Well, the biggest movie that I'll never see, Avatar, is ready to make me hate my favorite series of books, Foundation. The trilogy (that later added several more books) is set to be made into a series of films.
Normally, this would make me as giddy as a school girl. Until I read who would be directing the films - Roland Emmerich. The same Roland Emmerich who wrote/directed such films as Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012 amongst other disaster porn, big budget flops.
What makes this even sadder are these quotes by Emmerich on the topic of Foundation...
"The 'Avatar' technology applies to 'Foundation,' " Emmerich said. "It has to be done all CG because I would not know how to shoot this thing in real."
and the real killer...
"If you do a movie in 3-D, you can ask for more money and that's the trick!"
On the first quote - has he even read the freaking books!? I just reread Foundation, and about 98% of that book consists of 2-3 people sitting in a single room having a conversation. The other 2% being the introduction and arrival on Trantor. If memory serves, the remaining books have similar ratios. What, exactly, requires the use of CG? It's a few actors talking, for godsakes! Maybe someone should remake 12 Angry Men, but all in CG and 3D. Oh, man, the guy bringing the jurors their lunch jumps right off the screen! Juror #7 is completely CG, just like Gollum, because we just couldn't find 12 convincing real-life actors!
The second quote is really what this, and all of Hollywood, is all about - money. There's no need to do this movie in 3D. Doing the movie in 3D won't, in any way, make the movie better. But, fuck it, let's just do it in 3D so we can get a bigger production budget. This is the legacy of George Lucas. Let's "remake" Star Wars. And by "remake" I mean let's just insert stupid little background CG effects that have no bearing whatsoever on the storyline or in no way add to the plot or quality just so we can rerelease the movies theatrically and make more money. I guarantee you that every "big" movie in the next 2-3 years will be announced as "in 3D". This will continue until studio executives (hopefully) realize that 3D contributes nothing but cost to the vast majority of all films.
So that's what I'll be expecting when Foundation hits theaters. Sweeping panorama views of distant worlds that last for minutes. Invented space battles that never really occur alongside a bunch of cutesie and meaningless CG effects that contribute nil, because the novels - which beat out LOTR for best of all-time - need a little more pizazz to keep audiences interested. And they'll probably make The Mule completely in CG, because why the hell not!?
On the brightside, it'll still be better than Will Smith's I, Robot...
4 comments:
Ian, what's cg?
CG is short for "computer graphics". Think of movies like Toy Story and Finding Nemo - those are entirely CG films.
And I agree with Ian. These films will most likely suck. The problem with the Foundation novels is that they don't lend themselves to the big Sci-Fi movies of today. As Ian said, they are more about character development and behind-the-scenes scheming. While fantastic stories, they are somewhat anti-climactic in the end. What looks to be building as a big war or battle, usually just fizzles out for some intriguing reason which was overlooked by almost everyone except the main character.
Because of this, Hollywood is simply going to add in some garbage, er, I mean "action" to hook people in. That, or pull an "I, Robot" and completely change the storyline.
I just read that to make the stories "more accessible" they're going to rewrite them to have a common "hero" span them all. So Hardin, Mallow, Dever, etc... will all be replaced by an amalgamation and it will be a contiguous timeline rather than the era-specific crises in the books. God forbid the audience be forced to recognize more than 1 character! Basically, it will be the TV show "24", but in space...
After watching Avatar, I can't help thinking the perfect story to hit the big screen with the new 3D style would be Ender's Game. This movie has been in development hell for years. I don't know why. It's one of the most dramatic, action packed stories I've read. I know it's got little kids, but why not use Hollywoods favorite demographic - teens instead. I just want to see this story.
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