The Adam Project

This is an article “The Adam Project” by Marc Primo

Release date: 11 March 2022 (United States)

Director: Shawn Levy

Language: English

Production companies: Skydance Media, Maximum Effort, 21 Laps Entertainment

Producers: David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Shawn Levy, Ryan Reynolds

Spoiler alert—What happens when you sign up Ryan Reynolds and Canadian sci-fi/comedy director Shawn Levy to do a film that ticks all the signature MCU tropes? You get a time-traveling Netflix adventure fit for the whole family that surpasses their previous collaboration (Free Guy) and brings the needed hype for the next (Deadpool 3). Of course, Marvel Studios has nothing to do with this one. Still, with all the humor and action in their proper places and a screenplay that matches the wit of any blockbuster MCU movie, audiences can be sure of lots of exciting things to see in The Adam Project, from start to finish.

As Reynolds continues to work on his action hero onscreen persona, it’s easy to understand why the actor somewhat dialed down on the naughty comebacks that made him synonymous with his Deadpool character.

In this film, we see Reynolds as a no-nonsense fighter pilot named Adam Reed who works for a resistance group. He tries to avert the deadly invention of time travel but soon inadvertently comes face to face with his younger 12-year old self. Some may take it as a coming-of-age film if they can keep up with the timelines, but Levy makes sure viewers don’t get lost in the central character’s journey and that together, we all take that second chance to smell his life’s roses.

A wild road trip through time and space

The film opens with Adam dutifully performing his aerial skills as a renegade pilot, outmaneuvering the pursuing spacecraft carrying Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener) who had monopolized the time travel industry in a dystopian 2050. He shoots himself into a wormhole intended for 2018 but unintentionally returns to 2022 instead when his younger self (Walker Scobell) is coming to terms with his father Louis’s (Mark Ruffalo) death.

Having no place to go, he revisits his past family home to heal his wounds and meet the younger Adam. Throughout the visit, the older Adam gives the younger one advice about their mom Ellie’s (Jennifer Garner) dates, how to stand up to bullies, to not touch anything on his spacecraft, and generally blow the mind of young Adam about time travel.

Adult Adam soon crosses paths with his wife, Laura Shane (Zoe Saldaña), as she rescues them from being cornered by Maya’s top henchman, Christos (Alex Mallari Jr.). Laura had earlier been transported back in time and stranded after Maya’s attempt on her life. Together, the three try to change the course of history by averting Maya’s plans to take complete control of time travel by getting rid of Louis who, unknowingly, was the very inventor of its technology.

Laura helps the two Adams board the spacecraft by holding off Maya and Christos, and their journey eventually leads them to 2018. There, they meet Louis and tell him about the impending chaos of Maya’s plans. Louis leads them to the reactor lab, where they meet a younger Maya who is currently struggling with a misdirected moral compass. Soon, the older Maya catches up and the battle between right and wrong concludes with a few cliche lines and an obvious yet convenient loophole. But never mind that. As long as viewers get a full dose of entertainment for most of this wild trip through time and space, that’s probably good enough.

Cut from the same rib

With Reynolds and Scobell’s onscreen energy, audiences will appreciate the fast and funny banter between the two Adams. Their mutual annoyances quickly suggest that we follow the same person but from different years who carry different sets of personal and family baggage.

Despite their mutual irritation of each other, they soon learn to work together in sorting out their issues. Young Adam soon learns to handle his volatile relationship with mom Ellie, his never ending battle against persistent bullies Ray and Chuck, and the grief from Louis’s car accident. Meanwhile, the older Adam also learns to forgive his father for failing to be around during his formative years and makes the proper corrections to their respective timelines.

Levy makes sure that audiences get the rapport between the two Adams early in the film. The way young Adam is amazed by the fighter pilot’s knowledge of secret things in the household, like a technique to shut a quirky refrigerator door, immediately suggests that mysteries will be few.

The director also spares the audience from all the jargon and technicalities of time travel that most MCU films have a penchant for. Older Adam dismisses his younger self’s questions about multiverses by saying he watches too many movies (and we all know what he meant).

Aside from the quick-witted dialogues and rapid, action-packed pacing, there’s also the fantastic but confusing old-school soundtrack that has nothing to do with the timelines but which we can all just dismiss as a paean to Guardian of the Galaxy. What viewers get from The Adam Project is a hefty dose of sci-fi geekiness mixed with smatterings of broken family mechanics delivered in tribute form to the spectacular sci-fi films of past and present.

Taking something out of Spielberg’s book

That said, The Adam Project is still not your modern sci-fi film that boasts quantum physics and logic. If anything, it takes a good part of what families enjoyed during the peak of Spielberg’s earlier hits, notably 1982’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial or 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. With good dysfunctional family dynamics and few dull moments, every tender layer of sentiment that the screenwriters had put on paper was translated effectively on film without boring the audiences.

Viewers can hold on to second chances while allowing them to acknowledge that they can come to grips with the present and outright develop a healthy foresight by asking what their older selves would do or tell them. The film offers audiences the opportunity to take a deep dive into a compelling character study of the past and present. It also provides a retrospect at all the mistakes made along the way, then gives them the promise that never-too-late corrections can bring.

And because it’s about time travel, it’s easy to draw similarities to Robert Zemeckis’s Back To The Future trilogy and imagine it’s Marty McFly trying to save the world again. Instead, The Adam Project saves its main characters first but only in a time travel setting anchored on the need to protect the world’s future. Still, it works impeccably on both its emotional and special effects fronts. The Adam Project is an excellent cinematic experience that brings mature viewers into the new age of sci-fi, while giving the younger ones a peek into what the pre-internet generation considered magical back in the day.

You can also watch our video review here!