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Impulse Offers Jumper Director A Chance To Do What He Couldn’t In The Movie
The producer of Impulse feels that the Jumper spinoff series on YouTube Red allows the director to do considerably more with the story than the 2008 movie did. Impulse is a spinoff of Jumper, the film that loosely adapted Stephen Gould's novel of the same name, starring Hayden Christensen in the title role.
Both Impulse and Jumper feature young men and women who suddenly realize that they have the ability to "jump," or teleport, anywhere in the world, along with the power of telekinesis. The concept originated with the novel, but the film Jumper took great departures from the book, resulting in it getting panned by critics and moviegoers alike. In general, most complained that the movie's plot felt rushed and that the ending was anti-climactic. Jumper then fell into the vast hole of long-forgotten sci-fi movies. Perhaps that's why it was so surprising when YouTube Red announced that it had plans to order a series based on that world.
In an interview with Screen Rant at San Diego Comic-Con 2018, Impulse producer Gene Klein spoke about the series and about how Jumper and Impulse director Doug Liman felt like he had had more creative leeway over the YouTube Red series.
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"This really grew out of Doug's [Liman] experience making a movie called Jumper, which was based on a book series. Impulse was the third book from that series. And this was the chance for Doug to do the things that he wasn't able to do in the movie. And do them the way he really wanted to do them. And YouTube really allowed us to do that. And then kind of let Doug have his creative freedom on the pilot and us on the whole series."
Liman previously admitted that he knew that he didn't get the world and story right in Jumper. Impulse is Liman's chance at a do-over, and he jumped on the opportunity to create something better. For Impulse, the setting itself is a lot more than what moviegoers saw in the film, and the series has a serious game plan about how to delve into that larger world only previously hinted at. It does seem like the series will take liberties from the novel, but in this case, those changes are, hopefully, for the better.
For those who haven't seen the series, a trailer for Impulse released in March, showing a series that seemed a lot more intense than many might have expected. The trailer introduced Henry, a teen girl who already feels like a social pariah in her small town. Then she had a traumatic experience, a sexual assault. That trauma triggered her powers, and she learned that she could teleport. Overall, it seemed like the series creators planned on diving a lot deeper than the movie with this TV show - and that's precisely why they made it in the first place.
