Story
In 2050, Adam Reed (Ryan Reynolds) goes back in time to find out what happened to his missing wife, Laura (Zoe Saldana), who suddenly disappeared a few years earlier. While Adam is being shot at, he enters the wrong date and crashes near his childhood home.
At this moment in Adam’s childhood, young Adam (Walker Scobell) is 12 years old, angry and trying to come to terms with his father’s (Mark Ruffalo) death. Young Adam takes his rage out on his mother (Jennifer Garner), who is also still grieving. One night, young Adam gets more than he bargains for when he goes to investigate some lights in the woods and encounters Big Adam. When Big Adam is tracked to his current location by Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener), a co-worker of his late father, Laura appears just in time to save his life.
Together Big Adam and Laura work out that Maya was responsible for Laura’s disappearance. She’s also responsible for much of the corruption and inhumanity of the future, and she has been using the technology invented by Adam’s father for personal gain.
With only one chance to set things right, young and big Adam decide to risk it all and go back in time to see their father and destroy his technology so they can save the world from a future it isn’t ready for.
Themes
Grief; death of a parent or loved one; time travel; disrespect of parents; corruption; bullying; murder
Violence
The Adam Project has some violence. For example:
- Big Adam is shot at repeatedly while he tries to fly his spaceship into a wormhole. We see later that he has been shot through the side of his abdomen.
- A school bully tells young Adam that he’s going to kill him. The bully pushes Adam into a wall and punches him in the stomach.
- Young Adam ties to hit Big Adam with a bat.
- Outside of school, some bullies kick and punch Young Adam. Big Adam slams one of the bullies into a wall. He threatens to remove the bones from the bully’s body, sharpen them and use them to stab the other bully if they ever touch young Adam again. One of the bullies wets his pants in terror before running away.
- There’s a reference to the car accident in which Adam’s father dies.
- Soldiers attack Adam’s house looking for big Adam. Bombs explode, and soldiers are electrocuted with swords. Big Adam uses a weapon that smashes all the soldiers back into the trees.
- Soldiers are stabbed or beheaded and seem to disappear electromagnetically.
- Laura shoots at the soldiers to save big Adam.
- Laura and the Adams are shot at while they flee the soldiers. Two soldiers follow them through the woods, and both are killed. One soldier is smashed into a tree, and the other is blasted into the car door.
- Laura shoots and kills many soldiers to help the Adams escape.
- Laura explodes a car with a bomb.
- Maya locks her aircraft weapons onto Laura and kills her instantly. She later tells big Adam that she has killed Laura twice.
- Planes follow the Adams, shooting at them as they try to go back in time. The Adams destroy one plane and only just manage to escape the other.
- Big Adam punches his father in the face, and his father punches him back.
- Big Adam fights a small army of invisible soldiers with help from young Adam, who uses tech to fight them from the sky. They blast the soldiers away and explode a car. This causes other cars to crash.
- Big Adam is punched in the face and strangled.
- Maya shoots Adam and his father but ends up killing herself instead.
Sexual references
The Adam Project has some sexual references. For example:
- Young Adam asks big Adam, ‘Do I get laid?’
- A character asks, ‘Are you talking about your penis?’
- Young Adam tells big Adam that he looks like a condom with buttons.
Alcohol, drugs and other substances
The Adam Project has some use of substances. For example:
- Big Adam drinks a beer and repeatedly moves it out of reach of young Adam, who tries to grab it.
- Characters are offered drinks as a way to deal with difficult situations.
Nudity and sexual activity
The Adam Project has some nudity and sexual activity. For example, big Adam and Laura kiss passionately. They fall back onto a table and against a door, unable to keep their hands off each other. It looks like they go on to have sex, but this isn’t shown.
Product placement
The following products are displayed or used in The Adam Project: Subaru cars.
Coarse language
The Adam Project has some coarse language and insults.
Ideas to discuss with your children
The Adam Project is a science fiction action adventure with a fast-paced plot and humorous dialogue. It might appeal to children, but its content makes it better suited to older teenagers and adult audiences.
These are the main messages from The Adam Project:
- It’s easier to be angry than it is to be sad.
- Parents love their children no matter what.
- The scared child within each of us has wisdom that we would do well to heed.
- Sometimes the inner child turns out to be the best part of us, ultimately leading us to the person we’re destined to become.
Values in The Adam Project that you could reinforce with your children include courage, ingenuity, integrity, helpfulness and hope.
The Adam Project could also give you the chance to talk with your children about the real-life consequences of things like:
- taking out your anger with one parent on the other
- refusing to talk about your feelings
- using violence to solve conflict
- chasing power and wealth at all costs
- bullying others.