Discuss…
Brian
Good book series. If they film it, odds are it’ll be awful.
Look what they did to Riverworld and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Apparently the powers that be assume that people can’t understand complex ideas, so they dumb it down. And they won’t watch a long movie unless at least some characters – preferably the main ones – are American.
Admittedly, the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies were well done, and avoided this, but they were flukes. The Hyperion series, even if you only do the first two books, is long and complex. It seems highly unlikely that they would do it justice.
Some of the best science fiction I’ve ever read, but I can’t even see how to film it. It’s just too complex, and a lot of plot developments take forever… i.e. the priest who ends up in the jungle.
Somebody help me out here: Leonardo DiCaprio… I’ve never actually seen the guy act. I mean it sounds bad to me, very bad, but maybe I’m being unfair?
[spoiler]Wow, looks like they’re doing a trilogy of movies, like LotR, and Dan Simmons himself is plotting out how they can condense all 4 books into the 3 movies by making the 2 main characters from the 2 Endymion books the stars of the whole series.
I’m thinking the 1st movie would have to kind of mirror the 1st book (Hyperion) in having the pilgrims tell their respective stories. That would involve Aenea’s age regression.
The 2nd book (Fall of Hyperion) has the web collapsing, making FTL travel between planets impossible. The 3rd book (Endymion) takes place centuries later with a new version of FTL that involves resurrecting the passengers that die from the rigors of space travel, thus establishing the church’s dominance of the galaxy. I can’t see that happening in the 2nd movie.
I don’t know how “Scorsese” is going to be able to work in Simmons’ massive poetic references, unless that gets gutted from the script. Audiences accustomed to seeing explosions and CGI effects in scifi movies may not appreciate Keates too much.
One thing I’m a little worried about is that the Shrike battling the androids from the future would resemble the Terminator movies a little too much…the obsolete death machine versus the newer better versions.
I just don’t see this becoming a blockbuster like Hollywood typically shoots for. The Hyperion series may be masterpieces, but they’re not classics everyone’s familiar with like LotR.[/spoiler]Added spoiler tags - CF
I find it interesting that the 1st screenplay was faithful to the books (but unfilmable), and then the author is the one suggesting changing things around to make it work on screen.
I’m guessing that is very atypical.
Brian
Knowed Out, please use the spoiler tags when posting vital information about books and such!
From the AICN article:
You know, based on this, I don’t think we have to assume that the “major star” is Leonardo DiCaprio. It could just as well be Daniel Day-Lewis, who may not be quite as “major” and Leo, but is still a pretty heavy gun. He was in that movie about gangs, too, you know, and put in a pretty noteworthy performance.
That said, with Simmons having some input on a Hyperion film series, it could actually be pretty good. I’ll definitely see it.
And, a slightly OT rant… Simmons was in Seattle recently? DAMMIT! That’s twice in two weeks I’ve missed out on seeing some of my favorite people; Suzanne Vega was supposedly at our Seattle Borders a couple weeks ago, and now Simmons was at the damned University Bookstore, only a few miles from where I work every day! AGGGGH!
I really need to pay more attention to these things…
Or, now that I think about it a little more, Cameron Diaz is a possibility too. Duh. 
Oh God, I am already sad. The first two book in the series were fantastic, while the third was average and the last was lame.
But a film? No, please. And certianly not with the director and actors being discussed!
NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
nyah nyah nyah (puts fingers in ears) I’m not listening! nyah nyah nyah
I have no idea how an epic like Hyperion could be translated into a movie without ruining it and somehow I doubt that the project will ever get done.
Having said that, I find the thought of Scorsese doing a Science Fiction movie cool beyond belief.
I absolutely loved these books. I hope the flicks turn out good, but no matter how bad they are they won’t “ruin” the books.
I’m not sure Endymion and that execrable piece of crap The Rise of Endymion would be attractive to movie producers. While the series charts a fictional Roman Catholic Church hundreds of years in the future, it’s obvious that Simmons has a lot of contempt for the Catholic Church here and now. Since that bias is an inherent part of the plot, there’s no way to film those books in a way pleasing to many audiences even with extensive retooling.
UnuMondo
May I state for the record:
I read these books a while back and I still have no idea what the hell happened.Maybe I was just too young, but it was a confusing mishmash of random images and scenes with no beginning or end. Therefore, to mimick the book, they just need to cut and paste from FLCL and add CGI spiky monster and fields of space wheat.
Hmm so allow me to sum up by saying:
- The books are best thing that happened to sci fi since Forever War
- How the hell are they gonna make a movie of them? It would have to be 4 movies 5 hours long each and each with an nc17 rating for violence.
Conclusion: Its gonna suck
Oh good lord. I’ll withhold comment just in case this is another Lord of the Rings type fluke, but brrrrr.
And on that note, I might just have to start rereading the series.