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Overlooked Series for TV or Movie Adaptation
The Game of Thrones book series is nihilistic nonsensical bilge. But it makes for “good” television because that sort of mess seems to be popular in today’s culture, what with all the sex, sorcery, and savagery. As an actual story though? It’s terrible. Which is probably why George R.R. Martin could never finish it – it had no real logical “out”, no escape from its cycles of violence and revenge, save what the HBO writers could force together. Until HBO picked it up, though, it was unlikely fare for Hollywood treatment – Hollywood typically shies away from overly long fantasy cycles simply because such things are very expensive to cast and produce well, to say nothing of finding good writers to translate novels into scripts you can actually film. For all the awfulness of its story, I do give full credit to HBO for the solid work they put into the project over nearly a decade – one can deplore the story but still admire the brilliant and extremely skilled craftwork involved in telling it, and (more importantly) sticking with it at that high level for so long. Would that The Hobbit had been given that same dedication.
And now it seems we are to receive another attempt at telling the story of Dune. I am not excited at the prospect. The David Lynch film of the 80s was terrible. The SciFi Channel’s miniseries of 20 years ago was much better. But why Dune? Why yet another attempt? If Hollywood is looking for that next “big epic”, surely there are other and better stories to tell? Dune, the first book, is interesting, but has its weaknesses, while the rest of the series gets rather strange. Haven’t other authors written better and more compelling fantasy or science-fiction epics? Or must we continually return to just a few “classics”, like Amazon is trying to do with its pending Tolkien series? I would like to propose a few other authors and series that Hollywood should consider instead, and would invite you to make your own suggestions as well.
Jack Vance – Lyonesse – You have all the vying factions and warring kingdoms, spies, betrayals, magic, pending doom, adventures, and quests that people loved in GoT, but series is more tightly told, not predicated on the nonsense of centuries of cultural and technological stasis, and its story arcs and overall narrative have definite beginnings, middles, and ends. The characters are also far more human, and thus more clever, and more fallible at the same time. Vance is not afraid to kill off characters, but does not do so because the Plot Wheel® demands it. Vance’s other works, from his Dying Earth stories to his science fiction, would also make good candidates – they are character driven tales in vivid worlds, but the worlds are ultimately only backdrops for the people in them.
Susan Cooper – The Dark Is Rising – Yes this is a children’s series, and yes Hollywood did, in its Harry-Potter enthusiasms, already put out a film, but it was dreadful (almost Lynch-Dune dreadful at that), and we should put it aside and start over. The series is a modern blending with ancient Anglo-Celtic mythology, and as such is very richly told.
Cornelia Funke – Inkheart – Like with Susan Cooper, Hollywood tried this one and blew it once already, in no small part because they could not decide whether it was a children’s story with some mature hints, or a more mature story as witnessed by a child, and of course they Americanized it. Andrew Klavan’s Another Kingdom series deals with some similar concepts as Funke, so if you enjoyed Klavan you would find this series familiar in some respects. Inkheart is a story series about our own world intersecting with a very rich and complicated parallel magical world, through the eyes of a young woman growing up in both.
What would you like to see made? What authors or series have been either unfairly overlooked, or badly mangled and worth another shot?
Or are there series (say, like Dune) that you think ought to be put out to pasture just on principle at this point?
Published in Entertainment
Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
I would agree with you if they hadn’t done portrayed Rico’s disciplinary whipping, and the incident that led to it. But, obviously, sending women into combat was over the top foolishness. Bob let them pilot ships because he considered them better qualified for the job, but women in combat is simply uncivilized.
–But I want to know more. Where do I go?
Re Reading this series now.
I would love to see the Belisarius series too.
Doria Russell’s 2-novel series “The Sparrow” and “The Children of God.” I read somewhere that Brad Pitt had some corner on it but nothing has happened, and he would be a terrible choice in casting the main character.
This topic makes me wonder…..do conservatives read and watch more sci-fi than a population average, or just retreat from pop culture wherever they can, and this area is one of few options?
Never listen to ads. They never end well.
Oh, the issue is not that they’re casting non-white people as characters. Jordan’s world is full of different nations that are culturally and ethnically distinct, several of which are clearly non-European looking.
The issue is that they’re not keeping consistent ethnicities within these different communities.
Here are pictures of the main Emond’s Field crew:
Now, Rand is supposed to be ethnically different from the other Two Rivers folk, so of course he should be different-looking from others, but even taking Rand out of the equation, the other 4 don’t look like they’re all from the same part of the world. It’s odd that Emond’s Field, which is supposed to be this backwater town with little contact with the outside world, has the same genetic/ethnic diversity as a modern cosmopolitan city.
It’s not a deal-breaker for me. I’m still excited for the show. But it does show a willingness on the part of the showrunner to break world-building logic in the name of PC.
Titus bait! Titus bait!
I already know @titustechera saw the movie…
Nah. The only hint of the supernatural in the novels is prescience. That’s well on the science fiction side of the sci-fi/fantasy border. Roger Penrose thinks there’s a sub-quantum-reality basis for consciousness. Entanglement experiments hint that the sub-quantum substrate is non-local.
I would have been disappointed if he hadn’t.
A young Dustin Hoffman would have been fun in the part, if it had been written in time. A smallish Latino pickup baseballer type with deep haunted eye sockets and a blindingly radiant smile, when it emerges. Male. None of this female Jesuits in the future nonsense.
The suffering of the lead character would make for a tough watch. It makes for a very tough read, for that matter, though I read it congruent to some personal trauma so that may have accentuated the experience for me. The business with his hands makes me wince just to think about it.
In the day, someone gave Spencer Tracy one of those Tennessee Williamsy dark scripts to read and he rejected it violently, wanting to know why anyone would want to put an audience through that. I love the Sparrow, but it was such a tough read that I am torn between worrying if it would fail to translate to screen well or translate much too well.
Same experience, except that I disliked it from the opening and kept going for an hour anyway. I felt sad for Brooks and the people who liked his stuff.
I enjoyed it, even though as I read it I was very much aware that it was huge Tolkien rip-off. It was Brooks’s debut novel, though, and he got much more original as he continued with his writing career. I’ve enjoyed several of his other books. He’s not in my top tier of favorite fantasy authors, but he’s done some good stuff.
How did the Sword of Truth thingy work out?
Haven’t watched it.
The Reckoners series would be a cool 3-5 season series. I really enjoyed it.
From what little I watched of the pilot, pretty cheesy.
Yep, everyone’s trying to create the next Game of Thrones, so here’s fingers crossed that we get more hits than misses out of the coming onslaught of fantasy adaptations. Hopefully if enough of these turn out successful I’ll eventually get to see some Brandon Sanderson-adaptations. His Stormlight Archive series is WAY too big and convoluted for a film adaptation, maybe even too much for a TV-adaptation. But I think his Mistborn, Wax and Wayne, Warbreaker, Reckoners, and Skyward books would all make wildly entertaining films or shows if done right and given the proper budget.
I’ve not read Dune or seen the previous film/tv adaptations, but I am excited for Denis Vilenueve to be doing it. He’s demonstrated with Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 that he treats scifi with much more thoughtfulness and depth than most filmmakers.
Notice how the Star Wars movies, both cycles, started out as kids’ fare and matured? A New Hope and The Phantom Menace each captured their own new cohort, then the sequels matured with their audience.
The HP movies did that too, of course – the movies matured, grew darker and more responsible, along with Harry.
Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain stories could be treated the same way. Nevermind that Disney spoiled The Black Cauldron; that’s a long time ago and Disney is disgusting anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Niven_and_Pournelle_novel)
Edit: Dang, Judgementaled.
Agreed. Endgame was it for the Avengers for me. And Far From Home was entertaining, but I have SJW related forbodings about the next Spider-Man movie.
I haven’t watched BR 2049 yet; I did not hear good things. Should I give it a chance, or is it just a data point?
Vendetta would make a very good stand-alone movie.
Peter Clines is in the middle of several serieseses. (Not sure how many es’s there are there.)
I think a filmed version of his Ex-Heroes series would be awesome. Who knew that a new series about super heroes and zombies together would work? But it does, and I am hanging on waiting for the next one.
In the meantime he has been working on his other series, which wasn’t advertised as a series – just stand alone novels. It takes a minute to realize that these are taking place in the same world, and some of the characters are people we met in the other books. They are all going to come together at some point. Starts with “14”, then “The Fold”, “Dead Moon”, and recently “Terminus”. This would make a great miniseries also.
Haven’t seen it, and I’m a fan of The Avengers since forever. (X-Men suck.) I think I got put off by the weak-a$$ story arc. Out-of-nowhere godlike supernatural power that one can just wield by will is not sci-fi, it’s magic.
Comic book powers can be accidental, altho’ earned is better, but they may never be godlike. Magic makes storytellers irresponsible. Like with with that ridiculous Captainess Marvellous movie, which I did watch on the treadmill at the gym once. Comic book movie heroes should have to do more than give the bad guy a Karen look. Ok, that’s not funny. Stupid movie, but I guess it was made for the young moms who distracted me from my workout.
What about Orson Scott Card’s Alvin Maker books? Those would be fun.
Or S. M. Stirling’s Island in the Sea of Time books? Or the flip-side Dies the Fire books?
Or Orson Scott Card’s Memory of Earth books?
David and Leigh Eddings’ Belgariad would be excellent fodder for a season-long exploration, honestly. Two seven-episode parts would probably cover it nicely without needing to provide too much filler with the showdown between Belgarath and Ctuchik at Rak Cthol being a natural endpoint for season one.
There could also be a bit of grit without there being too much until you get to the human sacrifice part.
These ones in particular feature plenty of period costumes, war and sex, some of it perverted, possibly enough to satisfy media consumers…
Well, full disclosure I haven’t watched the whole movie. But the chunks I’ve seen of it I thought were really beautifully done.
I think it works in a story like Starship Troopers because the enemy a) isn’t human, and b) doesn’t take prisoners. The idea of sending women into combat against male humans is much more uncivilized.