Director Shawn Levy and star Ryan Reynolds explained the rules surrounding the version of time travel that will be featured in Netflix's new sci-fi adventure film, The Adam Project."I'll start by saying that Ryan and I are not time travel genre wonks, so the goal was to make a time travel movie that felt really grounded and foregrounded character and fun and adventure and heart and didn't get too mired in the rules," Levy said in an interview with IGN. "To the extent that there are rules that I couldn't eliminate, basically, a person doesn't have their memories reconciled, ie. they don't remember something that has happened to them until they get back to what we, in this movie, call their fixed time."
Levy continued, "Grown-up Ryan doesn't remember having gone back until and if and unless he's able to get back to his fixed time, which is the time period that he belongs in. We try to get the rules out of the way so that people can just enjoy the ride and have a visceral experience rather than a cerebral experience."
According to Levy, one of the main time travel rules came from Reynolds, which allowed them to eliminate excessive violence from the film, as they wanted The Adam Project to ultimately be an "all-audiences" experience. In particular, the rule originated from the amount of "time soldiers" Reynolds and co-star Zoe Saldana's characters kill throughout the movie.
"And our rule is that if you die out of your fixed time, you just have this molecular smear, what Ryan called 'digital skittles,'" Levy said. "So, suddenly, making up a time travel rule, which we're allowed to do, freed us up to do all kinds of action that probably would have been too gory if we were actually doing literal death. So, just the freedom of writing the rules was very, very fun."
The Adam Project stars Reynolds as Adam Reed, Walker Scobell as his 12-year-old self and Mark Ruffalo as Adam's late father. Directed by Levy from a script by Jonathan Tropper, T.S. Nowlin, Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, The Adam Project follows the older Adam, a time-traveling fighter pilot, who must team up with his younger self and his late father to save the future. In addition to Reynolds, Scobell, Ruffalo and Garner, the film stars Catherine Keener, Zoe Saldaña and Alex Mallari Jr.
The Adam Project premieres March 11 on Netflix.
Source: Twitter