I, Robot certainly *was* an Adaptation, a retelling of an Asimov story on the screen. That doesn't mean it was *good*. But it's an adaptation.
There's no guarrentee or neccessity of faith to the original author. Either the director thought that the adaptation he made was worthy of film for artistic merit, or felt that he read something into the Asimov stories that wasn't explicit on paper, or the point of taking the Asimov stories and putting them on the screen wass that they'll make money when sold to a new audience. None of these are a movie-making sin.
The movie started out as "Hardwired", but then the Fox lawyers realised they were sitting on the Asimov option rights, and they were about to expire, so they glued on the copyrighted names and themes to the rampaging killbot flick once called Hardwired, and passed it off as "I, Robot", which it wasn't, neither in spirit, nor in intent. It was only I, Robot in marketing and legal use of copyright.
Every single robots story was about how the laws were flawed, and they explored the consequences of those flaws. In that sense, the film is true to the spirit of the books.
Serious question. Do you really believe adapation started with Hollywood?
Serious question: Are you always this pedantic, or are you stupid enough to infer from my post that I believed that adaptations started (or ended) with hollywood?
Asimov didn't have hundreds of evil killbots, but modern audiences don't want to watch actors talk about pedantic philosophy for three hours. That doesn't make the base of it any less Asimov's original story. It's an adaptation to the screen.
Go back and read what said, I can repeat it here for you if that's too hard for your trollish mind:
Asimov SPECIFICALLY wrote stories that were NOT rampaging hordes of killbots. He stated time and time again in his prologues and introductions that he was writing stories that were the opposite of the usual robot fair: Man makes robot, robot turns on man and goes beserk. He called it the "Frankenstein syndrome".
I, Robot was NOT an adaptation, it was the movie "Hardwired", renamed and infused with copyrighted elements that the Fox studios had bought from the Asimov estate. They then went around claiming that it was in the spirit of what Asimov wrote: That was a lie, said to maximise profit.
Bicentenial Man was an adaptation, a failed one, since they took out the character's motivation for his actions and replaced it with the usual "love conquers all" crap, but an adaptation.
X Men was an adaptation faitfull to the spirit of the original. It took stories told in comic books and adapted them to the big screen. That was allright, they were faitfull to the spirit of what they adapted, they didn't wait for the author(s) to die so they could use the recognised brand names to peddle dumbed-down banalities.
So it's the extended edition of the Slashdot story, huh? Not a dupe!
Hey, don't complain! You knew it was coming, you should have waited a few more months to read it instead of rushing off to get the non-extended version that came out first.;-)
characterisations, plot development and pacing, and dialogue to a large extent are typical hollywood fare
OMG you can't POSSIBLY be complaining that they didn't keep the "realistically as slow as walking from one country to another on short hobbit legs" pacing of the books!
I think about 40% of the books were dedicated to describing how long it takes to walk from the Shire to Mordor! Something happens, followed by 20 pages of description of walking, then they see Gollum a bit, 12 pages of walking, etc.
All the subtley of the novels were not translated to screen.
That isn't specific to LOTR, no movie has EVER translated all the subtleties of a book! How could it? They have only 2 (or 3) hours to sum up hundreds of pages of text!
Never expect an adaptation to keep the subtleties: It is impossible. The best they can do is stay faithfull to the spirit.
given the enormous amount of fantasy material out there before and after Tolkien, I am quite surprised that Tolkien is revered as highy as he is today.
Almost every fantasy story since has been a rewrite of Tolkien's work...
I find his use of lengthy appendices and created languages fatuous and self-congratulatory.
...Mostly because of the richness of the world he crafted.
Douglas Adams was still alive when they started making the movie version of his books, and he happily accepted changes
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Really not!
He rewrote the screen adaptation many times, never finding a balance between his genius and the hollywood lowest-common-denominator dogma, and wrote one last draft that he believed was the best compromise.
He then died, and the studio REWROTE the script, AGAIN, probably to re-insert the stupid changes he fought against.
Do NOT let yourself be fooled when the vultures say he would have liked it. It is their contractual obligation to bullshit us and hype the project as much as they can. When they say it's going to be good, ask yourself: Is it in their financial best interest to lie to us about the quality of the product? Does this person stand to make MILLIONS from those lil' white lies?
Look at the EarthSea thing that happened recently, the producers made a comment that the author really wanted to say what their bastard monstrosity says, forgetting that she's alive and able to tell the world otherwise. She was able to defend herself and her original works from the slander it was subjected to, but Asimov can't, Adams can't, Roddenberry can't...
Look at the hype for Will Smith'S I, Robot! The fresh prince was actually saying in interviews that is was very faithfull to the spirit of Asimov's robot stories, and then he explains "everyone on earth trusts the robots, but my character is the only one that suspects the truth: they are up to no good", followed by rampaging hordes of killbots. That is the OPPOSITE of Asimov's stories! Only the USRobots people trusted their creation, the mundane people of earth didn't trust 'em one bit! They had laws forcing them to be manually operated, and to not be within a certain distance of schools, etc! And not only that, but the whole "robots are not to be trusted and will turn on their masters" is exactly the precise sort of stories that Asimov did NOT write. He made up the 3 laws to get away from that frankenstein crap, dammit!
Enjoying a movie for what it is is fine, really. But you can do it without the delusion that they are faithfull to the spirit of the original when they are virtually raping the author's corpse.
Here's a tip: If you hear of a movie being made that is based on a book, and you haven't yet read that book, wait until you've seen the movie, then read the book. The book is always better, so this way you get to like the movie, then love the book. If you read the book first, you like the book, then hate the movie.
Movie, like. Then: Book, love. The other way only leads to disapointment.
Good concept, bad execution. Ah well, back to our regularly scheduled games and gore and profanity on moday, I guess Child's Play has been monopolising their attention.
I worked at this little computer store in rural Louisiana. After a couple of years, we ended up with about 14 dead MGA/CGA/EGA monitors and decided to have some fun.
The monitors were all loaded up into a truck and taken out into the swamps, and set up on 55-gallon drums. Myself and three other people then proceeded to blow the fuck out of them with a number of weapons
Your hopes are well founded. He can act quite well, and I for one was happy to see he got the role. It's a sad loss for anyone who can't see past the color of his skin.
Well, they have new characters, which aren't black, it's just plain weird of them to take a character that has already been seen and to change his appearance.
Not that being weird isn't ok in a HHGTTG movie : )
You ever think that maybe they cast him because they felt he'd do a good job in the role? And calling Mos Def
Don't kid yourself, he's the required Token Black Guy. I don't really approve of having actors that look nothing like the character's past known appearance, but in the good ol' Land of the Free (tm), if you don't have a prominent black character, your movie is labelled racist and you get lots of angry people protesting it.
What I want to know is: Is this movie starting in england, or in the U.S.A.? If it's the latter, the character's name should be Ford Escort. If it's in the states and he's named Prefect, I take this as the travesty, not the fact that he's black.
P.S. I don't know who Mos is, I looked at his website, nothing rings a bell. Maybe he's a good actor (I hope). P.P.S. I hate the racist right, and I hate the racist left, but I hate unecessary changes to a story made by marketing people even more.
I'm seeing a theme here, and it isn't gender specific.
I said "girls" because he usually has a girl as the main character. Of course "don't bitch, just do it" applies to everyone, not just girls, not just kids.
Why would there be a legal limit of ONE moral per movie?
Since in their culture these values are nothing unusual, from their point of view, there are other, more important lessons to be drawn from the stories.
How do you think these lessons get assimilitaded? By osmosis? No! By repeating them, in stories, in life, by example.
Miyazaki is insisting on this PRECISELY because it was an important part of japanese culture when he was growing up, and he sees the kids nowadays slacking off and whining, so he makes kick ass cartoons that drive home the traditional values he finds most important: Work ethics, ecology, spirituality...
Spirited Away is clearly made only for children. I sat there, searching for absolutely anything that would appeal to people over the age of twelve, but I found nothing besides some blood.
When you reach a mental age above that of a 15 year old, you'll find other things are interresting to people above the age of 12 than "blood".
And lo, the two shall be forever locked in conflict. The enslaved brain rebels by obeying the liver's tyrannical dictates to the letter: by consuming precisely that which causes the liver the most pain. I must drink beer. Beer is the liverkiller.
"All right brain, I don't like you, and you don't like me. But let's just do this, and I can get back to killing you with beer!" "Deal!"
There's more to it than that. Other themes I spotted: Evil is a matter of perception.
You betcha! Aku, the "name" of the character who at first says he will help her escape, but later turns out to be (deceptively) cold and mean, is a japanese homophone that can mean "to become free", or "evil" (as in Samurai Jack's intro's last line "The evil that IS... Aku!"). : )
That's not the "moral," that's the background of Japanese culture from which it's created. It may be shocking to you, but working hard and not complaining are actual values (for both genders) that are very much embodied in Japanese child-rearing. From the Japanese perspective, the moral of American media is "slack off and whine a lot."
The moral of that family-oriented japanese movie is (gasp!) in synch with the culture that spawned it? Unfuckingbelievable!
Main Entry1: moral Pronunciation: 'mor-&l, 'mär- Function: adjective Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin moralis, from mor-, mos custom 1 a : of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior
Main Entry2: moral Pronunciation: 'mor-&l, 'mär-; 3 is m&-'ral Function: noun 1 a : the moral significance or practical lesson (as of a story) b : a passage pointing out usually in conclusion the lesson to be drawn from a story 2 plural a : moral practices or teachings : modes of conduct b : ETHICS
You might as well have said "That's not a duck! It's a swimming bird (family Anatidae) in which the neck and legs are short, the body more or less depressed, and the bill broad and flat".
Slashdot Mirror
That WOULD explain it's being maleable enough to fit fingers of different sizes.
Does it explain its malevolance, slipping off fingers at the worst possible moments, or refusing to come off when it would be best if it did?
I didn't know mercury was sentient...
I, Robot certainly *was* an Adaptation, a retelling of an Asimov story on the screen. That doesn't mean it was *good*. But it's an adaptation.
There's no guarrentee or neccessity of faith to the original author. Either the director thought that the adaptation he made was worthy of film for artistic merit, or felt that he read something into the Asimov stories that wasn't explicit on paper, or the point of taking the Asimov stories and putting them on the screen wass that they'll make money when sold to a new audience. None of these are a movie-making sin.
The movie started out as "Hardwired", but then the Fox lawyers realised they were sitting on the Asimov option rights, and they were about to expire, so they glued on the copyrighted names and themes to the rampaging killbot flick once called Hardwired, and passed it off as "I, Robot", which it wasn't, neither in spirit, nor in intent. It was only I, Robot in marketing and legal use of copyright.
Every single robots story was about how the laws were flawed, and they explored the consequences of those flaws. In that sense, the film is true to the spirit of the books.
I see you are repeating the crap.
READ THE DAMN TITLE OF MY POST, moron.
Serious question.
Do you really believe adapation started with Hollywood?
Serious question: Are you always this pedantic, or are you stupid enough to infer from my post that I believed that adaptations started (or ended) with hollywood?
Asimov didn't have hundreds of evil killbots, but modern audiences don't want to watch actors talk about pedantic philosophy for three hours. That doesn't make the base of it any less Asimov's original story. It's an adaptation to the screen.
Go back and read what said, I can repeat it here for you if that's too hard for your trollish mind:
Asimov SPECIFICALLY wrote stories that were NOT rampaging hordes of killbots. He stated time and time again in his prologues and introductions that he was writing stories that were the opposite of the usual robot fair: Man makes robot, robot turns on man and goes beserk. He called it the "Frankenstein syndrome".
I, Robot was NOT an adaptation, it was the movie "Hardwired", renamed and infused with copyrighted elements that the Fox studios had bought from the Asimov estate. They then went around claiming that it was in the spirit of what Asimov wrote: That was a lie, said to maximise profit.
Bicentenial Man was an adaptation, a failed one, since they took out the character's motivation for his actions and replaced it with the usual "love conquers all" crap, but an adaptation.
X Men was an adaptation faitfull to the spirit of the original. It took stories told in comic books and adapted them to the big screen. That was allright, they were faitfull to the spirit of what they adapted, they didn't wait for the author(s) to die so they could use the recognised brand names to peddle dumbed-down banalities.
See the difference?
So it's the extended edition of the Slashdot story, huh? Not a dupe!
;-)
Hey, don't complain! You knew it was coming, you should have waited a few more months to read it instead of rushing off to get the non-extended version that came out first.
characterisations, plot development and pacing, and dialogue to a large extent are typical hollywood fare
OMG you can't POSSIBLY be complaining that they didn't keep the "realistically as slow as walking from one country to another on short hobbit legs" pacing of the books!
I think about 40% of the books were dedicated to describing how long it takes to walk from the Shire to Mordor!
Something happens, followed by 20 pages of description of walking, then they see Gollum a bit, 12 pages of walking, etc.
All the subtley of the novels were not translated to screen.
That isn't specific to LOTR, no movie has EVER translated all the subtleties of a book! How could it? They have only 2 (or 3) hours to sum up hundreds of pages of text!
Never expect an adaptation to keep the subtleties: It is impossible. The best they can do is stay faithfull to the spirit.
Whereas some movie adaptations of great novels do suck (Lynch's Dune)
It doesn't suck if your attention span is greater than that of a gnat.
Almost every fantasy story since has been a rewrite of Tolkien's work...
I find his use of lengthy appendices and created languages fatuous and self-congratulatory.
they just say its "updated". Least they admit its a dupe
Now includes comparison of the extra special edition DVD footage, which wasn't there to be nitpicked a year ago.
Douglas Adams was still alive when they started making the movie version of his books, and he happily accepted changes
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Really not!
He rewrote the screen adaptation many times, never finding a balance between his genius and the hollywood lowest-common-denominator dogma, and wrote one last draft that he believed was the best compromise.
He then died, and the studio REWROTE the script, AGAIN, probably to re-insert the stupid changes he fought against.
Do NOT let yourself be fooled when the vultures say he would have liked it. It is their contractual obligation to bullshit us and hype the project as much as they can. When they say it's going to be good, ask yourself: Is it in their financial best interest to lie to us about the quality of the product? Does this person stand to make MILLIONS from those lil' white lies?
Look at the EarthSea thing that happened recently, the producers made a comment that the author really wanted to say what their bastard monstrosity says, forgetting that she's alive and able to tell the world otherwise. She was able to defend herself and her original works from the slander it was subjected to, but Asimov can't, Adams can't, Roddenberry can't...
Look at the hype for Will Smith'S I, Robot! The fresh prince was actually saying in interviews that is was very faithfull to the spirit of Asimov's robot stories, and then he explains "everyone on earth trusts the robots, but my character is the only one that suspects the truth: they are up to no good", followed by rampaging hordes of killbots. That is the OPPOSITE of Asimov's stories! Only the USRobots people trusted their creation, the mundane people of earth didn't trust 'em one bit! They had laws forcing them to be manually operated, and to not be within a certain distance of schools, etc! And not only that, but the whole "robots are not to be trusted and will turn on their masters" is exactly the precise sort of stories that Asimov did NOT write. He made up the 3 laws to get away from that frankenstein crap, dammit!
Enjoying a movie for what it is is fine, really. But you can do it without the delusion that they are faithfull to the spirit of the original when they are virtually raping the author's corpse.
Here's a tip: If you hear of a movie being made that is based on a book, and you haven't yet read that book, wait until you've seen the movie, then read the book. The book is always better, so this way you get to like the movie, then love the book. If you read the book first, you like the book, then hate the movie.
Movie, like. Then: Book, love.
The other way only leads to disapointment.
Merry XMas to all!!! :)
Joyeux Noël!
Good concept, bad execution.
Ah well, back to our regularly scheduled games and gore and profanity on moday, I guess Child's Play has been monopolising their attention.
...anti-Bush folks... For such a "creative" bunch, you have become absolutely boring and predictable. (Score:2, Insightful)
Dammit, must EVERY thread have the political trolls modded up?
That makes so angry! I could just crush my keyboar...waitaminute...
to strike one's computer in anger.
Anger is irrational.
I worked at this little computer store in rural Louisiana. After a couple of years, we ended up with about 14 dead MGA/CGA/EGA monitors and decided to have some fun.
The monitors were all loaded up into a truck and taken out into the swamps, and set up on 55-gallon drums. Myself and three other people then proceeded to blow the fuck out of them with a number of weapons
Quite fun.:-)
Quite Toxic
But why recycle what you can shoot?
Your hopes are well founded. He can act quite well, and I for one was happy to see he got the role. It's a sad loss for anyone who can't see past the color of his skin.
Well, they have new characters, which aren't black, it's just plain weird of them to take a character that has already been seen and to change his appearance.
Not that being weird isn't ok in a HHGTTG movie : )
You ever think that maybe they cast him because they felt he'd do a good job in the role? And calling Mos Def
Don't kid yourself, he's the required Token Black Guy.
I don't really approve of having actors that look nothing like the character's past known appearance, but in the good ol' Land of the Free (tm), if you don't have a prominent black character, your movie is labelled racist and you get lots of angry people protesting it.
What I want to know is: Is this movie starting in england, or in the U.S.A.?
If it's the latter, the character's name should be Ford Escort. If it's in the states and he's named Prefect, I take this as the travesty, not the fact that he's black.
P.S. I don't know who Mos is, I looked at his website, nothing rings a bell. Maybe he's a good actor (I hope).
P.P.S. I hate the racist right, and I hate the racist left, but I hate unecessary changes to a story made by marketing people even more.
I'm seeing a theme here, and it isn't gender specific.
I said "girls" because he usually has a girl as the main character. Of course "don't bitch, just do it" applies to everyone, not just girls, not just kids.
it's not the lesson to be drawn
Why would there be a legal limit of ONE moral per movie?
Since in their culture these values are nothing unusual, from their point of view, there are other, more important lessons to be drawn from the stories.
How do you think these lessons get assimilitaded? By osmosis? No! By repeating them, in stories, in life, by example.
Miyazaki is insisting on this PRECISELY because it was an important part of japanese culture when he was growing up, and he sees the kids nowadays slacking off and whining, so he makes kick ass cartoons that drive home the traditional values he finds most important: Work ethics, ecology, spirituality...
You've got his number
;-)
I check his previous posts, I was off by 2 years actually... but I said "mental" age
name is Haku
Huh... must have gotten away with the Samurai Jack similarity.
Spirited Away is clearly made only for children. I sat there, searching for absolutely anything that would appeal to people over the age of twelve, but I found nothing besides some blood.
When you reach a mental age above that of a 15 year old, you'll find other things are interresting to people above the age of 12 than "blood".
And lo, the two shall be forever locked in conflict. The enslaved brain rebels by obeying the liver's tyrannical dictates to the letter: by consuming precisely that which causes the liver the most pain.
I must drink beer. Beer is the liverkiller.
"All right brain, I don't like you, and you don't like me. But let's just do this, and I can get back to killing you with beer!"
"Deal!"
There's more to it than that. Other themes I spotted: Evil is a matter of perception.
You betcha!
Aku, the "name" of the character who at first says he will help her escape, but later turns out to be (deceptively) cold and mean, is a japanese homophone that can mean "to become free", or "evil" (as in Samurai Jack's intro's last line "The evil that IS... Aku!").
: )
That's not the "moral," that's the background of Japanese culture from which it's created. It may be shocking to you, but working hard and not complaining are actual values (for both genders) that are very much embodied in Japanese child-rearing.
From the Japanese perspective, the moral of American media is "slack off and whine a lot."
The moral of that family-oriented japanese movie is (gasp!) in synch with the culture that spawned it? Unfuckingbelievable!
Main Entry1: moral
Pronunciation: 'mor-&l, 'mär-
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin moralis, from mor-, mos custom
1 a : of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior
Main Entry2: moral
Pronunciation: 'mor-&l, 'mär-; 3 is m&-'ral
Function: noun
1 a : the moral significance or practical lesson (as of a story) b : a passage pointing out usually in conclusion the lesson to be drawn from a story
2 plural a : moral practices or teachings : modes of conduct b : ETHICS
You might as well have said "That's not a duck! It's a swimming bird (family Anatidae) in which the neck and legs are short, the body more or less depressed, and the bill broad and flat".