Damnation Alley

[jack]

Hey, there *is* a Zelazny film! Why did no-one tell me? I didn't know till I looked down at the book I was reading and it said "Now a Sensational[1] 20th century fox film".

Admittedly, it doesn't look like I'm missing much, the film converted the antihero Hell Tanner into Jeff Hale, I mean a random all american airforce officer not-Hell Tanner, and decided no post-apocalyptic world was complete without mutant cockroaches.

OTOH, it was a reasonable choice -- one of Zelazney's books that *is* set on earth, without a lot of special effects. As much as I'd like to see Lord of Light, I appreciate it could be tricky[2].

[1] Sensational: I guess bad emotions are technically sensational :)
[2] Blasphemous is often the word used. I'm not sure -- I interpreted it as having the fairly clear message that impersonating gods is bad, mmkay? but I can see others.

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I think Lord Of Light might film pretty well actually...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

It's the one I'd like to see, obviously. And is fairly full of action with introspection communicated by conversation. I guess the biggest hurdles would be making the effects non-cheesy, not offending 1bln Hindus. Wasn't it mooted at some point, but didn't come to anything?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I don't know how seriously Hindus take that sort of thing. (Well, doubtless it varies, not all Muslims were up in arms about Rushdie, really the question means would people be blowing things up or just holding demonstrations about it.)

What I noticed about Star Wars: Revelations was that the CGI was top notch, the settings were a bit Blake's-Seven-ish but basically OK, but the acting was well below par for a professionally made film. The relevance of which is that I don't think the fx would be the hard bit.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

True. Doh, my hypocriticalmeter has just gone off: I wouldn't have objected to a film dissing the christian god. (Amazing Pullman got away with it, really...:)) But it might be a factor in getting a big budget film, whether or not it'd provoke actual armed response.

Then again, "What Dreams May Come" for instance (Robin Williams goes to heaven, and kicks himself because his wife committed suicide and is in hell) seemed a scathing satire on a lot of people's unthinking beliefs to me, but most people thought it was feel-good, I think.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

The relevance of which is that I don't think the fx would be the hard bit.

LOL. I see what you mean. (Though I think my original point -- that Damn Alley is a reasonably unobjection film and hence was easier to make held mostly. I'm not sure if it was before or after starwars; now of course a scifi romp is a default film.)

Yes, I can so easily see the plot/characters etc of LoL being butchered. But it's always *possible* to do that well, even if people wouldn't want to :)