyanother sci-fi comedy but with a videogame theme.
Levy then, who also has some episodes of Stranger Thingsseems to pay homage to this whole nerd reunion with the name of Adam’s dog, Hawking. Which in the Netflix series is the fictional town in which the underworld tries to emerge, but which is also the surname of the famous scientist Stephenwho died in 2018.
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