| Timeline | |
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| Directed by | Richard Donner |
| Screenplay by | |
| Based on | Timeline byMichael Crichton |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Caleb Deschanel |
| Edited by | Richard Marks |
| Music by | Brian Tyler |
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Running time | 116 minutes[1] |
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| Budget | $80 million |
| Box office | $43.9 million |
Timeline is a 2003historicalscience fictionadventure film directed byRichard Donner and starringPaul Walker,Frances O'Connor,Gerard Butler,Billy Connolly,David Thewlis, andAnna Friel. Based onMichael Crichton's1999 novel of the same name, the film concerns a team of present-day archaeology and history students who are sent back in time to medieval France to rescue their professor from the middle of a battle.
Jerry Goldsmith composed the original score, which would have been his last released before his death in 2004, but was replaced with a new score byBrian Tyler, after the first cut of the film was re-edited and Goldsmith's increasing health problems prevented him from continuing. The film was poorly received by critics andbombed at the box office, losing an estimated $49 million.
Castlegard, a village nearLa Roque Castle inDordogne, France, is the site of the 1357 hanging of Lady Claire, sister toArnaut de Cervole. Her martyrdom ledFrance to win theHundred Years War against theEnglish. While excavating a nearby monastery, an archaeological team finds asarcophagus containing the remains of a French knight with a lopped ear, holding the hand of his lady, an unheard-of practice for the time.
Professor Edward Johnston, the team's leader, travels to the American headquarters of the ITC Corporation, his project's sponsor, to learn if they have tampered with the site. Johnston's students Kate Erickson, Josh Stern, and François Dontelle, along withScottish archaeologist André Marek; and Professor Johnston's son Chris, discover a lens from Johnston'sbifocals and a note begging for help, although both date over 600 years old. ITC later invites them to its headquarters.
In the process of developingteleportation technology, ITC locked onto a stablewormhole to 1357 Castlegard. Johnston was invited to see the past for himself, but his group has not returned, and ITC wants Marek and company to go back in time to locate him. All but Josh volunteer to go.
The volunteers are stripped of all modern technology save for markers they can use to initiate their return. They are joined by a security team including ITC's head of security, Frank Gordon, and two former military men.
On arrival in 1357, the team appears in the path of a young woman chased by English knights; the security men are killed while protecting the group, although one activates his marker after priming a grenade. When his body arrives in the present, the grenade detonates and shatters much of the teleportation device. Josh aids ITC vice-president Steven Kramer in making repairs in order for the team to return.
The team evades the knights, and the woman leads them to the English-controlled Castlegard. They are captured and brought before Lord Oliver de Vannes and his second-in-command, DeKere. When interrogated and discover to speak the English tongue, the team members claim to be Scottish. After hearing Dontelle's dialect, De Vannes kills François, believing him to be a French spy. The others are imprisoned along with Johnston, who previously promised de Vannes that he could makeGreek fire for the English in exchange for his life. They escape but are pursued by the English. Gordon and Johnston are recaptured, while the others make for the monastery, led by the woman.
DeKere reveals himself to Gordon and Johnston as former ITC employee William Decker; he had frequently used the teleportation device but was not told by ITC that each use damaged his DNA until it was too late, at which point he would die on a return trip. He plans revenge on ITC and kills Gordon. De Vannes orders his knights to march on LaRoque castle, and DeKere brings Johnston along.
At the monastery, Marek, Kate, and Chris meet de Cervole and realize that the woman is Lady Claire; they have changed history by saving her. Kate and Chris help to swing the upcoming battle in the French's favor by leading de Cervole's men through the monastery tunnels they had previously mapped to the castle.
As the battle starts, Marek frees Johnston, while Chris helps de Cervole defeat de Vannes. Enraged, DeKere slashes off Marek's earlobe, and Marek realizes that he is destined to be the knight in the sarcophagus. Marek defeats DeKere, recovers the markers, gives them to the others, and says his goodbyes while running off to help the French assure victory and restore history.
In the present, Josh and Kramer finish the repairs. ITC president Robert Doniger, who tried to sabotage their attempts, fears that when the students' stories become public, ITC will suffer financially. As the machine activates, Doniger races into it, attempting to block the teleportation, but instead is sent back to 1357, where he arrives outside the castle and is presumably killed by a charging knight.
Chris, Kate, and Johnston safely return while Marek chooses to stay behind. Later, the team returns to the Castlegard ruins, re-examines the sarcophagus, and finds that Marek and Lady Claire lived together after the war and had three children: Christophe, Katherine, and François.
The battle sequences usedmedievalreenactors.Richard Donner limited the use of CGI in the film as much as possible.[2]
ComposerJerry Goldsmith, who had previously collaborated with Donner onThe Omen, completed a score for the film – the last score he worked on before his death in 2004 (his last score used in a film was for the 2003 filmLooney Tunes: Back in Action) – but it was replaced by a different score composed byBrian Tyler after Donner was forced to re-cut the film at the insistence ofSherry Lansing, the then-head ofParamount Pictures.[3] However, both Goldsmith and Tyler's scores were released on CD.
In the United States and Canada,Timeline grossed $19.5 million, with $24.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $43.9 million, against a budget of $80 million.[4] It opened at No. 12, then rose to No. 8 in its second week – its only week in the Top 10 at the domestic box office.[5] In 2018,Newsweek included it in an article aboutbox office bombs.[6]
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 13% of 141 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3.9/10. The website's consensus reads: "This incoherently plotted addition to the time-travel genre looks and sounds cheesy."[7]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 29 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.[8] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.[9]
Kirk Honeycutt ofThe Hollywood Reporter called it "[g]lorious so-bad-it's-good entertainment."[10]Roger Ebert gave it 2 stars out of 4, and wrote that it was "not so much about travel between the past and the present as about travel between two movie genres" namely "a corporate thriller crossed with a medieval swashbuckler". He was disappointed that the elaborate premise was not put to greater use, that it was essentially nothing more than a frame for action scenes.[11] Robert Koehler ofVariety wrote: "Lacks the consistent tone, pace and point of view for either a science fiction thriller or medieval war adventure."[12]
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