Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘The Adam Project’

Written by Shae Rufe

Caution: This article contains spoilers for the motion picture, ‘The Adam Project’.
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The Adam Project is one of the most unique films that I have seen on Netflix. This movie quickly became my favorite after only a few minutes in, and it’s not just because Adam is a very relatable character. The premise of the movie revolves around a time traveling pilot, Adam, who goes back in time to find his stranded wife, Laura. Only, he’s injured and doesn’t make it to the right time period. He actually ends up in 2022, not 2018, and has to deal with a younger version of himself. Adam was a mouthy kid, and is a mouthy adult, but as a kid he spent a lot of his time getting beaten up. At age 12, he’s also dealing with the recent death of his father. It’s not the time, place, or drama that adult Adam needs or wants to deal with right now. He’s actually quite rude to his younger self, and let’s be honest, we all probably would do the same.
 
The kid versions of ourselves were definitely not the best versions. Nobody wants to revisit being 12, but Adam is injured, and this is his only option at the moment. He needs to deal with that and fix his plane, and then hopefully he can go find Laura. Everything is always more complicated than it seems, however, and Adam isn’t in the mood for any of it. Young Adam is full of wonder and questions, because he just discovered that time travel is real, and his older self is a time traveler. Which with all the jobs in the 2050s, that seems like the literal coolest one to have. Let’s be honest, if time travel was real and our older selves popped in for whatever reason, we’d all be excited and have so many questions, just like Young Adam.

Adam isn’t in the mood for that either, but he does need his younger self to get into his ship to even start the repairs. He even tries to get his younger self to stand up to a gang of bullies. When that doesn’t go as planned, he takes matters into his own hands and confronts them verbally with a warning to leave Adam alone. The kid’s been through a lot, and he clearly isn’t able to take these bullies head on. The truth is, his sass is his coping mechanism for the loss of his father. And when he’s not taking his misplaced anger out on his mom, he’s mouthing off to bigger kids. It’s an unfortunate, relatable, coping mechanism. Young Adam idolizes his father, and keeps waiting for the pain to stop, but it won’t. Older Adam is more bitter about the whole thing and seems to idolize his mother.
 
The brilliant shift from anger and grief is a powerful reminder that when someone passes, we tend to only remember the great parts about them. It’s easy to take our anger out on the ones who’re still alive, still there, and it’s hard to accept that the ones we’ve lost were just as flawed as the living. Death is indiscriminate, despite our best efforts. Grief is also blinding. It can consume someone so quickly with so little warning and drown them in the sorrows of anger and disbelief. Young Adam is a child suffocated by loss, ignorant to the suffering of his mother in her own loss. While Adam is scrambling to hold onto the ideology that if he just tries harder, he can avoid ever feeling the cold grip of empty sorrow ever again. And that he can find redemption, not by saving his father or by treating his mother poorly, but by saving his wife Laura.

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That’s not the only problem Adam has. He’s being chased by Sorian, his father’s old business partner and the one who built the time traveling planes. She’s dead set on bringing him back to his time, and us also spinning the story that Laura is dead. We all know she’s not. In fact, she proves that by showing up. Laura has been trapped in this timeline for 4 years, and not once did she believe Adam wouldn’t come after her. Their reunion is short lived, however, as there are much bigger things at stake. Laura has discovered that Sorian has been using time travel to give her past self, insight into the future. Telling her what to invest in, where to hide money, and so on. Adam has to travel back even further to stop what’s happening. Realistically, he’s going to have to go back and destroy the program for time travel before Sorian can even get her hands on it. Doing so also means confronting his father, and that is not something Adam is fully ready for. It has to be done, however. Laura sacrifices herself so that Adam and Young Adam can escape. They have one last shot at getting to the right time; making it by the skin of their teeth.

Confronting his father is not something Adam easily handles. At some point, when the initial devastation of loss has set in, anger takes over. Being angry at someone for dying is often a short-lived thing, often replaced with a soul crushing realization of the loss. In Adam’s case the anger set in and didn’t leave. He decided that his father hadn’t been there often, had chosen work over him. Although, having a time traveling project named after you is pretty cool, Adam saw it as an insult. The anger boils over when he finally does confront his father. Louis is smart and figures out quickly who Adam and Young Adam are. He’s a genius after all and he also knows that there’s something heavy in the interaction between them. He knows what they aren’t saying, and he refuses to hear it.
 
He does agree that they have to stop the Adam Project before Sorian turns it into what it is in the future. By destroying the program, they either create a catastrophic event that rips space time apart or time quietly corrects itself as though nothing ever happened. Either way, it’s a big risk. Sadly, Sorian is one step ahead. She threatens Young Adam’s life, much to the dismay of her younger counterpart. Such is life. When that doesn’t go in her favor, she settles on just murder. Adam had the program, and Sorian has already gone great lengths to succeed. She’s not going to lose now. Except she does lose, in a pretty big way, when instead of shooting Louis, she ends up inadvertently killing her younger self. Louis destroys the program, and all is right with the world. The timeline does correct itself. Luckily for Adam, he doesn’t remember any of it and he still meets his wife, Laura. It’s a happy ending that’s heartwarming and sad in a way. Adam seems to be a better-rounded person. Having to confront loss head on and get to the underlying issues is a powerful feeling.

The Adam Project has a deeply insightful dialogue hidden under the hilarious banter of a fantastic A-List cast. The issues it tackled and themes that drive the plot are so deeply rooted within a carefully crafted script that it’s hard to comprehend how strongly this movie hits until it’s over. On its surface it’s a good movie and beneath the flashy veneer it’s one of the most thought-provoking films of a lifetime. The complexities of grief are so thoroughly interwoven within the story that it tweaks all the right strings in perfect succession. The illustration of what grief actually looks like is hyper realistic and unapologetically bold. This film is unexpectedly emotionally cultivating. Propagated by a truly talented cast. 

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