Carpenter B, Bad Robot, Warner Bros. Television,
James Franco, Sarah Gadon, George MacKay, Chris Cooper, Cherry Jones, Daniel Webber, Kevin J. O’Connor
Jake Epping (James Franco) is a school teacher in 2016. He finds a way to travel back in time, but it always takes him to October 1960 to the same place and the same time. He can return, and anything that was changed remains changed, but when he goes back through the portal, everything resets the way it was. He is on a mission to stop Lee Harvey Oswald (Daniel Webber) from killing J.F.K. on 11/22/63 so he has three years to wait to prove that Oswald was the shooter, and to try to stop him before he can do it. But time pushes back when you try to change things, and time is a powerful foe.
This is based on a novel by Stephen King, and was planned for a big budget Hollywood film, but the producers determined that it needed more time than that, so they developed an 8 episode, 8 hour mini-series. Starring and produced by James Franco, this is a really neat little time travel story. Stephen King has his own bizarre way of developing a story, and this is pure King. When people write a time travel story, it’s usually either to kill Hitler or to save Kennedy. But they are all the same. You can’t change history or things fall apart. You can’t count on King to follow the rules though, and this is not really ever predictable. There are some really creepy characters, like an old man who keeps telling him “You shouldn’t be here” that gives you the creeps. Plus there is a romance blooming when Jake bumps into Sadie (Sarah Gadon) in 1960 which causes him a lot of distress. This is not a Twilight Zone episode that wraps up in 30 minutes. This is an 8 hour marathon, so we get many characters that we get to see developed, and many side bars and tangent stories that make it good. When it comes down to the last episode, it’s really quite exciting. How cool it is to have this on 2 DVD’s so that we can binge watch them all in one long day! I really enjoyed this film, but, of course, I am a total sucker for time travel stories. It’s something that has stuck with me since I was a youngster. I had never heard of this TV series, and was really interested when I found it in the new releases this week, and very happy I took up 2 spots in my queue for this story. I recommend it for those of us who love a good science fiction thriller once in a while. Keep in mind though, that even though it’s based on the real images of 1963, this is total fiction, so don’t expect to solve the Kennedy assassination while watching this film.
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