Slashdot Mirror
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.
A: Do you remember seeing that one? ... but it was good
B: No
A: Me neither
B: Yeah, Totally
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...
At least Gibson's treatment for Neuromancer didn't get filmed. His script for Johnny Mnenomic did, and it was a complete and total atrocity.
(That said, his script for Alien 3 would probably have been better than the abortion that Fincher foisted off on us.)
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
...who has struggled for years to fund my various off-the-wall projects, like Best Served Cold I know how hard it is to do anything different.
:)
I've been working on the project that follows BSC for a year now. It's a cheesy B movie pisstake with zombies and alien bugs, and it'll be a scream. But can I get funding? No! My low budget productions are well made and funny as hell, but fundraising when you're deliberately making cheesy movies, or movies with gorgeous fat chicks, well, it's tough.
Anyone got $15,000 I can use?
I hate to be one of those "me too" posters, but...
me too
I'd rather be flying
I agree completely, the thing I did was not going in to the movie expecting everything to be exactly the same. I did bring a couple friends to see it with me, who had never read the books, they said they liked it after seeing it. A few days later they were telling me that they loved it after it had sunk in. Now they have my copy of the DVD and won't give it back.
In a post-apocalyptic world where websites mysteriously drop from existance, server hardware is reduced to mere slag and ISP lawyers roam the shattered earth a hero shall rise.
Coming this summer from Forks Searchlight Entertainment:
ths slashdotting
crazy dynamite monkey
Of course, I'm sure they'd make YT 18.
Can't have under-age girls actually interested in sex, no, that would be ungood.
While I believe you probably did like the movie, I can't imagine a universe in which I /would/ like the movie. I've read the books, heard the radio plays, seen the BBC TV production, and loved them all. Then I went to the movie, against my better judgement, after having read the review by Adam's biographer. I went hoping that he was wrong. I looked for redeeming qualities in the movie. I couldn't find any. NONE. I chuckled /ONCE/ during the whole movie.
As a control to my experiment, my wife has only a passing aquaintance with most of the material, and really isn't that fond of most british comedy. She chuckled 2 or 3 times. And agreed with me that the movie wasn't even worth the time we wasted sitting in the theatre.
As a further control, in case I have influenced my wife unduly: The theatre was reasonably full. Not a sold out showing, but at least half the seats were filled. No one in the audience laughed more than my wife. Period. I heard people complaining loudly about the movie on the way out.
Matthew Walker
http://www.tweeterdiet.com/ - My Diet Tracking Tool
Guess they weren't concerned with novels. Little things like Mote In God's Eye and Ringworld. Even Lucifer's Hammer blew away any of the meteor films that got made, although many stole from it. Science fiction novels done properly for cinema are virtually nonexistent. There are rare exceptions like 2001 but the script was by the writer of the novel and Directed by Kubrick of coarse.
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.
Although I'm sure many only know the character of Conan from John Milius' big screen romp with steroid-giant Ahnold (or possibly from the even more wretched TV series or the comic books), no one has yet had the guts to film a real movie based on the original Robert E. Howard stories from the 1930's.
The real REH Conan wasn't the dumb as a board Ahnold, he was a multilingual leader of men, an accomplished horseman, a stealthy and dextrous thief, and many other things that neither Milius nor Ahnold understood (and still don't to this day). He was a product of the pulp era and the Great Depression. He was the toughest guy not because he was chained (for no apparent reason) to a wheel for his entire life, but because he had survived as only the fittest did in his environment.
Hollywood very rarely avoids the trap of going for the "easy story". Why create a complex character that is truly interesting when a one-dimensional revenge-fest is so much easier to explain to a suit? Why respect the original stories when just grabbing the trademark name to use for promotion takes less time? Why cast an actor who can actually act when a steroid-giant looks so cool on screen?
I've given up on any story or book adaptation ever coming close to the original and hence am no longer disappointed. And that way I enjoy the very rare occasions when they do actually get it right. But for every Maltese Falcon there are hundreds of I, Robots.
An imperfect plan executed violently is far superior to a perfect plan. -- George Patton
His point was that Shaun of the Dead better captured the feel of Douglas Adams' sense of humor than the Hitchiker's movie: ironic, considering that he actually wrote the novel (and radio show, and TV show) upon which the film was based.
And I haven't seen Shaun yet (bad Sammy! bad!) but I have to say that I'm inclined to agree. The film adaptation of Hitchiker's was awful. About the only good thing to come of it was the music video created to endorse his presidency.
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.
it was better then I expected when - taking into account the fact that it was backed by disney. note: I'm a die hard H2G2 fan.
Not that it was perfect, far from it. It was a pretty good effort IMHO, with some great moments. some of them (the knitting stop-animation scene, for example) were great, even though I doubt DNA scripted them in. It was a worthy effort. Much better then the TV series, for example (and even better then some of the books).
Granted, the missed some of the better jokes ("I wish I listened to what my mother told me.." for example), but all in all, it was a good film. the fact that it wasn't a great success says more about the american audience then the quality of the flick - take a look at Kiss kiss, bang bang, which I thought was a great flick, but it totaly Bombed in the box office.
Robert Anton Wilson
Google Cache
Plus, I just have to copy and paste this quote for Snow Crash, I think it's hilarious because it's completely true:
"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live,devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."
So true, so true.
Left 4 Dead Gaming Group - http://www.l4dgg.com
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.
And then there's all the weak sellouts of Philip K Dick's work
Actually, at least one good PKD adaptation has been done that I know of: Screamers, based on the story "Second Variety".
Granted, not one of his major works -- nor an awesome film -- but a credible one.
(Frankly, I think that A Scanner Darkly looks like it might actually be a good adaptation, despite Keanu starring in it. We'll see...)
...people fantasize about the fucking sequels they'd like to see... What about Ringworld? Neuromancer? As for comparisons to the Matrix, The Futurological Congress would stop that shit - that's a story that could out-Matrix the Matrix.
I spend most of my time in bed, darling.
The movie was acceptable, but for me the biggest "gotcha" was the total lack of comprehension of British humor by the directors.
The most obvious example was Arthur Dent's conversation with Processor, or lack thereof. Of course, naming the ex-President Hamma Kavula (or however it is spelled) was seriously funny.
And the whole scene with the Total Perspective Vortex which was a gun, where Zaphod gets "enlightened" was Hollywood-romance drivel. "Hey, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox, man!"
The absolute worst was the !)@#!ing 2+ minute opening scene of jumping dolphins! What a waste of celluloid!
It just could have been so much better in the hands of a director who had a sense of humor that didn't need a laugh track to tell him what was funny.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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.
I'll throw in another "me too". I've read the series multiple times (as well as Adams' other books), and heard the radio series. I went in to the theater not really expecting to like it, and enjoyed it quite a bit. I figured I may have set my expectations too low - thinking anything better than crap was good enough - but the next time I watched it, I enjoyed it as much as the first.
"Think you can take me? Go ahead on. It's your move." --Joe Don Baker in Final Justice
Everyone remembers the exact moment when they realized that their Phanom Menace sandwich was filled with shit.
I think that would make a good Slashdot poll. When did you realize that George Lucas had defecated on your childhood memories?
- Opening sequence: "The taxation of trade routes to outlying systems is in dispute."
- First appearance of Jar Jar
- First mention of midi-chlorians
- The creepy virgin birth thingy
- First appearance of the annoying brat who played young Anikin
- First appearance of the wooden teen-aged brat who played older Anikin
- ???
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
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
In all honesty, Ford was about the only good thing the movie had going for it. Mos Def did a fantastic job and gained more respect (from me) in one movie than any other actor since Jack Nicholsen in Batman. He just _felt_ right.
:]
Everything else was essentially repulsive. I'll stick with the books -- but now I'll always (happily) imagine Mos Def as Ford.
At least the movie was good for something...
Forget Doom...
Enders Game
Stranger in a Strangeland - purchased by Tom Hanks is the rumor
The Cat who could Walk Through Walls - Heinlin again
I have no mouth and I must Scream - Ellison
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
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.
- 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.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
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.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
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.
Wishing for novels or computer games to be made into movies, or better movies, is to be ridiculously naive about the moviemaking process. The problem with, say, the DOOM movie is that it's a dumb concept so it doesn't attract good people. Good people are a necessary, but not sufficient, precondition for a halfway decent movie. You options are to pay lots of money to find someone obviously good (e.g. Ridley Scott) and try to get them interested in your movie, or try to pick someone you think will be good, and hope...
Why has StarCraft not been made into a movie? It's not so incredibly well-known that someone with $50,000,000 can be reasonably sure that folks will watch it despite it having a no-name director and no-name actors, and it isn't that interesting a concept. Aliens, only bigger. People in power armor. More aliens. Big deal. Any fool can come up with this concept, and many have.
And even if you have a great concept, there are other obstacles.
Why has Snowcrash not been made into a movie? Not because of any conspiracy, but because it's in creative purgatory somewhere. I guarantee you that (a) someone owns the movie rights, (b) that person has been trying to put the project together since the book was written (or he/she got the rights from the last person), and (c) the project has looked like it might happen at least ten times. The same thing happens to pretty much every halfway decent novel. "Forever War" -- for example -- has been optioned since it was published, and has had directors such as Ridley Scott interested in it, but there are only so many projects a top guy (like Paul Verhoeven, for example) can take on, and stuff gets left by the wayside. Meanwhile, do you want your brilliant SF movie directed by Ridley Scott in ten years or whoever's available today? Down one path lies a movie that never gets made; down the other lies DOOM: The Movie.
Look at the books that do get made into movies... They're either something that has grabbed the attention of someone with serious clout (e.g. Clint Eastwood or Oprah or whoever) or they're absolute no-brainers ("The Da Vinci Code").
Aside:
Hitchhiker's Guide was originally a radio play, so statements (from TFA) such as "since most of the comedy was in the narrative language and descriptions" are baloney. This reminds me of the director of "The Saint" (the version with Val Kilmer) who referred to having researched "the original TV series" (sorry, bud, it was originally a series of books).
I want to see an ExoSquad movie! One that picks up where the series left off. They wrapped up one arc pretty well, but the last episode still left you hanging. Man it would be awesome. Sure it was a cartoon, but if you actually watch the entire series, it's damn good.
"This thing does science so hard, you say, 'I've never seen that much science.'" -Sam
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.
They forgot one: Neuromancer by William Gibson.
No they didn't. You REALLY need to see Johnny Neumonic. It has some of Keanu's best 'Whoas' that he ever commited to film...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
(I slightly rewrote the scene for effect. Director's license...)
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
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?
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
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.
Agreed. Episode I raped my childhood. I've already gone off about midichlorians. The idea of Anakin being a created being caused by Sith force-manipulation of one of Shmi Skywalker's ova is interesting, but was introduced clumsily in Episode I. This revelation might have been something for a later episode. Or maybe an aside in a single prequel movie.
I always come back to it, again and again: Episodes I, II and III would have made a bitchen single movie.
Another thing that rankled about Episode I was the blatant pandering to the juvenile audience. Jar Jar Binks was only the tip of the iceberg. Young Anakin as a boy genius was just intolerable and gag-producing. Episode I didn't have to be kidvid. "The Phantom Edit" proved that.
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.
Again, if the prequels had just been one movie, a lot of this weirdness could have been just asides and flashbacks. Also the main weakness of the film was the actor chosen to play Anakin as an adult. Sorry, but Hayden Christiansen falls completely flat as a pancake. He reminds me of the deer-caught-in-the-headlights performance of John Travolta as "The Boy In The Plastic Bubble." He might have been good elsewhere, but he was a bad Anakin.
Everyone screamed when Leonardo DiCaprio was considered as Anakin. However, he had chops as an actor before "Titanic," (Go rent "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" and "The Basketball Diaries" sometime) and he definitely showed he had chops and could portray a character like Anakin in the movie "The Aviator." DiCaprio's Howard Hughes was a swashbuckling, rogueish guy who started coming apart at the seams. Anakin Skywalker always struck me as a swashbuckling roguish guy who came apart at the seams. DiCaprio is going to wind up like fellow ex-teen idol Johnny Depp...a really awesome character actor who can do anything he wants to. I don't know if his oevre will be as quirky as Johnny Depp, whose work I love.
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.
Episode III would provide the backbone to a potential "Mega Phantom Edit." Every important element that moved the plot forward in Episodes I and II could be told in flashback around the framework of Episode III.
The whole relationship between Padme and A
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Another book I'd love to see on the big screen is "The Shadow of the Torturer" by Gene Wolfe. I think there was talk of this happening, but it fell through as do so many movie projects.
Oh and just about any Heinlein that has not already been made into a movie. "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", "Stranger in a Strange Land", and "The Number of the Beast" would top my list.
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
Don't know about you, but I might like to see a movie where Jesus fights thousands of cloned Kung Fu Romans. He kicks all of their asses, and then at the end, when he thinks he's won, the last one sneaks up behind him, grabs him, and they nail him up. Or at least that should've been how Passion of the Christ ended.
Imagine a system where multiple authors could contribute to a WIP screenplay, with a group of project leaders at the helm. A movie studio could purchase the rights to a project, and the contributors would donate the proceeds to charities and foundations of their choosing, divided as desired. In exchange, those so devoted and committed would receive rights to approve and nix studio decisions on visualisations, casting, and staffing (i.e no Uwe Boll), in addition to being able to sleep soundly at night, knowing that the works which inspired them will be preserved in spirit.
During the authoring and editing process, discussions much like those which are held on this very page could help resolve disputes or vagaries in the adaptation. Slashcode is great this way. You visit your personalized SlashScript homepage and see all of the adaptations-in-progess that you are interested in, posted by discussion topic and franchise. Click. Read. Participate. If you are so inclined, become a project contributor. If not, add your two cents to a particular issue.
So read the comments in this discusion.
Realize the potential we have collectively to produce works which will encourage future generations to pursue interests in computer sciences, physics, and freaky flights of fantasy. Let Keanu Reeves never be cast as an intelligent character again. Let terrible directors be dismissed, and idiotic screenplays be tossed in the rubbish. Let there never be another "I, Robot", "Alien 3", "Doom", "Resident Evil", or what may turn out to be a very bad X-Men 3.
The incentive for studios? Classics like 2001. Reduced price on screenplays. Favorable press for charitable donations.
WHO'S WITH ME?!? (I've never shouted on /. before)
This would have required only minimal changes to the sequencing of things, and could have shown off off the fall of the Old Republic as an honest-to-goodness tragedy. Having the Sith successfully playing off two honestly well-intentioned sides against each other could have worked out excellently well.
What was also unfortunate is that little more than lip-service was paid to the various "failures of democracy." It seemed to me that when Dooku explained, in Kenobi's earshot, why he was collecting up forces to oppose what was going on in the parliament, he had some pretty legitimate reasons for concern.
Unfortunately, all we saw, after the various "things failing," was that people seized at power of one sort or another to respond to them. What perhaps wasn't clear enough was that seizure of power was, in every case, a mistake.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I'd be the first to argue that Neuromancer is no great piece of literature, but, I feel the need to say a couple things:
* Sure, it's beginning is slow. But then again, think about it, most of the book really is. It's a langorous journey, not a mad rush. Yes, it has it's action sequences, but like the rest of Gibson's work (all that I can speak of that is.... I still haven't read pattern recognition), it's not the action that defines it. It is the almost dream like quality that his books have, while remaining rooted firmly in their reality that makes them some of my favorites to sit down and just enjoy. Gibson in my opinion has a wonderful ability to take a small topic and weave it into something wonderful, as he does in his short fiction. The movie Johnny Mnemnonic may be infamously bad (I can't, alas, testify), however, the short story is quite a piece of work. Read the New Rose Hotel. Yes, Gibson writes a bleak, dystopia of a future, but it feels bleak much in the way that a foggy beach, or broken neon is bleak. Bleak, but beautiful, and quite enjoyable to take in
* Compare that to Snow Crash, which, while enjoyable, has too much action (In a sense, as that point is arguable), and has a tendency to bend away into plain wierdness. I think that's why I enjoyed Cryptonomicon more, was because it felt more thought out, and showed the talent Stephenson has, rather than just his stylistic (and sometimes shallow feeling) views. I get the impression sometimes that Stephenson is a bit of a topical bulldog, and has a hard time letting go of an idea. Stephenson's writing, at least, in snow crash, comes off as almost a candy coated dystopian vision of the future, filled with neon, lazers and headphones.
So many other folks don't seem to get how the Jedi Order in the prequels was intentionally a bit crap. The "return" in ROTJ means Luke is restarting the Jedi, but it also means that the purity has returned, the Jedi are back to their ideal.
Note how neither Yoda nor Obi-Wan try to teach Jedi culture to Luke. No "council", no rules, no "padawan" or other ranks. If they hadn't the time while alive, they could still do it while blue and glowy - but no. I'd call that deliberate.
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.
A modern version of "The Power," this time true to the novel by Frank M. Robinson. This book is so written to be turned into a movie that there was no good reason to dumb it down and remove all the cool philosophical and psychological bits from the book. Of course, in 1968 movies could not be that dark, but today it should be possible to turn this book into a kickass SF/mystery movie.
ANY book by Philip K. Dick, directed by Terry Gilliam.
But look at the works of hackers. Do we ever finish? How many projects on Sourceforge have actually reached 'Stable' status? How many of Google's toys aren't Beta? How many programs on your computer, that you rely on every day, have a version number looking like 0.99.997, just because of the hacker's fear of declaring something finished?
We never finish. We always keep the lid off the case, we tinker on the fly, we reconfigure at the drop of a hat to suit ourselves.
But Neal Stephenson has publishers. Publishers insist that sooner or later the book must end so that it can go to print. And so after a certain point, he begins looking for an opportunity to bail out, and leaves the story at the next exit.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I actually did that, just for the hell of it. It wasn't 100 minutes, but 117 isn't too far off. As to whether it flattened anyone's balls, I couldn't really say - but I do know it's now the only way I can watch the sequels, because it made me realise just how awfully bloated and padded and pretentious they are.
The major changes:
All the 'Trinity's death' dream sequence (and references to it) removed.
Film now starts with Smith possessing Bane, then cuts to Neo jolting awake on the Neb as if that's what woke him.
Meeting of the captains shortened.
Arrival at Zion shortened.
The Kid excised almost completely (I accidentally left one shot of him in).
The rave deleted.
Neo's fight with Seraph removed.
The Oracle's conversation with Neo shortened.
Most of the meeting with the Merovingian taken out (including the 'virtual orgasm').
Chateau fight shortened.
Twins fight shortened.
Car chase shortened.
Fight between Morpheus and the Agent deleted.
The scene where the Machines destroy one of the ships re-edited to take out the 'WTF?' accident that kills the crew (now they just get blown up).
The Architect's bafflegab shortened.
Trinity/Agent fight shortened.
Trinity doesn't get shot while falling - Neo simply grabs her, so the scene of him taking out the bullet also goes.
The 'DUN!' ending of Reloaded re-edited using a shot from Revolutions so that the two films blend together.
The entire Mobil Avenue/Club Hel/Morpheus and Trinity meet the Oracle section deleted.
Neo's meeting with the Oracle shortened.
Smith's meeting with the Oracle, ditto.
The standoff between Neo and Bane as Trinity's held hostage removed.
The three stories at the climax are now intercut - Neo's flight to Machine City, the Hammer's Sewer Shark fight and the Battle of Zion now all take place at once.
Huge amount of cutting of the Battle of Zion - the only minor character who now gets any screentime is Mifune (Zee and all her pals are completely gone).
Major re-editing so that Mifune, not The Kid, opens the door.
Trinity's death scene cut by three frickin' minutes!
Super Burly Brawl shortened.
Meeting between the Oracle and the Architect cut - the film now ends with Neo's apotheosis cutting straight to sunrise over the Matrix.
All done using iMovie and iDVD! I know that some Matrix purists were enraged by the mere idea of cutting any of the existential dialogue when I posted about this elsewhere, but screw 'em - if you live your life according to the philosophy of a movie, you've got bigger problems than some guy doing his own edit of it.
You must think in Russian.
My biggest fear before seeing the movie was that it would suck. It didn't suck - I found it to be quite good, actually. But it wasn't The Best Hitchhiker's Guide Film Ever, or even halfway there.
The book plot just doesn't work in a way that lends itself successfully to a movie plot. And nor does the plot of the TV series or the radio shows. The books and the radio shows work because of a very curious narrative style, which finds humor in the smallest descriptions and long scenarios. Spoken lines you can quip; the rest doesn't work quite so well.
Imagine, if you will, the atmosphere laid down for Krikkit in the third book. A cosy place to be, by all means, and lots of songs. Constant comparisons of what size country Paul McCartney would be able to buy, had he written the songs. And the total absence of the sky in the minds of the Krikkitans. This stuff just doesn't adapt very well to being acted out without constant narration, which is expected in radio, but does not work at all in a movie.
I realize how fellow readers may start chuckling here, but the Guide is deep. It's deeply written. When a movie makes you think, it's because of interesting exposition (see the philosophic aspects of the Matrix trilogy) and not because the book is typeset in industry script standards. So I think that the only movie that could have been done successfully would be one that was, when compared to the book, very shallow.
Movie-wise, it turned out quite alright, even if it was imperfect in a lot of places (like the parent says, some of the movie was mangled). But don't go see it if you truly expect it to be the book or the radio series in movie form. It's just not.
Zahn gives us
Perhaps we're better off that Heir to the Empire exists only as a book. Hollywood would only screw it up.
Zarn
I still think A Fire Upon the Deep would be even more unfilmable. How could you possibly get across the scene where Jefri runs up to Steel and cuddles him?
Background if you haven't read the book: Jefri is a human child, orphaned and taken in by a tribe of Tines, which look sort of like a pile of puppies. Individually, they're about as smart, too, but when gathered into packs of four to six, communicating via short-range ultrasound, they become human-smart. Because it would badly confuse them to hear someone else's thoughts, they only come into close contact with each other for sex or fighting. Steel is the leader of the tribe that Jefri has fallen in with; he's a vicious dictator, but Jefri doesn't know that.
So, on the one hand, you have a cute kid hugging a pile of puppies, and on the other hand, you have the pile of puppies thinking that eww, this is like fucking a corpse. (Since he can't hear any ultrasound from Jefri, see.)
And you'd probably have to subtitle the Tines, anyway. And how can you film a character that has four to six different faces at once? I suppose you could turn the text-only Usenet into some sort of video chat, though that wouldn't be a very good solution. And hell, almost all of the real action takes place far, far offscreen and is incomprehensible to the main characters.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca