All Things:Science Fiction/Fantasy

ucsdguy1 said:
Ender's Game is one of my all time favorite books. A lot of it is so much based on what's going through Ender's head, strategies amongst characters, etc. Can't figure out how that will translate to the big screen.

I hope not just a Starship Troopers re-boot. don't get me wrong, I really liked starship troopers, but in different ways. I hope the movie does it justice.
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The overall premise is the same: humans vs. insectoids. Still, Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers (the book the movie was loosely based on) was first published in '59, while Ender's Game first published in 1985. I'm not certain if EG has any roots in Heinlein's novel (and if you haven't read it, you should), but it's entirely possible.

I personally loathed the S.T. movie...
 
Warner Bros. Developing ‘The Fourth Realm Trilogy,’ From Enigmatic Novelist John Twelve Hawks | /Film

Warner Bros. is looking for a new franchise starter in the novel The Traveler, which is the first in the Fourth Realm Trilogy written by a relatively mysterious author named John Twelve Hawks.

The book describes a world in which a small secret society known by many as The Tabula have achieved a sort of stability through total social control. The Tabula wants to create a fully monitored society in which everyone knows they’re being monitored, and acts accordingly. Technology plays a big part (surveillance cameras, centralized databases, citizen RFID tags, etc.) but there is a group called Travelers which rejects the control, and their grand opposition filters down to a couple of individuals whose lives intersect as the bigger conflict quietly takes place around them.

Here’s a very long recap of the first novel:


In the shadows of modern society an epic battle is fought. One woman is standing between those who try to control mankind and those who will risk their lives for the freedom of us all. On one side the Brethren, using high-end surveillance technology for control, supported by officials and politicians. On the other side the Travelers, the gifted ones, who are able to leave our realm and cross over into other realities. Because of their knowledge they are a great threat to the Brethren. The Travelers are supported by the Harlequins, a group only trained to defend the Travelers and to save them from the Brethren. Harlequins are trained since birth by their parents and other Harlequins. They are able to use all kinds of weapons, but their favored arm is a unique Harlequin sword they carry with them all the time.



In London, Maya, a young woman trained to fight by her powerful father, uses the latest technology to elude detection when walking past the thousands of surveillance cameras that watch the city. In New York, a secret shadow organization uses a victim’s own GPS to hunt him down and kill him. In Los Angeles, Gabriel, a motorcycle messenger with a haunted past, takes pains to live “off the grid” — free of credit cards and government IDs. Welcome to the world of The Traveler — a world frighteningly like our own.In this compelling novel, Maya fights to save Gabriel, the only man who can stand against the forces that attempt to monitor and control society. From the back streets of Prague to the skyscrapers of Manhattan, The Traveler portrays an epic struggle between tyranny and freedom. Not since 1984 have readers witnessed a Big Brother so terrifying in its implications and in a story that so closely reflects our lives.

Part of the hook with these books is the reclusive lifestyle of the author. John Twelve Hawks (often called J12H or JXIIH) is not Native American, as his name suggests. The name is a pseudonym chosen a few years ago, and the author has given only a very few interviews and has reportedly never met his editor in person. As the story goes, the communicate only via email and an untraceable satellite phone and voice scrambler. That’s all a good set of identity-defining tactics, at the very least.

None of that matters for the film, however. Deadline says that WB has just optioned the books, and there is no screenwriter in place yet, much less a script draft.
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Melissa Leo Joins Tom Cruise in ‘Oblivion’ | /Film

Briefly: The latest addition to Joseph Kosinski‘s Oblivion, the sci-fi film starring Tom Cruise, Andrea Riseborough and Olga Kurylenko, is Melissa Leo (The Fighter). We don’t have any word on her role, but simply knowing she’s in the cast will do just fine. Oblivion is shooting now and was just moved to April 2013 in order to be one of the first summer movies out of the gate. Oblivion also features Morgan Freeman and Game of Thrones co-star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.



Cruise plays a surface drone repairman who travels the blasted post-apocalyptic surface of Earth while most of the remaining human population lives in orbit above, safe from alien scavengers that endanger surface-walkers. He finds a woman (Riseborough) crashed in a pod, and that sets of a sequence of events that calls his entire life into question. Kurylenko plays Cruise’s wife, and Freeman reportedly will be the leader of a human resistance movement. Coster-Waldau will play “Sykes, a battle-hardened, physically imposing, intelligent and extremely athletic military technology and weapons expert.”
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Nice cast. Really looks like Sci-Fi is the new zombies as far as movies.
 
FBJ said:
There's a fifth one: Ender In Exile.

And don't miss the Shadow Series. It chronicles the life of Bean (Julian Delphiki) and his nemesis Achilles. GREAT series. Every bit as good as the Ender Series.
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I will definitely check em out. I am also in the middle of reading the hyperion books for the first time as well so I have quite a bit to read atm.
 
It would be interesting to see a Starship Troopers movie that's closer to the source material. When the book put forth the idea that one needs to sacrifice themselves, for example, join the military, to be granted full citizenship, it wasn't trying to be funny like the movie. Instead, the novel was seriously looking at military service as it relates to citizenship and complicated things by focusing on a struggle between humans and aliens as opposed to national military fighting each other.

The thing is, however, that what appears as a pro-military John Wayne esque film isn't likely to be made today without irony. However, beneath its surface, there's a whole lot going on in the novel that the film didn't really do well. I mean, ugh, casting Casper Van Dien as a John Rico, erases the much of the racial issues in the story, not to mention the gender issues. I mean, when the novel was written, women really didn't have major roles in the military. The movie tries to deal with this, but mostly uses the fact that women are in the military for sexual tension and love story elements. And the whole idea of military rank and structure is dealt with mostly by Heinlein to show the comradeship that exists in the military in general.

I thought that the movie is okay. It was entertaining enough, I liked the action, and got to see Dina Meyer topless, so I went home a happy camper. However, the fact that the satire and black humor is set up from the get go changes the overall tone of what Heinlein was trying to do, which is not a criminal sin, but doesn't really represent the novel.

So a more faithful version of the novel would be interesting and it really doesn't have to be something that's being done as a political statement, but rather, a film that provides a different take on the story, which an audience can think and make their own mind about.

Either way, if Starship Troopers gets remade, it would probably suck, lol, and another Casper Van Dien would be cast as John Rico. :P
 
Personally I think Starship Troopers may be one of the greatest subversive head**** movies ever. And yes...I read the original book. If you want to read a book that takes the original concept even farther read ARMOR by John Steakley. That book far exceeds the source material, like I think the(starship troopers) movie did. Sorry, as good as the Starship Troopers book was, it was a miniscule thing just waiting to be outdone.
 
I kind of agree with that. The original has NOT aged well and seems a little silly at this point. The cast on this one is pretty nice. I think Colin Farrell has gotten better as he's aged, and Cranston, Nighy and Bokeem Woodbine. Nice eyecandy with Biel and whatshername. Could be good.
 
Yea the only problem is that Jessica Biel is not good.

They should remake every Schwarzenegger film except Conan, Predator and the first Terminator.
 
Dr. Naysay said:
It would be better with someone who isn't Schwarzenegger in it.



Ditto.

40 years from now people will look back at those movies and wonder what the hell was wrong with us.
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I have to agree here...part of the reason why Total Recall(2012) already has instant credibility is because the main character isn't a steroid infused giant with an Austrian accent. Always thought that was kind of weird in the Terminator movies that robots creating robots would install a confusing accent into this unbelievable acheivement. If you watch any Schwarzenegger flick it's a problem. Except for maybe Red Heat. He was a star, an amazing one, who managed to be HUGE box office in spite of the logic flaws created in ANY movie just because of his existence. And yeah, what the hell were they thinking with Running Man? Would they really put a guy in the game who basically negated the natural strengths of the chasers? C'mon Adgy...Ahnold does not scream 'every man' like the lead in a movie should.
 
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