Indiana Jones IV in the making!

[L233]

And before somebody goes, "TOTAL RECALL! BEST MOVIE EVER!", I will reply with "Everything Paul Verhoeven makes is trash." Well, Peter Weller is pretty good (anyone who's seen the short-lived Odyssey 5 can agree with that), but Total Recall. Man. What an ugly movie, what a stupid movie, and how unsatisfying in every regard.

TOTAL RECALL IS TEH BEST!!1
Running Man is a close second.

Btw., am I the only one who thinks that Terminator is a much better movie than Terminator 2?

And Starship Troopers--you know, the book is stupid, but it's ridiculously entertaining. The movie got rid of the best parts of the book (powered armor, no weapons except flamethrowers, grenades, and nuclear rockets, stuff blowing up REAAAAAL good, no romance to distract from stuff blowing up real good, etc.) and threw it out. Oh well, such is life.

The book ranks among the most boring SciFi novels I have ever read. The way how Heinlein uses his characters as vessels for his immature philisiophical rants makes me cringe. Verhoeven took this crypto-fascist claptrap and turned it into a highly entertaining satire. Starship Troopers is, in my opinion, one of Verhoeven best works.

 

[StefanS]

Well, an ass I don't know. But as for recent times I'd sure rather trust Spielberg over Lucas for judging scripts, for sure!

Apropos movies in development, did you all know that Far Cry(as in the game) is in development for a motion picture already?

*shudders at the thought of Lucas writing the script and taking down the Star Wars road

He might reveal something about Indiana Jones currently unknown. E.g.:

1. Indiana Jones is not son of Henry Jones sen., but was conceived by medi-chlori-whatever.
2. Adolf Hitler is Indy's long lost twin brother including the almost obligatory "I am your brother, Indy" "NOOOOO" dialogue

Seriously everything Lucas has touched nowadays turns into dung at best.

 

[Mariner]

Somebody needs to make a Snow Crash or Diamond Age movie. Except, if they made a Snow Crash movie, Vin Diesel would play Hiro Protagonist. *shudder*

The problem here is that although these are two very good books it would be extremely difficult to make them into a successful movie. The average audience wouldn't have a clue about what was happening and would surely complain that there weren't enough explosions!

If either of these were to be made into a film, it would have to be Terry Gilliam doing the directing, I reckon.

I read a fair bit of science fiction and it still amazes me how poor most of the SF films are. For some reason, although the studios are willing to spend hundreds of millions on special effects, they only seem to be willing to spend about 50 pence on the scripts and storylines. Lost in Space (cringe) and The Phantom Menace (shudder), are examples of this.

How about a movie based on an Iain M. Banks book, such as "The Player of Games", eh?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

How about a movie based on an Iain M. Banks book, such as "The Player of Games", eh?

Most of the great SF books would be very difficult to make into good films without needed some very long movies, and Hollywood would probably screw up the things that make the books great.

However if you could stay true to the books and make some long (or multiple ) films, there are some books like "Ringworld", "Consider Phleabas" or "Mindstar Rising" that would make good movies because they have a very film-friendly style and narrative. Other books such as "Neuromancer", "Only Forwards", or "Snow Crash" couldn't be done very easily because of their more complex structure, or the way they cover the material. For instance, I've never seen a film/TV representation of cyberspace that conveys a fraction of what a book does about what is actually happening and why.

Even if you look at one of the few successes, the Lord of The Rings, that took years of work, hundreds of millions of dollars, the extended versions (the theatrical ones have too many rough edges) take 9-12 hours of screen time, and they *still* had to chop out huge chunks of the book in order to make it fit a simplified story. Can you imagine what a bastardisation a "Night's Dawn" or "Neuromancer" trilogy would turn out like?

Ultimately, the problem is that Hollywood wants to make 90 minutes of something that is easy to understand and can be sold to the masses. Most of the great SF books that we want to see as movies would need more than 90 minutes, and involve the audience thinking and understanding things they might never have considered before.

 

[Tim Murray]

yeah, there's no way you could get a movie based on a Stephenson or Gibson book to be comparable in any way, shape, or form to the book. it would have to be "based on," not a literal film version of the book.

and Starship Troopers--you have to IGNORE the philosophical stuff. if you take it seriously, it's infuriating and ridiculous. but you can read it and laugh at it, and that's much more fun.

Plus, I hate Casper van Dien. You know, Mr. Omega Code (along with... Michael Ironside?).

but anyway, speaking of bad movies--RoboCop 3. it has so much violence it disgusted me. me, Mister I Love Dawn Of The Dead As Much As Almost Any Other Movie. crazy.

 

[Mariner]

Yep - to be fair, I was (moderately) impressed with Minority Report which was well-produced and pretty coherent all around. Certainly one heck of a lot better than The Matrix 2 & 3, for example.

Personally, I'm surprised that nothing has ever been made set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Some of the fiction set in this milieu is pretty good (books by Ian Watson, for example) and it has a dark and gritty feel whilst retaining the opportunity to use a relatively simple good vs evil story. Heck - they could even reuse the make-up for Orcs from LOTR!

Ultimately, I suppose it is asking too much for many good SF films. Just think of how few good films exist in any genre - I often go down to the video shop and can't find a single film worth watching.

 

[Tim Murray]

A. Minority Report rocked, but it wasn't a sci-fi movie. Old-fashioned detective movie, and a great one at that.

B. Matrix 2 and 3--I don't even know if they're sci-fi. I don't know what they are. Matrix 3 was the best movie I've ever seen in a theater though, by far. Yes, it was quite a bit better than Matrix 1. I don't know what people expected--everybody thought Matrix 1 was the best thing ever just because it was a new idea, and of course they couldn't do that with Matrix 3. But just the visual stuff... holy crap.

But I digress. WH40K would be an absolutely insane movie, but there's no way they could do it without the whole thing being exposition ("Chaos? Space Marnies? Emperor? GAWHA?!").

Too bad Kubrick's dead. AI would have been a lot better had he made it.

 

[Mariner]

Thinking about WH40K stuff, I just remembered the Lynch version of Dune. The visual design of that film was excellent - very dark and brooding and exactly what I'd expect for WH40K. What's a Space Marnie, by the way?

I also think Kubrick could have had a good go at some more serious SF stuff - Excession by IMB perhaps although maybe that's too close to 2001. I must say I doubt that a film such as 2001 would be made in the current climate. The only serious SF film I've seen recently was Solaris which was nothing special and this, of course, was a remake of a European film anyway!

I've certainly got nothing against more 'tacky' SF films if well produced. I quite enjoyed Pitch Black, for example.

Just to be slightly controversial, I thought the last two Matrix films were pretty crap, sacrificing anything resembling a coherent storyline with mystical mumbo-jumbo. My favourite part of the third film (well, it made me laugh most) was during the battle to save Zion. Time to reload the guns? Bring on the wheelbarrows of doom! They are obviously so advanced in the future.