When I was much younger, I remember wondering if there would ever be a time when the state of the art in \u201cfilm\u201d would allow a decent version of the Lord of the Rings to be made.\u00a0 When Ralph Bakshi\u2019s cartoon over live action was made in 1978, I was quite surprised at how good it was.\u00a0 And I hoped that he would continue the project to finish the complete story.\u00a0 But he never did.\u00a0 Maybe he didn\u2019t make enough money or maybe he got bored.\u00a0 And so, it would be another twenty years before anyone tried again.<\/p>\n
Peter Jackson did a remarkable job both visually and artistically of capturing Tolkien\u2019s story.\u00a0 And I think he proved that we have reached a point where regardless of the unreal or fantastic nature of the story CGI can produce a convincing visual representation of that story on the screen.\u00a0 And that was an important moment.\u00a0 For a fan of science fiction and fantasy this is the promised land.<\/p>\n
And yet, what have we got now?\u00a0 For every film like Dune where the story faithfully reproduces a worthwhile piece of fiction, we get ten movies like \u201cThe Marvels\u201d or \u201cThe Last Jedi\u201d or \u201cMadame Web\u201d where the visuals are successful but the story and the acting are unwatchable.<\/p>\n
Well, that\u2019s reality.\u00a0 The cultural and societal standards are pretty awful so even if some interesting topic like the Second Age of Middle Earth (Rings of Power) or Harry Seldon\u2019s Psychohistory (Foundation) are being filmed chances are that the result will be terrible.<\/p>\n
But the only good thing I can say is that the potential exists for a rogue force like Elon Musk to come along and fund an independent studio to produce some exciting projects.\u00a0 So, eventually we will get good movies.\u00a0 Eventually the profit motive will succeed.\u00a0 Who knows we may be forced to watch Chinese or Hungarian movies in subtitles but it will come.\u00a0 So, patience, patience.<\/p>\n
And what might make a good project?\u00a0 Well, based on what we know would sell, how about space opera that is a lot more interesting than the Star Wars universe?\u00a0 How about a project to film the Lensman series?\u00a0 A few updates to the technology might be needed and the chronology might need to be tweaked but then the story would be easily turned into a series of films.\u00a0 It has likeable heroes, awful villains, interesting aliens and plenty of space battles.\u00a0 And best of all, not a girl boss in sight.\u00a0 Just classic square-jawed heroes saving the day and rescuing the damsel in distress.\u00a0 I would guess that the Lensman saga would be easily as popular as Star Wars and in fact more so.<\/p>\n
Now another popular film idea would be the Heinlein juveniles.\u00a0 There are several good candidates.\u00a0 As a first choice I\u2019d go with, \u201cHave Spacesuit Will Travel.\u201d\u00a0 It has all the requisite ingredients for a good young adult movie; human interest, suspense, adventure, pathos, humor and the resolution of a coming-of-age story.\u00a0 As a second choice I\u2019d recommend, \u201cThe Star Beast.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an interesting thing to reflect that a really satisfactory movie version of a Heinlein book has never been done.\u00a0 The only one he ever had a hand in was Destination Moon.\u00a0 And while technically there were interesting aspects to the production as a movie it was pretty cut and dry; more of a primer on rocket flight than work of fiction.\u00a0 In terms of popularity, I guess Starship Troopers is the best of those produced, even though the director made it in the spirit of a mockery of the underlying philosophy of the book.\u00a0 A faithful portrayal of Starship Troopers would be an amazing idea for a movie.<\/p>\n
And rounding off my picks for Heinlein would be, \u201cThe Moon is a Harsh Mistress.\u201d\u00a0 I think this story would make an excellent film too. I\u2019d especially enjoy seeing the rail gun attack on Earth on the big screen.\u00a0 And I think the friendship between Manny and the artificial intelligence Mike would work great on the screen.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll have to think of some other classic sf&f books that would make good movies.\u00a0 If you can think of any you\u2019d like to see made, leave them in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was much younger, I remember wondering if there would ever be a time when the state of the art in \u201cfilm\u201d would allow<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,5,239,237,4,242,243],"tags":[43,4153,38,1355,44,265,1176],"class_list":["post-28977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-current-events","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","category-sff-movie-reviews","tag-movie-review","tag-ocf-goes-to-the-movies","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-sci-fi","tag-science-fiction","tag-science-fiction-and-fantasy"],"yoast_head":"\n