io9
"If you show someone their future, they have no future." That's the wisdom of Ben Affleck, in this bizarre clip from Paycheck, the movie that bounced. Apparently if you can look into the future, you turn everybody into soulless mall kids, with no purpose. And your attempts to prevent future catastrophes will always cause those catastrophes to happen, because... uhhhh... Hey, it's Uma Thurman with really bad hair! (Wig? You decide.) More details, and another Paycheck clip, below.
"If you show someone their future, they have no future." That's the wisdom of You think Paycheck is going to be a slippery thriller about a guy who's had his memory erased, but it takes a very unfortunate left turn. It turns out the missing year that was erased from Affleck's memory involved him building this machine that can look into the future. And he used it to see that bad things would happen if the machine ever went on the market. So armed with this foreknowledge, and a bunch of random objects like paperclips, the amnesiac Affleck is able to prevent the horrible future he saw in the machine. Even though the problem with the machine is that you can never prevent the horrible futures it shows you. Oh hey, it's Uma's hair again!
I'm going to skip the cheap shot about how if Ben Affleck really had a predict-o-matic machine, he would have been forewarned about Jersey Girl and Gigli. Here's another amazing Paycheck moment: The evil henchman decides to look into the future-telling machine to see his own future, not realizing Ben Affleck has stuck a bullet in one of the valves to make it blow itself up. So the predict-o-matic machine shows the henchman that he'll get blown up in about twenty seconds... and twenty seconds later, it happens! He's just turning to run away from the exploding future-scope, and boom! It's comedy gold. Or maybe comedy frankincense, because it's so aromatic.
The evil henchman decides to look into the future-telling machine to see his own future, not realizing Ben Affleck has stuck a bullet in one of the valves to make it blow itself up. So the predict-o-matic machine shows the henchman that he'll get blown up in about twenty seconds... and twenty seconds later, it happens! He's just turning to run away from the exploding future-scope, and boom! It's comedy gold. Or maybe comedy frankincense, because it's so aromatic.
Comments
Paycheck, the movie that bounced
Bless you, Charlie Jane. Bless you.
I like that Phillip K. Dick stories keep getting turned into non-stop action thrill-rides.
I don't know who keeps making that decision, but it's hilarious.
Also?
The best way to end a Mexican stand-off while standing over subway tracks is to drop the clip out of your gun, so it will fall on the third rail and EXPLODE. No one has ever had an idea as good as that.
@braak: I forgot to mention that John Woo totally wasted his amazing talents directing this film. He's an action god.
Ahh, the movie that finally convinced everyone that John Woo is a hack.
@charliejane: Well, almost everyone.
@extracrispy: really? paycheck? did you not see windtalkers?
I saw this crap when it first came out. I was disappointed, but I wanted to like it because it was based off of a Philip K. Dick short story. It wasn't until, literally, this past weekend that I finally read the story and saw how great it was.
Imagine if the movie had stuck to the short:
-The machine is a mirror and scoop (so you can see what happens as well as literally PLUCK small items - like the ones the character used)
-Affleck's character is somewhat corrupt and wants in on the operation, resorting to blackmail if he must
-Thurman's character is not to be trusted at all
-John Woo wasn't involved
The sad thing about Paycheck is that, until A Scanner Darkly, it may have been the most faithful PKD adaptation ever made. I mean, yeah, it was only about 30%, but still, that was the tops at the time.
@ElijahDProphet: It pretty much went under the radar but Impostor stuck more closely to its PKD origins.
the problem with polt lines like this is that they assume that forsite, even sciencetifically based foresite, is no better than a horiscope. the reason the fortunes that were revealed by the machine were selffulfilling prophicies is because they were never more complete than what you can typically find in the back of the local paper next to the crosswords...
I liked Paycheck. I don't know what everyone's problem is about it. I thought Next was spiffy, too, so bite me.
I saw this after being awake for 34 hours straight. I needed to kill a couple of hours and this was the only thing showing that seemed remotely entertaining.
Then I saw it on cable a few months ago, and realized that it was much, much better when you're sleep-deprived.
@GospelX: I'm with you: I wanted to like it, but couldn't. Script aside (and it SHOULD be aside, thrown there with great force) the production values were terrible. It looked like it was cheap video, shot by some talented fourteen-year-olds. God knows how they spent all that money. I saw it in a theatre in Vancouver and the crowd eventually amused themselves by just yelling out the name of each location as it came up on screen. "Railtown," "SFU" etc, etc.
@graphicwave: Oh sure, it was a fine movie, if you've never read the story. Kind of like how "The Golden Compass" was a pretty good movie, if you've never read the trilogy. Also, box office receipts suggest that "Jurassic Park" was a great movie, but it was merely similar to the book and nowhere near representative.
In all three stories they changed some pretty critical plot points just to make the transition from well established story to 90-120min of pop film a bit easier. Sadly, this is how it always seems to be.
@ElijahDProphet: I've always appreciated that the differences between Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep are very subtle. You can say it's not faithful because BR leaves out a lot of the religious soul searching of DADoES, but if you view it as a character piece of Rick Deckard, it's really spot-on. I've only come to this conclusion after the recent release of the DVD with its new version. The theatrical ending was just wrong, but the director's cut left out a lot of the despair for the rest of the film and tacked it on at the end.
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