What was the problem w/ Timeline (may be spoilers eventually)
 

I put the spoiler warning in since while the initial post won't contain any in response to the question there might be some.


So what was the big deal w/ Timeline? I heard it was a bad movie and got some very negative reviews but I just finished watching it and didn't think it was that bad at all. Don't get me wrong it's certainly not an award winner in any sense and I doubt I'll even buy the DVD but it was better than The Core (a comparison I heard in the other direction) and not a complete waste of time as I've also heard. Maybe it was because of all the negative expectations it turned out better than I was led to believe, but I'm curious to know why people didn't like it. I mean come on... this isn't Congo we are talking about here ;)

Congo sucked hardcore but if you want to compare it with a crappy Michael Cricton movie that made no sense compare it to Sphere. Timeline was just a trainwreck. I was actually bored with the movie. Don't get me wrong The Core sucked too but at least it was mildly entertaining. It had some cool stuff in it like the shuttle landing. Keep in mind I would buy none of these movies on DVD. I may watch them on HBO for a couple of minutes but I would not sink more money into them.

I agree Nemein. I thought it was what it was, a fairly thoughtless actioner set predominately in Medieval Europe. It had decent acting (excluding Mssr. Walker who really needs to stick to So. Cal. surfer dude parts) and likeable plot lines. The dialogue was a little weak, and the effects were marginal. I did enjoy the big fight scene at the end and just love the constant "Trebuchet" lines. The image of the flaming arrows flying at each other in mass was, I think, a particularly strong image. Caleb Deschanel's cinematography was, as usual, excellent.

Overall, a decent rest the mind and enjoy the spectacle pic.

"Your father is stuck in the 1400 century" says it all..

Nemein, I thought the same thing. Not a great movie, but not as bad as the reviews said it was either.

I thought it was terrible and I generally like pretty much every movie based around time travel. I'd have to sit and watch the movie with you and point out where it goes wrong and why it's stupid I guess... or I could just let you enjoy it as you did. Nothing wrong in liking an unpopular movie... happens to me all the time.

Which is better than we need to retrieve whales from the 20th century in what way? Granted I think if it wasn't the ST characters that one would have bombed too ;)

Read the book and you will see why people complain. The script got butchered.

That I have no doubt about... given the past history w/ his book to movie translations ;)

But, the book wasn't even all that good, IMO. It was better than the movie (most are, it seems), but the movie just lacked in near most everything. I can't quite point out a single element that made it bad - but rather a little bit of everything. The lack of substance in its 'parts' results in a below-average 'whole' movie.

My problem with this movie was that of unfulfilled expectations. The trailer featured the varsity blues guy saying "we have 600 years of knowledge on these guys, let's use it".

So I expected to see a movie about time travelers who use all kinds of modern day know-how and tricks to outwit the medieval people. You know, knowledge of science and engineering to create weapons and booby traps and all that. Instead we got a bunch of people running around in a forest. Sucked.

My problem with the movie started waaaaaaaay before it was in theaters. Honestly, the BOOK itself is already written almost like a screenplay. Why they had to change things up (i.e. , casting a wimpy actor for Doniger) I'll never know.

I'm still gonna rent it though, out of curiosity.

That is the marketing departments fault(along with your own expectations), not the movie itself. If you go in expecting one thing but get another, does that automatically make it bad? No. Just different. This was the problem with the Matrix movies. 98% went in expecting one thing and got something else. Hence all the negativity towards it.

I for one enjoyed it. Was it Casablanca? No. Was it Gigli? No. Somewhere inbetween. I can think of worse movies to waste my time on.

Although it was mildly entertaining, it was a fairly bad flick.

I just didn't believe for 1 second that they were in the 13th century or whatever era it was supposed to be. To top it off this movie had some of the worst time travel logic ever (and I normally don't complain about these things).

It seriously disappointed. Especially since I read the book first. I did have big expectation of it though as I have been following it's development for a couple of years. But I don't think that it is wrong to expect certain scenes that completely lend itself to the cinematic form to be transfered from the book.

The whole absence of the earpieces subtracted from figuring that someone wasn't who he said he was. They also totally neglected what could have been a spectacular Jousting scene (A Knight's tale anyone?)

Overall it just completely disappointed and was a totally average movie which, in my opinion, is even worse then a horrible yet memorable movie.