I think it should be directed by Paul Verhoeven.
Can you imagine the trainwreck *that * film review thread would become?
A grand Total of 10 people would see it.
Seriously, given what makes it to the movies these days… anything that has a smackering of intelect would not last long.
At the very least. the language would have to be updated.
You have a truly evil mind, Balle
…and beat me to posting it! 
Nawww. He’d cut out the Scouring of Paradise.
As Satan: Ned Flanders.
I agree with HumbleServant: Paradise Lost simply could not be made into a movie. If anything, I think it could possibly be done as a play that could be staged in many different ways, but there are a couple of reasons why the film wouldn’t work:
- PL is magnificent and exceptional for its use of language as much as for its religious significance.
- PL’s relevance is largely due to the way it affected historical perceptions of religion.
- People are too straight-and-narrow as far as they see religion, and the conflicting ideas of PL are far too contradictory to be accepted by moviegoers. (Satan as supreme evil and the possibility that he is a sympathetic hero, Fate vs. Free Will, God’s presence and absence)
- Milton’s absolutely brilliant imagery works in words and in minds, but would be absolutely horrific if translated into CGI–it would seem silly or (worse?) fantasy-like.
Paradise Lost is a poem first and foremost. Secondly, it is a religious text. It is also an important political apology.
That said, the characterizations are so incredibly thorough and real that even I would be interested in seeing PL in film IF the filmmaker took advantage of the multiple possibilities of the story and characters and made the film(s) as a series–not Book by Book, as to be expected, but from different points of view. One film would show exactly how wonderfully manipulative and evil Satan is, while another would show him as, yes, evil, but also just and right and in conflict with God–but justified. Paradise Lost makes a case for both. Different actors would have to play the same roles in the different movies. God would have to be written in in a way such that He would be insinuated, and never seen or heard, or everything would (pardon the pun) go to hell.
And all of that said, the final scene–Adam and Eve walking out of the Garden of Eden, holding hands–has to be filmed someday in an appropriate tone that is both hopeless and hopeful.
I think a lot of movies and books have taken the Adam and Eve creation myth and run with it, basing characters on their flaws and innate, tragic goodness. But any subsequent depiction of Satan after Paradise Lost has been lacking–and the cold-yet-inarguably-Good depiction of God from PL has never been matched. People don’t want that these days. Americans still have residual Puritan mindsets, but we don’t want our God to be anything but loving and compassionate. To real Puritans (which Milton was), God is compassionate only in that He is right. He’s not a sweetheart–in fact, he is less sympathetic than Satan–but that’s his strength, whereas it’s Satan’s weakness.
Try to capture that on film in 120 minutes. Go on. I dare you.
Heh. That would be justifying Satan’s ways to man.
Here’s a point nobody has brought up yet: Who should play God? George Burns is dead, Richard Pryor is sick, and neither Morgan Freeman nor Alanis Morisette is quite right for the part in this version . . .
Ian McKellan
Ian Holms
Christopher Lee
Christopher Plummer
basically- any authoritative old guy
Oh, I disagree. As **Humble Servant ** and **Papierboi ** have pointed out, God in Paradise Lose is omnipotent and righteous. It’s not really easy to dramatize those characteristics in real time. The God chapters of the poem are (IMO) boring and cringe-inducing, in turns.
If I were making this movie, I would cut the God bits right out. If Milton couldn’t make God sympathetic, no filmmaker and no actor alive can do it. Nope, in my conception of the movie, we only see God through Satan’s words and actions.
I’m afraid I’d also have to cut out the confrontation at the Gates of Hell, between Satan and Sin. My favorite part of the book, but I think it would be unwachable cinema.
Here’s a question: a suitably fresh, juicy, young, naked actress to play Eve. Innocent but temptable. Any thoughts?
Mary Pickford?
The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair,
But ended foul in many a scaly fold,
Voluminous and vast–a serpent armed
With mortal sting. About her middle round
A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still barked and howled
Within unseen.
Yeah, I don’t think I really wanna watch that, no matter how cool the CGI.
I made a mistake before when I said Byron was infamous for saying Satan was the hero of the poem–I meant Shelley. Can’t tell your drunk-on-emotion hedonistic romantics without a scorecard.
You’d need to get around the death-knell of “classic work” by calling it something like, “Dawn of the Damned” …
Michelle Trachtenberg?
Gonzo as Satan. And Kermit and Piggy as Adam and Eve, of course. This could really work.