SCENESTEALER

That’s not just a bus. It’s a weapon in a age-old war fought between time-space hopping Jumpers – in this case, the roguish Griffin (Jamie Bell) – and Paladins, led by Roland (Samuel L. Jackson), who are sworn to destroy them. In “Jumper,” the battle climaxes when Griffin teleports a double decker from London to the Sahara to smash Roland. “The bus materializes out of thin air over the desert, then rolls like a yo-yo and impacts a sand dune,” says visual effects supervisor Kevin Elam (“Mr. & Mrs. Smith”). Special effects supervisor Yves De Bono (“The Patriot”) devised a massive cable rig to send the full-scale bus corkscrewing through the air after crashing through faux sand. New Zealand’s homegrown FX house, Weta Ltd., completed the sequence. “They created the teleportation effect of the bus coming in,” Elam says, “and composited Sam Jackson into the shot.”

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Ron Magid