Teleportation gets reel in new Sci-Fi movie "Jumper"

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. -- Most Hollywood directors wouldn't have the guts to let two renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicists and a slew of opinionated students dissect their science-fiction movie, but Wednesday Doug Liman did just that when he shared details of his latest flick, "Jumper," which is based on the premise that human teleportation is possible

"I flew out from L.A. this morning with Hayden Christensen and we are very excited to be here with the MIT professors and to have some of the science of the film ripped apart. I am someone that does not shy away from a challenge in my career," Liman said. "Hayden and I were cramming the entire way out here over quantum physics realizing we should have read it before we started making the film. We might not have made the film if we knew quite how impossible these guys are going to tell us teleportation could be."

Click to see: Hayden Christensen

Christensen -- who gets to do in the new movie what millions of sci-fi fans have longed to do -- joined Liman on a panel with MIT physicists Dr. Edward Farhi and Dr. Max Tegmark to discuss the teleportation depicted in the film and the science that is reality today. The panel sat before a slew of engaged MIT students ready to discredit any notion that Christensen's portrayed ability to will himself from beneath the icy waters of an Ann Arbor, Mich., lake to within the stacks of the local library is anything more than good acting and advanced special effects.

"I wasn't expecting such a lively group," Christensen told attendees at the MIT event, which showcased four clips from the film set to open next month. Yet Liman said he anticipated the excitement around the science of teleportation because it drew him to make the film and to travel to 14 countries and 20 cities to lend credibility to the locations to which Christensen jumped.

Liman, who also directed "The Bourne Identity," explained how he realized while he could train Matt Damon to fight like an assassin, he would not be able to get Christensen up to speed on teleportation abilities. But that didn't stop him from wanting to make the film and to add as much science to the process as he could.

"There is a tendency in Hollywood to want to dumb topics down for the audience," Liman said. But he visited a physics expert -- who shunned his concept immediately -- to try to make the impossible act of complete human teleportation seem plausible enough for the audience to suspend reality and accept that Christensen's character and others in the film were able to teleport themselves.

"I wanted to figure out what it would look like if someone is in a chair and then suddenly not in a chair. I took a very scientific approach" by considering objects moving and climate conditions in the environment, Liman said, amid uproarious laughter from the audience. He then added good-naturedly, "When I speak other places I sound very scientific."

Admittedly Liman didn’t have much of a chance of coming off knowledgeable about science in the company of Farhi and Tegmark, who separately discussed in detail the facts around teleportation that have their roots in quantum mechanics.