Time Traveler’s Wife Starting to Look Like the Poor Man’s Jumper

When badass studio 20^th Century Fox released Jumper last year, critics responded negatively—like 16-percent-on-Rotten-Tomatoes negatively. Why? Because they didn’t have the mental capacity to comprehend the Chuck Norris-esque sublimity that is jumping through space—for example, when Hayden Christensen hardcore jumps over streets and national borders and childhood memories and PYRAMIDS. This is probably why critics will end up loving The Time Traveler’s Wife, produced by Brad Pitt and starring Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams. Based on an equally wussy book of the same name, The Time Traveler’s Wife features Bana as a bulkier, less aerodynamic version of Hayden Christensen, but this time he JUMPS THROUGH TIME and not OVER COLOSSEUMS. As you can imagine, this imaginative bit of exposition sets us up for a series of compelling conflicts, like when Eric Bana misses his wife’s birthday party. Meanwhile, in Jumper, Hayden Christensen is being chased all over the globe by a secret society of assassins, which interrupts his luxurious penthouse lifestyle. Did Brad Pitt really think we were going to forget about this awesomeness just because his movie attests to focus on the tedious stuff of romance as opposed to the BAMF practice of flying through space and/or time?

On the other hand, author Audrey Niffenegger certainly deserves some amount of credit for penning such an inventive twist on the classic time travel story. Because Eric Bana’s character—who naturally possesses less power and overwhelming force than Hayden Christensen’s—cannot control when he travels back in time. He might do it right after his wedding, when he and his wife are jumping on the bed in celebration—not good! Or he might do it right in the middle of when she is nagging him for something stupid—good timing! So indeed, Niffenegger seems to present us with an idea that is unprecedented in the history of time travel narratives.

WRONG! Has Brad Pitt been living in a dark hole for the past five years, isolated from the omnipresent cultural tour de force that is LOST? Probably, yes. He has so many filial obligations! But anyway, in the superior program Lost, Ben goes into a frigid room and pushes really hard on big-ass wheel that is iced over, and then the island starts jumping through time as if the island were an old Bread album that people let get scratched up. Locke and Sawyer and Juliette can’t control the flashing of time, which is sometimes convenient and sometimes not convenient at all! Like when they are flashed back to the days when Charles Widmore was in his sexy physical peak. Sound familiar? That’s because I just explained that very same scenario in the last paragraph, but with Eric Bana.

Imagine how much it would suck if he were to travel through time right now!

So now you’re thinking: “Wait a minute, Audrey Niffenegger probably wrote The Time Traveler’s Wife before the geniuses behind Lost were even born!” WRONG AGAIN! The creators of Lost have known the plot of Lost since the beginning of time! In fact, all the mysteries of Lost are part of the collective unconscious of the human race. As much as Eric Bana is embedded within the female psyche these days, you can’t say as much for Time Traveler’s Wife.

In conclusion, if Hayden Christen and Eric Bana were in a Pokemon Stadium fight, Hayden Christensen would win because he would be able to jump around the arena and use the element of surprise, whereas Eric Bana would also have the element of surprise but it not be on his side—it would inevitably turn on him and make him reappear at exactly the wrong time. That is why Jumper and the Lost finale should be rereleased the same day that the The Time Traveler’s Wife premiers, because then people will remember how it’s supposed to be!