Gerard Butler & Paul Walker’s Forgotten Sci-Fi Movie Was Richard Donner’s Second Time Travel Film

Name: Timeline
Genre: Sci-Fi

By Sophie Evans

Published Aug 31, 2024

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Despite Richard Donner’s fame, there is one sci-fi movie, which featured Gerard Butler and Paul Walker in Donner’s second foray into the time travel genre, that's been forgotten. Richard Donner is most notably known for directing classic 80s movies such as The Goonies, Lethal Weapon and Scrooged. His work on the first three Lethal Weapon movies has been highly praised for helping revitalize the rarest and most expensive VHS tapes.

Richard Donner seems to thrive in the action genre, however, there is one historical sci-fi film involving time travel which stands out in his filmography. 2003’s historical sci-fi movie was released the same year as the X-Men sequel, X2, which was also co-produced by his company. Timeline was the sixth movie by The Donners’ Company which Donner himself directed, and starred Gerard Butler and Paul Walker in leading roles, who were two big name actors at the time.

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Timeline Is A Time Travel Historical Movie Starring Gerard Butler & Paul Walker

The Movie Is Based On A Book By Jurassic Park Author Michael Crichton

Timeline is a time travel historical movie which follows a group of archeology students who must time travel to battle-ridden 14th-century in order to rescue their missing professor. The movie stars Paul Walker as archeology student, Chris Johnston, and Gerard Butler as the Scottish archaeologist, André Marek, alongside others such as Billy Connolly, Michael Sheen, Neal McDonough and David Thewlis. Timeline is based on Michael Crichton's 1999 novel of the same name and was the ideal movie for Richard Donner to direct, as he was in the running to direct Michael Crichton’s other book adaptation movie, Jurassic Park.

Richard Donner Box Office Fails

Movie

Budget

Box Office

Ladyhawke

$20 million

$18.4 million

Radio Flyer

$35 million

$4.6 million

Timeline

$80 million

$43.9 million

Despite its host of big-name actors and $80 million budget, Timeline was a box office flop, with $43.9 million at the box office. Timeline marks the third box office bomb with Richard Donner as director, with previous movies Ladyhawke and Radio Flyer also missing their mark. However, Donner’s career lasted 50 years, so three bad movies were not the end of the world. Furthermore, actors such as Michael Sheen and Gerard Butler were not impacted by Timeline’s big box office bomb, as Sheen reveled in the success of Underworld and Butler landed his first musical role in The Phantom of the Opera.

Why Richard Donner’s Timeline Wasn’t Well Received

The Movie Is Disappointing For Multiple Reasons

Richard Donner’s Timeline was not well received by critics or audiences, and it has a 13% Tomatometer score and 45% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes. When it was released, critics described the movie as cheesy and claimed that despite its budget, Timeline looks cheap because it lacks a sense of grand scale. Other critics were disappointed by the historical inaccuracies in Timeline and claimed that, even though it was marketed as a time travel movie, Timeline actually travels between the historical and sci-fi genres more than time itself. The Donner movie held a lot of promise, however, its execution failed to deliver.

The main plot hole happens in Timeline’s big battle ending, when the characters decide to make Greek fire to defeat the French.

One particular grievance with Timeline is its flimsy take on time travel, which ended up making time travel messy instead of entertaining. This is surprising considering time travel is a major plot point in the movie. The main plot hole happens in Timeline’s big battle ending, when the characters decide to make Greek fire to defeat the French. This would cause a ripple in time which changes the future because this event didn’t originally happen in the movie’s timeline. However, the major plot point is glossed over and disregards the most important time travel movie rule: don’t change the past.

Timeline Was Technically Not Richard Donner’s First Time Travel Movie

Donner Had Made A Successful Time Travel Movie Beforehand

Timeline was not Richard Donner’s first foray into time travel, as he also directed 1978’s Superman (aka Superman: The Movie) starring Christopher Reeve, which has been called the best Superman movie due to its characterization and comic accuracy. Superman follows Kal-El’s origin story as he grows into the caped superhero, whilst maintaining his disguise as Clark Kent and pursuing love interest, Lois Lane. Despite being warned not to change human history earlier in the movie, when Lois dies, Superman becomes enraged and flies around the world, reversing time so that he can save Lois and prevent Lex Luthor’s missile strike.

It is forbidden for you to interfere with human history. Rather, let your leadership stir others to. - Jor-El

Superman was a box office success, earning $300.5 million against a $55 million budget. This was partly due to Mario Puzo co-writing the movie’s script, as Superman to come to fruition. Following The Godfather’s success, Puzo’s involvement meant the unexplored superhero genre was being endorsed by an established personality and allowed the film to get the green light. Even with its unscientific time travel methods and significantly lower budget, Superman charmed its way to a 94% Tomatometer and 86% Popcornmeter, making it much more successful than Richard Donner’s 2003 box office flop with Timeline.