Jumper: The Abridged Script
By: Rod Hilton on Mar 11th, 2008 | Movie Rating: 
FADE IN:
INT. HIGH SCHOOL
YOUNG HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN timidly approaches YOUNG RACHEL BILSON.
YOUNG HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
Uh, hey. I don’t know if you know who I am, but I sorta have this crush on you.
YOUNG RACHEL BILSON
Of course I know you! We’re in the same shop class!
YOUNG HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
Huh? No… you’re probably confusing me with a piece of wood. I get that a lot.
(hands her a worthless trinket)
I got you a snow globe of Paris, because you conveniently desire traveling the world.
Suddenly, some ASSHOLE BULLY totally COCKBLOCKS HAYDEN and takes the SNOWGLOBE.
ASSHOLE BULLY
With absolutely no provocation from you, I will throw your snowglobe onto the barely-frozen river in exactly the way that no real teenager would.
He DOES. Predictably, YOUNG HAYDEN retrieves it and falls into the river. Suddenly, he teleports to the local library.
YOUNG HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
(to librarian)
Ma’am, can you direct me to the section containing books on how to awkwardly force a plot progression in filmmaking?
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN (V.O.)
And so I checked out a book that told me pointless narration is a great way to drive a story forward without any real writing.
(pause)
I decided to move to New York and start stealing from banks. If you’re wondering why I’m bothering to narrate this, since the upcoming scene is of me walking around New York and robbing a bank, I suggest you go ahead and leave - this movie only gets worse from here.
HAYDEN teleports into a bank vault and takes a shitload of money.
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN (V.O.)
Hey, I was a teenager, what would you do? I mean, besides something like robbing mob bosses instead. I dismissively chalk the whole bank-robbing thing up to my youth, but I continued doing it for years and hiding my wealth in a secret room, along with casino chips that I decided to keep for some reason.
HAYDEN teleports to various international locations where the JUMPER FILM CREW was ALLOWED TO SHOOT.
INT. PUB - LONDON
HAYDEN hits on a RANDOM ENGLISH CHICK.
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
My totally awesome superpowers have made it easy for me to pick up girls.
RANDOM ENGLISH CHICK
I don’t get it. It’s not like you’re using your powers in front of me or anything. The only possible edge your powers gave you in this situation was that you were able to teleport to England in order to find me. Is this movie suggesting English women have low standards or something?
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
No, it’s just that people outside of the U.S. don’t all immediately recognize me as that whiny douchebag from Star Wars.
HAYDEN fucks the girl and teleports back to his apartment, where he runs into SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Hello Hayden. I’m here to kill you. I am a member of a religious sect called ‘Paladins’. We hunt down people like you, who we call “jumpers” because it’s hipper-sounding than “teleporters.”
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
A religious sect? Of course. Because why write character motivation when you can just say “ZOMG RELIGION” and be done with it?
SAMUEL electrocutes HAYDEN, which prevents him from teleporting.
SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Now you know how it feels to get electrocuted by an old guy! I’ll teach you to just stand there and let me get thrown out a window.
HAYDEN manages to teleport anyway. He goes back to his hometown in MICHIGAN, because the best place to go when a secret organization tracking you wants you dead is your old home.
INT. BAR - MICHIGAN
HAYDEN goes to the BAR where grown-up RACHEL BILSON works and decides to hit on her as well.
RACHEL BILSON
Holy shit! I haven’t seen you since you vanished four years ago! How are you do–
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
Whoa, whoa, whoa. We’re expecting the audience to believe that only four years have passed since we were played by 15-year-old actors?
RACHEL BILSON
Sure, why not? We’re expecting them to believe that your old classmates would remember most unmemorable person alive.
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
Well, didn’t you always want to go to Rome? Let’s go, right now.
RACHEL BILSON
That’s tempting, but is right now really a good time?
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
Sure. Nothing going on for me besides being chased by a crazy guy who wants me and my kind eradicated and will stop at nothing to see me destroyed. I see no reason why now isn’t a great time to involve you in my life.
EXT. ROME, ITALY
HAYDEN takes RACHEL around ROME and they look at TOURISTY SHIT.
RACHEL BILSON
I suppose that you paying for me to take a vacation in Italy pretty much means I’m obligated to have sex with you, because all women are apparently just whores.
She has sex with HAYDEN and then they visit the COLLOSSEUM. HAYDEN uses his powers to unlock locked doors that RACHEL wishes to open, getting him further into RACHEL’S PIXIE-SIZED PANTIES.
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
Who knew that something as simple as unlocking doors would score so many points with the ladies? A $10 set of bump keys must be the ticket to an endless supply of pussy.
Suddenly, some PALADINS show up with extremely high STRENGTH and CONSTITUTION. JAMIE BELL teleports in and saves HAYDEN, killing the PALADINS. JAMIE then teleports to his HIDEOUT and HAYDEN follows him.
JAMIE BELL
Did you just come through my jump scar?
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
Jump scar?
JAMIE BELL
Yes. When a jumper jumps, he leaves a wormhole behind that another jumper can jump through.
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
Oh… so, did we just have sex or something?
JAMIE BELL
No. Those guys back there were Paladins. They’ve been killing Jumpers for a thousand years. The witchhunts, the red scare - it was all these guys.
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
Really? What did they use before electricity was discovered?
JAMIE BELL
Am I really getting a lecture on plot holes from the guy who starred in “Attack of the Clones?”
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
I think we should work together and kill the paladins. It’ll be just like Marvel Team-Up.
JAMIE BELL
Ugh.
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
What, you don’t want to work with me?
JAMIE BELL
It’s not that. I just can’t believe the screenplay is justifying the arbitrary plot progression of us teaming up by drawing attention to the cheesy comic-book nature of doing so. It’s like one notch better than having characters say “it’ll be just like in a movie” in a movie.
JAMIE and HAYDEN work together to try and kill SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON.
SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Enough is enough! I’ve had it with these motherfucking jumpers in my motherfucking space-time continuum!
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
Why are you so obsessed with destroying me?
SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Because it’s your fault that the film is so painfully boring. This entire movie is about the same thing that the opening sequence of X-Men 2 was about, but not a single action scene is as good. Face it, you suck.
They FIGHT for a while. Eventually, HAYDEN teleports RACHEL’S apartment underwater, destroying all of RACHEL’S POSESSIONS. He then teleports SAMUEL to the GRAND CANYON and leaves him there to be discovered by TOURISTS.
RACHEL BILSON
Because you saved my life after you needlessly endangered it in the first place, I have no choice but to fall in love with you.
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
Cool. First, I have to track down my mother, who abandoned me when I was five and left me with a lazy drunk father.
INT. DISTRACTINGLY NICE HOUSE
HAYDEN knocks on the door of a house and finds his mother, DIANE LANE, a PALADIN.
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
Holy shit!
DIANE LANE
What? Surprised to find out that your mother is a Paladin?
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
No, I’m surprised my mother is Diane Lane. What the fuck are you doing in this idiotic piece of garbage?
DIANE LANE
Phoning it in, what does it look like?
The MOVIE teleports out of the memories of the AUDIENCE forever.
END
Thanks, Rod! That’s one more movie I am not going to see. You’re saving me a lot of money.
March 11th, 2008 at 11:29 amwell. i love your reviews, as ever. and i dont know why im chosing this one to make my first comment on. but… for the first time i think you made a mistake? is it possible?
maybe you missed the fact that HAYDEN and RACHEL were good friends? as shown by the attempt at them talking at the lockers? and how her parents know him, and by her crying when he dies.
anyway. the movie still was stupid though. but that part actually made some sense..
March 11th, 2008 at 12:06 pmEnough is enough! I’ve had it with these motherfucking jumpers in my motherfucking space-time continuum!
March 11th, 2008 at 1:11 pmFavorite line: “Suddenly, some PALADINS show up with extremely high STRENGTH and CONSTITUTION”
Cause, you know, your character can’t BE a paladin unless he/she has high strength and constitution.
I think high wisdom was a requirement too, which meant you really couldn’t ever be a paladin unless you cheated on your dice-rolling.
I could go on, but then I’d risk being as boring as Jumper.
March 11th, 2008 at 1:51 pmEnough is enough! I’ve had it with motherfuckers quoting a post with no motherfucking commentary, just a motherfucking direct quote from something any motherfucker could scroll up and see.
March 11th, 2008 at 2:12 pmhahaha! i love that paladin thing, and the “I’ll teach you to just stand there and let me get thrown out a window” part was awesome. just another great abridged script overall, really
March 11th, 2008 at 3:09 pm“I’ll teach you to just stand there and let me get thrown out a window.”
LOL!!!
Rod, our brains are working on the same wavelength(which is itself a terrifying thought). Check out my screen caption, third picture down, on my Jumper review: http://www.subvoce.homestead.com/Jumper.html
Hope you like it! Brilliant parody, Rod! Thanks!!
March 11th, 2008 at 3:43 pmThe “religious sect” thing is the ultimate cop-out. Need your villains to be evil? Blame religion! Remember, people who belong to some obscure religious sect will believe anything! Why are these people murdering children? They’re religious! Why are they traveling the world to destroy you? They are believe in it! Why are they going through such great lengths, spending hundreds of thousand dollars to track and destroy you? They believe in it *very strongly.* Sheesh. No wonder everyone hates religion, it’s like the ultimate scapegoat in half the movies I watch.
Remember, writers: when in doubt, create a cult!
March 11th, 2008 at 4:26 pmIt’s your abridged scripts like these that I read when I was in middle school that have influenced me until today and led me to be a comedian.
Definitely love the Star Wars references.
March 11th, 2008 at 6:35 pmMy favourite part is when you see him watching TV. These people are stranded by a flood on the roof of a car or something and the reporter says “only a miracle could save them.” So you think “oh, I guess he will, to show how he isnt a punk bank robber as in his youth.”
March 11th, 2008 at 11:27 pmAnd then he doesn’t! So you think “Okay by the end of the movie he’ll become a hero!”
And he doesn’t! He’s the most static jackass ever.
Jamie Bell’s character was awesome though. Why couldn’t the merciless vengence-bent nut-job have been the main character?
“Now you know how it feels to get electrocuted by an old guy! I’ll teach you to just stand there and let me get thrown out a window.”
Beautiful. I never heard of this movie, but then again I haven’t been keeping up with the latest. Can you please do Harry Potter 5 with lots of Star Wars references?
March 12th, 2008 at 4:42 amRod,
Please post an address where I can mail you a check. I figure since you have yet again saved me $11 dollars by not seeing this worthless tripe that I should send you a portion of my overall savings as retainer.
It sounds to that if Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson was wielding a plus 5 Holy Avenger that this film would have been over a lot sooner.
March 12th, 2008 at 6:49 amRod, 2.5 stars? You must’ve been in a generous mood.
This is a good script, as usual, though you left out some of the dumbest story elements. My favorite is how Hayden finds out he can “jump” anywhere in the world if he just looks at a picture of it. The hell? If he looks through a book about the solar system, can he jump to other planets?
My second favorite is how Hayden, several times, jumps right into a room or area filled with people (ex. the hospital) and no one gives him a second glance. He practices his jumping all over his town, in broad daylight, and no one notices!
And also, I like how Samuel LMF Jackson kills Hayden’s loser father for no particular reason. “Only God should have the power to…. um…. have kids who can teleport!” Or maybe, as others have already pointed out, he killed him because of RELIGION.
March 12th, 2008 at 8:23 amIt’s strange how the Jumpers didn’t wipe out the Paladins hundreds of years ago. I mean, what chance did the Paladins have before the harnessing of electricity and instant global communication?
March 12th, 2008 at 10:22 amWell, the Jumpers couldn’t really go very far, because no one had invented postcards yet.
March 12th, 2008 at 10:33 amAnyone besides me think that the title implied a film about suicide, or maybe electronics?
March 12th, 2008 at 1:32 pmWhen I first saw the poster, I thought the movie was going to be about bungee-jumping. He jumps off the Sphinx… Yeah…
If he looks through a book about the solar system, can he jump to other planets?
Probably, but where’s he gonna find a spacesuit adapted to those other planets?
March 13th, 2008 at 12:06 amthat first comment was taking too long, so I tried another
March 13th, 2008 at 12:39 amHow did Samuel Jackson get into Hayden’s apartment without Hayden knowing? At first I thought Samuel (palladins) was a jumper because he just appears in Hayden’s apartment.
What should have been Hadyen first move after getting electrocuted — using that fucking scuba suit or other rubber suit to protect himself. But no, the idiot goes surfing.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:03 amGreat reference to episode III.
March 13th, 2008 at 2:52 pmHuh? No… you’re probably confusing me with a piece of wood. I get that a lot.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:15 pmIs that picture of him in Egypt really in the movie? It looks like a video game cutscene.
March 13th, 2008 at 10:14 pmWasn’t there a script for Stepmom on this site somewhere? I can’t find it.
Anyway. What I find worst about this film is that I can no longer support Doug Liman without adding ‘… except for Jumper.’ at the end. Even the action sequences are shocking in their shittiness.
From a writing standpoint, it felt like Christensen’s character was an amalgam of two different personalities: a Jumper who robs banks and a Jumper who travels all over the world in order to forget the girl he left behind. It shifts between hotshot asshole to sensitive boy-next-door whenever it becomes convenient for the story. Mentioned above, after his first fight with Jackson, ‘He goes back to his hometown in MICHIGAN, because the best place to go when a secret organization tracking you wants you dead is your old home.’ This entire idea should have been changed entirely, or at least justified in some manner.
The cuts to Sam Jackson investigating the Jumpers were especially awkward. There’s that point where Hayden’s wretched narration is suddenly halted to show Jackson in a goddamn tropical rainforest or something with a bunch of extras hunting down a random Asian Jumper. As if later scenes in the film weren’t enough to show how much of a bastard the guy is.
Blah blah blah, point being, the movie sucked, I hated it, that image at the top really does look like it’s from a videogame, and where the fuck is the script for Stepmom?
March 14th, 2008 at 12:00 amRod;
I know it’s early in the posting, but PLEASE do “Doomsday” next. I hate to ask you to subject yourself to it, but man….what a shitfest! It truly deserves your special brand of literary surgery.
March 14th, 2008 at 10:06 am“Huh? No… you’re probably confusing me with a piece of wood. I get that a lot.”
HA! Good one! After seeing the movie I couldn’t wait to see your script for it, especially since it had Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson.
March 14th, 2008 at 10:28 amLance:
Doomsday is, indeed, next.
March 14th, 2008 at 10:31 amIronic for a movie called jumper to be so absolutely pants!
But did they not say in the film ‘eight’ years had passed since they saw each other not just four. wee mistake there maybe?
thats scene were the two chairs starting kissing in rome was pretty hot.
March 14th, 2008 at 9:43 pmGod bless you, Rod.
March 14th, 2008 at 9:56 pmSeriously, can we start an online petition to have Hayden Suck-ensen’s SAG card revoked or something? He’s the worst excuse for an actor since that one fuckhead that farced up the most evil guy in the Galaxy, Darth Vader.
Oh wait -
March 15th, 2008 at 8:27 pm“This entire movie is about the same thing that the opening sequence of X-Men 2 was about, but not a single action scene is as good.”
lulz
Also, teleportation allows you to pickup chicks. *scribbles on notepad* I see…
March 17th, 2008 at 9:49 amBeen waiting ages for another script. It didn’t disappoint.
You’re a comedy genius Rod.
March 17th, 2008 at 2:18 pmhey I thought this movie was about an article of women’s clothing!
March 18th, 2008 at 8:27 am“pout in every country.”
March 18th, 2008 at 6:16 pmlove it
But the script was really witty. The movie itself is a worthless piece of a shit.
March 19th, 2008 at 7:29 am“ameer Says:
Anyone besides me think that the title implied a film about suicide, or maybe electronics?”
In a world where one must choose to be master or slave, he chose CABLE SELECT!
March 20th, 2008 at 4:11 pmThe bit that I thought was amusing was how Samuel LMF Jackson was talking about how ‘all Jumpers go bad’, and Hayden is denying it… and I’m sitting there thinking “wait a second, the kid who immediately started using the power of teleportation to ROB BANKS, and then left a bunch of helpless people to die in a flood, is arguing that he’s not a BAD GUY?”
And then Griffin starts talking about being fucking careful with his powers and Hayden’s response is basically “Pshhh, whatever dude.”
If they make a sequel, I’m SO rooting for the Paladins. :P
March 31st, 2008 at 5:49 pmNot to mention the fact he teleported himself LESS THAN A FOOT to reach the remote.
And we’re supposed to believe a guy this lazy has a washboard stomach?
March 31st, 2008 at 5:50 pmthe 2.5 stars he gave the movie were for Rachel Bilson’s good looks.
April 3rd, 2008 at 3:28 pm“Because you saved my life after you needlessly endangered it in the first place, I have no choice but to fall in love with you.”
Damn straight. That shit is straight out of the fucking movie.
April 6th, 2008 at 6:40 pmRod, contrary to your glorious literary efforts, you have sold me utterly on this movie with the words “PIXIE-SIZED PANTIES.” I can’t wait to rent it!
April 19th, 2008 at 3:36 pmIn Australia we call sweaters jumpers. So the title of this movie makes us chuckle.
April 19th, 2008 at 8:43 pmTwo terrible parts not mentioned in your script.
Diane Lane - I had two choices. I could either kill you or leave you.
Hayden Christiensen - So you left!
At one point, Jamie Bell and Sam Jackson are fighting in the desert. Rather than teleporting to escape, he runs away, hops on a quad, drives the quad 10 feet, teleports with the quad, and then ditches the quad when he arrives in his new location. - Ya
April 21st, 2008 at 10:43 pmI actually liked the movie, becuase i kept thinking “This is excatly what i would have done!”
I mean, you keep saying “But he robs banks!” like its a bad thing. Banks rob us all the time, and the money is insured. The only people who rob us more then banks are insurance compenies.
And yes, i would allways teleport to the remote, or the fridge.
The only thing i would have done differently was hunt Sam to the death. I’d stalk him from afar, wait till he went to sleep, and just killed him. I dont get why they allways escape in these movies when they can just fight.
April 28th, 2008 at 1:23 am[…] script of Jumper, re-edited. (”Hayden Christensen finally succeeds in his lifelong goal to pout in every […]
May 2nd, 2008 at 5:35 am