While it involves a man with the ability to travel through time, director Robert Schwentke says that the upcoming movie, “The Time Traveler’s Wife” is not sci-fi.
Instead, the big-screen adaptation of the best-selling novel is an “epic love story” with “no butterfly effect,” and the time-travel aspect is just “a very good metaphor,” the director tells SciFi Wire.
The story follows the romance of Henry and Clare, who meet, fall in love and get married. There’s just one small thing–Henry is a time traveler who appears and disappears involuntarily, coming into and out of Clare’s life at different times and moments.
“At the heart of every time-travel narrative there is a paradox, and at some point you just have to roll with it,” Schwentke said. “Since [Henry] doesn’t really change anything in the past that significantly affects anything but personal choices and personal outcome, we kind of tried to run the other way [from the sci-fi] as fast as we could.”
But just because Schewentke says the movie isn’t sci-fi, he understands that some audience members will identify the film as such. And he said he and the special effects crew worked hard to make sure the effects sequences of Henry bouncing in and out of his time travel journey were up to snuff.
“When we edited the movie, we had to do mock-ups for these effects, because we had to decide how long the shots would be, and we had to edit the scenes,” Schwentke said. “We didn’t have the luxury of having finished visual effects to put in, so we did these really primitive wipes. That’s really what they were. [He makes a whooshing sound and makes a wipe-edit gesture with his hand.] And then it was gone.”
Schwentke added, “We watched the movie with those effects and realized how very little hinged on these effects being fantastically, wonderfully done. Not that they’re not wonderfully done, but we became very aware that we needed to downplay them, that they shouldn’t get in the way of anything, so it didn’t feel at any turn like you’re watching a different movie. I think that’s the difficulty with this kind of thing, that you have to somehow figure out how to stay within a very specific tonality, so that people don’t sit there and go, ‘OK, I have not suspended my disbelief to the degree where I now believe this.’ [If that occurs], then you’re done, you’re cooked, and the movie doesn’t work.”
Henry’s journey through time was charted by screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin on a timeline. This document was used to help filmmakers keep up with the continuity of Henry’s journey through time. However, Schwentke said that while it was a resource for he and the rest of the cast and crew, that they didn’t necessarily feel bound by it.
“We had a master document, [but] we committed pretty early on to make a movie where the storyline was independent of the timeline,” the director said. “And we actually narrowed it down to dates and sometimes even times of day. We had the master document that we could consult, but even then sometimes there would be things in the frame that didn’t belong there.”
tensaibaka says
So it’s Journeyman retold through the eyes of the wife? I’ll pass.
JFStan says
Y’All listen up now!
“The Time Traveller’s Wife” was an absolutely incredible book, and although it’s more chick-flick than sci-fi, I was excited to hear about it being made into a movie. If done correctly, it could be this generation’s “Somewhere in Time” (that statement is meant to be an extremely high compliment BTW).
Nick says
Why are they so afraid of the sci-fi label? There IS such a thing as intelligent speculative fiction. Last time I checked, traveling through time was definitely part of the science fiction milieu.
D. C. says
I saw the trailer for this in theater this weekend. Looked like Journeyman written by Stephanie Meyer. A definite pass.
So, the director doesn’t want the “scifi” label on this movie? Fine by me. Enjoy the “sappy romance” label instead.
Bronzethumb says
These kinds of people annoy me.
Jayson says
Nick & D.C.
That was my first thought, that he’s distanceing him self from the genre so it “might” win some kind of award. Obviously he’s the director and its his call but I can’t stand people who treat science fiction as a plague to be avoided, his loss.