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A Sound of Thunder
blamanj writes "One of the great sci-fi short stories, Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder is scheduled to be released on film next month. Links to the trailers (QT, Real, WMP) can be found here. The original story prefigured chaos theory in its 'small changes, large effects' premise. Indeed, when I first heard the term 'butterfly theory,' I assumed it was based on Bradbury's story. Unlike the original, however, the film won't be touching on dystopian politics, but appears to have been turned into a 'Jurassic Park'-style creature feature. Sigh. Oh, well, we can hope that the new Fahrenheit 451 will be treated with a bit more respect."
I watched the preview and my theory is that this has already happened. Some doofus stepped off the path and killed a butterfly, because the rest of the trailer bears absolutely no resemblence to my memory of Ray Bradbury's story.
The on-tape version of this story was one of my favorite tapes for a long time. It featured truly excellent acting and sound effects and was better than any movie I can imagine. The horror in the voices of the travellers having returned and discovered what they had done still sends a cold shiver down my back.
I found a copy at my local library, definatly something to look up before it gets picked up by the movie fan masses.
What post? The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!
Not much info there yet, but might be worth bookmarking for the future.
Oh, well, we can hope that the new Fahrenheit 451 will be treated with a bit more respect.
You don't know Hollywood very well do you?
I wonder about all these "remakes" where the message of the book is erased (I even include "I, Robot" in that...). How many people will not read books because they saw the films and think they know what they were about, desite the films being sanitised, pro-corporatist and watered-down?
Instead of the hero returning and blowing his brains out because everything is misspelt and someone else won the election.... they decide in the movie version to hey, have a movie, with stuff in it.
:)
Those.... BASTARDS.
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Great, now a title like this rings the bell of M. Moore instead of R. Bradbury. Great indeed.
It's like when I saw in a DVD review of TRON that it was the Matrix of the eighties. I shouldn't comment on this further.
I just guess today's bright minds can't take the burden of even just 10-20 years of cultural heritage. Let alone history.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Thees is goo chort storrie.
Mee hapie Bush waz re-ellectd.
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The episode is called "Time and Punishment" and features Homer repairing a toaster which then sends him back and forth through time. Each time he comes back he's messed things up worse than the last.
"I've gone back in time to when dinosaurs weren't just confined to zoos." - Homer
Visceral Psyche Films
I couldn't let this one pass. In the late 19th century it was known that the roughness of the surface of a tube effects the amount of fluid that flows through a pipe under pressure (look up any discussion of the Reynolds Number and pipe or tube flow). The roughness of the pipe is a very small cause that causes a large macroscopic effect.
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This has been my rule of thumb for movies adapted from books (most movies, BTW). I will admit that there are a very few exceptions (usually where the book was adapted from the movie - Star Wars), but the vast majority of the time the book is better. Even when they do a really good job on the movie, like with LotR or The Princess Bride, there's still no comparison with the book. Don't get me wrong, I love those movies & can't think of many practical ways they could have been improved (three movies each for FotR, TTT, and RotK...), but IMO the books are still much better. I know a lot of you will start yelling "Apples and Oranges" at me, but I guess that's kind of my point. With very few exceptions I like oranges better than apples. I honestly think that books are a better form of entainment media than movies. Not that movies aren't great, but books are better.
I also want to say that I don't think there shouldn't be movie adaptations of books - like I said above I love the LotR movies. But as I am something of a bookworm (never would've guessed, huh?), it really bugs me when Hollywood takes a book and totally screws it over. And all too often that's what they do. Just a couple recent examples: I, Robot. That movie just really ticked me off. It would have been all right (well, the movie still would have sucked, but I wouldn't have cared so much) if they had just come up with their own title for the movie, and not had any connection to Asimov or his stories. He just had to be spinning in his grave over that movie. For those that don't know, I, Robot was a collection of short stories and essays by Asimov; and one of the things he makes very clear was that the whole reason he started writing Robot stories was because he hated the cliched plot "Man builds robot. Robot goes crazy and kills everyone." What's the plot in the movie?
One last example of a book Hollywood screwed over recently: Cheaper by the Dozen. Remake of a movie adapted from a stageplay adapted from book. The first movie and the stageplay were done well. The 2003 movie never should have been made. Cheaper by the Dozen is a comedy revolving around two points: a large family (12 kids), and the Father working as an efficiency expert consultant for large corporations. He is not, I repeat NOT , a football coach. Hollywood just blew away half of the premise.
Like I said, I don't think Hollywood should stop making book adaptations, but they should stay true to the book. If you don't like the book's plot, then don't make a movie claiming to be an adaptation of it, when less than half the movie is related to the book, or worse goes completly against the book.
All right, rant mode off...
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He didn't commit suicide. If the "hero" was killed it was because the hunter shot him. Although it never says anything except that there was a sound of thunder. Wich could be a poetic way of saying gunshot but that is not clear. Nor needs to be clear. Maybe the hunter killed himself after all he is the one who objected most in the story to the guy now in power.
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You guys are gonna have to wait until 1st quarter 2005 to see this one as the release was pushed back by Warner Bros.
I never read the story but I saw the TV version of this story on a Ray Bradbury theater episode. The trailer is mostly correct in the beginning. There is a company that figured out time travel and uses it to go back in time to offer people the chance to hunt creatures they could never hunt before. Everything is strictly controlled, and they do kill a T-rex. In the story, the T-rex is sickly, and was going to die anyway, which is the point, to preserve the time line.
However the guy who hired the company to go on this expedition stepped off that path, a special path designed to isolate the time travellers from all the other organisms and not cause damage to the timeline.
When the travelers get back, they are in a whole new world. The company is still there, the people are too. However, in this world, Germany won the second world war and the third reich is in power.
The story ends with the leader of the expedition locating the butterfly on the shoe of the client who stepped off the path. In the show, which I'm not sure was in the story, the leader puts a bullet between the eyes of the client for basically messing up the time line. Again I'm not sure that last action was in the story.
And that's it. That's all that's needed for the lesson in the timeline. This crap WB turned it into is just another hollywood suspense action thriller with the same damn plot as all the others. Blah.
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If you _really_ stretched the story you could make it last 10 minutes. So expecting a 2 hour film to do more than take the story as a starting point (which it does seem to do) is asking a bit much.
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The people who removed that are idiots.
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What book? "A sound of thunder" is a cheesy 2 page short story where a guy goes back in time, steps on a butterfly, and rewrites all of history.
For a 2 pager, it's a good story. But sheeit, get a grip on it people, it's not the greatest story I've read by a long shot.
I'm surprised anyone thought it was worth a movie. It was barely worth the Simpsons spoof.
I have a feeling what happened was, someone wrote a script about going back in time to hunt dinosaurs, suits noticed the similarities in plots, and just bought the rights to the story rather than risk a copyright suit down the road.
I like Bradbury and all, but this just seems like a goofy short story to get worked up about.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
*Fade up, its a dystopian world 2054, things constantly break down, the sky is polluted. Cars with the MS logo are crashing randomly on the side of the road. Computer screens flicker, and some of them even show BSODs*
*Cut to scene in a corporation*
Salesrep: We offer time travel services! Go back in time and play pranks on you favorite CEOs!
Client: Sounds like fun! Can i throw a pie in bill gates face?
Salesrep: your in luck! He gets pied in history. We'll send you back in time and it won't disrupt the timeline.
Client: great, I want to pay that SOB back. I look around and see all the things that have gone wrong and I get so mad.
*cut to time machine*
Expedition leader: remember... stay on the path. Now ready your pies!
*time machine starts, expedition walks in, cut to scene in japan. Bill Gates is attending a conference. A japanese prankster sneaks up on bill with a cream pie.*
Leader: get ready... he's almost there... now!!!!
*Bill is pied from every direction. He quickly ducks into a bathroom to freshen up*
Client: woo hoo *gets a little excited, but slips on pie on the path. He catches his balance but not before stepping off the path*
Leader: get back on the path! now! Everyone back home quick!
*cut back to corporation as the expedition comes home*
*scene has dramatically changed. It's more utopian. Everything works flawlessly and is clean. Cars in near collisions find ways to avoid each other safely and automatically.*
Leader: what happened?
Salesrep: sir? Nothing has happened, you've returned safely.
Leader: Damnit we changed the timeline. I have to find my wife!
Salesrep (looking puzzled): you can use that terminal there to email her, use the search engine to locate her, or place voice call even.
Leader: what? no! Thats impossible, Microsoft computers don't work that well, it would break down or I'd send her a virus! I can't risk that!
Salerep: Microsoft sir? Microsoft has been dead for decades. Everyone uses Linux now.
*Leader turns to client, pushes him into a chair and lifts the client's boot. Under his boot is an MSN butterfly, crushed and dead.*
Announcer: Change your future with Linux!!!
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
The great thing about Ray Bradbury is his amazing ability to captivate with simple short stories. He doesn't even describe what happens at the end of this story, it just ends with the chilling line, "There was a sound of thunder." There's no way even a faithful short film adaptation can capture that magic. In a feature-length film, I'd be surprised if there were any magic left at all. Oh, well. At least the first half of the trailer was enjoyable.
I hope they do better than they did with Robert Heinlein's classic Starship Troopers.
I love good science fiction, and constantly wonder why it's so rare at the movies. Phillip K. Dick's stories have done better (Blade Runner). I liked Gattica, as a thought provoking and cautionary tale of technology bent by society and politics, but the Hollywood touch renders most science fiction into a festering mound of low-brow special effects poop.
Why does Hollywood usually wait until science fiction authors have died before converting their work into a movie? I have a couple of theories:
1) The author has seen other SF movie adaptations, and thus adopted the policy, "Over my dead body."
2) Hollywood wants to lessen the chances of a lawsuit based on misrepresentation, libel, etc.
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Simply stated, a really good writer can write a really good book ...
along comes a MEDIOCRE Hollywood writer / director / producer and turns the book into a mediocre movie.
It's all about talent levels. Bradbury wrote a good short story. But the writer(s) who expanded it to movie length probably were NOT in the same league as him.
Hollywood executives aren't the only ones who do the same thing over and over... now Slashdot does it too!
Previous version of this story here
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didnt watch the fucking trailer.
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The wrong guy wins a close election because of a problem with a butterfly?