Way back in 1991 or so, I read in the Wall St. Journal that this classic Sci-fi novel was being turned into a movie. They were filming in Russia.
Since then I have heard nothing.
Does anybody know anything at all about his? Could you provide a link?
I’m desperate to know if this favorite novel of mine will ever make it to film.
Hmm, was that the one with jaunting and PYre or however it was capitalized? It could make an interesting movie, but they’d have a hard time handling all the background. For more info, we’ll probably have to wait for Cervaise.
Yup, that’s the one. Can’t see how it could be made into a movie without destroying the story.
That hasn’t stopped Hollywood yet, unfortunately.
Hey, they did a film of Dune without any background, and they made a movie of Starship Troopers without any intelligence or insight.
Both films sucked royally, and I cannot hope for more from a Bester adaptation.
::very small voice::
i kinda liked starship troopers,
I agree whoeheartedly about the dismal effort in making Dune into a movie. The virtual world of Dune is just too vast to be ever compressed into a standard movie. Too much of the subtle detail would be glossed over, and there would be no easy way to explain all the Arabian-like terminology which is an essential part of the magic.
I recently re-read the original Dune novel (I have all of the series) and I found myself going to the glossary time and again for exact definitions of those words. You simply cannot provide a glossary in a movie.
Ever see a movie which sucked, but could have been great? You find yourself saying, “If I’d done this movie, I would have…”.
For example, Starship Troopers. I would have given the troopers the powered armor of the book, and toned down the “militarism = fascism” rant.
Just an FYI for all the Dunies out there - a 6-hour miniseries of Dune is currently in post-production, and will be shown on the Sci-Fi channel in December. For info and pix, go to http://www.scifi.com/dune/
IMHO, the pictures at least look better than the Lynch stuff. The 6-hour format is much better for the scope of the book, and I understand they are trying to keep close to the story and feel of the original.
Don’t even get me started on Tri-Star Troopers. The tragedy is that now, nobody will ever make a movie of the Heinlein classic, becuase they’ll think it’s been done. Dune, I’m just now reading for the first time, and I have no clue how they managed to even approximate fitting all that complexity onto the screen.
Some books do make good (if less detailed) movies… Jurassic Park and The Princess Bride come to mind. I’ve no clue how well The Stars my Destination will work, though. It does have a lot of background, but then again, it’s a novella, not a full-length novel, so they won’t have to cut as much to make it fit. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
Although this is quickly becoming a thread likely to find itself in IMHO, I’d just like to point out the militarism/fascism thing was what Verhoeven’s verion of Starship Troopers was about. I won’t argue that it wasn’t totally faithful to the book, but it was a brilliant exercise in ridiculing America’s brainless monoculture and the shadow of fascism at the heart of extreme American “patriotism”/nationalism.
It was a mean, nasty film that had nothing nice to say about American culture, but what it said was still worth saying. Personally I think what made it a brilliant movie, rather than just a good movie, was that it so gleefully ridiculed American culture, rather than simply, seriously pointing out its flaws.
It was an evil hoot.
(I should also point out that Heinlein’s own body of work reflects, at best, uneven politics; for every anti-communist allegory like Puppet Masters there was a crypto-fascist anthem like Starship Troopers.)
It is possible to make extremely good adaptations of very complex works; LA Confidential leaps to mind. There are at least six plots in the novel, only about three in the movie, but it’s still a great adaptation. The author, James Ellroy, has said that he was stunned at how well the filmmakers adapted his novel.
I doubt, however, that a similar “boiling down” could successfully be performed on Dune.
In what way is this uneen? Now, if you want to argue that Heinlein’s benevolent fascism was contradictory to his beloved independent hero archetype then I might be more inclined to listen.
The tragedy of Starship Troopers: the Cartoon was not that it included Heinlein’s political ideas but that it reduced them to the absurd. It was a shallow treatment of a book that deserved better, whether you accept the political thesis or not.
The movie failed to live up to the book on many other levels as well, but the caricature of the novel’s political philosophy was the most egregious.
DVious Means:
They DID provide a glossary for the movie Dune!
I went to a first-run theater to see it. Lo and behold, everybody got a sheet with the weird terms defined on it. It was double–sided. I didn’t need it, because 'd read and re-read the originl books, but I had to wonder what the newbies in the audience made of it all.
Even more interesting was the movie with FOOTNOTES! This was “Executive Action” – sort of “JFK” done a quarter of a century earlier. hey handed out an entire NEWSPAPER of reference material coded to the movie.
I agree about the reduction, but not about the tragedy. And I agree that Verhoeven only took the book as a starting point for his own work; it was not an adaptation. He kind of “sampled” parts of the book and came up with something that was pretty much entirely his own. Personally, I’d like to see a faithful adaptation of the book, too, but I still loved Verhoeven’s movie.
Again, I agree that Verhoeven’s movie was, at best, a caricature of Heinlein’s book. But ultimately the movie stands on its own as a statement about modern American Society. This was not the message of Heinlein’s book, but frankly I think the world is richer for having both works. And personally, as far as “living up,” and this is obviously nothing more than my own opinion, Verhoeven’s movie has a great deal more to say than Heinlein’s book and is more valuable to me for having said it. YMMV.
Again, I agree that Verhoeven’s movie was, at best, a caricature of Heinlein’s book. But ultimately the movie stands on its own as a statement about modern American Society. This was not the message of Heinlein’s book, but frankly I think the world is richer for having both works. And personally, as far as “living up,” and this is obviously nothing more than my own opinion, Verhoeven’s movie has a great deal more to say than Heinlein’s book and is more valuable to me for having said it. YMMV. **
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I’m not a big fan of Heinlein, though I like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and saw ST solely because Verhoeven was the director. I did read the book afterwards and I have to back lissner on his assessment. The adaption is not faithful, but IMHO superior to the book.
I find it curious that many American moviegoers I’ve talked with do not seem to grasp that the movie is a satire. Have I been talking to too many literal Heinlein-fans?
TSMD AND The Demolished Man are great books, but I dread the day they are butchered for the silver screen.
That’s a common misconception over here; European critics understood that Verhoeven was ridiculing American culture, but most American critics did not. (Odd, considering that two of his other films Robocop and Showgirls were so blatantly doing the same thing. And all of his American films do so to some degree.)
I agree. Although interestingly enough, TSMD has already been adapted: as a novel. Russell Hoban’s most recent novel Fremder is another take on roughly the same situation. (From a reader’s review at Amazon: “[Fremder] takes place in the year 2052 when a man survives the destruction of his spaceship and tumbles through space without a spacesuit, landing safely. He doesn’t know why he survived but lots of people would like to find out.”) It’s Hoban’s second SF novel (his first was 1979’s Riddley Walker, my favorite novel of the last 50 years. As you can see from my sig, Hoban’s my favorite living author.
There is a good reason why Starship Troopers is so unfaithful to the book - it started out as a totally unrelated movie. It was supposed to be a satire of military sci-fi like Aliens and the original title was simply ‘Bug Hunt’. Someone read the script, said 'This kinda reminds me of ‘Starship Troopers’, and somebody got the bright idea to buy the book rights, change some character names, and throw in a bit of Heinlein political philosophy.
I was expecting to hate the film because I loved the book and knew ahead of time how unfaithful it was, but I actually enjoyed it a great deal by forcing myself to forget the name and to accept it for what it was.
No argument on this point.
As to ST: I understood the satirical elements but thought they were poorly realized as a whole (though I thought his skewering of the media treatment of war was hilariously on target). I disagree that the movie is superior to the book, though. I thought the trivialization of the political issues undermined a large part of the satire and the action “core” failed to maintain sufficient tension and/or emotional engagement to support the satire. Robocop is a more successful example of Verhoeven’s work, and Showgirls is a more egregious example.
Sometimes a movie sucks even if it is intended as satire.
No disagreement here. And no disagreement that Robocop was better, but (and this will no doubt discredit me for most people reading) Showgirls is my new favorite movie! Its theme, vintage Verhoeven, might be clumsily phrased as: “In order to survive in a sea of human garbage you have to become a bigger monster than any of them.” (Very clumsily.) The first time I saw it, I hated it like the rest of you. Then I read somewhere that the great French director Jaques Rivette referred to it somewhere as Verhoeven’s best movie. So I rented it again out of curiosity. Hateful, mean, vicious movie, but a hilarious skewering of the mercenary whorishness at the center of American economic practices. Personally I’m convinced that in like 20 years Verhoeven’s work is going to be reconsidered and he’ll be seen the the genius that he is! Needless to say, like Hitchcock’s and Sirk’s, the reconsideration will not begin in America; probably France. But then there’s always the troublesome Jerry Lewis thing . . .