Movie Adaptations of Philip K. Dick stories

Cafe Society
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Howdy, y’all. I’m a P.K. Dickhead, too. Just a little late getting to this thread.

While the movies in the OP can be said to be based on Dick’s stories, they sure don’t cut it as * film adaptations* of them, imho.

But, I have enjoyed them.

I especialy the way Rutger Hauer’s character was done in Blade Runner. Wonderful!

Actually, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep had so much going on it, that I thought Blade Runner improved on the story by lifting only what was needed for the film.

Total Recall? I didn’t know for quite a while that it was supposed to be based on We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. I just thought about how few original ideas there must be left.

Oh well. I’m sure I’ll be seeing Paycheck.

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Yeap, but I prefer ignore that issue, focussing in his times of a pulp writer (or what remained in him of it), times where he was at least plot-consistent.

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  1. I’ve always said that, although the beginning of Total Recall does indeed use some of the material from WCRIFYW, the bulk of the film fells an awful lot like Robert Sheckley’s The Status Civilization (Mutant Town; mutants with paranormal abilities; mutants who can tell you who you used to be; lots of gunplay, etc.)
    SPOILER!
  2. Someone has pinted out that Dick’s Second Variety actually gives you the “flashback” (“flash forward?”) section from the movie Terminator. Although Harlan Elliso sued over what he claimed was he theft of his ideas (from the Outer Limits episodes "Demon with a Glass Hand"and “Soldier”), neither of those featured a human=shaped robot inended to slip in among humans in order to kill them. Dick’s sory did.

END SPOILER!

  1. I don;t understand why they keep “adapting” philip K. Dick storis when they have to change them so completely. Read the stories that Minority Report and Bladerunner are based on.Even B]Total Recall** at the beginning (the only part where it resembles the Dick story) doesn’t follow it very cloely.
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(picking up this thread)

I agree. I read those after seeing the movies. I think the reason may be that they choose stories which wasn’t conceived for the screen. That’s understandable, but there are many good short stories and novels that do have the structure of films, I cite Ubik again, the mentioned Paycheck and Impostor, this one could not pass the line, however. Other examples are Eye In The Sky, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, A Scanner Darkly and A Maze of Death. But those deals with obscure subjects, the issues for capturing popular attention may be the short stories.

I recall a couple of them: Pipers In The Woods, where a scientist investigates strange psychological mutations of men into plants in an Earth-like asteroid. Fascinating, but it is only a set-up, I hardly imagine it as a movie the way it’s written. The other one is Adjustment Team, about a man who goes to work and find a “de-energized sector”: buildings, people, everything gray, dusty, dead, all of that because of a higher entities fatal error… well handled, this story may result in a creepy movie.