What The Adam Project Does So Much Better Than Franchise Movies
The Adam Project, the latest collaboration between actor Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy, is an original film that succeeds where many franchise movies fail. The actor and director are clearly a winning partnership, as Levy has signed on to direct Deadpool 3 with Reynolds as star and producer. The pair last worked together on the 2021 action-comedy hit, Free Guy.
The new Netflix movie finds Ryan Reynolds’ time-traveling pilot Adam embarking on a vital mission that takes him from 2050 to 2018 via an encounter with his 12-year-old self (Walker Scobell) in the present day. It’s a surprisingly warm-hearted sci-fi movie that – in between the action set-pieces — reflects upon childhood, parenthood, and grief. Though it was stuck in developmental hell for a decade, the wait seems to have paid off.
Related: Every Song In The Adam Project
The Adam Project has a similar snarky comic tone to the Deadpool movies, but there’s a lot more heart and much less self-indulgence. Instead, The Adam Project is less like Deadpool and more like Free Guy, an original property that is literate in both genre and the wider popular culture landscape. Despite not having a connection to an existing IP, The Adam Project is more successful at invoking the nostalgic spirit that so many franchise movies strive for. An awkward teenager with an absent father, discovering both futuristic technology and a mysterious figure in the woods outside his home, is pure Spielberg. Despite being set in 2022 and 2018, it's a more satisfying and celebratory '80s throwback than the recent spate of sequels and remakes of beloved movies.
These tonal callbacks to films such as E.T., Flight of the Navigator, and Back to the Future fit with the central themes. It's a
Read more on screenrant.com
