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There's rumors flying that Neill Blomkamp is going to make a new Starship Troopers movie.
Further, the rumors state that he's going to stick to the book.
That's better than the previous attempt by Paul Verhoeven, if true.
Not sure how well the book can be translated to film, but I've seen a Japanese anime that did a better job than Paul "Everything Military Is Nazis" Verhoeven.
I've ranted continuously that if you're going to license a property, then DO that property.
We've got a few great examples that show that it's a good plan.
The Hunt for Miss Red October. <- This one stands out because other adaptations of the Clancyverse failed to adhere to the books and didn't do near so well at the box office.
The Lord of the Rings.
Harry Potter.
300.
Dune.
Stick to the source material and the fans who've been keeping the books in the best seller rack since... a long fucking time ago will plant their asses in the seats with popcorn.
Notice that the fans will forgive some departure from the text because they understand the differences between the mediums. But you have to hew close to the source!
Heinlein also wrote one called Starman Jones. That would make a great movie if they followed the book.
ReplyDeleteI want, so want, to see Starship Troopers done right. Hive-like Bugs of multiple castes, with warriors that carry weapons. Skinnies. Mobile Infantry.
ReplyDeleteOn the Bounce!
If anything, the first Godfather movie improved on the book in some ways---they cut out a lot of extraneous subplots. About the only way I can think of to make it better would be to replace James Caan as Sonny Corleone with Sylvester Stallone. Stallone IS Italian, and looks a lot like the descriptions of Sonny in the books. But this was a few years before Stallone made it big. I'm not saying James Caan didn't do a great job, but he doesn't look at all Sicilian to me.
ReplyDelete1) Verhoeven should be retroactively sent to a konzentrationslager for the anal raping he did to Heinlein's magnum opus. Anything new couldn't hep but be better unless they hand it Kathleen Kennedy and Sam Mendes.
ReplyDelete2) Harry Potter was done right, because J.K. Rowling wouldn't let them screw it up, and wouldn't sell the next rights until she'd seen the last picture, which kept WB honest.
3) Peter Jackson treasured LOTR and The Hobbit, and once again, the Tolkien Trust and family wouldn't let him bugger it just because Hollywood.
4) THFRO was done well, and even though they used Connery for Ramius, and made Adm. Greer black (which would have been about as likely in the VN era as flying pigs), Alec Baldwin nailed the Jack Ryan character, in a way way-too-old Harrison Ford never could. If Baldwin hadn't been such a self-important jackass, he could have been Jack Ryan the way Connery became James Bond, but he wanted to be the star of melodramatic mediocrities instead, and we got Han Solo-Ryan. When Hollywood told Clancy they wanted to put coral reefs off Maryland for the climactic chase in Patriot Games, and he told them they were out of the damned minds, they informed him "advisor" meant they could ignore his input, they stopped calling him, and he stopped selling them any more screen rights after the four they'd already paid for, which all sucked after the first effort.
Hollywood changes the work of stellar authors, because 20-something directors can.
Then they're shocked and dismayed when their artistic license turns a great story into sewage, and they lose their financial pants, over and over again.
Until studio heads learn to start bitch-slapping their directorial and producing "talents" and telling them what not to do, this will continue until they go broke.
NTTAWWT.