I Don't Mind That Hollywood Isn't In Favor of Smart Science Fiction, But Do They Need To Keep Working Against it?

The closest one would be about a six-hour round trip for me. Handy to know, though, thank you!

Especially since the liberal side of scifi seems to... I'm not sure how best to describe their feelings for him since 'hate' really does seem a rather tame description for what they feel for him. Perhaps utterly loathe and despise both him and his works would work best?

I can't count the people I've met online and in person that would tell me they loved Ender's Game when they read and then found they hated it when they realized his political leanings. To which I reply that homophobic or not, the man writes a damn good scifi novel.

Any of these close to you?

http://www.sonyclassics.com/moon/dates.html

@ Jake: I still haven't seen Moon. It hasn't cracked a theater anywhere near me. It's driving me nuts.

@ Wolf: I'd be interested in seeing Ender, though I'm not a huge fan of the novel. To be honest, I think what's scaring H'wood on this one is the VERY strong following the book has amongst conservative Christians and Mormons. "Hell, we don't wanna' make movies people who believe in God would like"

That's the movie I want to see. Especially considering Card has written the first half dozen screen plays himself. They even had Wolfgang Petersen scheduled to direct and the guys who did the first X-men film to polish the screen play but it all came to naught. Speaking of X-men, that was a pretty decent and smart comic book/sci-fi movie; along with the first two Spiderman movies. But I'm at a loss for anything else at the moment.

I do have to give Duncan Jones credit for his film MOON. Probably the closest thing we got this year to an intelligent SF piece. The characters are well-drawn and brilliantly acted (Sam Rockwell needs to get an award for this thing), and the story is compelling. Not to mention that I even enjoyed this film as a conservative -- if there's any political message to be found, it's a very libertarian one; the film is very much in favor of individual rights, as opposed to corporations or governments.

That gives the suits a bit more credit for awareness than I usually feel they have, but, yeah, it's a very 1950s might-makes-right kind of movie, and H'wood just can't have that in a 21st century might-makes-right kind of world.

Yeah, I've heard rumors of this for quite a long time. Scott has generally got several projects germinating at once, and most of 'em don't come off. I'd actually be pretty excited if he did it, though, since Scott is one of the few directors I really trust, and also because Scott is one of those 'rewrite the hell out of it' directors, so the finished product will be stunning, cool, and only vaguely related to the source material, but in a *good* way. It's as close as you can come to having your cake and eating it too.

I think Hollywood also felt they had to change the message of the movie because, as is, it actually looks pretty pro-Bush. Obviously, that wasn't the intention of the filmmakers back in 1951, but think about it: an advanced civilization sees a backwater, primitive civilization building weapons of mass destruction, so they come to the backwater civilization and tell them to stop or be destroyed. Pax Americana as Pax Gort, really.

You're right R3 I just thought Hollywood would spin it as pro gay as for casting a major would cast Brad PItt and Angelia Jolie. And they are making it link:

http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/10/13/the-forever-war-ridley-scott-returns...

Yeah. Frustrating. Of course the original was a message movie, too, and I know some conservatives who hate that movie because of it (Wrongheadedly, I think). I can understand the desire to re-imagine it for a new generation, with a new moral. Arguably "Farewell, The Master," the story it was based on, has never really been literally filmed, so I could understand remaking it closer to the source material - there's a good horror movie in that.

What a lot of people miss is how deliberately religious the first movie was - a heavenly messenger named "Carpenter" visits earth, the authorities immediately try to kill him, he gets away, teaches a message of peace and love, he dies, is entombed (in his space ship), is resurrected, gives a final sermon, and leaves his disciples behind as he ascends once more to the heavens. You don't really need to be a genius theologian to see what they were trying to do there, and it works.

Of course the first thing the remake did was strip away all the religious allegory, and it just goes downhill from there...

Y'think?

To be honest, I didn't take it that way, and remember I first read it in the 80s, which were pretty homophobic times by comparison to now. I felt like the gay stuff was more of a running joke to show how society changes and becomes more unfathomable, and it allowed Halderman to do some great one-liners about how Mandala is hoping to find a latent heterosexual amongst his troops, and people calling him "The old queer" because he's the one straight person on the ship.

But that last chapter of the book - the one where the posthuman clones are talking to the all-gay survivors of Mandala's unit, and they say "Oh, and we can make you straight so you'll fit better in to normal society" - completely undercuts any pro-gay interpretations the book may have allowed. In fact, you could take the book to be anti-gay simply because Halderman was trying to show the future as being revolting, and how did he do that? He turned everyone gay.

It is *Definitely* an anti-war book, of course, a sort of counterpoint to "Starship Troopers" (Deliberately so), and just a fantastic read. Far and away Halderman's best book, too. I'd love to see a movie version of it, though it'd be hard to cast it, and awkward to film it without an NC17 rating (Lots of orgies and stuff). And, yes, it would have been easy to spin it as a pro-gay movie, so it should have been the film H'wood was clamoring for, but, of course that would involve 'the reading' and they're not so much in to that. They're dullards.

I dunno. If I *WAS* going to start a studio, I think I'd go to some place like Canada or Australia or South Africa to do it, just to get away from the whole H'wood cycle of self-devouring anti-intelectualism.

Hollywood's idea of a smart science fiction movie is remaking The Day the Earth Stood Still with a green message. The problem is that it takes smart people to write smart science fiction, and Hollywood isn't exactly brimming with geniuses.

I am sorry R3 your dream will be still born Hollywood is incapable of making a smart sci fi movie, maybe an independent could but not the majors. Why you may ask well because the people that green light projects do not read good novels let alone science fiction. So they make what they think a sci fi fan would like. Look what they did to the Martian Chronicles when they made that mini series they made it so PC that the point that Bradbury was making was lost the same for the Illustrated Man.

You also have to remember that Hollywood thinks Transformers is sci fi all they know is that sci fi is another form of action movie. Can you imagine what they would do to Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama or Childhoods End. Look what they did to I Robot it sucked compared to the original stories. They might be able to do a space opera that has lots of fights but they had their chance with StarShip Troopers and what did they do, it was like the producers wanted to show that Heinlein was a fascist they totally missed the whole point of the book they did not even come close.

You would think that the lefties in Hollywood would have jumped on the Forever War but they don't even understand that it was the anti war pro gay movie they wanted to make when GW was president. If they can't recognize something like that how are they going to make a smart movie period let alone a smart sci fi one.