War of the Worlds - Spielberg Debate

My number one, I decided, is

Alfred Bester's "The Demolished Man" with Kevin Spacey as the villainous lead character and Ridley Scott directing.

The number one on that list in my book has for a long time been The Demon Breed (James H Smitz, 1969). It shouldn't be such a huge undertaking considering that most of the story is confined to a limited number of locations all of which can be done indoors. There is a suitable amount of action and thrills as well as a love interest in the story, all perfect for the Hollywood recipe. The only difficult part in my view would be the recreation of believable intelligent otters, but considering what Andy Serkis achieved with Gollum, that too can be done to near perfection, no kid in a suit needed.

I just saw the Star Wars fan film Revelations, if you see what some people can do with $20 000 and a little time on their hands, then it makes you ashamed to think how Hollywood would have to spend millions to do the same thing.

Other titles that could make great films would be the Heechee novels of Frederik Pohl. Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein, 1961) is a classic too, but those novels are perhaps too high brow to be made into blockbusters.

Further on my list of "should be filmed" are a number of short stories and novlets that could be made into a great TV series.

As indendents are getting more and more financial help we could hopefully see "The Demolished Man." It bears resemblance to the superbly realized "Minority Report" (the book predates that book by over a decade) but the police detectives themselves have different level of abilities in ESP. The real difference is that punishment is not physically harming the body but erasing the brain, memories and all, and creating a new person. Spacey could easily capture the suspense when the character must try to block his mind from the ESP police. If anyone doesn't remember the initiation of the plot, the main character devises a plan and murders his corporate rival, and must hide the crime. Otherwise, he will be '"demolished." Bester followed up with a novel about teleportation "The Stars My Destination" where humankind discovers the ability to teleport to other star systems' planets.

Paaskynen, I'd like to see Stranger in a Strange Land on the big screen, too, but I just don't know how all of the intricacies would translate (I fear Stranger would turn out something like Dune).

If Hollywood's looking for a good sci-fi story that already has quite a following and should be very translatable to the screen, they should make a film version of Card's Ender's Game.

Ignore the second paragraph of my last post--I just found out that Warner Bros. is in the early stages of making Ender's Game (it will combine Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow).

There are far better Heinlein stories than "Stranger In a Strange Land" which might be filmed but I agree that they would probably botch them.

I don't know; Stranger is generally considered Heinlein's masterpiece. But I'd settle for a more faithful adaptation of Starship Trooper.

"Methuselah's Children" is regarded as Heinlein's masterpiece. At the time of "Stranger In a Strange Land," the critical response from the sci-fi community was lukewarm (not a relative of Luke Skywalker). The book is not part of the future history stories and even short stories like "The Green Hills of Earth" are considered his best work.

Heehee, and here I thought "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" was Heinlein's masterpiece... if only that was movie-ized.. it'd have to be done properly, though, and chances are good that Hollywood would fudge the job royally.

I liked "12 Monkeys" a lot, it's one of my favorite sci-fi flicks... I thought Gilliam did a nice job with his variation of the time-travel movie.

"War of the Worlds" was a pretty good movie, but nothing spectacular, I thought. The effects were dazzling, and the apocalyptic feel was nicely cultivated, but the plot had a few holes and the characters were pretty abrasive and obnoxious. I have to agree wholeheartedly with you on this one, Mills, the little girl's uncontrollable screaming just wound up pissing me off more than it provided a plausible cause for discovery by the aliens.

Did anybody see "I, Robot?" I liked that movie. Most Asimov devotees hated it because it didn't stick to the original storyline, but that's because most of them didn't take into account the screenplay's history; that Asimov asked his friend Harlan Ellison to write I, Robot as a screenplay, and when Ellison gave him the script Asimov fell in love with it, and that's the one that became the movie. I thought that was a good film.

Just finished reading Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land - the complete original version (approx 220,000 words compared to the 160,000 words contained in the book published 1961)

Thanks for putting me onto it.

As for making it into a film.....hmmm

Don't get me wrong, "A Stranger In a Strange Land" is entertaining reading but I never could get rid of the feeling that it was written for popular appeal. It could make a good movie even though one of the other popular Heinlein novel, "The Puppet Masters," was just average. "Starship Troopers," consciously written to appeal to a younger audience of readers actually made a good action adventure flick. One would have to consider Heinlein's future history series as one long epic novel but I don't believe the narrative could be transferred to film. About as unfilmmable as F. Scott Fitzgerald with the possible exception of "The Last Tycoon," and in this case it's because that novel was finished by another writer and it made cinematic sense.