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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. "
As a filmmaker, and after reading this book cover to cover many times, I've come to the assumption that this book is truly unfilmable. I have read a few scripts based upon it found on the 'web, one particular written by Gibson himself, but there is just absolutely no way to capture the depth of environment this novel creates.
I don't care how big your budget is, it "ain't gonna happen."(tm)
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
I, and most people I talked with and most critics actually LOVED the Hitchiker movie as much as a book. And that even though I was rather pessimistic before seeing it.
Fleur de Sel
It's so cinematic that I didn't just desperately want a movie to be made from it, I was always shocked they didn't make one.
Nope, a Neal Stephenson movie wouldn't work for the same (real) reason The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy didn't work. The joy of those books is in the expository language. Even the best adaptation would still disappoint the hardcore fans.
Imagine turning the Cap'n Crunch seen in Cryptonomicon into a movie -- Randy Waterhouse eats a bowl of cereal in a Manila hotel room. Woohoo!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
the Wachowskis thought that people went to see the movies because of the Car chases, bullets flying, and the Kung Fu fight scenes. Maybe some people did. But what got me hooked on the first was things like this line, "Knowing the path is different from walking the path." I thought, "Ooooo" these guys are going to do something different and possibly something that has a deeper meaning than, blam-blam-blam-blamblam-blam". But noooo, that's not how it turned out. And if they did it the way I thought they were going to do it, it would have cost much less and they would have made more money.
Read that as Ellison's I, Robot screenplay or Asimov's I, Robot stories, but don't please read it as I, Robot. Damn Hollywood for attaching one of my favorite childhood titles to a movie that had almost nothing to do with either Asimov's work or Ellison's brilliant (and never produced) screenplay. It deserved better.
You absolutely forgot Æon Flux, guys. The series was prodigal; the movie was a piece of soulless, mass-compatible hollywood crap. It definitely would've earned the top spot in this hall of shame.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
I'd film it by putting a digital clock on the table. Hook the clock to a sensor pad. The clock starts when he puts the milk on it. Focus on how he keeps his eyes on the clock while eating.
Then, have the phone ring. He turns to the phone and drops his spoon. He reaches down to get the spoon, gets a bit frantic when he can't grab it, then grabs it and comes up. He stares at the timer.
"Fuck....."
Then he gets up, washes out the bowl, focus on all the cereal in the sink's drain. He dries the bowl. He dries the spoon. Then he takes them over to the table again.
He fills the bowl with cereal, re-sets the timer, looks up, goes to the phone and carefully unplugs it and wraps the cord around the receive. Then he goes back to the table and reaches for the milk
Don't focus on eating the cereal. Focus on the person who has a ritual that complicated just for eating cereal. Focus on the effects that interupting that ritual has on that person.
this author, davd wong, good author. i've seen people say the same thing he just said, but less effectively, with ten more sentences to play with. he gets big ideas across forcibly and quick. sign of a good author
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
- Greedo shot first.
- Han Solo steps on Jabba's tail without getting killed.*
- BS explosion rings from the Death Stars.
- Ewoks Cartoon.
- Droids Cartoon.
- Star Wars Christmas Special.
- Ewoks instead of Wookies on Endor in RotJ.
My personal pick is when Greedo shot first.
(* Yes I know that it was because when they originally filmed the deleted scene Jabba was a man instead of a slug-like alien and Harrison Ford moved around him in ways that didn't work later, but this did sort of help break suspension of disbelief.)
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So, you're saying it was a B movie, just like he said? It had great action, great effects, and a story that a muppet could follow, yet was still cohesive and somewhat interesting. It did absolutely no justice to Heinlein's book, but as a movie, it's the kind of thing that Doom should have been. Doom never had a story, either. It would have fit perfectly.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
First mention of midi-chlorians
That had to do it for me. I was under the assumption anyone could be a Jedi if they just tried hard enough and not because of some noble upbringing or good genetics.
Secondly, it added nothing to the movie. It isn't as if we didn't already have some knowledge of what the force was coming from the first three movies. I mean they could just have wandered by and said "I feel a strong presence in the force with this child" or something like that. Not this "let me whip out my tricorder and talk about something that wasn't mentioned in the first three films.
Those are one of the things I hope George takes out in the first movie. Heck... Why doesn't George just do them all over again.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!", pretty much sums up my Star Wars I,II,III experience.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
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The way I figure it, Episode I was a total waste of time. It was dull, badly written, poorly acted and just generally no damned good. What Liam Neeson was doing in this movie I'll never understand, and the introduction of idiocies like midichlorians and Anakin-as-Jesus-virgin-birth crap was nonsensical, and would require the most bizarre explanation for Anakin's brother Owen in the next film.
Episode II just didn't seem to know where to go. Did it want to be Obiwan's detective story? Did it want to be the love affair between Anakin and Padme? About Anakin's descent into the dark side? The Sith's bizarre machinations (including a Sith apprentice who tells Anakin that "oh yeah, the Sith control the Senate")? Or is it a political thriller? It wanted to go so many places in two hours that it ultimately went very little distance at all. One way to have patched things up would have been for Anakin to become Darth Vader at the end of that film, which would have made the next film much more interesting.
Episode III. As close as we'll ever get in Lucas's post-1980s world to a good Star Wars film. Still clunky, but at least the Emperor comes off interesting (by now he's clearly the only character in the prequels that is really all that interesting). Still, way too much deux ex machina. Anakin still seems to sort of abruptly become Darth Vader rather than a slow descent into evil (which is why I think the more natural transition would have been at the end of Episode II). The whole "my apprentice is in trouble" which gets the Emperor on a ship to fly to Vader's aid was the worst example. The ending was idiotic, the Darth Vader suit sequence seeming anticlimactic, and the whole bit about Padme dying not only ridiculously maudlin but making the Epside VI statement by Leia that she could still remember her mother rather odd, considering Luke didn't.
I think Lucas's whole reason for making Star Wars films changed between 1976-1983 and the 1990s. The earlier films, even as they got a bit deeper and more philosophical on the nature of evil in the Star Wars' universe, still maintained a fun, swashbuckling feeling. The plot holes in Episode VII could be ignored because, goddamnit, those Ewoks were cute, the Millenium Falcon was way cool flying into the Death STar, and the Emperor was so fucking evil in a basic, elemental fashion, rather than as some political plotter more in the line of Idi Amin than a Dark Lord holding extraordinary powers.
I think Lucas decided to take his space opera and turn it into some sort of political parable. The problem is that Lucas isn't a very good writer, so loads of nonsense like midichlorians get loaded into the brew just so he can progress his almost-plot with as little effort as possible. He's so busy with his wannabe-political-philosophy nonsense that he forgets that a movie has to be interesting, whether it aspires to greater things or not.
Lucas is a good idea man, or was, but ultimately, his instincts are all wrong. He overestimated his abilities as writer, and misjudged want the fans wanted. The fans didn't want The Galactic Manchurian Candidate, but rather Star Wars, as they saw it between 1977 and 1983.
I disagree with the article that the prequels were a bad idea, though they clearly would have the limitation that we all know Anakin turns into Darth Vader. There's no "Wow, Luke is Vader's son" or "Hey, Darth Vader ain't so bad after all" moments. Those that read the original novel adaptations even knew basically how Anakin received the injuries. I really think that the entire Anakin-Darth Vader could have been done in a single movie, and without all the virgin-birth nonsense. Two other movies could have given us a better background of the Jedi-Sith struggles and the Republic.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I think they did a good job translating Adams' very linguistic humour in to visual humour. His books weren't the kind of thing that could go untouched to screen, so much of the jokes are in the way it's written. That kind of stuff just doesn't work a lot of the time in what is an overwhelmingly visual medium. You HAVE to go visual with the humour, otherwise the movie doesn't work.
Also, that it was different and even contradictory to the books isn't a problem, that's just part of the show. The books are not in line with the radio series, or even with themselves. This isn't intended to be a Star Wars universe that's (allegedly) set in stone with canonical ideas that have to be respected in all works. It's a funny bunch of short stories, that became a funny bunch of novels, that became a funny movie.
The problem is the "hardcore" fans that have only ever read the books and seem to think that SciFi universes need to be really rigid and believable. They were expecting to see a perfect translation of the first book to screen, without ever really considering how such a thing might be accomplished, and were pissed that it didn't happen. To me this would be as silly as being angry because the novels weren't simply word of word transcriptions of the radio series.
They are different mediums, they need different stories, and I have nothing wrong with having the same story told to me many times, in different ways.
I was under the assumption anyone could be a Jedi if they just tried hard enough and not because of some noble upbringing or good genetics.
Is this where everyone who doesn't like midi-chlorians is coming from? I had no real problem with midi-chlorians, and I always thought force-usage did run in families (with the occasional random person getting just the right genes where previous family history was unknown).
Canon-wise, the only proof in the movies was Luke's statement of "the force is strong in my family" in ROTJ, which indicates that there may be at least some genetic reason for high force ability. Going down the list of official source, there's a book ("The Crystal Star", I think) which mentions the Emperor trying to breed two force-sensitive individuals to attempt to make a strong jedi (but resulted in a child that had no force ability at all). Dorsk 81 comes from a race of clones with no previously known force ability in his clone history, but both he and his predecessor (Dorsk 82) are force sensitive, showing the possibility of a random mutation which is then introduced to the succeeding clones.
Not a typewriter
Yeah, they made a movie called I Robot. It wasn't Asimov's story, and it wasn't Ellison's magnificent screenplay--it was typical hollywood dreck eye-candy, and it was a total waste of time, money, and resources.
Someone show me an intelligent, dramatic movie of I, Robot or in fact ANY SF story, and I'll be happy.
(Note: "Intelligent" does not mean bullshit pseudoscience, and "dramatic" does not mean blowing shit up)
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Ringworld was an amusing technical conceit. But not much of a story.
Do not be under the impression that I am trying in any way to justify The Phantom Menace! Desperate fans (or Lucas himself) will try to justify the craziest plot points. But I find that it does ease the pain. A little.
First appearance of the wooden teen-aged brat who played older Anikin
Don't be so hard on him. Hayden Christensen is actually a good actor. As are Natalie Portman, Samuel Jackson, Ewan MacGregor, Liam Neeson and Jimmy Smits. But their performances in the Star Wars prequels all uniformly sucked. Only one person can ultimately be blamed for that.
That's just it! In the first movies, we see little parts of a "fantastic, magical universe". A few dirty, grubby planets with a couple of ineffective and somewhat inconsequential guys mucking about in their struggle against the giant, evil (and squeeky clean) empire. A couple of weird creatures and exotic locations. That's it. And yet it's totally believable.
In the last 3 movies, Lucas throws breathtaking vista after heart-stopping action at us, interspersed with scenes of utter insignificant drivel, petty disputes and barfy love scenes. These movies are the first ones with a binary tension scale: it's either an all-out adrenaline rush or Bergman on prozac. The scenes and the plot jump around more and faster than Jar Jar on fire, and we're faced with a dazzling array of bad guys, about whom we know nothing and care about even less. All this in an attempt to make something from a plot about a rather boring trade dispute. And we never get the chance to catch our breaths, take in the scenery and get to know and care for the characters, and immerse ourselves in this universe.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
In fact, the pair make my very short list of movies that are better than the book. The book was trying to do about seven different things at once, and thus did a pretty mediocre job of all of them. The movie took one relatively small thread from the book, and fleshed it out into a good little story.
But more importantly, the movie was really about lighting, blocking, and music. The feel of the movie, the visual tone, is the thing about which everyone (rightly) raves. And that feel was absent from the book, but did show up quite prominently in Neuromancer.
>Ten best S/F movies that never existed
Except that none of those mentioned are S/F! They are fantasy and horror and the writer of the article surely has a sick mind. I am afraid one day he will run amok and shoot real world people by the dozen to fulfill his dreams about those bloody and gutty Doom and Alien movies he envisions. There must be some big problem in Hollywood if the success of any movie is measured by the number of people and monsters killed in it.
For your information, SF means science fiction. Muscular superheros shooting and chopping up ugly giant bugs, while saving then fucking scantly clad big-tits blondes and redhead is a genre called fantasy.
There are very few SF writers, because to qualify their works should have a sound scientific method or worldview and also their novel should have the fiction, the artistic literature element also called talent. The so called Hard-SF meets the first, but misses the second requirement and so becomes worthless not being a piece of literature.
Nowadays SF essentially does not exist anymore, all publications are soft or hard fantasy. The classic SF is gone due to disillusionment, because there has not been any sound scientific progress in the last 60 years. All the shiny high-tech equipment around us is just that, technology, developed from scientific knowledge gained before 1947. The demise of SF shows what dead-end our contemporary science has ran into.
(That said, his script for Alien 3 would probably have been better than the abortion that Fincher foisted off on us.)
Remember that Fincher was like, the 3rd director to take over filming, and he had to work with what he was given. Personally I don't think he did that bad a job. Before you write off Alien3 completely, you should watch the Special Edition, it's a much more complete film.
And anyway if Fincher hadn't have got the opportunity to direct Alien3, we'd have never had Seven (at least not as good).
-Jar.
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