Can't Quite Kick the Hobbit

[jasong]

Stopped reading at the end of post 7, but:

There are plenty of other good books to base movies on. A low budget version of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series would be awesome, as would a lot of his other books that haven't yet been made into movies.

Personally, I'd like to see Heinlein get some Hollywood loving. Although, the misogyny(sp?) should be taken out when the scripts are planned. Give Number of the Beast a new name that's less likely to offend Christians and go wild with it. (If it were horror, I'd say keep the name, but I'm thinking PG-13, so you don't want to alienate a possible demographic)

[xilman]

Originally Posted by jasong

Stopped reading at the end of post 7, but:

There are plenty of other good books to base movies on. A low budget version of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series would be awesome, as would a lot of his other books that haven't yet been made into movies.

Personally, I'd like to see Heinlein get some Hollywood loving. Although, the misogyny(sp?) should be taken out when the scripts are planned. Give Number of the Beast a new name that's less likely to offend Christians and go wild with it. (If it were horror, I'd say keep the name, but I'm thinking PG-13, so you don't want to alienate a possible demographic)

I'd like to see Dune done properly.

EE Doc. Smith's Lensmen books would be a superb series in the hands of Lucas or Spielberg.

Greg Bear's Eon could be impressive., as could Kim Robinson's {Red,Green,Blue} Mars trilogy.

I could throw out many more candidates but that will do for the moment.

[ET_]

Originally Posted by xilman

I'd like to see Dune done properly.

EE Doc. Smith's Lensmen books would be a superb series in the hands of Lucas or Spielberg.

Greg Bear's Eon could be impressive., as could Kim Robinson's {Red,Green,Blue} Mars trilogy.

I could throw out many more candidates but that will do for the moment.

The mote in God's eye

BTW the filming remake of "The moon is a harsh mistress" was awful...

Luigi

[rogue]

Originally Posted by jasong

Personally, I'd like to see Heinlein get some Hollywood loving. Although, the misogyny(sp?) should be taken out when the scripts are planned. Give Number of the Beast a new name that's less likely to offend Christians and go wild with it. (If it were horror, I'd say keep the name, but I'm thinking PG-13, so you don't want to alienate a possible demographic)

Hollywood made "Starship Troopers", which is watchable, but IMO "Number of the Beast" would not be a good book to put on screen. I've read almost all of Heinlein's books, that being one of the last that I read. I had to put it down after 100 pages because I think Heinlein was thinking "I can write crap while paying homage to myself, but people will buy it because I wrote it and they will love it" while he was writing it. I enjoyed a number of the Lazarus Long stories, but some of his stuff (re "To Sail Beyond the Sunset") made me think that he needed help from Dr. Freud, ala "tell me about your mother." As for "NotB", one has to be a hardcore Heinlein junkie to enjoy that book. It reminded me a lot of Quentin Tarantino's movies. QT has made some great movies, such as Pulp Fiction, but his tendency to pay homage to obscure movies of the past has turned me off. Kill Bill is good until you realize how much he has borrowed from other movies.

Asimov should get more screen time. His literature is not as character driver as Heinlein nor technology driven as Clarke. I don't know how easy it would be to put Foundation on screen, but I think that "Caves of Steel" and its two immediate successors could be made into movies. They couldn't be worse than that "I, Robot" movie with Will Smith.

[jasong]

Originally Posted by rogue

Hollywood made "Starship Troopers", which is watchable, but IMO "Number of the Beast" would not be a good book to put on screen. I've read almost all of Heinlein's books, that being one of the last that I read. I had to put it down after 100 pages because I think Heinlein was thinking "I can write crap while paying homage to myself, but people will buy it because I wrote it and they will love it" while he was writing it. I enjoyed a number of the Lazarus Long stories, but some of his stuff (re "To Sail Beyond the Sunset") made me think that he needed help from Dr. Freud, ala "tell me about your mother." As for "NotB", one has to be a hardcore Heinlein junkie to enjoy that book. It reminded me a lot of Quentin Tarantino's movies. QT has made some great movies, such as Pulp Fiction, but his tendency to pay homage to obscure movies of the past has turned me off. Kill Bill is good until you realize how much he has borrowed from other movies.

Asimov should get more screen time. His literature is not as character driver as Heinlein nor technology driven as Clarke. I don't know how easy it would be to put Foundation on screen, but I think that "Caves of Steel" and its two immediate successors could be made into movies. They couldn't be worse than that "I, Robot" movie with Will Smith.

I find it ironic that you mention the Foundation series after claiming you disliked some of Heinlein's work, since I think the Foundation stuff is a snooze fest. I'd forgotten about Starship Troopers. It was an ok movie, but I'm mostly trying to figure out why the communal shower scenes were considered necessary. The special effects were pretty awesome, with all the bugs swarming over the landscape to kill us. I even remember some of the more brutal scenes that made me sympathize a bit with the bugs, like when a scientist stabbed a bug straight in the eye and it screamed in pain.

The recent Martian movie disappointed me. Not because it was bad, I liked it. Instead, I was disappointed because it was a flop at the box office. They were intending to make 3-4 more movies based on the later books in the series. If you notice, at the end things were set up for a sequel, which will probably never happen unless they can lower the production costs by a huge amount.

[kladner]

IMO, Hollywood totally butchered Starship Troopers. The Mobile Infantry was supposed to be equipped with powered armor and everything up to tactical nukes. Instead, they take on the Bugs with fairly typical assault rifles. It seemed that the whipping post was one of the most high-tech pieces of equipment in the arsenal.

Of course, the gender setup in the book would not fly when the movie was made. Originally, the MI were all men while the pilots and much of the naval personnel were female.

I was obsessed with that book as a 12yo who had not yet developed a perception of the awful militarism of all that heroism. That, and the idea that only veterans could vote are pretty odious to me now.

[rogue]

Originally Posted by jasong

I find it ironic that you mention the Foundation series after claiming you disliked some of Heinlein's work, since I think the Foundation stuff is a snooze fest.

I gave specific reasons for disliking some of Heinlein's work, but that doesn't mean that I dislike all of it. Stranger in a Strange Land is a very good piece of science fiction. I can't say it is his best as I don't have an opinion on that, but it is very good.