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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.")
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.")
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.
#DeleteChrome
Not a single world about HYPNOTOAD. I hope we get another full episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad! It was possible the best television ever!
Instead of doing remakes, such as The Day The Earth Stood Still, how about we take older properties, such as, I don't know, Neuromancer? Or maybe something newer like Cryptonomicon? And while you're at it, could you remotely stick to the source material, unlike that abomination you called I Am Legend? I think the only thing that the movie had in common with the book was the fact he was alone in the city.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
It would be helpful if there were warnings about spoilers for each review....
Monstar L
Keanu will be perfect as Gort.
You forgot about Stargate: Continuum the next sg1 movie.
I must assume Keanu Reeves will play that robot since that's his acting style, anyway.
-- Will program for bandwidth
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Oh, the fools! If only the beast had a billion and one backs! When will they learn?
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!
The only film so far that has worked as an adaptation of PKD's work was A Scanner Darkly. One big problem with it was that they left out much of the overbearing paranoia and resulting melancholy in order to instead highlight stoner humor. Though I admit I would have preferred that the ending remained more nuanced, as opposed to the ever-so-convenient voiceover/recap that films seem to like to push on audiences to counter their short attention spans.
The rotoscoping could have possibly been used to better effect as well. It only really seemed to truly add to the atmosphere on a few occasions. Otherwise the style seemed surprisingly tame given the tone and content of the plot.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
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.
Bad submitter - from the article..."IGN reports that Cleese will play a physicist Dr. Barnhardt, a Nobel Prize laureate who helps work out why Klaatu and Gort have come to earth."
Sigh of relief. I can't imagine Gort being played with any personality, especially humor - he's a world-destroying robot, after all.
(So is Bender, but he doesn't count)
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.
"Keanu Reeves was ill the day the Earth stood still..." just doesn't have a ring to it.
What wouldn't Jesus do?!
Thank goodness they've updated The Day the Earth Stood Still to preach about environmentalism, since a commentary on mankind's violent, destructive nature is no longer relevant in these modern times.