Samuel L. Jackson and Hayden Christensen in Jumper Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox

How much did you want or need to know about your character, and do you think there's enough up there on the screen? When we first see him, he's killing someone brutally and it looks like he's having a good time doing it. And he obviously wants to kill David as well. But as the audience, we're wondering why?
Well, I didn't want a lot... There were other explanations when we were shooting. Or there were things that were shot or things that were in the script or were different from what I guess [were] left [in the final edit]. But at one point I talk to my son about the history of who we are and what I do, because I'm leaving home and his birthday is coming up, and he wants to know if I'll be back for his birthday. And I'm telling him: "Well, I have to go out and do this job, and your great-great-grandfather did it. And your grandmother did it. And I'm doing it. And hopefully one day you'll do it. These people are very dangerous and I have to go out and do this thing." And I guess that's not there now. That explanation is gone. Then we did some enhancement shots and all of a sudden Doug is saying: "Oh yeah, there's this thing now. Only God should have the power [to teleport]." And [I realize] now I'm a religious kind of zealot. But that's Doug. One day you're in this place and the next day you're in this other place and you kind of got to flow with it. So it's not something that I had to play with the whole time we were shooting... I knew I have some history with Jamie [Bell]'s character. Apparently he put the scar on my face and I did some things to him and killed his parents. But I guess that story will come out somewhere else.

So when the film came to you, it was packaged in a way that there possibly could be three films?
Yeah, of course. I was looking forward to doing three jobs, not one. That's always an enticement.

Why did it appeal to you?
Well, I like the genre. I love science fiction. I think the concept is great and I'm sure most kids or most people sitting [in the audience] wish they could do that very same thing. We've all been stuck in an airport or had our flight delayed, wishing we could just be there. Or been in a car driving, thinking: "Damn, I wish I could get there!" So it would be great to be just beam down somewhere, like we used to see on Star Trek. "Beam me down, Scotty." Beam me down here. Beam me down there. So it's kind of a great thing to do, and a great super power to have. Better than invisibility. I liked the idea of there being this kind of conflict between the Paladins and those Jumpers. And not necessarily being the bad guy, [even though that] is kind of hard to say. These kids jump into banks, and they steal money, they steal things. I think that at some point they all go bad, whatever that means. That must be somewhere [further] down the line; we'll see what that is. But you can actually see that Hayden was very different from Jamie and that Hayden has fun jumping. He jumps in banks, takes money and goes on dates, goes on vacation. Jamie is isolated, kind of psychotic, fixated on killing me and whoever else works for me. But he's been jumping longer. So maybe the longer you jump, the most twisted you get, or something. We don't know yet. And they also leave these rips in the atmosphere that could be environmentally dangerous. We don't know yet. So I could be a good guy working for Greenpeace or something. Who knows?