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10 Best S/F Films That Never Existed
Jamie mentioned (via a Metafilter discussion) a great article entitled The 10 Best Sci-Fi Films that Never Existed. From the piece: "There was a movie that perfectly captured the Douglas Adams experience, the combination of bitter sarcasm and sharp imagination, the droll British wit and whale-exploding slapstick that infused his novels. And that movie was Shaun of the Dead. That movie was not, unfortunately, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a movie that floated around Hollywood for about 20 years before it finally appeared in theaters as a flat, lifeless, americanized lump that was mostly hated by people who liked the book and loathed by people who hated the book. "
Alien 3 was further brutalized by the studio cut that utterly ripped the guts out of the film. If you haven't already, go and watch the Director's Cut on the Quadriology (you can often rent it by itself). The film is infinitely better, and actually works as a small, dark, claustrophobic piece. It's not what fans were promised, it's not what they were expecting, it's not what should have been filmed. But it works. That's tough to admit, but it's nice to find a silver lining to the nightmare that was the movie's production.
Which brings me to...Alien 5
Since in the minds of Alien fans, Alien Vs. Predator simply does not exist, Alien 5 was intended to be something along the lines of what Alien 3's teaser promised. Long story short: James Cameron and Ridley Scott went to the studio with the pitch, the studio told them they were going to do A vs P instead, Cameron told them if that movie was made, he would walk. You know the rest. The film is officially, 100% dead.
More acurately, Kubrick and Clarke collaborated on both the book and the script. The book was being written as the movie was being made.
Rhapsody in Numbers
Amen! When /. did 20 q's with Neil, I thought this question was the funniest of a dozen or more that harped on Niel S's endings. According to other comments in the above story, his own take is that he writes the endings he likes and that's that. He's happy with 'em.
Tragic.
Neuromancer began the whole shades-and-black cyberpunk style, which pervades The Matrix. Much of The Matrix owes debts to an anime film called Ghost in the Shell. They might be major influences, but The Matrix had many, many more. That's not a bad thing - it's probably what made the first movie good, and the rest terrible.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Where the hell did this guy leave This Movie? Dali, Jodorowsky, Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, Giger (pre-alien), Orson Wells.
This is the greatest S/F film never made.
That's true, but the cyberpunk noir atmosphere that Gibson was excited about doesn't appear in the book at all - the basic idea of the detective hunting the replicants is in the story, but the entire plot, atmosphere, themes...everything is almost completely different
All available data suggest that regardless of any of this, the sun will still come up tomorrow.
You dumbass.
None of the versions of HHGTTG have followed the same story, or have even been internally consistent. For example: There are clear indications that Zaphod picks up Trillian before he's president, based on the timeline, but that makes no sense because he hadn't screwed with his own head yet.
Even when 'technically' consistent, they make no sense, like Adams just throwing Fenchurch away at the start of Mostly Harmless. (And then the Vogons pretending all humans were accounted for when, of course, she wasn't.) Or the idea that time travel could 'start' causing problems. Or how Marvin got off the ship plunging into the sun.
Hell, there's even a joke about that, with Arthur's randonly changing bags, which we never get any sort of explanation of.
And, incidentally, the screenplay was Adams', so if you have a problem with the plot, you have a problem with him. Someone didn't come along and butcher it after he died, he wrote the whole thing, or at least the other person writing the screenplay wrote it and he okayed it. A few lines might have been changed, and a scene or two deleted for time, but random people didn't wander in and add the whole rescue from the Vogons, or whatever you think they did.
Jesus. Completely ignorant Hitchhiker fanboys make me sick, and I'm a damn fan myself. Stop trying to make it damn Babylon 5 with dates and whatnot, and stop whinging about how the only two versions you've ever seen don't match up. It's not a real sci-fi story, it's a satire of them and their conventions.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Now *that's* a god I could believe in.
Why wasn't this mentioned in Sunday school?!