A long time ago, albeit not very far away, I was one of literally
millions of people eagerly awaiting what
was then the first Star Wars film, the
one that has since become the fourth in the Star
Wars universe's chronology. Then it was just called Star Wars; it has since been renamed Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. I recall sitting in a cinema in
London's West End, better to experience the film with the benefit of Dolby
sound, listening to that stirring John Williams theme, seeing the now famed
crawl as the back story was revealed and then that small space craft flitting
across the screen, to be immediately replaced by the hulking mass of the
pursuing craft that filled the entire screen to an accompanying rumble from the
cinema's loudspeaker system. And now there is a new Star Wars film, one that has been eagerly anticipated by
aficionados and which, from what I have heard, is actually rather good in a way
that some of the more recent additions to the franchise, Episode One: The Phantom Menace in particular, were not.
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| 3rd August 1977, and crowds flock to The Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles for the opening of Star Wars. |
At around the same time as Star Wars was released, in 1977, I started to become interested in
science fiction and the first novel in the genre that I read was Larry Niven's Ringworld. More Niven followed, and James
Blish (including his novelisations of the Star Trek TV series), Philip K. Dick
and H.G. Wells. Interestingly, while Blish, and Alan Dean Foster (who has
written novelisations of both Star Trek
and Star Wars) have turned their hand
to converting film scripts into books, their original output has never been
turned into movies, whereas the work of Wells and Dick account for more films
than most other science fiction writers. And like any writer whose work is
adapted for the screen, the reader's perception of the novel, the story and
especially the characters, determines whether as an individual, you appreciate
the film or not. Take Jack Reacher for instance; Lee Childs' ex-military
policeman turned drifter and investigator of suspicious and dangerous events is
supposed to be six foot five inches tall, yet was portrayed on screen by the
more averagely built Tom Cruise. A certain amount of suspension of disbelief
was required to accept Cruise as Reacher, but on the whole he just about
carried it off.
Cruise also starred in the film version of Philip K. Dick's
short story, Minority Report, which
like most of PKD's shorter output, is a fairly straightforward tale, as was We Can Remember It for You Wholesale
which became Total Recall on screen.
PKD's longer works, with their themes of altered realities, altered states and
postmodernity, have been translated into films which concentrate more on the
action elements, with a nod to the philosophical and metaphysical themes of his
stories, some with greater success than others. Blade Runner, which Dick eventually gave his full blessing to, is
possibly the most successful adaption of a PKD novel (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?); certainly it is the most
well known, although The Adjustment
Bureau is to my mind a highly accomplished, and much underrated, adaption. A Scanner Darkly, on the other hand, was
in my view a grave disappointment. As much as I enjoyed the book, as much as I
wanted to like the film, I didn't warm to the movie, perhaps largely because of
the animation technique (rotoscoping). The
Man In The High Castle has been made into a TV series by Amazon Prime and
there have been plans to make a film of Ubik
in the pipeline for years, although the PKD novel I wish someone would film is Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a
story that I return to periodically and which to me is most representative of
PKD's work; it is the novel I would recommend as an introduction to anyone
unfamiliar with his writing.
While Philip K. Dick has been largely well treated by the
film makers, one cannot say the same for Robert Heinlein. Starship Troopers, the first science fiction novel to appear on the
reading lists at three of the five United States military branches, is widely
regarded as a classic of the genre yet was turned into a film that bore little
resemblance to its source and was described by one critic as "a nonstop
splatterfest ... devoid of taste and logic."
Meanwhile, H.G. Wells, a master of science fiction in print,
has not been especially well treated by the film makers either. While the 1960
film of The Time Machine was a
creditable effort, the same cannot be said of the remake released in 2002.
Likewise The War of The Worlds was
turned into a landmark work of the science fiction cinema in 1953 (although the
special effects now look somewhat dated) but suffered miserably when remade by
Steven Spielberg in 2005. Despite favourable reviews from the critics, this
adaption succeeded in turning a classic novel into boring, plodding film.
Considering how many other stories there are that have been rebooted, it is
odd, not to say more than somewhat disappointing, that no one has had the wit
to make a film faithful to Wells' original story, that is to say set in
Victorian England.
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| The late, great, PKD |
Meanwhile there is Star
Wars: The Force Awakens, but with all
due respect to those who like this particular branch of sci-fi, I don't think
I'll be bothering. I wouldn't categorise it as drivel, although goodness knows there
has been a lot of that in cinemas masquerading under the banner of science
fiction; think The Phantom Menace, think Superman IV, think Battlefield Earth (which I apologise for mentioning since most of
you were probably trying to forget it ever existed), but Star Wars is not really my thing anymore.
On the other hand, there are a whole load of stories that are
crying out to be made into films. Apart from the aforementioned hoped for but
unlikely War of The Worlds reboot, and
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, and
Ringworld, there's Time Out Of Joint[1]
(PKD again), A Canticle for Leibowitz
(Walter M. Miller), The Player of
Games (Iain Banks), Perdido Street
Station (China Miéville) and Altered
Carbon (Richard Morgan) to name but a
few.
But there again, books being so personal to us, often the
stories are better off remaining on the page. Sometimes the best films are the
ones that we make in our own heads.
[1] The Truman Show bears comparison with Time Out of Joint. Until someone films
Dick's book, the Jim Carrey movie will do just fine.
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