Ah yes, “Stupid Evil.” Isn’t Evil much more threatening when it wants to do something more substantive than just eating the heads of the protagonists?
Actually, that is a general criticism of much of the horror genre (big screen). When you are faced with an obviously evil if not terrifying character, but it quickly becomes obvious that they are after something more significant than merely sucking you soul away (while still being very cryptic about what it is, exactly), that’s much more horrifying, right? But all too often horror movies pull their punches in this way. Mundane Evil = Boring Evil.
I hate these kinds of threads, because my brain doesn’t work very well trying to dredge up lists of specific items from specific categories. Other than my general complaint above no specific single film (or series) comes to mind. I guess I could rag on The Wizard of Oz for copping out at the end with no Ruby Slippers on Kansas Dorothy (“It was all a dream”), but that’s for the Copout thread, not here, which is more about scripts with promise which were pretty much DOA after editing.
Michael Mann’s vastly under-rated The Keep offered a much more interesting take on a similar idea: a platoon of Nazi soldiers who hold prisoner an elderly Jewish professor and his daughter occupy a Romanian castle, until it becomes evident that this titular Keep was built to hold something in rather than keep invaders out, as something wakes and starts killing soldiers. However, instead of going down the “monster disembowels Nazis” route, the film becomes much more interesting as the demon begins tempting people: he offers the Jewish professor the chance to end the Holocaust in exchange for his soul… what would you do? What would you do?
Personally, I thought TNG generally handled the Borg pretty well. It was the other series’ (Well, just Voyager.) that increasingly mucked 'em up. I couldn’t tell if the writers didn’t really understand what the “collective consciousness” concept was, if they thought the audience didn’t or wouldn’t, or if they simply out and out decided to change the premise of the species.
Heck, I remember one line in the final season of TNG where they actually made a point of referring to the Borg in the singular (“The Borg is everywhere!”) in a throwaway line. I think the Voyager team saw them more like one of those comedy stories where two guys are hillariously stuck together by accident.
I’ll second AvP. Would anyone honestly have cared if they had made it without any human dialogue whatsoever? If you’re not going to have Space Marines, just have aliens and predators duke it out for 90 minutes. They took a great fictional future universe and completely discarded it in favor of a time setting that I guess audiences were supposed to be better able to relate to.
I find The Ninth Gate to be a frustrating movie. One of the rare movies that could have used more special effects.
Alas that film has been tied up in knots (shorthand for various conflicts of interest) for so long that the chances of a DVD release currently seem very remote.
I half agree with the OP. When I first read the blurb to “Scarecrow” it sent shivers down my spine. The idea of an international bounty hunt targeting the world’s best soldiers really appealed to me. But it wasn’t up to the standard of his other books in some ways. For one, the reason behind the hunt isn’t great. Also, the bad guys go for overkill - targeting 1 US city and 1 EU city would have done the job.
But it was better than a lot of other books of that style. I liked Killian as a villain - truly psychotic, with quite a romantic view on the dark side of humanity, IMO (if that makes sense). His plan to nuke Mecca, with an Israeli missile tipped with a US warhead, that too sent shivers down my spine. And we see Scarecrow reach a whole new level of dangerous - don’t piss that guy off.
And Knight is pretty cool. I hope he gets his own stories, or at least reappears in others.
On a PBS interview, many years ago, I head that PKD only had real editors for two of his books. One was The Man In The High Castle, his excellent “alternate history.” I’ve forgotten the other.
But he was working in the SF ghetto, back when publishers rarely bothered with the expense.
Yup, I’m currently slogging through The Scourge of God. Luckily, I slog quickly!
But Stirling shines elsewhere. The Island in the Sea of Time trilogy moves more quickly, so the well-constructed alt.history distracts from the depth-free characters. His *Lords of *Creation books and The Peshawar Lancers really left me wanting more. So I won’t give up on him yet.
Stephen King’s Rose Madder would have worked much better as a straight story without all the science fiction horror crap. When Norman showed up to kill Rose, she could have just kicked the crap out of him, whereupon he leaves and gets hit by the Daughters & Sisters van coming back from the outing. He ends up a real parapalygic. Rose & Bill go on to live happily ever after.
Didn’t Red Dwarf do a parody of this? Lister and Rimmer think they’ve returned to Earth and found the perfect niches for themselves, only to discover that it’s an addictive VR game called Better Than Life?
Tell me if you agree or disagree with this: the main premise behind 2000AD and Judge Dredd is that the human race screwed up so badly that God himself finally said “screw you”. The protagonists of the stories live in a literally God-forsaken Hell-universe which is absurdly inimical to humanity. Survival is only possible due to the Judges being as inhumanly merciless as the world they live in. To translate this into a movie would require someone who’s a genius at making the blackest of black comedies.
I don’t think even Phil Dick’s staunchest defenders (I am one) would claim he was a great stylist. He makes up for stylistic flaws with wierd plots, a singular vision, and a great sad and deep humanism. Also, in his better books, his style and characterizations have a quirky tone that serves his ideas well.
The plots in Neal Stephenson are secondary to the digressions, which I find highly entertaining but YMMV. But you have to expect that his books will stop, rather than end. He’s like Pynchon, if Pynchon actually cared about communicating with his readers.
ETA: Open your eyes is the movie Vanilla Sky was based on. I liked it. I never saw VS so I can’t say which one is better IMO. Penelope Cruz is in both movies.
Totally agree. I loved that book until all the crap started with the painting in her room. It could have been such a strong woman-centred, triumph over tragedy style book like Dolores Claiborne, and the supernatural element spoiled it quite a bit.
You might like The Peace War, by Vernor Vinge, collected in an omnibus volume with its sequels called Across Realtime. The situation isn’t quite “no electricity”, but rather “no high power density”, which severely limits its use. The novel skips past the initial breakdown of society and picks up decades later in the aftermath.
Absolutely right about Idiocracy. I also think that while Underworld was exceedingly mindless, the idea of a vampire-werewolf conflict has potential if the vampires are characterized as “refined” and “civilized” (they often pose as aristocracy, right?) and werewolves are pure animal savagery, letting the beast in them come out.
I would have liked better Underworld if the romance happened between a Vampire and a Werewolf. Two warriors who are supposed to kill each other and all that.
The pairing Vampire - Crazy Hybrid thingie is a lot less star struck.