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Something by Gene Wolfe. Technically not fantasy, but still. I can already see in my mind the look and feel of Cereberus or the New Sun. Lots of slow tracking shots, colours that are lush yet decayed, etc.
It seems to me that it wouldn't be that hard to adapt one of Pratchett's novels esp. one of the City Guard ones. Of course who is going to fund a humorous fantasy mystery?
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Oh, and it seems likes the Taltos novels (esp. the early ones) would be perfect for film. Short. Hard boiled. Cool technology. Repartee and violence. Crazy revelations. Beautiful people.
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The ones I can think of are either already being made, or are actually sci-fi when I think about it so don't count Posts: 3636 | Registered: Oct 2001
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Haha. Well it'd be fun to see the Otherland series as film, if not just because of all the different cool places and things in the Otherland. Also, Snow Crash, it reads like a really awesome sci fi flick. I'm so shallow *grin*
Posts: 3636 | Registered: Oct 2001
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I second FlyingCow's "Thrawn Trilogy" vote.
Would like to see the following on the big screen, live action.
-His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman
-Fullmetal Alchemist manga and with a different name and highly Americanized. Possibly a better storyline, so maybe just loosely based but well done is what we'd be aiming for.
-The Dark Elf trilogy by R.A. Salvatore (not all his books, they get repetitive)
More will come to me too...
Posts: 1236 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Speaker for the Dead. I just reread it and am still reveling in its power.
The big problem would be that I have almost no interest in seeing Xenocide/CotM made into movies, so they'd have to do something to tie up the story, and that something would probably be horrible.
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Both Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett have commented on the agonies they experienced trying to get Good Omens produced in American cinema. In fact, the whole thing was so bad that Pratchett gave up on live-action movies altogether, and Gaiman actually withdrew from Hollywood for a few years. In fact, the colossal bungling of Good Omens is indirectly responsible for the creation of Mirrormask.
Pratchett has observed that American studio executives, even ones who've claimed to read the books, just don't get it. Even the inevitable "can't we set this in America somewhere, with American actors" bit wasn't what caught them by surprise; they came to Hollywood prepared to say "yes" to that one. But he was asked if it would be possible to remove the religious references from the script. And if we could get more shots of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse actually killing people. And so forth.
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I'd like to see a bunch of crappy sci-fi movies get remade into good ones.
The Bicentennial Man comes to mind first, followed closely by I, Robot. There's also a huge, huge lack of good movies based on cyberpunk fiction.
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Thirding Dianna Wynne Jones. Seconding His Dark Materials. (And with what they can do now with effects, I'm not even frightened to see what they'd do with Pan, like I was after seeing the first attempt at The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.) They're making Coraline, by Neil Gaiman, into a movie; likewise a certain book about a Mr. Norrell and a Mr. Strange. Farmer Giles of Ham would be an interesting movie. The Dark is Rising series, by Susan Cooper. Any book by Tamora Pierce would be a good movie if done right.
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The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. I'll take it live action or CGI. Or even whatever the style they're using for A Scanner Darkly is called.
I want to see Saltheart Foamfollower come to life.
quote:Ender: The government let my parents conceive me because they hope to mold me into the ultimate military commander. Government: Ender, become the ultimate military commander and go defeat the buggers. (He does.) Ender Horror. I'm only nine years old, and I have already eradicated an entire species. I thought it was a game, but it was for real. I will fret about this in the sequels. THE END
quote: The Dark is Rising series, by Susan Cooper.
I didn't mention that one, because they *are* being made into movies, or at least The Dark is Rising is Posts: 3636 | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: Speaker for the Dead. I just reread it and am still reveling in its power.
The big problem would be that I have almost no interest in seeing Xenocide/CotM made into movies, so they'd have to do something to tie up the story, and that something would probably be horrible.
Second that!
I'd also like to see Wolf and Raven by Michael A. Stackpole made into a movie. It's from the Shadowrun universe.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Gwen, some of those really cracked me up. I especially liked the 2001: A Space Odyssey summary
quote: HAL I'm evil. (kills astronauts) Dave Bowman I must shut you down now, HAL. HAL Daisy, Daisy... Dave Bowman Now I must finish this mission alone. (STRANGE THINGS happen, and they MAKE SENSE.)
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Anyway, though, I wish there were a way to do The Song of Ice and Fire as a film ... but I think we'll just have to wait until high-quality special effects are cheap enough to do it as a long-running television series
The Taltos novels should be a video game. Grand Theft Auto meets Splinter Cell, but you have magical powers. Who could resist that?
Posts: 1539 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Robin Hobb's Farseer and Tawny Man books. I think there's too much court intriuge that would be boring to watch though. I really would love to see The Fool, though.
quote:Originally posted by ricree101: Gwen, some of those really cracked me up. I especially liked the 2001: A Space Odyssey summary
quote: HAL I'm evil. (kills astronauts) Dave Bowman I must shut you down now, HAL. HAL Daisy, Daisy... Dave Bowman Now I must finish this mission alone. (STRANGE THINGS happen, and they MAKE SENSE.)
Reader Wow. I understand the movie now.
THE END
I hated every single one for books I enjoy.
Too bad I couldn't stop laughing at them anyway.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I'd love to see Octavia Butler's Wild Seed done well. I think portraying the character of Doro would be a very big challenge cinematically. I'd love to see him played by a string of different actors throughout the movie, but that might be a tough sell. Also, some of the subject matter might be considered objectionable. I can't see doing it well and getting less than an R rating by today's standards.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Movie need to have fairly cinematic elements, IMO. It's a visual medium, after all. (Plus I love period pieces and hate elves.) This would be better lent-to by some of the older oft-ignored pulp stuff:
Solomon Kane (Robt. E. Howard) would be an excellent candidate for a movie, particularly if you concentrated on the African storyline.
A more comedic approach could be had knitting together the stories of Zampras the thief and the unemployed headsman from Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborean Cycle.
An even better choice, because it's fallen into the public domain so you wouldn't have to license it: Abe Merritt's The Moon Pool, arguably his best work.
Posts: 196 | Registered: May 2005
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Tresopax, as I recall, it's not in The Golden Compass that Pullman lets lose the venom about how all Christianity and the inhabitants of Heaven itself are evil and/or stupid.
Nope. Unless they alter it, that stuff would come up in the sequels.
I really loved The Golden Compass. I didn't love the sequels. Does that make me a member of the religious far right?
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:The first decade of the 21st century has seen more fantasy films released than possibly any decade has had since the 80s.
So basically, this decade has seen more fantasy movies than the nineties
Were they making more in pre-80s decades? The success of the late 70s original Star Wars movie seemed to lead to the 80s having more than its share of fantasy flicks than previous decades had.
Just my impression.
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I think Puppy's point was that there has only been one decade "since the 80s" besides the current one.
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I was saying the 80s was the decade which seemed to hold the record in the past, that's why I used the term "since the 80s". Until the...zeroes...the aughts...until the first decade of the 21st century completes itself, there's the chance the trend will dry up. 'S all I meant. Not that the ninties had mysteriously become multiple decades. Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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I'm absolutely shocked that no one has yet mentioned David Gemmel. I would love to see any of his books made into films, though I think my favourite, 'Dark Moon', wouldn't work so well. However 'Winter Warriors' or possibly 'Echoes of the Great Song'. There are so many great ones it's hard to even choose an example without missing equally deserving titles.
And Robin Hobb, brilliant as she is, just wouldn't work as a film. Unless directed by some sort of genius. Nothing much actually happens in her books, it's her skill in the technical aspect of writing that makes them so good, rather than the filmic quality of the story. And who could properly recreate the Fool on screen?
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Yeah, the last part of His Dark Materials really disappointed me, primarily because Pullman failed to put the same kind of development into his primary antagonists that he did into his heroes and early antagonists. I mean, seriously, what motivated the Metatron & Company to want everyone to live by arbitrary rules and be miserable? Absolutely nothing. Or nothing that was ever made clear to the reader.
It's almost as though Pullman was relying heavily on the assumption that, of course, everyone knows what incomprehensible jerks religious people are, and he shouldn't have to explain them. He CAN'T explain them. But they're bad, and in this book, these bad people control the universe and must be defeated.
It was extremely dissatisfying to me. Despite the fact that I loved the rest of the series.
Posts: 1539 | Registered: Jul 2004
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John Varley's Gaea Trilogy would make incredible films.
I would love to see a serious attempt to capture The Sword in the Stone on film. Not sure it's really a book that can be captured by film, though.
Jack Faust would be pretty easy to do on film, I would think, and really neat to see.
Second the Otherland and Snow Crash recommendations.
I am not at all sure that The Song of Ice and Fire really can be captured well by film at present without sanitizing it for mass consumption, and thus losing a lot of what it is and what is integral to the world.
I don't agree that SF is " fantasy with a hard or soft scientific basis. Yeah, I know, we've all heard the Clarke maxim, and I grant that there is a grain of truth to the thought, however if you accept that SF (*not* sf) is extrapolation of what is, and that fantasy has no need to stay within those guidelines and can just say 'stuff exists because of magic', as that what magic is, then I think it's clear that SF which doesn't appear, on knowledgeable examination to be total bs is in many ways a lot harder to pull off than fantasy.
Fantasy: A magic word is said and a dragon pops into existence. Dragon can do whatever it wants as it is magic. No real explanation need really be given as to how the dragon appears. It's magic.
SF: We breed a dinosaur into existence from dino dna. Since dinos and dna are known quantities with known qualities, this forces the writer to be knowledgeable about dna, genetics and dinos and the problems inherent in bringing them into existence that must be dealt with in a 'real world' fashion.
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The Dark is Rising is being made into a movie? By Walden Media? For movies alone, this is definitely the time to be alive.
I thought that the difference between science fiction and fantasy was that science fiction has rivets and fantasy has trees. Or that if science fiction does have trees, they are really the third life of an alien species on a planet far away and three thousand years in the future.
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I'm using the definition of fantasy as "Fictional things that (as far as we know) can not yet be done in the real world, or are impossible". Not the definition they use to divide the books in the bookstores and libraries.
I'm not going to say we'll NEVER grow our own dinos, but right now it's definitely a fantasy...one with a scientific basis, but still a fantasy. Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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It's almost as though Pullman was relying heavily on the assumption that, of course, everyone knows what incomprehensible jerks religious people are, and he shouldn't have to explain them. He CAN'T explain them. But they're bad, and in this book, these bad people control the universe and must be defeated.
It was extremely dissatisfying to me. Despite the fact that I loved the rest of the series.
Reading Pullman's non-fiction essays on why he wrote the series, those seem to be his views on real world religious people: The epitome of all-that-is-bad-with-the-world.
So, they're the bad guys and deny everything good in life because they just are. Brain-washing bullies and power hungry tyrants...because they're religious so they are innately in the wrong just by being religious.
That said, I still think The Golden Compass is a book so imaginative, exciting, and plain cool that everyone should read it.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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The Gunslinger series, although I imagine they'd manage to ruin them.
Any of Vernor Vinge's novels would make fantastic movies. Particularly A Fire Upon the Deep
I would also love to see Glen Cook's Black Company series, if they could make them dark and gritty and true to the books. They would probably be made too nice and too black and white. The moral ambiguity is so important.
Meiville's Perdido Street Station and The Scar would both be fabulous movies, and they're so dramatic and vibrantly written that I think even the most idiotic team could make them into fantastic movies.
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