Line #13 Film/Jumper


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jumper.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:''[[TagLine Anywhere is possible.]]'']]
3
4	''Jumper'' is a 2008 film about people who can teleport around the world, and the fanatical group who hunts them. Directed by Creator/DougLiman. Stars Creator/HaydenChristensen and Creator/SamuelLJackson.
5
6	It's loosely inspired by the novel ''Literature/{{Jumper}}'' by Steven Gould and inspired a TieInNovel, also by Gould, ''Griffin's Story''. The movie also inspired a tie-in video game, also titled subtitled ''Griffin's Story''.
7	----
8	!!''Jumper'' provides examples of the following tropes:
9
10	* AbnormalAmmo: Griffin is a master of using Jumping to hurl large and dangerous objects at his enemies, as Roland finds out the hard way courtesy of a double-decker bus.
11	* AbusiveParents: David's father is an alcoholic drunk while his mother [[spoiler:is a member of the Ancient Conspiracy tasked with killing all Jumpers, including him]]. Granted, the former is an alcoholic because of said mother leaving them.
12	* AdaptationalJerkass: Done deliberately by Doug Liman due to wanting a protagonist who learns and grows, but it must be said that the David Rice of the movie is rather more amoral and self-centered than the David "Davy" Rice of the books. The best example of this is a scene shortly after we are introduced to adult David, when he is lounging in his apartments and flips the channels to find a news report of a flood. Seeing the location, David could easily jump there and save people, but he just shrugs and changes the channel. By contrast, the Davy of the books is so moral that he kidnaps a terrorist, but instead of killing him he dumps him in a hole and gives him food and water until he learns the error of his ways.
13	* AlternateContinuity: The film and its TieInNovel ''Griffin's Story'' are this to the original novels: the prologue to the film, up to David robbing the bank, is broadly accurate to the book, but everything after that is original to the film, including Griffin and the Paladin order. In the original book, David was pursued by the NSA instead, then by a NebulousEvilOrganization of business leaders in the sequels.
14	* AncientConspiracy: An entire one revolving around killing teleporters and inventing technology to stop them.
15	* AntiHero: David. He is by no means a bad person, but ended up stealing a good deal of money as a child which led to his mildly hedonistic lifestyle. He doesn't do anything heroic until the 3rd arc though.
16	* ArchEnemies: Griffin and Roland. The latter killed the former's family when he was just 5, and the former now spends most of his time plotting the violent murder of the latter.
17	* ArtisticLicenseGeography: The CoincidentalBroadcast in Ann Arbor, Michigan somehow shows [=NY1=] on their TV sets, despite Ann Arbor being far from New York City. This was a result of film technique: Doug Liman shot the film on-location in various exotic settings, and all the scenes for a particular location were shot at the same time, regardless of plot progression. This results in some glaring inconsistencies in time of day, as David and Griffin will Jump between them instantly.
18	** London, Tokyo and Griffin's hideout (an AncientTomb in an undefined ThirstyDesert); darkest night.
19	** The Great Pyramid, the Sphinx, New York, Ann Arbor; broad daylight.
20	** Rome; early morning. An ''extremely'' justified case here, as the director was able to get limited permission to shoot ''inside the Coliseum.''
21	* ArtisticLicensePhysics:
22	** It's one of the AcceptableBreaksFromReality with most teleportation stories that the center of the Earth is down, and teleporting to another location won't leave you at an angle to the ground - for example teleporting to the exact opposite side of the earth you won't end up upside down
23	** One of the AcceptableBreaksFromReality is the fact that the surface of the earth is revolving at a different rate at each lattitude, meaning you would have to compensate for speed.
24	* BadassArmy: The Paladins are an army of {{Badass Normal}}s whom have proven formidable to be able to hunt Jumpers since the Medieval Times. Note this is before they had the technology to follow Jumpers through their jump points or electrocute them to nullify their powers. The fact they are a group of religious fanatics and can appear anywhere in the world through sheer expediency and coordination makes them even more dangerous.
25	* BadassTeacher: Griffin starts off as a reluctant one of these before becoming the...
26	* BrokenPedestal: Griffin becomes one of these to David after he decides to blow up Millie's apartment because the Paladins are all inside -- despite Millie still being inside too.
27	* TheBully: Mark Kobold, the jerk who inadvertently causes David to discover his teleporting powers in the first place.
28	* TheCameo: Creator/KristenStewart as [[spoiler:David's half-sister in the movie's ending.]]
29	* CanonImmigrant: Griffin, who wasn't in the novels, but did get a book based on the film.
30	* CarFu: Griffin jumps an entire double-decker bus at Roland, who only narrowly avoids getting crushed.
31	* CharacterDevelopment: The stated point of David's selfishness. Doug Liman was tired of standard SuperHero philosophy; he wanted to see one ''develop''. In the beginning, he's a timid pre-teen with an abusive father. After his SuperEmpowering, he's a world-class thief who lives in a penthouse apartment. When the Paladins catch up to him, all he wants to do is "save his own ass". The near-miss fails to educate him, and he [[spoiler:goes back to see his girlfriend and take her to Rome on a trip, just to impress her. A few misses later, they nearly kill his father. And when they capture Mille]], he sticks his neck out for the first time. [[SequelHook Time will tell if he goes further.]]
32	* ChurchMilitant: The Paladins, though they by far play up the "militant" over the "church".
33	* ComesGreatResponsibility: {{Defied\|Trope}}. Neither David nor his pal seem to care about using their teleportation powers to help "{{muggles}}".
34	** {{Justified\|Trope}} when you think of how [[TheUnfettered Unfettered]] the Paladins are. See the ImNotAHeroIm below for elaboration.
35	* CowardlyLion: David at first. He wants ''no part'' of fighting the Paladins, and shamelessly abandons (or tries to abandon) Griffin to fight them on his own. But once Millie gets dragged into things he finds his spine and seeks out Griffin in hopes of teaming up against them.
36	* CreateYourOwnVillain: Griffin is a damaged and possibly even sociopathic young man who is obsessed with killing Paladins, yet the Paladins have no one to blame but themselves for their deadliest enemy.
37	* DamselInDistress: Millie's primary utility to the plot.
38	* DangerousForbiddenTechnique: Jumpers can easily move themselves and another person, but greater masses are more difficult. Griffin is able to jump cars and a double decker bus at one point, but only when they're moving and it's implied he's using their momentum to take some of the strain off. Griffin relates a tale of a Jumper who tried to teleport an entire building; he managed to shake it a little before the strain killed him. [[spoiler:In the climax, David manages to jump a sizable portion of Millie's apartment twice without killing himself, but it takes a lot out of him.]]
39	* {{Determinator}}: Griffin has been hunted by Paladins since he was 5 years old, but he's still going strong.
40	* DidntSeeThatComing: Said verbatim by Griffin after [[spoiler:Millie is kidnapped]].
41	* DieOrFly: David's first jump is out of pure instinct after he falls into a frozen lake and nearly drowns.
42	* EstablishingCharacterMoment:
43	** Roland is introduced telling a Jumper at his mercy that only God should have this power, then [[AgonizingStomachWound shanking the man in the gut]][[note]]instead of, say, a relatively painless and quick bullet to the head[[/note]], establishing his religious extremism and viciousness.
44	** As mentioned above, one of the first things we see adult David do after jumping all around the world is shrug at a news report of a flood he could very easily do something about, establishing his moral apathy and lack of concern for others.
45	* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: [[spoiler:In a deleted scene, Roland is introduced by tucking in his young son to bed, telling him about the Paladins in a very sanitized way and encouraging him to "follow in his footsteps" when he gets older]].
46	* EvilGloating: Roland indulges in this during his first meeting with David, believing that the young Jumper has had help in staying under the radar and wanting to interrogate him rather than kill him outright.
47	* FantasticRacism: Paladins feel that all Jumpers are inherently evil and must be destroyed, evoking the standard "normal vs super" take on this trope.
48	* FightingAcrossTimeAndSpace: Towards the film's climax, [[spoiler:Griffin plans to bomb David's apartment and kill Roland. David objects to this since his love interest Millie is in there. This results in a fight/chase sequence in which the two teleport to various locations across the world for possession of the detonator. It ends with David trapping Griffin with [[KryptoniteFactor power lines]] in Chechnya.]]
49	* FirstGirlWins: Millie and David don't have a lot of established chemistry (only some backstory), but he ends up choosing her and she's single and ready.
50	* GunsAreWorthless: The Paladins use hybrid GrapplingHookPistol/[[TheParalyzer stun guns]] because when a conventional bullet hits the "Jump Scar" left in the wake of a teleport, it spins off in a random direction. It's AllThereInTheManual.
51	* HeWhoFightsMonsters:
52	** Griffin. A cold and remorseless killer whose parents were murdered by the Paladins, giving him a motive to go to war with them. The only prospects he cares about anymore is saving his own skin and killing Paladins, and will personally slay anyone he feels will get in the way of either. Despite helping David understand his powers, David spends much of the third part of the film preventing him from blowing up the apartment the Paladins are located in to save his love interest.
53	** Roland was also going to be revealed as this in early script drafts, as his hatred for Jumpers was going to be revealed to be caused by a Jumper who [[PiggybackingOnHitler helped Hitler in World War II]]. That premise went unused, perhaps because it is such a DeadHorseTrope, though Roland is still implied to be one of these in the final product.
54	* TheHedonist: The adult David viewers first see is a shallow and self-satisfied young man who cares about little other than his own pleasure. The rest of the film largely consists of him (slowly) growing out of this.
55	* HolierThanThou: Roland considers himself morally superior to any Jumper, despite committing acts much worse than even the worst Jumper we see.
56	* IDidWhatIHadToDo: When David reproaches his mother for abandoning him when he was a kid at the end of the film, she responds by saying this trope word-for-word.
57	* IfIWantedYouDead: At the end David jumps Roland to a small cave in the middle of nowhere. Just before jumping out, he points out that he could easily have left Roland to be eaten by sharks (as Griffin brags of doing to Paladin agents), trying to make the point that Jumpers aren't inherently evil.
58	* ImNotAHeroIm: Griffin spits this at David as he walks off to what Griffin believes to be certain death; in his experience, Jumpers don't have the power to save anyone, as while the Paladins are ready, willing and able to kill entire families as collateral damage in killing Jumpers, all Jumpers can do is Jump away. The best Griffin's ever accomplished is escaping with his life after killing his enemies, and he's been ForcedToWatch everyone he's ever cared for die at the hands of the Paladins.
59	-->'''Griffin:''' You're not a hero! You're a Jumper! Don't you get it? '''You don't save the girl! You lose her!'''
60	* InNameOnly: The movie shares the title, two character names, and the fact that the main character can jump with [[Literature/{{Jumper}} the book]]. Also the fact of the bank robbery itself, but none of the details of it. The book is a character study with a science fiction twist, the movie is a science fiction action flick.
61	** The author of the original book tried to remedy this with the third book in the Jumper series, "Griffin's Story," which is slightly closer to the movie than the original book.
62	* InsideJob: Referenced but {{averted}}. David cleans out a bank vault with his teleportation power. Later, somebody theorizes in his hearing that the robbery must've been an inside job since there wasn't any sign of forced entry.
63	* IronicName: Roland's name means "famous throughout the land", yet Roland himself is a very anonymous agent (well, as anonymous as you can get when you're Creator/SamuelLJackson with white hair) who hunts Jumpers from the shadows.
64	** Though also [[SubvertedTrope subverted]], as his name is supposed the resemble the figure of the Frankish Knight Roland — ''confer'' the name “Paladins” and Griffin's talk about the struggle going back to the medieval times.
65	* JadeColoredGlasses: Having been on the run for most of his life, Griffin is rather less enamored with his jumping ability than David, rolling his eyes at the latter's hedonist use of his power -- though this notably does not stop him from stealing a Mercedes after he agrees to the "team-up" with David.
66	* KarmaHoudini: David's Mom. [[spoiler: She abandoned Jake and his father, and so far as shown in the movie didn't send any money to help out despite living in a nice house. Yes, she didn't kill David when he was young, and gave him a "head start" at the end of the movie, but evidently has not given the same courtesy to other jumpers over the years.]]
67	* KickTheDog: Roland vs. Griffin. As he approaches him he shouts; "Time to send you home to Mommy!" Roland was the one who killed Griffin's parents. However, this hits his BerserkButton, cuing a teleporting charge of UnstoppableRage, where Griffin punches Roland through a wall.
68	* KnightTemplar: Roland Cox, and indeed all the Paladins, are ''literally'' this, as Griffin reveals when he tells David that their organization goes back to medieval times.
69	* LackOfEmpathy: Roland's sneering promise to send Griffin "home to mommy" reveals he is just as bad as any of the [[HeWhoFightsMonsters monsters he may or may not have fought]].
70	* MeaningfulRename: A meta example -- David Rice in the books is usually referred to by the nickname "Davy", while the less moral and more self-centered movie David is never called by any sort of diminutive, not even by his love interest Millie.
71	* MegatonPunch: Jumpers can do this by teleporting in front of themselves multiple times as they charge an opponent. Griffin uses it to great effect during his fight with Roland.
72	* MissingMom: David's mom [[spoiler:is one of the leaders of the AncientConspiracy trying to kill Jumpers, and had to leave her family behind]].
73	* MundaneUtility: David uses Jumping to travel the world and make moving faster. Taken to an extreme where he would rather Jump to his television remote literally a few inches away from him on the couch rather than physically move to it. When David tries to exit his apartment without teleporting, his muscle memory is so bad that he can't turn the doorknob. Roland comments that he Jumps so much it's probably been a while since he actually ''used'' a door.
74	* NebulousEvilOrganization: The Paladins are a nebulous bunch of ChurchMilitant types about whom little is known other than they hunt down and kill Jumpers at any cost.
75	* NiceJobFixingItVillain: Had the Paladins not been intent on hunting all of David's friends and family down, he probably would have just run away from them forever. But threatening his lover Millie and then nearly killing his father gives him a will to fight them in earnest.
76	* ObliviouslySuperpowered: David isn't aware of his abilities until he nearly drowns in a frozen lake and jumps out of pure instinct.
77	* TheOmniPresent: The [[KnightTemplar Paladins]] reference this, claiming that the reason they hunt the jumpers is because "Only God should have this power--to be in all places, at all times." Note that the jumpers aren't actually an example (being pretty standard [[TeleportationWithDrawbacks teleportation with mass limits]]), the Paladins are just over-reacting fanatics.
78	* PlotArmor: [[spoiler: Griffin and Cox survive, as the movie was intended to be the first in a trilogy.]]
79	* PortalCut: Zig-zagged. The GrapplingHookPistol works against the Jumpers because they can't simply teleport away. Once it's secured, the wire teleports with them. David ends up embedding one in a door when he tries to jump with one attached. The fact that they're electrified might have something to do with it. On the other hand, Jumpers definitely can jump out with only part of an object, as David demonstrates near the end when he jumps [[spoiler:most of Mille's apartment, cutting a huge chunk out of the building]].
80	* PragmaticAdaptation: The book spans about one year of David's [[SliceOfLife life as a teleporter]], during which he [[spoiler:[[HowDoIShotWeb learns the specifics of his power]], meets his LoveInterest, and reconnects with his MissingMom. Then, [[DeusAngstMachina in the space of a week]], he runs afoul of a wife-beating cop, is exposed first as a criminal then [[BrokenMasquerade as a teleporter]], and is finally knocked off his feet by a case of pneumonia, thus making him LateToTheTragedy when his [[YouKilledMyFather mother is killed by terrorists]]. David has only begun to hunt them down and reconcile with his girlfriend when TheGovernment steps in and things go FromBadToWorse.]] At this point, David has his SuperHeroOrigin and can begin to kick ass - ''after three fourths of the book''. The movie manages to adapt just about all of this (swapping terrorists for {{Church Militant}}s) with room for several {{Fight Scene}}s, and even set up a few {{sequel hook}}s.
81	* ProperlyParanoid: Griffin lives in the middle of a desert, is always looking over his shoulder, and thinks people out to get him are everywhere. The Paladins prove he is ''entirely correct'' on all counts.
82	* PsychoElectro: The Paladins predominantly fight with electroshock-based weapons, as they are one of the few ways to slow a Jumper down.
83	* PunnyName: It's probably not a coincidence that TheBully Mark Kobold shares a name with the aggressive and xenophobic yet very weak [[OurGoblinsAreDifferent goblinoids]] from ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''.
84	* RandomlyGifted: Jumpers are born randomly, which is why the Paladins can't just track down bloodlines and have to instead look for unusual reports -- though they usually kill all of a Jumper's family as well, both to draw the Jumper out and just to be sure. [[spoiler:David's mother is revealed in the end to be a Paladin, who was horrified to find out that her own son was a teleporter, so she left him at the age of 5, knowing that he'll be killed otherwise]]. Slightly different in the novels, where the ability can be obtained by simply being teleported enough times.
85	* RequiredSecondaryPowers: Jumping not only teleports the person, but all the matter around them, otherwise {{Telefrag}}ging would be a big problem. David's first few teleportations result in damage to his surroundings because he hasn't streamlined the process, resulting in blasts of compressed air cracking the floor every time he Jumps into a building. This is exploited by Griffin in one instance; by closing on Roland with a series of rapid teleportations, he compresses so much air around him that the end result is [[MegatonPunch Roland getting hit with enough force to punch him through a wall]].
86	* ScarilyCompetentTracker: If you're a Jumper, Roland ''will'' find you, even if he has to crisscross the world to do it.
87	* ShoutOut: While trying to convince Griffin to team up with him against the Paladins, David references the "Marvel Team-Up" series, in which multiple Marvel heroes (usually Spider-Man and some B-list character) team up against a single threat.
88	-->'''David''': Marvel Team-Up. Now or never.
89	* TeleportSpam: Primary method of Jumping combat, obviously.
90	* ThreateningShark: Griffin explains that he knows of a reef with an active school of sharks where he dumps Paladin agents that attack him.
91	* TheUnapologetic: Roland has no regrets for any of the ordinary humans he kills for being between him and a Jumper, and even goes so far as to use Griffin's dead mother (who he himself murdered) to taunt him with.
92	* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: During the jumper duel, nobody notices the two men that appear out of nowhere and are wrestling in the street.
93	* VillainHasAPoint: Despite the Paladins having religious motivations for hunting Jumpers, they are very correct in believing that Jumpers can be highly dangerous. For example, David, the protagonist, uses his powers to steal whatever he wants and also uses his powers for petty reasons such as teleporting a former bully into a sealed bank vault. It's not until Millie's life is threatened that David is motivated to do anything heroic. Griffin is a [[ZigZaggingTrope zig-zagging]] case; he learned to Jump as a teenager, but was relatively harmless until the Paladins killed his parents - after which he dedicates his life to killing Paladins with no consideration for collateral damage, not any different from the Paladins' efforts to exterminate Jumpers.
94	* WalkingSpoiler: [[spoiler:Sophie, David's half-sister who is played by a young Creator/KristenStewart and only appears in one scene at the film's end]].
95	* WeaksauceWeakness: Being zapped with electricity scrambles a Jumper's ability to teleport.
96	* WhatTheHellAreYou: Mixed in with WhoAreYou. Although the latter is Mark's exact words, he's also clearly thinking this after witnessing David's teleportation abilities (and getting arrested for an alleged bank heist for them) when he sees David again.
97	* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: Griffin can't seem to decide if he's English, Irish or Scottish.
98	* WhiteHairBlackHeart: Roland has (very conspicuously dyed) white hair and is an utterly remorseless murderer.
99	* WhoAreYou: Overlapping with WhatTheHellAreYou, Mark exclaims this word-for-word after witnessing David's jumping abilities, when David confronts Mark for (without knowing or caring what he was doing) spilling to the Paladins who came asking Mark about David.
100	* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: [[JustifiedTrope A justified aversion]] during Roland's first encounter with David. He could have easily killed the unsuspecting Jumper when he first shows up in his penthouse, but Roland wants to find out how David evaded detection for eight whole years and if somebody else is shielding him from the Paladins. [[spoiler:Unknown to both, it's been David's own mother.]]
101	* WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity: Aside from the holy crusade thing, Roland expresses the belief that all Jumpers eventually "go bad", which is why they are targeted. While David is a bank robber, Roland still says this in the context of "you'll get worse" rather than this alone being proof of his point, suggesting that he means it in a more megalomaniacal context. As none of the Jumpers seen fit this definition, this is probably just another self-justification rather than a legitimate concern.
102	* WorthyOpponent: Roland seems to see David as this by the film's climax, noting how far he's come from robbing banks.
103	* WouldHurtAChild: The movie and its supplementary material annoyingly waffle on whether or not the Paladins are this. On the one hand, they attacked Griffin and killed his family when he was only 5 years old, and Griffin notes that few Jumpers live into adulthood because of the Paladins. But in the press release it specifically notes that Jumpers become targets of the Paladins when they "make it to adulthood". [[spoiler:David's mother abandoning him as a child because her only other choice was to kill him seems to indicate that the idea of Paladins waiting for Jumpers to get to adulthood was one that was phased out, making them this trope in the final product]].
104	* VanHelsingHateCrimes: The Paladins are a sort of Van Helsing Ku Klux Klan. Indeed one gets the feeling they do what they do more out of jealousy that they don't have the power rather than a holy crusade. In the videogame interpretation of Jumper: Griffin's Story, Griffin mockingly lampshades the jealousy aspect while fighting Roland.

Context Film / Jumper