Thursday, January 17, 2008

Well, this could be interesting.

Hmm..
Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment and Universal Pictures are negotiating with the estate of legendary SF author E.E. "Doc" Smith for film rights to Smith's seminal Lensman novels, Al Trestrail, Smith's grandson and manager of his estate, told SCI FI Wire.

On a scale of 1-20, how pissed off do you guys think the final product would make me?

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12 comments:

  1. Can I make the obvious joke of some number higher than 20? I'll go with 22.

    Howard is a very "safe" director -- it would at least be extraordinarily inoffensive.

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  2. It depends on what you're gonna be pissed about, really. No way do they leave the sexism in, but getting it out of the story is going to require some major divergences from the book. So, y'know... how much is that gonna piss you off?

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  3. Actually, I suspect that they'll attempt to remove the sexism, but screw up and leave enough in to make it obvious that they're just going through the motions. Which will be even more irritating than if they'd just thrown their hands up in the air and said, "Let's film it as written."

    That's why I'm gonna go with 19 out of 20 Angry Ragnells.

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  4. I've never read the books, and don't know anything about them except hearing that they're very sexist. So no numbers, but I'm guessing you'll be pleasantly surprised by the film.

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  5. I would imagine they'll take some of the overt sexism out- we'll see more than one female Lansman, for instance- but they won't actually give any female characters anything new to do. Although, depending on how they film certain parts of Second Stage Lensmen, Clarissa might come off well.

    So, I'm going to say about a 14.

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  6. Howard generally strives not to offend. The Beautiful Mind adaptation caused controversy for leaving out Nash's homosexual encounters, but I suspect the real reason was that he didn't want to equate homosexuality with mental illness.

    Howard is the very definition of middlebrow. He's competent, dull, sentimental, and after a long career, has precisely one good film under his belt (Apollo 13). Getting offended at his films would require more energy than anything his films has ever provoked.

    On the other hand, he was the narrator on Arrested Development, so he gets to heaven on that alone.

    Note: I have no idea what Lensman is, but if it's supposed to be fast paced and/or exciting, I can't see Howard being a good choice

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  7. I'm going with 13. 'Cause that's a spoooky number.

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  8. I finally read some lensmen last year, and maybe it's one of those SF series you need to discover in adolescence, but I found it kind of... batshit insane. The prose styling I could only describe as "wacky".
    I did enjoy myself reading it (notice how I phrased that), but I can't imagine an adapted version that will please everyone. In terms of a modernized, non-sexist (or less sexist) less metaphysically nutty version, well that's pretty much Green Lantern, isn't it? A perfectly faithful, respectful version that changes nothing is never going to happen, if just for the sexism and archaic lingo. Personally, I'd go for a camped up version that kept much of the book's dialogue, but massively overacted, with violent zoom-ins to duplicate the feel of such bits of the book's prose as "before him was a brain - A BRAIN!", but that would probably just piss everybody off. Including you, most likely.

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  9. Alternately, they could go the route of the GURPS Lensman RPG supplement. In a sidebar, that book candidly acknowledged the sexism, and how badly it jarred on modern sensibilities. It then emphasized how the Tellurian culture we see has been manipulated for thousands of years by the Arisian breeding program. Keep the gametes safe!

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  10. It depends who directs and adapts the screenplay. :o If it's you, then I bet it'd be awesome!

    Watch it be Jerry Bruckheimer or Uwe Boll or somebody tho :(

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  11. With all the Green Lantern movie talk it seems that doing a Lensman film is inevitable.

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