Rachel McAdams, The Time Traveler’s Love Interest - Cinematic Calling Cards
Cinematic Calling Cards is a new column on GeekTyrant that takes a fun look at actors and filmmakers with recurring themes or character types in their films, whether they be coincidental, serendipitous, or otherwise.
In this week’s Cinematic Calling Cards, we play connect the dots with Rachel McAdams' filmography. McAdams has played a variety of characters throughout her movie career, and she will certainly be taking on darker fare with her foray into television later this year on True Detective. But a few of her movies have blipped the typecasting radar. McAdams has played the love interest of time travelers in three different films! Granted, there are plenty of actors (nearly two dozen, we've counted) who have been in multiple franchises involving time travel — check out the highest grossing ones here. However, what makes McAdams' case unique is that despite being in three time travel movies, none of her characters have travelled through time. SPOILERS ahead...
The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009)
In director Robert Schwentke’s adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger's best-selling novel, McAdams plays Clare. As the title character, she falls in love with and eventually marries Henry (Eric Bana), a man who suffers from “Chrono-Impairment,” a rare genetic anomaly that causes him to involuntarily travel backwards and forwards through time.
Why She Doesn’t Time Travel: Clare has been visited by an adult-aged Henry since she was six years old — yes, quite creepy. Though this makes her privy to future knowledge unknown to present day Henry — when he first meets her she has already known his future self most of her life — she does not have the ability to travel with him. However, Henry’s genetic disorder is passed on to their children. Only one child is successfully brought to term, though, due to the other unborn fetuses transporting out of the womb.
How Her Character is Affected by Time Travel: Henry uses his "disorder" to correctly "guess" the winning lottery numbers for a $5 million jackpot. Other than that leg up, the normal woes of married life are only magnified by Henry's random disappearances through time. Furthermore, the time travel mechanic is a "closed loop," meaning that Henry can’t change events that already happened — e.g. the death of his mother — and the course of current events are predetermined by what his future self has already done. This predestination at times causes Clare to question her free will in the relationship.
Bonus Fact: The same year this movie came out, Bana also traveled through time (via wormhole) as the Romulan villain Nero in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot.
Midnight in Paris (2011)
McAdams reunited with her Wedding Crashers co-star, Owen Wilson, in this romantic comedy from writer-director Woody Allen. In the movie, McAdams plays the fiancé of Wilson's character, Gil, a successful screenwriter attempting to finish his first novel while on vacation in Paris with McAdams and her parents. Gil finds himself rubbing elbows with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and other significant figures who were in Paris during the 1920s when he travels a street that becomes a conduit through time at the stroke of midnight.
Why She Doesn’t Time Travel: Though McAdams' character and anyone else who journeys the road at midnight can travel back in time — as evidenced by the private investigator hired by her father who unwittingly follows Gil back in time and gets stuck there — her character leaves just before midnight when Gil attempts to take her back in time with him.
How Her Character is Affected by Time Travel: While Gil's actions seem mostly inconsequential, his presence in the past is recorded in a diary he finds in the present. Also, while he takes his "nightly strolls" around Paris and begins falling for a woman from the past, McAdams becomes involved with another man (Michael Sheen perfectly playing a pedantic, pseudo-intellectual d-bag).
Bonus Fact: The film earned Allen an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and became his first picture to gross over $100 million worldwide.
About Time (2013)
In this touching comedy from writer-director Richard Curtis, McAdams once again plays a time traveler's wife. This time, though, her character, Mary, is blissfully unaware of the special time traveling abilities of her husband Tim (Domhnall Gleeson). When the males in Tim’s family turn 21, they are able to travel back to any point in their lives and change events by simply finding a small dark place, clenching their fists, and picking a moment they want to go to — it's a time travel mechanic so simple that I'd be lying if I said I didn't try it.
Why She Doesn’t Time Travel: Although Tim is shown to be able to take people with him, namely his sister, he takes a cue from his father (Bill Nighy) and doesn't tell his wife about his secret abilities.
How Her Character is Affected by Time Travel: Too many to mention all of them. Unlike in The Time Traveler's Wife, which has a closed-loop or fixed timeline (think 12 Monkeys or Somewhere in Time), Tim can drastically alter events big or small in his life and those around him — a la Back to the Future. Tim learns early on that all the time travel in the world can't force someone to fall in love with you, but when he must override the moments when he first meets Mary in order to help his friend, he uses time travel to find and meet her for the "first time"... again.
Bonus Fact: McAdams replaced Zooey Deschanel, who was originally cast in the role of Mary but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. ♫ Who's that girl??? ♫ Not Jess.
Conclusion:
While the muddy timeline in The Time Traveler's Wife ultimately shortchanged the emotional stakes, Midnight in Paris and About Time hit all the right notes, in terms of romance and in offering the type of fun exclusive to, but not always inherent in, time travel movies.
As for the actress herself, McAdams is timeless...at the very least, she's practically ageless. She has hardly changed at all since her breakout role in 2004's The Notebook. In fact, that same year, the then almost 26-year old actress starred as a high school junior in Mean Girls, while Amy Poehler (who is only 7 years older than McAdams) played her mother. Here's to hoping McAdams continues stealing our hearts, and taking pictures where she's in profile almost kissing a time traveler. Who knows? Maybe one day she'll get a chance to play a character who travels through time herself.
