CycleChat Investigates - SciFi

[wiggydiggy]

I have read that Paramount never really had faith in the film and it's about half an hour shorter than it should be and the studio lost all the other footage. Shame really, as I think it's an absolute class as it is, but I'd love to see it as Anderson envisaged it.

It wasn't lost as such but it wasn't stored properly - it was stored in a Transylvanian salt mine (really!) and had deteriorated. There does exist a video copy of the original cut of the film that the Paramount execs watched, and was immediately squeaky bum times for them and they ordered sweeping cuts.

Bit more info here: https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/exploring-the-deleted-footage-from-event-horizon/
And a Q&A Paul Anderson did here:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXL_CM4DXZ8


I'm quite lucky as a friend of mine in the 90s was a major film geek so they would put us onto the best films, EH was one of the best they found.

 

[Drago]

Sitrep.

2001 romps ahead. While even the delightful Anne Hathaway isn't enough to earn Interstellar a single vote.

Star Wars is putting up a good fight, and the deeply flawed but still wonderful Silent Running is doing well in third place.

 

[AndyRM]

It wasn't lost as such but it wasn't stored properly - it was stored in a Transylvanian salt mine (really!) and had deteriorated. There does exist a video copy of the original cut of the film that the Paramount execs watched, and was immediately squeaky bum times for them and they ordered sweeping cuts.

Bit more info here: https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/exploring-the-deleted-footage-from-event-horizon/
And a Q&A Paul Anderson did here:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXL_CM4DXZ8


I'm quite lucky as a friend of mine in the 90s was a major film geek so they would put us onto the best films, EH was one of the best they found.

Oooh, that's peak film nerdery there, nice one!

 

[Drago]

Sitrep. It's now Darth Vader versus the HAL9000. Will the force overcome the murderous AI?

 

[Rezillo]

Going off at a tangent, there's a category of SF books yet to be made into films that could be great. I only bring it up because I would dearly love to to see film versions of any of Iain M Banks' books. All we've got so far is a great joke in Hot Fuzz.

 

[wiggydiggy]

Going off at a tangent, there's a category of SF books yet to be made into films that could be great. I only bring it up because I would dearly love to to see film versions of any of Iain M Banks' books. All we've got so far is a great joke in Hot Fuzz.

You have to be very careful with an adaptation, too much meddling turns a great story into something generic that neither people who know the story or people that are new would want to see.

I've just finished reading Phillip Reeves Mortal Engines quartet and its really annoying they mucked up the first film so bad, he really hits his stride by the time of Books 3 + 4 and it's got a lot of interesting things going on that we'll never see. The film version they did make for some reason decided they needed a big 'attack the deathstar' moment to finish rather than the books rather tragic ending for characters they don't even bother having in the film. You can probably tell I'm quite annoyed about it still!

Iain M Banks I've never read, just put his first 'Culture' book on my reading list.

 

[matticus]

How many of the great SF films are adaptations? I'm typing this blind, but I can't recall any - especially if you discount the ones like Blade Runner that made no attempt to capture the feel of the original, or slavishly follow the plot/structure.

Perhaps more than any other genre, the adaptation process seems a rocky road in most cases ...

 

[Threevok]

How many of the great SF films are adaptations? I'm typing this blind, but I can't recall any - especially if you discount the ones like Blade Runner that made no attempt to capture the feel of the original, or slavishly follow the plot/structure.

Perhaps more than any other genre, the adaptation process seems a rocky road in most cases ...

Not just SF but horror too

Anyone who's read Gary Brander's The Howling and Howling II knows how much of a tangent the films went "off script", especially after the first film.

 

[wiggydiggy]

How many of the great SF films are adaptations? I'm typing this blind, but I can't recall any - especially if you discount the ones like Blade Runner that made no attempt to capture the feel of the original, or slavishly follow the plot/structure.

Perhaps more than any other genre, the adaptation process seems a rocky road in most cases ...

I've got the book adaptation of the 1990 version of Total Recall, making it a book based on a film that's based on a short story

 

[Drago]

The book of the film The Abyss was written after the film and was actually very good.

 

[AndyRM]

You have to be very careful with an adaptation, too much meddling turns a great story into something generic that neither people who know the story or people that are new would want to see.

I've just finished reading Phillip Reeves Mortal Engines quartet and its really annoying they mucked up the first film so bad, he really hits his stride by the time of Books 3 + 4 and it's got a lot of interesting things going on that we'll never see. The film version they did make for some reason decided they needed a big 'attack the deathstar' moment to finish rather than the books rather tragic ending for characters they don't even bother having in the film. You can probably tell I'm quite annoyed about it still!

Iain M Banks I've never read, just put his first 'Culture' book on my reading list.

You're not wrong. Night Watch, while not a bad film, is like a quarter of the first book.

 

[Rezillo]

2001 has chunks based on various Arthur C Clarke short stories, most notably The Sentinel. The book was published at the same time as the film - I read it before seeing the film just after its release and while the two are not the same, its enough to work out what is going on during the end scenes. However it did mean that I spent much of my time during it explaining it all to my dad.

It remains my favourite film. The spaceship docking sequence to a Strauss waltz is just utterly magnificent.

 

[MontyVeda]

2001 has chunks based on various Arthur C Clarke short stories, most notably The Sentinel. The book was published at the same time as the film - I read it before seeing the film just after its release and while the two are not the same, its enough to work out what is going on during the end scenes. However it did mean that I spent much of my time during it explaining it all to my dad.

It remains my favourite film. The spaceship docking sequence to a Strauss waltz is just utterly magnificent.

For fans of the film, it's certainly worth reading the book too. They're not the same but then again, they are. The movie gives us everything David Bowman saw, the books gives us what's going through his mind.

@matticus ...how on earth can you discount Blade Runner as an adaptation? One could say it's not the film of the book, but it absolutely is an adaptation.

 

[Drago]

Clarke wrote the book at rhe same time he was writing and continuously fiddling with the screenplay, so in most regards they are closer than is typical.

The main difference ie the book has the final destination as Saturn, and the film Jupiter. It was all originally written as Saturn but the effects supervisor, Douglas Trumbull, was struggling with recreating Saturn's rings so the setting was changed to Jupiter.

Interestingly, Trumbull later went on to work on Silent Running and technology had advanced sufficiently in those few years to do a convincing job of Saturn's rings.

 

[Alex321]

How many of the great SF films are adaptations? I'm typing this blind, but I can't recall any - especially if you discount the ones like Blade Runner that made no attempt to capture the feel of the original, or slavishly follow the plot/structure.

Perhaps more than any other genre, the adaptation process seems a rocky road in most cases ...

The one which is leading the poll was an adaptation of a short story (The Sentinel by Arthur C Clarke - I read that long before seeing the film) - and then spawned a full novel and sequel, also written by Clarke.

Dune, of course, was based on the novel by Frank Herbert (Again, I read it long before the first film was made). Not on the poll, but mentioned several times in the thread. I haven't actually seen the film, so not sure just how accurate an adaptation it is.

Starship Troopers was based on the Heinlen novel, and is actually a fairly accurate adaptation.

Another good one (IMO) not in the poll is I Robot, based on a story from the Asimov I Robot collection.

And The Bicentennial Man, also based on a novel by Asimov and Silverberg, which was itself based on a short story by Asimov.

There have been a few, some of which have been pretty good.