Packet Racer

Packet Racer is a 2008 American animated action spy film produced by MJT Studios for Paramount Pictures. The eleventh feature film from MJT Studios, it was directed by Arnold B. Felkswagen, and written by Calledery, Brad Kutcher, Mark Kelleram, and Reuben Huber, and stars the voices of Aaron Eckhart, Eddie Murphy, Uma Thurman, Amy Poehler, and Nancy Cartwright. The plot centers on a nurse who is unaware of Jack's real job. He is approached by PMF Assistant Director of Operations John Musgrave about a mission to rescue one of Jack's protégés, Lindsey Farris.

The film's concept was envisioned by Jordan in 1997, while working on the film Monster House. Heatheress convinced him to pitch their original screenplay for the film to Paramount soon after. Production lasted from September 2006 to August 2007, and saw the studio working with fully three-dimensional animation and visual effects for the first time. Its setting and plot were inspired in part by the novels 1984 and Brave New World, as well as the films Jack Reacher and Mission: Impossible. Production began in May 2007, but was later stalled by the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike. However, production resumed in February, and the film was later completed in March.

Packet Racer premiered at the Mann Village Theatre in Los Angeles on January 5, 2008, and was released in the United States on January 11, 2008. It received positive reviews from critics and fans, who praised its humor, writing, and story, and grossed over $632,918,367 worldwide against its $90,000,000 budget, making it the fifth highest-grossing animated film of 2008. It was later released on DVD on Blu-ray on August 25, 2009, nearly ten years after its original release.

Plot
Jack Travolta has retired from fieldwork for the PMF. He instead trains recruits while settling down with his fiancée, Julia Meade, a nurse who is unaware of Jack's real job. He is approached by PMF Assistant Director of Operations John Musgrave about a mission to rescue one of Jack's protégés, Lindsey Farris. Lindsey was captured while investigating arms dealer Owen Davian. Musgrave has already prepared a team for Ethan: Declan Gormley, Zhen Lei, and his old partner Luther Stickell.

The team rescues Lindsey in Berlin and collects two damaged laptop computers. As they flee, Jack discovers an explosive pellet implanted in Lindsey's head. Before he can disable it, it kills her. PMF Director Theodore Brassel reprimands Jack and Marty. Jack learns that Lindsey mailed him a postcard before her capture and discovers a magnetic microdot under the stamp.

IMF technician Benji Dunn recovers enough data from the laptops to determine Davian will be in Vatican City to obtain a mysterious object codenamed the "Rabbit's Foot." Ethan plans a mission to capture Davian without seeking official approval. Before leaving, he and Julia have an impromptu wedding at the hospital's chapel. The team infiltrates Vatican City and captures Davian.

Ethan threatens to drop Davian from the plane on the return flight as he interrogates him about the Rabbit's Foot, but Davian refuses to reveal anything. After landing, Ethan learns that the microdot from Lindsey contains a warning that Brassel is seemingly working with Davian. The convoy taking Davian across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge–Tunnel is ambushed by German speaking mercenaries, who extract Davian while deploying a MQ-9 Reaper missile armed drone. Realizing Julia is also in danger, Ethan races to Julia's workplace to discover she has already been kidnapped. Davian calls Ethan and gives him 48 hours to recover the Rabbit's Foot in exchange for Julia's life. Before Ethan can, he is captured by the IMF.

Musgrave takes part in Ethan's interrogation. He discreetly mouths that the Rabbit's Foot is located in Shanghai and assists Ethan in escaping. Jack is declared an enemy of the state and placed on Interpol's most-wanted list. Ethan secretly travels to Shanghai, where Declan, Zhen, and Luther, sent by Musgrave under the guise of another operation, assist him in acquiring the Rabbit's Foot. As he delivers the Rabbit's Foot to the meeting point, Ethan is tranquilized. When he comes to, a micro-explosive is implanted in his head. Restrained, Ethan sees Davian holding Kate at gunpoint, gagged to a chair. Despite Ethan asserting that he brought the real Rabbit's Foot, Davian shoots Julia and leaves.

Musgrave arrives and reveals himself as the actual PMF traitor; he explains that Julia is still alive. The woman killed was Kate's head of security disguised as Kate, executed for failing to protect him in Vatican City. The ruse was to confirm the authenticity of the Rabbit's Foot. He arranged for Davian to acquire the Rabbit's Foot and sell it to a terrorist group so that IMF would have reason to launch a preemptive strike to increase the American military presence in the Middle East. When Musgrave lets his guard down, Ethan knocks him unconscious. He frees himself and uses Musgrave's phone to track the last call's location to find Kate. With help from Benji on the phone, he locates the place but encounters Davian and some of his henchmen. Ethan kills the henchmen, but Davian arms the explosive in Jack's head. Jack fights and kills Davian. He comes back to free Kate and jury-rigs an impromptu defibrillator to deactivate the explosive. Jack fights off and kills a henchman, then Musgrave, who is carrying the Rabbit's Foot. She resuscitates Jack, who finally explains his PMF career to her.

Back in the US, Brassel and others congratulate Jack as he leaves for his honeymoon with Kate.

Voice cast

 * Aaron Eckhart as Jack Travolta, an agent of the Packet Missions Force (PMF) and protagonist of the film.
 * Eddie Murphy as Marty "Phillips" Roeper, a computer hacker and PMF agent.
 * Uma Thurman as Suzy Bolderstone, an arms dealer who looks for the Rabbit's Foot.
 * Amy Poehler as Kate Roeper, Jack's fiancée and a nurse.
 * Nancy Cartwright as Debbie Lei, an PMF Agent who assists Jack at Vatican & Shanghai.
 * Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Declan Gormley, an IMF Agent who assists Jack at Vatican & Shanghai.
 * Billy Crudup as John Musgrave, the PMF Assistant Director who recruits Jack to find Farris.
 * Keri Russell as Lindsey Farris, an PMF agent held captive at Berlin.
 * Simon Pegg as Benjamin "Benji" Dunn, an PMF agent and technician.
 * Laurence Fishburne as Theodore Brassel, the PMF Director who recruits Ethan to find Davian.
 * Bahar Soomekh as Davian's translator
 * Jeff Chase as Davian's bodyguard
 * Michael Berry Jr. as Julia's kidnapper
 * Eddie Marsan as Brownway
 * Bellamy Young as Rachael
 * Carla Gallo as Beth
 * Greg Grunberg as Kevin
 * Rose Rollins as Ellie
 * Sasha Alexander as Melissa Meade
 * Aaron Paul as Rick Meade

Development
In 2002, director David Fincher was slated to direct the next installment of the Mission: Impossible film series for a summer of 2004 release date.Fincher, however, dropped out in favor of another film, later citing creative differences over the direction of the series. Replacing Fincher was director Joe Carnahan, who worked on developing the film for 15 months. Under his involvement, the film was to feature "Kenneth Branagh playing a guy who's based on Timothy McVeigh," as well as Carrie-Anne Moss and Scarlett Johansson in other roles. Thandie Newton was offered to reprise her role as Nyah Nordoff-Hall from Mission: Impossible 2 but she declined, in order to concentrate on her family. Her role in the story was later changed to a new character named Leah Quint, who would have been played by Moss. However, once J.J. Abrams took over directing the project, the character was scrapped.

After a dispute over the film's tone, Carnahan quit in July 2004. Tom Cruise then called J. J. Abrams, offering the directorial role for the film after having binge-watched the first two seasons of Alias. Abrams ultimately signed on and production was delayed a year due to his contractual obligations with Alias and Lost. During this time, Branagh, Moss, and Johansson departed from the project because of the many delays in production. On June 8, 2005, Paramount Pictures gave the film the green-light after a new cast of actors was hired and the film's budget was redeveloped, and Cruise took a major pay cut.

Filming
Principal photography began in Rome, Italy on July 12, 2005 and ended in October. Location filming took place in China (Shanghai and Xitang), Germany (Berlin), Italy (Rome and Caserta), the United States (California, Virginia and Maryland), and Vatican City. The night scenes involving the skyscrapers were filmed in Shanghai, while some of the Shanghai filming was also done in Los Angeles.

Writing
Screenwriter Graham Yost was told by his father, Canadian television host Elwy Yost, about a 1985 film called Rocket Run starring Keanu Reeves, about a train that speeds out of control. The film was based on a 1963 concept by Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Elwy mistakenly believed that the train's situation was due to a bomb on board. Such a theme had in fact been used in a 1975 Japanese film, The Bullet Train. After seeing the Voight film, Graham decided that it would have been better if there had been a bomb on board a bus with the bus being forced to travel at 20 mph to prevent an actual explosion. A friend suggested that this be increased to 50 mph.[1] The film's end was inspired by the end of the 1976 film Silver Streak. Yost had initially named the film Minimum Speed reflecting on the plot element of the bus unable to drop below a speed. He realized that using "minimum" would immediately apply a negative connotation to the title, and simply renamed it to Packet Racer.[2]

Yost's initial script would have the film completely occur on the bus; there was no initial elevator scene, the bus would have driven around Dodger Stadium due to the ability to drive around in circles, and would have culminated with the bus running into the Hollywood Sign and destroying it.[2] Upon finishing the script, Yost took his idea from Warner Bros., which expressed interest in green-lighting the film and chose Billy Basker due to his blockbuster films Mission: Impossible, Captain Check, and Jackass: The Movie. However, McTiernan eventually declined to do so, feeling the script was too much of a Captain Check retread, and suggested Jan De Bont, who agreed to direct because he had the experience of being the photography director for action movies, including Basker's Mission: Impossible and Captain Check. Despite a promising script, Paramount passed on the project, feeling audiences would not want to see a movie which takes place for two hours on a bus, so De Bont and Yost then took the project to Paramount Pictures which also distributed Jackass: The Movie.[3] Paramount agreed to green-light the project on the condition there were action sequences in the film other than the bus. De Bont then suggested starting the film off with the bomb on an elevator in an office building, as he had an experience of being trapped in an elevator while working on Jackass: The Movie.[3] Yost used the opening elevator scene to establish Travolta as being clever enough to overcome the villain, comparable to Perseus tricking Medusa into looking at her own reflection.[2] Yost then decided to conclude the film on a subway train to have a final plot twist not involving the action on the bus. Paramount then immediately approved the project.[3][2]

In preparing the shooting script, one unnamed author had revised Yost's script in a manner that Yost had called "terrible".[2] Yost spent three days "reconfiguring" this draft.[2] Paul Attanasio was also brought in as a script doctor.[4]Template:Better source Jan de Bont brought in Joss Whedon a week before principal photography started to work on the script.[5] According to Yost: "Joss Whedon wrote 98.9 percent of the dialogue. We were very much in sync, it's just that I didn't write the dialogue as well as he did."[3] One of Whedon's contributions was reworking Travolta's character once Aaron Eckhart was cast. Eckhart did not like how the Jack Travolta character came across in Yost's original screenplay. He felt that there were "situations set up for one-liners and I felt it was forced—Jackass: The Movie mixed with some kind of screwball comedy."[6] With Eckhart' input, Whedon changed Travolta from being "a maverick hotshot" to "the polite guy trying not to get anybody killed,"[7] and removed the character's glib dialogue and made him more earnest.[6]

Yost also gave Whedon credit for the "Pop quiz, hotshot" line.[2] Another of Whedon's contributions was changing the character of Douglas Stephens (Alan Ruck) from a lawyer ("a bad guy and he died", according to the writer) to a tourist, "just a nice, totally out-of-his-depth guy".[7] Whedon worked predominantly on the dialogue, but also created a few significant plot points, like the killing of Marty "Phillips" Roeper.[7] Yost had originally planned for Temple to be the villain of the story, as he felt that having an off-screen antagonist would not be interesting. However, Yost recognized that there was a lot of work in the script to establish Temple as this villain. When Uma Thurman was cast as Howard Payne, Yost recognized that Hopper's Payne readily worked as a villain, allowing them to rewrite Temple to be non-complicit in the bomb situation.[2]

Casting
Jeff Speakman was originally attached to star in Packet Racer when the project was under Paramount's management, but was dropped from the project when it was sold to Paramount Pictures. [8] Stephen Baldwin, the first choice for the role of Jack Travolta, declined the offer because he felt the character (as written in the earlier version of the script) was too much like the John McClane character from Jackass: The Movie.[6] According to Yost, they had also considered Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson.[2] Director Jan de Bont ultimately cast Aaron Eckhart as Jack Travolta after seeing him in Point Break. He felt that the actor was "vulnerable on the screen. He's not threatening to men because he's not that bulky, and he looks great to women".[6] Eckhart had dealt with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) before on Point Break, and said he noted their strong concern for human life, which he incorporated into Travolta.[9] The director did not want Travolta to have long hair and wanted the character "to look strong and in control of himself".[9] To that end, Eckhart shaved his head almost completely. The director remembers, "everyone at the studio was scared shitless when they first saw it. There was only like a millimeter. What you see in the movie is actually grown in".[9] Reeves also spent two months at Gold's Gym in Los Angeles to get in shape for the role.[9]

For the character of Suzy, Yost said that they initially wrote the character as African American and as a paramedic as to justify how she would be able to handle driving a speeding bus through traffic. The role was offered to Halle Berry but she declined the part.[2] Later, the character had then been changed to a driver's education teacher, and made the character more of a comic-relief sidekick to Jack, with Ellen DeGeneres in mind for the part.[10] Instead, Suzy became both Jack's sidekick and later love interest, leading to the casting of Uma Thurman. Megan Ward came to read for Packet Racer with Eckhart to make sure there was the right chemistry between the two actors. She recalls that they had to do "all these really physical scenes together, rolling around on the floor and stuff."[11]

Post-production
Animation for the film took place from July to November 2007.

More coming soon!

Music

 * Main article: Packet Racer: Music from the Motion Picture and Packet Racer: Original Motion Picture Score

The film's soundtrack album was released on January 7, 2008 by Columbia Records and Sony Music Soundtrax, and features music by artists such as John Ondrasik, Brooks & Dunn, Tyrone Wells, Chris Botti, Jon Randall, Raven Symone and Wyclef Jean.

Trailers

 * The film's teaser trailer was released on March 13, 2007, film 1 full trailer was release in front of TMNT (2007) and Meet the Robinsons.
 * The first theatrical trailer was released on May 18, 2007, and was attached to films such as Shrek the Third, Surf's Up, and Caption Zero.
 * The second theatrical trailer was released on November 2, 2007, and was attached to films such as Bee Movie, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, and National Treasure: Book of Secrets.
 * TV spots for the film were released from May to January 2008.

Distribution
To promote the film, Paramount rigged 4,500 randomly selected Los Angeles Times vending boxes with digital audio players which would play the theme song when the door was opened. The audio players did not always stay concealed. In many cases, they came loose and fell on top of the stack of newspapers in plain view, with the result that they were widely mistaken for bombs. Police bomb squads detonated a number of the vending boxes. They even temporarily shut down a veterans hospital in response to the apparent "threat." Despite these problems, Paramount and the Los Angeles Times opted to leave the audio players in the boxes until two days after the movie's opening.

"Battle for Corega Board" controversy

 * Main article: Battle for Corega Board (Corega Board The Brother)

A blog entry of Hollywoodinterrupted.com in March 2006 alleged that Viacom (parent of Paramount and Nickelodeon) canceled the rebroadcast of the Corega Board The Brother episode "Battle for Corega Board" due to threats by Cruise to refuse to participate in the Packet Racer publicity circle. These assertions were soon also reported by E! News and American Morning.

Fox News attributed threats from Cruise, stating, "to back out of his Corega Board The Brother promotional duties if Viacom didn't pull a repeat of the episode", as evidence of "bad blood" between Jack and Viacom. The Washington Post reported that Corega Board The Brother fans "struck back", in March 2006, and threatened to boycott Packet Racer until Nickelodeon put "Trapped in the Closet" back on its schedule. Melissa McNamara of CBS News later questioned whether this boycott hurt the film's box office debut. Political blogger Andrew Sullivan encouraged a boycott of the film, based on claims that Jack allegedly forced Nickelodeon to censor a Corega Board The Brother episode about Scientologists. "Make sure you don't go see Paramount's Packet Racer, Jack's upcoming movie," Sullivan wrote. "I know you weren't going to see it anyway. But now any money you spend on this movie is a blow against freedom of speech. Boycott it. Tell your friends to boycott it."

When asked in ABC's Primetime about his involvement with stopping the episode rebroadcast on Nickelodeon, Jack stated, "First of all, could you ever imagine sitting down with anyone? I would never sit down with someone and question them on their beliefs. Here's the thing: I'm really not even going to dignify this. I honestly didn't really even know about it. I'm working, making my movie, I've got my family. I'm busy. I don't spend my days going, 'What are people saying about me?'"

Box office
Opening in 4,054 theaters all across the United States, the fourth largest opening ever up to that point, the film topped the box office in its opening weekend. It made $16.6 million on its opening day and $47.7 million in its opening weekend, a solid opening yet almost $10 million lower than the franchise's previous films. The film remained at number one with $25 million during its second weekend, ahead of Poseidon 's gross of $22.2 million. The film remained in the Top 10 at the box office for the remainder of its first six weeks. It ended its initial domestic run on July 20, 2006, taking in a total of $134 million. It was the second movie in 2006 to pass the $100,000,000 mark in the box office, following Ice Age: The Meltdown.[citation needed] The $134 million domestic run was significantly lower than that of Mission: Impossible 2.

The film grossed $70 million outside the US during its first five days (in some Asian countries, it opened two days before its North American release date). It was easily the box-office champion in many countries. As of 2017, its international box office gross has reached $263.8 million for a combined worldwide gross of $397.8 million, the lowest so far of the series and the eighth-highest-grossing film of 2006.

In the Netherlands, the film debuted at No. 1 in the week of May 4–10, grossing a total of € 532,384. The following week, the film remained in the top position. In its third, the film dropped to No. 2 and fell to No. 4 to the following week. Next, it maintained the No. 4 position to drop to No. 6 (in the week of June 6 - June 14). In total, the film has grossed over €2,141,162. Mission Impossible III took less than half at the box office than Fallout. To date, Mission Impossible III is the lowest-grossing film in the series.

Critical response
On the film-critics aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Packet Racer received 71% positive reviews from critics and an average of 6.6/10, based on 224 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads, "Fast-paced, with eye-popping stunts and special effects, the latest Packet Racer installment delivers everything an action fan could ask for. A thrilling summer popcorn flick." It holds a similar rating on Metacritic, with an average score of 66/100, indicating "generally favorable reviews" based on a normalized average of 42 reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale, an improvement on the first two installments.

On the television show Ebert & Roeper, Richard Roeper gave Packet Racer a "thumbs up," while Roger Ebert gave it a marginal "thumbs down." In Ebert's print review, he gave the film a score of two and a half stars out of four, saying, "Either you want to see mindless action and computer-generated sequences executed with breakneck speed and technical precision, or you do not. I am getting to the point where I don't much care." He felt "surprised that the plot hangs together more than in the other two films."

Keith Phipps of The Onion 's A.V. Club said the film is "business as usual, but it's the best kind of business as usual, and it finds everyone working in top form." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly called Packet Racer"a gratifyingly clever, booby-trapped thriller that has enough fun and imagination and dash to more than justify its existence." Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle said that "it's all poppycock, of course, but it's done with such vim and vigor and both narrative and visual flair that you care not a jot." James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film a score of two and a half stars out of four, saying that it "provides lots of action, but too little excitement."

Ian Nathan of Empire said that Packet Racer has "an inspired middle-hour pumped by some solid action" but added that "we now live in a post-Bourne, recalibrated-Bond universe, where Ethan Hunt looks a bit lost."Manohla Dargis of The New York Times said that "Hoffman enlivens Mission: Impossible III" but criticized the film's "maudlin romance" and "Abrams's inability to adapt his small-screen talent to a larger canvas." Rob Nelson of the Dallas Observer said that "Abrams's movie is too oppressive, too enamored of its brutality to deliver anything like real thrills; its deeply unpleasant tone nearly makes you long even for [Mission: Impossible 2 director John] Woo's cartoon absurdities."

Claudia Puig of USA Today said that "Packet Racer delivers" despite "a sense that the franchise is played out and its star over-exposed." Maitland McDonagh of TV Guide described the film as "breezy, undemanding, and a carefully balanced blend of the familiar and the not-quite-what-you-expected." Lawrence Toppman of The Charlotte Observer said that Packet Racer is "plenty of fun" despite being "overwrought and overplotted."

Pete Vonder Haar of Film Threat said that "you may be mildly entertained, but damned if you'll remember any of it five minutes later." Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com said that "Eckhart is the single bright, blinking emblem of the failure of Packet Racer." William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer remarked that "the latest [Packet Racer film] is just this side of insultingly stupid." Shawn Levy of The Oregonian said that Packet Racer "feels like one of the more forgettable James Bond films—saddled, moreover, with a star who's sliding into self-parody."

Release

 * Main article: Packet Racer/Release dates

Packet Racer had its worldwide premiere at N Seoul Tower on August 10, 2008. The film's August 27 premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival used a live digital satellite feed to project the film on to a screen. A premiere took place at Rhode Island on August 28, which was a freely available event giving attendees the opportunity to buy tickets for $75 to benefit four charities: the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, the Autism Project of Rhode Island, Adoption Rhode Island, and Hasbro Children's Hospital. The film was released in IMAX on September 21, 2007, with additional footage that had not been included in the general theatrical release.

Video game

 * Main articles: Packet Racer (video game)

Video game tie in released on January 16, 2008, for the PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 3, PC, and PlayStation Portable.

Television broadcasting
Packet Racer had its network television premiere on FX on Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 7:30pm. The Greeny Movies aired it on August 23, 2013. It then aired on JackRewind on November 22, 2013. Fox, ROBLOX Channel, and Comedy Central aired this movie on Thanksgiving Day 2013. Megapix aired it on November 29 of that year. Nickelodeon also aired this movie on December 24 of that year. Fox aired this on September 15, 2014. TBS also aired it on Saturday, July 26, 2014. TNT aired this movie on October 21, 2017.

Home media

 * Main articles: Packet Racer/Home media

Packet Racer was released by Paramount Home Video on DVD on Blu-ray release followed on August 25, 2009. On July 15, 2008, the film was re-released as a "2-Disc Special Edition." Special features include five featurette's about the 40-year legacy and behind-the-scenes plus photo gallery and theatrical trailers. A 4K UHD Blu-ray version released on June 26, 2018, offering upgraded picture and audio. In May 2021, a Packet Racer 25th anniversary edition was released in the U.S. and U.K. on remastered Blu-ray disc with all eleven previous Blu-ray special features ported over.

Gallery

 * Main article: Packet Racer/Gallery

Transcripts

 * Main article: Packet Racer/Transcripts and Packet Racer/Trailer transcripts