Hunger Games

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Hollywood is so skilled at bloodily butchering excellent SF books, I remain reluctant to desire movie interpretations of my favorite books. Watching the typical movie adaptation merely saddens and needlessly raises one's blood pressure.

 

Have downloaded a scad of Orson Scott Card ebooks but haven't read any as of yet. Have known for years his excellent reputation, so eventually will get around to it. A couple of years ago heard him subbing as host on a couple of political talk shows, where he portrayed himself as a "conservative liberal" or whatever, but it didn't quite jibe with my libertarian leanings.

 

For the last year or so have been reviewing a lot of moldy old SF on ebooks, some of which I'd previously read and much of what I'd missed. Some of it sucks of course, as 90 percent of everything is crap. But some of the old stuff is great.

 

Favorite memorable authors include (no particular preference order) -- A.E. Van Vogt, Alfred Bester, Anthony Boucher, E.E. Smith, Clifford Simak, Philip K. Dick, Greg Bear, Harry Harrison, Heinlein, Harry Turtledove, Jack Williamson, Joe Haldeman, J.W. Campbell, Lester Del Rey, Murray Leinster, Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle, Philip Jose Farmer, Poul Anderson, Theodore Sturgeon, Vernor Vinge.

 

Of lesser-known newer authors, canadian Robert Sawyer can put together a decent tale, and in the cheez category Robert E. Howard (Conan among others) and Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote massive quantities of deliciously stinky cheez.

 

I don't go to unusual trouble or expense to see a movie and do not watch much tv or movies, but the hunger games movie did not seem a butchery of the art and the cinematography was stunning and the acting and plot consistency quite good. Much better than Godzilla vs Mothra, Amazon Women on the Mooon, Nazis at the Center of the Earth or whatever. :) Also I'd say much better than the typical Philip K. Dick movie adaptation. If I was to READ hunger games most likely I'd enjoy it less than Philip K. Dick, though the Hunger Games movie seemed much better done than the average Philip K. Dick movie.

 

Maybe if we wish for something, we could wish for people of the talent to film Hunger Games or Atlas Shrugged, to be let loose on some high quality science fiction novels.

Edited April 27, 2013 by Lester Weevils

[Rightwinger]

Oh, as an FYI, Ender's Game is finally being made into a movie with Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff and Ben Kingsley as Mazer Rackham.

Again?  They have started making it twice then.  Never comes to fruition.  I sure hope so, but I'm prepared for disappointment on Battle Room scenes already.

[1gewehr]

Pretty much any John Ringo book would make a good movie as they are all very visual.  But I would LOVE to see Last Centurion made into a movie !!!

Some of Robert A. Heinlein's juvenile books would be great on a big screen.  Of course, RAH wrote for teenagers that actually had an education, so most teenagers these days would have trouble understanding them.  Can you imagine Red Planet as a movie?!  Or Have Spacesuit, Will Travel?  Probably the one I'd like to see best would be The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

 

Of course, they all deal with moral folks who know the difference between right and wrong, so Hollywood would probably screw it up in the name of being 'progressive'.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Pretty much any John Ringo book would make a good movie as they are all very visual.  But I would LOVE to see Last Centurion made into a movie !!!

Some of Robert A. Heinlein's juvenile books would be great on a big screen.  Of course, RAH wrote for teenagers that actually had an education, so most teenagers these days would have trouble understanding them.  Can you imagine Red Planet as a movie?!  Or Have Spacesuit, Will Travel?  Probably the one I'd like to see best would be The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

 

Of course, they all deal with moral folks who know the difference between right and wrong, so Hollywood would probably screw it up in the name of being 'progressive'.

 

Well, there's morals and then there's morals, and old RAH was a rather libertine cuss that would annoy the typical social conservative no end, but his morals went along the lines of "don't mess with me and I won't mess with you" proto-libertarian kinda stuff. The social conservatives would like the anti-commie militaristic sentiments even if shocked by the loose sexual mores.

 

There was an animated kid's adaptation of Red Planet I saw years ago watching saturday morning TV with then-young daughter, but can't recall if it was accurate or at all faithful to the juvenile novel.

 

One of the juvenile novels I read with daughter when she was in early grade-school, getting her into reading, which she remembers fondly to this day is "Tunnel in the Sky" which would make a decent movie and wouldn't need a huge budget because most of it is "primitive survival on an unpopulated jungle planet". Only the beginning and end would need high-tech FX except for CGI of strange alien critters in the woods.

 

All the RAH juveniles would make good movies. A list here-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinlein_juveniles

 

Time for the Stars, Citizen of the Galaxy, Starman Jones. Supposedly Rocket Ship Gallileo was the rough outline for the Destination Moon movie, but they are not very similar really, but at least RAH himself helped mangle the script for that one. There was a movie a couple decades ago of The Puppetmasters which wasn't complete butchery, in a low-budget fashion. Probably more faithful to the book than the Starship Troopers movie.

 

Supposedly Star Wars was strongly modeled after E.E. Smith's Lensman series, but a good high-budget movie series of Lensman would kick the crap out of star wars. I think it would be best done in a retro-future, diesel-punk style, showing on screen what the reader of the 1930's or 1940's would have seen in his mind. There have been a few pretty good diesel-punk "Air Stories" retro-future pure-adventure stories in the last decade or so, that were pretty good for tripe, visually satisfying, not incredibly expensive. But a well-made Lensman series would be real expensive done right. There was an anime version of Lensman which supposedly isn't even close, haven't seen it. Am afraid to watch it because its supposed to be so bad.

 

A movie of "The Mote in God's Eye" would kick butt. Vernor Vinge's "Fire Upon the Deep" or "A Deepness in the Sky" would be awesome though expensive if done right.

Edited April 27, 2013 by Lester Weevils

[Chucktshoes]

Again?  They have started making it twice then.  Never comes to fruition.  I sure hope so, but I'm prepared for disappointment on Battle Room scenes already.

Principle photography has completed and it is currently in post production with a 11/1/13 scheduled US release date. According to OSC, there will be some significant changes between the book and the movie because the book was pretty much unfilmable in its original form. Here is a link to a recent talk he had on the Ender's Game movie and other Enderverse related subjects.

 

http://www.endersansible.com/2013/04/22/full-interview-with-card-and-johnston-from-the-2013-la-times-festival-of-books/