Liman did it again with “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” which was a huge success, regardless of the anxieties it caused in the studio. In that Los Angeles Times Liman was not happy to be told that Goldsman had called him crazy, although he admitted: “I'm an unusual person… [but] “The film I end up with is the film I aspired to make.”
Hollywood loves stories about directors who bet big and then hit the jackpot, which is why part of the lore around “Titanic” and “Avatar” is how risky those James Cameron movies seemed before. of them becoming phenomena. But that exciting and enjoyable narrative quickly fades if the filmmaker isn't able to keep pulling rabbits out of his hat. That's what happened to Liman after “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” when he signed on for the sci-fi action film “Jumper,” which was intended to create a trilogy. Starring Hayden Christensen, Rachel Bilson and Samuel L. Jackson, and proudly billed as “From the director of 'The Bourne Identity' and 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith'”, the film, about a young man who discovers that he has the power to teleport, was only a modest success, insufficient to start a franchise. The reviews were terrible, with many focusing on Christensen's awkward performance, but years later, Liman also blamed himself.
“When I was making 'Jumper,' I said my version of a superhero movie would be that the person doesn't become a superhero,” he said. recalled in a 2018 interview. “They have a superpower, but they use it to save themselves, at the end of the movie, and not to save the damsel in distress. I thought it would be interesting, in the same way that 'The Bourne Identity' took what was in the spy genre and threw it out the window. And then you end up in those moments, where you get backed into a corner and find it hard to get out because you start to realize that these clichés exist because they work, and you've intentionally cut out something known that works to make something experimental. In the case of 'The Bourne Identity' it worked, and in most of my movies it worked.”
As was becoming common, when Liman was working on “Jumper,” there were stories about a tense shoot. (Also, Christensen suffered serious injuries and, tragically, the decorator David Ritchie deceased during an accident on set). In the middle of production, Liman I talk to Empire, insisting that the rumors about him being difficult were simply a byproduct of staying true to his vision. “I remember a discussion I had with the director of Universal [when making ‘The Bourne Identity’]” he recalled, “and she said, 'This is not your film school. You can't run around and try ideas. This is not your film school. She was wrong. This is how you get something original. You don't want to resort to something someone else has done. Then you are a pirate.
