11.12.10: Skyline

[Fumesucker]

Read about this one on David Brin's website, looks interesting.

http://skyline.movie-trailer.com/

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_W3CcQJ21ZTM/TG352OSsNGI/AAAAAAAAABk/pfmwy0VOcvM/s1600/Skyline+New+Poster.jpg

[kentauros]

1. Looks to me like yet another "aliens destroy the world" movie

from what little I've been able to find in a synopsis. I didn't watch the link because I can't disable the monitor-speakers at work.

Why is it so hard for Hollywood to make movies from all the great books of science fiction we've got out there already? I want to see "Rendezvous with Rama", "Ringworld", "Gateway", "Farthest Star" and "Wall Around A Star" (Frederick Pohl), "Midnight at the Well of Souls" (Jack Chalker). The last one would make a great adventure-style movie, while the rest are more about making you think.

Of course, I've just answered myself with the last bit, because it's antithesis to what Hollywood defines as "science fiction". The "thinking" movies are rare.

[SheilaT]

2. Hollywood has done a terrible

job with the Heinlein books they've made into movies. Done properly, without just going for the violence, and number of them would make good movies.

I would also love to see Asimov's End of Eternity made into a movie. It would film almost perfectly as is, with very little need to change anything in the plot. Plus, we now have the CGI and other special effects technology to make the different centuries look the way they should.

[kentauros]

3. I haven't read as much Heinlein as I probably should.

But the ones I have read would also make good movies, especially Glory Road. "Stranger in a Strange Land" could even be used to make fun of Scientology ;)

For plenty of violence and gore, there's also Harry Harrison's "Deathworld" series. Telepathic animals, insects and even plants, all out to kill you! :o

We may just have to resort to turning these books into home-produced animations, because I don't think Hollywood cares about what has come before. They just want 'new' and 'edgy' and probably don't want the hassled of copyright permissions. Better to have their own writers create knock-offs...

[Fumesucker]

5. My guess is that with a lot of hard SF there would be too much to explain..

You really couldn't fit say "Ringworld" into a movie because a lot of the audience is coming from a profound deficit of scientific understanding and the entire "Known Space" universe. Scrith, room temperature superconductors, Kzinti, shadow squares, General Products, Puppeteers, hyperdrive, et high tech cetera. Writing this kind of thing into a novel is entirely a different thing than trying to put the concepts into a movie for a much broader audience than SF geeks.

Then in "Ringworld" you run into the whole evolution problem, it would cause massive cognitive dissonance in a big chunk of the audience to think of hominids evolving to fit as many niches as they fit into on the Ringworld. Can you imagine the screaming that would come from the religious reich about some of the stuff Niven has in Known Space?

[kentauros]

6. 2001 and even 2010 were commercial successes,

and yet there's still plenty that isn't explained to the audience. Look at any science fiction movie that relies on technology not known currently and how much explanation goes into it in the movie. Rather, it is mentioned and accepted within the story. No explanation needed. Do most audience members understand what warp drive or hyperspace is? Not likely, but they accept it as a form of faster-than-light travel. They don't need to know how it works, and they're fine with that.

With Ringworld, you do the same thing. Present these technologies evolutionary realities as existing and accepted to the characters within the story and the audience will as well. As with any story, the characters are what drive the interest in reading it or viewing it. To me, this movie Skyline doesn't appear to be all that character-driven. From the little info given so far, it appears to be yet another "aliens destroy the world" movie where character-driven storylines aren't that important, but special effects are.

As for how the religious right would react to these better stories: who cares? I doubt they accepted the concepts of evolution in 2001, or even the somewhat positive use of religion in Contact. They're not the majority of movie-goers. Let them get upset; it'll sell more tickets ;)

[txlibdem]

16. I can't remember the name of it but

I read a book decades ago about a human colony planet that had at some time in the past had a short war with lizard-men. At the end of the war we had many prisoners and used genetic manipulation to turn them into dragons (the European version) to use in gladiatorial type fighting competitions, a human rider strapped onto their back controlling the dragon during the fight and armor and razor sharp metal claws adorning the dragons. It was kind of like a cross between a jousting tournament and cock-fighting with the winning human rider gaining prestige in the society. Later on in the book the aliens returned and we find that they had also genetically manipulated their human prisoners to become huge, muscular brainless slave labor.

Think of the RW buttons such a story line would push!

[Forkboy]

4. Been following this for a couple of months now.

I'll be checking it out. It could end up sucking, or it could be pretty neat. Only one way to know for sure.

[kentauros]

7. Sooooo, did it suck?

...as 99% of its audiences seem to be saying :P

I'll likely never see it, whether on dish or even youtube if someone pirates it there, but I did find the audio review on the following site hilarious! :D

http://my.spill.com/profiles/blogs/skyline-audio-review

[Forkboy]

8. I still haven't watched it, but I will regardless of reviews.

Not like I haven't sat through a million bad horror movies before. What's one more? :)

[kentauros]

9. Well, I hope you get some laughs out of it,

at the very least :)

I watched Dementia ("Daughter of Horror") on TCM the other night. Although not very believable, it was interesting in that there wasn't any dialogue; just a very melodramatic voice-over in spots.

[Forkboy]

10. I have not seen Dementia since I was a teenager.

I don't even really remember it, though I do remember the no dialogue part because it threw me. I don't think I was very open minded watching it at that age. I'll have to watch it again.

And considering that I've been watching MST3K for 3 weeks straight I suspect that I'll have a grand time if Skyline sucks. :)

[kentauros]

11. You'll have your own internal RiffTrax going!

:D

Get some friends together that are equal fans of MST3K and see it together, with the intention of making constant funny comments on it

[Forkboy]

12. "You'll have your own internal RiffTrax going!"

I don't even need to be watching a movie for this to be true. :)

[kentauros]

13. Life is that weird for ya, eh?

:P

[Forkboy]

14. You don't know the half of it.

:D

[kentauros]

15. No wonder you like bad movies.

It's to even out the wyrding way

[Forkboy]

17. I watched it and thought it fairly decent.

certainly nothing deep, but it was better than Cloverfield and Independence Day (anything is better than I.D.), the two movies it's most clearly influenced by (with a couple of references to War of the Worlds for good measure).

The two biggest complaints that I heard was that the characters were unlikable and the plot was thin. There's truth to both of those, but it's not the whole truth. The characters are unlikable, at first, but find some humanity as the movie progresses. I think they were intended to seem shallow at first. On the second part, the plot is indeed basic, but it doesn't call for anything deeper. This isn't meant to compete with a movie like The Last King of Scotland, for instance. It's an alien invasion movie, for crying out loud.

I'm not saying this is a classic movie by any stretch, and i can certainly understand that there are people who won't like it, but some of the negativity I've read about it seemed extreme, and it really wasn't that bad.