A Few Notes on Movies of the Near Future

BenderFan writes "The first review of the next Futurama DVD, The Beast With a Billion Backs (out in the US on June 24), has appeared online. And the reviewer liked it — a lot." (I hope it's as good as Bender's Big Score.) Read on for reader submissions on two other upcoming movies. The Day The Earth Stood Still (with Keanu Reeves, but also John Cleese) is due out in December, and a movie version of Philip K. Dick's The Owl in Daylight is currently being drafted by Tony Grisoni; the interview linked below is appropriately surreal.

Etienne writes "Tony Grisoni is a British screenwriter who has co-written several Terry Gilliam's films (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Tideland, Brothers Grimm and Lost in La Mancha).
He is currently writing the screenplay for 'The Owl in Daylight', based upon the book Dick was planning to write just before he died. The movie is produced by Electric Shepherd Productions, which is run by Anne and Laura Dick, PKD's daughters. Paul Giamatti is co-producing and will take the part of Philip K. Dick."

bowman9991 writes "Keanu Reeves' big budget remake of the 1951 science fiction classic 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' has all the right ingredients to be his biggest hit since 'The Matrix.' SFFMedia asks whether we are looking at another classic or a disastrous Hollywood star studded rehash? Now that the cold war anxieties from the original movie have been replaced with the threat of environmental catastrophe, will Keanu become some type of extraterrestrial Al Gore and ruin the movie?" (John Cleese plays Klaatu's giant 8-foot robotic pal called "Gort.")

Comments

I hope it's significantly BETTER

[93 Escort Wagon]

I thought "Bender's Big Score" was mediocre at best - so I'm hoping they've managed to recapture some of what consistently worked in the TV show.

Re:I hope it's significantly BETTER

[Spad]

My reaction was the same first time through, but after watching it a second time and listening to the commentary, I really warmed to it.

There's an awful lot going on and the plot is pretty complex; I really don't think you can get a full appreciation for it on a single run through - not that is necessarily a good thing.

Re:What a useless review.

[Anonymous Coward]

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD.

Quality

[ktappe]

(I hope it's as good as Bender's Big Score.) I hope it's better. I didn't think Bender's Big Score was their best work. Certainly better than nothing though.

hey moron

[ClioCJS]

Hey moron, it IS 3 long episodes put together. They STATED that that is their INTENT -- to have 66 minutes of video that can either be split into 3 22-minute fullscreen episodes, or 1 66-minute widescreen movie. How can they bring the series back without episodes? So you're whining about something they intended to do. Turn in your fanboy card.

A movie that needs no remake

[fermion]

Is the day the earth stood still. There are no significant special effects that need to be made better. There was nothing wrong with the story. The husband lost at war is as relevant at this moment as at the previous moment. The man who is in love with war and fear mongering and his money at the expense of his country is as relevant.

Ok, so an argument could be made that this is the right time to remake this movie, even if it guaranteed to be worse given the Mr. Revees has trouble acting his way out of a paper bag, and it just gets worse when he is acting across from someone that is truly competent(see A Walk in the Clouds).

The fact remains that there are any number of sci-fi horror movies that are more suited to his abilities, could benefit from better special effects, and are screaming for remakes. Simplying going through the MST3K list would net a treasure trove of easy money films.

wow

[ClioCJS]

I think it is actually YOU that only has ghostly traces of your original ability to appreciate it. There really is no discernible difference between this movie / 3 episodes, other than that it is a 3-episode arc rather than a 1 episode arc. It continues all the major plot points RIGHT WHERE THEY LEFT OFF, but there are always predictable naysayers like you. The same people who didn't like all the other adaptations movies: Aqua Teen, South Park, Beavis & Butt-head, The Simpsons, The Golden Compass. (I think LOTR is an exception though, most of the naysayers for LOTR were NOT fans of the original work.)

And please don't start with the tiresome "it played like 3 episodes, not a movie" argument. They intended to do that. They want 3 episodes to be able to air on 3 nights in syndication. That's the only type of comment more tiresome than your type of comment.

Re:wow

[Moridineas]

Wow, unless you're one of the writers, you really don't need to take it personally! I'm not the gp, but I more or less agree with him. I did enjoy Bender's Big Score, and I bought it, but I've only watched it 1.5 times. I've seen most of the episodes several more times.

It has nothing to do with the fact that the movie "played like 3 episodes" -- and you throwing that out there is a complete red herring as the GP said nothing about that. In my opinion, it just wasn't quite as snappy. Had some individually really good parts, but the whole thing just didn't seem as seemless. And no, to be clear, I'm not complaining about the episodic nature of the film--I'm talking about individual scene changes.

Seriously, I don't understand your reply at all. I mean, I understand fanboyism on the Internet and all, but why be so invested in whether other people like a movie or TV show you like? Other people liking or not liking it shouldn't diminish your enjoyment of it at all!

Re:wow

[Moridineas]

By and large I agree with your post, but any psychologist/sociologist will tell you that other peoples' opinions have a lot to do with enjoyment (in a really substantive way). I suppose you're right at that. Seems a shame though--I think a lot of people would be a lot happier if we could just like what we liked and disliked what we disliked--regardless of other people.

Nobody Expects the...

[Cornwallis]

John Cleese as Gort? Why not include the Spanish Inquisition?

Disaster

[Graftweed]

...will Keanu become some type of extraterrestrial Al Gore and ruin the movie?

I'm voting for disaster. Let's take a look at some of the changes:

The original Klaatu - Played by Michael Rennie, a virtually unknown actor outside of the UK at the time, which gave him credibility as an alien when he stepped out of the spaceship.

He also had to be both menacing when delivering his warning/ultimatum, and compassionate as he goes among earth's people to learn more about them. Eventually he bonds with a little boy and his mother.

The new Klaatu - Keanu Reeves has received massive exposition, thus ensuring that people see Neo stepping out of the spaceship.

Also, he has the dramatic range of a cinder block.

The original theme - It dealt with timeless concepts such as our distrust for different cultures and our natural propensity toward aggression. Which is why it has endured to this day.

The people whom Klaatu represents aren't worried that we kill one another, their fear is that we extend our aggression as we step out into space.

The new theme - With the new environmental theme, apparently they are now terribly worried that we destroy the planet and thus ourselves. Or that we start littering space.

The original Gort - Silent, soulless, impersonal, ruthless and menacing.

The new Gort - John Cleese!

Also, I'm sure some of the original's somewhat Orwellian undertones of Klaatu's people creating a race of robots and giving them irrevocable power to control any and all acts of aggression will also be lost. As will his admission that their system, and their own society by extension, isn't perfect. Everything is black and white these days.

But hey, I'd love to be proven wrong since it's one of my favorite sci-fi movies, but somehow I'm skeptical.

Re:Philip K. Dick Movies

[Mr. Roadkill]

Likewise, Total Recall was a decent action film, but didn't manage much more.

(damn... got modpoints too. Oh well, there are other discussions...)

I just recently read "We can remember it for you wholesale", and ... well... yeah, decent action flick that I'll continue to enjoy, but the major twist in the novelette about the memories suppressed by aliens during childhood (and what will happen when they are recovered, and it turns out that he IS the most important person on earth) is what really makes the story. It seems like the standard PKD film-adaptation process is to leave out all the really interesting stuff and just go with whatever lets them do the action or film-noir or whatever kind of genre-flick they've decided to make.

Can we subtract from the list?

[roystgnr]

I used to wish my favorite science fiction novels would be turned into movies. That stopped after they fumbled "The Puppet Masters" and pissed on "Starship Troopers". Seriously, "Starship Troopers", one of the few SF books that could have been translated for the big screen with little more effort than "tell everyone to read chapter N, act it out, then read N+1"... How do you screw up a coming-of-age movie with moral debate set among battles between aliens and powered battle suits? Why, to start you cast actors whose next "coming of age" events will be balding and menopause, change as many plot facets as necessary to parody a strawman of the morals you didn't like, and turn the aliens into animals and the battle suits into cannon fodder.

And you think they could get Mote in God's Eye right? Yeah, it's a tempting thought, but you know by revision 3 of the script, Hollywood would have turned the Moties into Ewoks.

Poorly written

[Outsdr]

The Futurama review was so poorly written that I gave up after reading the first paragraph. Anyone can write; few can write well.

Re:Philip K. Dick Movies

[jasonjacks0n]

Blade Runner was great, but left out every shred of thought (Mercerism, Mood Machines, radiation poisoning, social significance of real pets vs. synthetic ones, etc) in favor of film noir.

Yeah, they left out a lot, but they added some things of real significance too..

Actually, Blade Runner is the only PKD "adaptation" that I like better than the original story. By removing things like Mercerism, they were able to pare the story down to its essence, and make Deckard a replicant. Which if you think about it only makes sense - like they're going to be using actual people to do dirty work like tracking down escaped replicants? Hardly.

It's actually a little surprising to me that PKD overlooked (or just chose to forgo) that angle, especially when you consider A Scanner Darkly's plot, of stories like Second Variety..

So while Blade Runner might be kind of a poor adaptation of Do Androids Dream, it's a pretty brilliant story in its own way.