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Agent Thompson is one of the main antagonists of the 2011 science fiction romantic thriller film The Adjustment Bureau, alongside his fellow Agents Richardson, Harry Mitchell and the overarching antagonist the Chairman. He is a supernatural being with telekinetic and limited teleportation powers which he employs in his work as a veteran Agent for the Adjustment Bureau. While originally retired, he is called back to action when would-be Senator David Norris severely deviates from the Plan the Bureau has set for him and pursues a forbidden romantic interest, Elise Sellas. Despite his success in tracking down and originally separating the two, they end up together again, and Thompson prepares to erase their memories, only for the Chairman to re-write their plan to allow them to be together.
He was portrayed by Terence Stamp, who also played Zod in the 1978 film Superman and the 1980 sequel Superman II and the Devil in The Company of Wolves.
Biography[]
Thompson was a supernatural being employed by the Adjustment Bureau, an organization dedicated to enforcing their leader the "Chairman's" Plan on all humans and control society according to his will. He operated as an Agent of an Intervention squad, earning the nickname "Hammer" by his fellow Agents due to his tendency to "hammer away all problems" he encountered to reset divergent humans. After a long and successful career, Thompson retired from the field, but remained known as one of the best Agents to have ever worked for the Bureau.
The Norris case[]
Sometime during the 21st century, David Norris, a talented politician groomed by Agent Mitchel to become a future US President in accordance to the Plan set out for him, severely diverged from his path due to Mitchel failing to spill his coffee on him one day. The spill coffee would have resulted in Norris being late for work and missing an Intervention team which was altering his aide's mind to support one of Norris' business ideas. Norris instead took the bus to work, inside of which he encountered a woman, Elise Sellas which he was supposed to never see again. He also found the Intervention squad which was still on mission in his workplace, and the Agents were forced to incapacitate him and take him to an abandoned warehouse. There, Agent Richardson burned the paper on which Norris had written Sellas' phone number and made him swear that he would never reveal the Bureau's existence to anyone.
Norris however refused to yield to the Bureau and actively sought Sellas out, taking the same bus to work every day in hopes that he would see her again. Three years later, he finally noticed her on the street next to the bus and approached her, rekindling their relationship despite the Bureau's warnings that they were not supposed to be together. Richardson fails to stop him from reaching a threshold point, after which his Plan would become irreversibly damaged, and decided to hand the case over to a veteran.
Thompson takes over[]
Richardson conferred with several high-ranking Agents and decided to call Thompson out of retirement, as the case was particularly sensitive and required careful but decisive handling. Returning to service after years, Thompson successfully tracked Norris down in one of his speeches and trapped him inside the Bureau's warehouse. After leaving him locked inside for a while, he appeared and explained the Bureau and its purpose to him to discourage him from further deviating from his Plan. According to Thompson, the Bureau was around since before the Stone Age, and the two sole times they attempted to allow humans to have free will it resulted in the Dark Times and the two World Wars respectively. From the Cuban Missile Crisis onward the Bureau maintained a stronghold over humans' free will, manipulating their decisions to prevent them from destroying themselves.
Despite Thompson's warnings, Norris, once released, decided to head back to the concert where he marveled over Sellas' dancing talent. Thompson reappeared, revealing that the only reason why he chose to let him go back to her was so that he would see what she'd have to sacrifice in order to be with him; her Plan was to become a world-class choreographer, but if she kept her relationship with Norris she would end up teaching music to sixth grade students. Thompson then used his telekinetic powers to cause Sellas to slip and strain her ankle, before disappearing. Distraught from the realization, Norris indeed left Sellas behind at the hospital to allow her to pursue her career.
Return to arms[]
For eleven months, Norris and Sellas' path proceeded according to their respective Plans. However, when Norris found out that she would be married with her ex boyfriend, he attempted to find her again and rekindle their romance. Whatever hesitations he had were gone when Agent Mitchell, the officer previously in charge of his case felt sympathetic towards him and decided to help him, giving him a crash course on how to avoid Agents and use their teleportation. Gifting him his Agent hat, the mystical item that gave Agents the ability to teleport through carefully placed doors, as well as a map to said doors, Mitchell sent Norris to the courthouse where she was to be married.
Thompson realized what was happening too late, as Norris and Sellas had already escaped from the courthouse when he arrived with his squad. Realizing via his Plan book that Norris had already revealed the Bureau's existence to Sellas, he called for a reset squad to rewrite both of their memories while the couple infiltrated the Bureau's headquarters. They were finally trapped by Thompson's squad on the roof when he sealed off all doors around them, but just as he was about to reset them, Mitchell arrived with a letter from the Chairman himself. Inspired by their determination, he had rewritten Norris and Sellas' Plans, allowing them to be together in spite of the danger. Disappointed but obedient, Thomspon allowed them to leave.
Powers and Abilities[]
Powers[]
- Teleportation: Thompson, like all Agents, is able to teleport through the world -at least in the city and immediate vicinity of New York- via a network of ordinary-looking doors. As long as he wears his Agent hat he is able to unlock and enter a doorway and exit from another by rotating their handle clockwise, even if the two doors are completely disconnected from one another, being in a different room, building or place altogether. Rotating a door's handle counterclockwise will teleport the Agent inside the Adjustment Bureau's headquarters. No two doors lead to the same place, and not all doors work as portals, so Thompson is equipped with a door map which he uses to track down and detect suitable portals.
- Teleportation manipulation: Contrary to most Agents, Thompson has been shown to be able to block portals from forming or to make them all lead to the same place. He used this ability to imprison Norris in the Bureau warehouse by locking all portal doors in the room, and later to trap Norris and Sellas in the Bureau headquarters' roof by making all exits to lead back to the roof instead of the last floor.
- Telekinesis: Like all Agents, Thompson is also able to use rudimentary telekinesis. He is so skilled with the power that he can use it to influence a dancer's jump in midair and cause them to slip, immediately blocking their fall to prevent a severe accident.
- Intention detection: By using his Plan book, a notebook-sized parchment with seemingly infinite pages, Thompson has access to every human's decision tree. This allows them to accurately predict their intentions as well as track the way these will influence the rest of the world. He can also detect ripple points, marked with a red circle; these are decisions and events that once performed will irreversibly damage the human's Plan.
- Decelerated aging: All Agents are said to age in a far slower rate than humans; Thompson is no exception and is implied to have been around since the Stone Age.
- Above average endurance: Agent Thompson takes a punch from David Norris without flinching and then keeps on talking with no visible signs of injury.
Abilities[]
- Expert Manipulator: Centuries of working with the Bureau have made Thompson an expert at manipulating and controlling humans. He is able to make even David Norris yield to his Plan by gaslighting him into believing he will be responsible for his love interest's failure in her life. He can appear benevolent when it better suits his plan, as shown when he allowed Norris to leave the warehouse he was trapped in, only to switch his personality in a moment's notice and become violent again.