Good Sci-fi Movie ideas

keen320 · Post by **keen320** » 2010-11-12 10:12pm

Ok, I'm sure everyone has daydreamed about a favorite sci-fi universe getting a good movie. What I'm asking in this thread isn't just, what movie you would really like to see. It's more like, what sci-fi books/games/whatever could be most faithfully adapted to the silver screen? Which ones are audiences most likely to attend? Which ones is Hollywood likely to risk making, and which ones might Hollywood make but butcher beyond recognition? Essentially, which ones would probably be good movies, and what are the odds they'll ever get made?

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2010-11-13 01:34am

I think Dan Simmons Hyperion would make a fantastic movie and turn a profit. It fits in it current obsession with huge budget special effects ridden bonanzas. At same time it delivers an incredibly sophisticated tale that is both personal and epic in scale. Plus the author himself is very smart. He has admitted himself you cant turn a book into a movie the best you can do is do an equivalent with same underlying themes. So he has a realistic idea of what to do here instead of pissing of the fans of the originals by not staying faithful to the books.

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2010-11-13 03:05am

H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy series, with a little tweaking, could be made into family friendly movies with a wide audience though it'd be tricky to get a studio to not dumb it down - that would be the biggest danger. It's a trilogy about adorable friendly childlike intelligent aliens - who happen to be slowly going extinct. (There was mention of a rather nasty moment in the second book about a pregnant Fuzzy who had a miscarriage. She looked at the deformed fetus and said, "Dead, as always" and just went on with her life because they were that used to it. I have no idea if that would make any final cuts.) The movies could be made pretty easily if anyone was actually interested in the rights for them, but it could get really stupid very fast if someone untalented got his paws on it.

TOSDOC · Post by **TOSDOC** » 2010-11-13 01:12pm

There's a bunch of novels I would love to get seen made into movies, but Hollywood would tear most of them up. I saw Del Toro's latest script for At The Mountains of Madness and it didn't seem faithful at all, which would be a real shame. Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle should have been what we got instead of Independence Day.

I think the most obscure novel I read that should be made is Illegal Alien by Robert J. Sawyer. Aliens called Tosoks make contact with Earth, and things go swimmingly until one of the humans on the first contact team is found murdered. One of the aliens is arrested and charged with the crime, and is to be tried in an American court. You can imagine the ramifications, right down to the jury selection. The aliens are extremely interesting and believable--the author has gone to great pains not only to explain their biology, but also how their evolution has affected their own culture and worldview, which of course is very different from humans. When we consider how much more difficult first contact will actually be than what Hollywood would allow us to think, this book becomes a must read, especially in how we as humans should respond as a species. This kind of story deserves a wider audience.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2010-11-14 01:27am

poor piper killed himself.

hmm, I have always been fond of some of the great oldies, however I would like to see someone besides Micheal Mann do F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack series.

Starglider · Post by **Starglider** » 2010-11-14 05:02am

David Webber's Honor Harrington series, or rather choice bits appropriately adapted for for film, because the characters are decent and it would be nice to see some semi-realistic giant space battles. The Dark Wing / Dark Path / Dark Ascent / Dark Crusade series (by Walter Hunt), the writing is mediocre but I'd really like to see the anthro hawk aliens in CGI.

Orm · Post by **Orm** » 2010-11-15 02:18pm

Mayabird wrote:H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy series, with a little tweaking, could be made into family friendly movies with a wide audience though it'd be tricky to get a studio to not dumb it down - that would be the biggest danger. It's a trilogy about adorable friendly childlike intelligent aliens - who happen to be slowly going extinct. (There was mention of a rather nasty moment in the second book about a pregnant Fuzzy who had a miscarriage. She looked at the deformed fetus and said, "Dead, as always" and just went on with her life because they were that used to it. I have no idea if that would make any final cuts.) The movies could be made pretty easily if anyone was actually interested in the rights for them, but it could get really stupid very fast if someone untalented got his paws on it.

I'd second this, but I don't really see any way it won't get turned into Avatar with Ewoks.

TOSDOC · Post by **TOSDOC** » 2010-11-15 02:31pm

Starglider wrote:David Webber's Honor Harrington series, or rather choice bits appropriately adapted for for film, because the characters are decent and it would be nice to see some semi-realistic giant space battles. The Dark Wing / Dark Path / Dark Ascent / Dark Crusade series (by Walter Hunt), the writing is mediocre but I'd really like to see the anthro hawk aliens in CGI.

Honor Harrington was my first thought, but then I thought it would make for a better TV series than a movie. The first book is a fantastic story and might be a good stand-alone film, but the exposition required is daunting to a general audience just to get the ball rolling. They would also have to get the battles right--otherwise I picture capital ship scenes from Wing Commander all over again.

Samuel · Post by **Samuel** » 2010-11-15 10:36pm

What are you talking about? The first book has Harrington accidentally piss off her superior, get dumped in Basilisk station, kick things into shape and foil an attempt by the Space French to seize control of the planet. You don't need much exposition for that and it makes a good self contained movie. If you want we can add in a romance with her XO, although I imagine fans wouldn't like such creative lisence- you don't really need to make many changes, just decide what to show and what to imply.

Although I would make Nimitz a regular cat. Any further changes can be dealt with further down the line- personally, I'd like to change make Manticore more imperialistic and make Haven interesting. Make them a democracy- decisions are voted on electronically so the government is essentially mob rule.

Knife · Post by **Knife** » 2010-11-15 11:29pm

I forgot the authors name, but in the 70's there was a series called Jandar of Castillo or some such thing about a 'Nam vet being sucked from a ancient ruin in Laos to the moon of Jupiter. His fight from being a slave to an alien species to finding a beautiful woman who was a Princess who in turn was kidnapped by Sky Pirates in floating sailboats, and his attempt to free his new hottie.

I think it would be an awesome movie, swashbuckling with swords, aliens, and floating freaking sail ships. Auto win.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2010-11-15 11:32pm

sounds like John Carter of Mars adapted for Vietnam.

Knife · Post by **Knife** » 2010-11-16 01:26am

Just looked it up, yeah it was 1972 by Lin Carter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jandar_of_Callisto

It was a fun read.

SeaTrooper · Post by **SeaTrooper** » 2010-11-16 05:16am

My top choices are:

Phil and Kaja Foglio's Girl Genius as a TV series, preferably live action but good cartoon would work. You'd just need to get all the Mad Science right.

John Ringo's 'Into the Looking Glass' trilogy as movies, though mainly for when they do Vorpal Blade and Manxome Foe.
The Posleen Wars would have to be up there as well, though can you imagine how non-PC 'Watch on the Rhine' would be?

I second the Harrington series, naturally. Well done, that man.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2010-11-16 09:29am

I second the Harrington series, naturally. Well done, that man.

It is difficult to transition Honor Harrington books into a visual medium. How do you portray wedges and multi million kilometer range combat onscreen ? And the series is huge and still growing every year. Which book do you decide to butcher adapt for hollywood treatment ?

adam_grif · Post by **adam_grif** » 2010-11-16 10:14am

You ever seen Starship Operators?

That's how you show long range space combat.

Simon_Jester · Post by **Simon_Jester** » 2010-11-16 10:20am

Sarevok wrote:It is difficult to transition Honor Harrington books into a visual medium. How do you portray wedges and multi million kilometer range combat onscreen ?

Scale the wedges down until they're roughly the same size as the ships, make them look like mildly glowy force fields that flare bright when something hits them or something. Trying to represent massive gravitational distortions onscreen is pointless, and the audience really doesn't need to know anything except "the wedge is what makes the ship go and what acts as its shields, oh and there are holes in it here and here, and these parts are tougher than those parts."

One of Weber's biggest mistake was trying to improve his explanations of 'gravitic' technology (the wedge, the hyperdrive, the FTL comm) by throwing on extra layers of technobabble. You don't want to duplicate that mistake on screen.

And the series is huge and still growing every year. Which book do you decide to butcher adapt for hollywood treatment ?

Start from Book One, keep going to the end of Book Eight. Maybe Nine. Stop there; it's a much better place to end your TV series than to keep going into the weirdness that Weber had to come up with after the pro-democracy people take over Haven. One little rewrite to Ashes of Victory (with no assassination attempt on the Manticoran leadership) and you wind up with "game over good guys win in both countries yaaay!"

Of course, all by itself that's enough material for a pretty damn big TV series.

TOSDOC · Post by **TOSDOC** » 2010-11-16 12:29pm

Post subject: Re: Good Sci-fi Movie ideas

What are you talking about? The first book has Harrington accidentally piss off her superior, get dumped in Basilisk station, kick things into shape and foil an attempt by the Space French to seize control of the planet. You don't need much exposition for that and it makes a good self contained movie. If you want we can add in a romance with her XO, although I imagine fans wouldn't like such creative lisence- you don't really need to make many changes, just decide what to show and what to imply.

Although I would make Nimitz a regular cat. Any further changes can be dealt with further down the line- personally, I'd like to change make Manticore more imperialistic and make Haven interesting. Make them a democracy- decisions are voted on electronically so the government is essentially mob rule.

Not just that, but just setting the stage off Earth for the general audience, including the strategic and economic value of the Manticore Wormhole Junction, Haven's problems and actual reasons for going to war, and setting up the parallel between the Napoleonic Wars and the Honorverse. It'd be nice not to do it with just a simple opening crawl. Just the battle with the Stilties and Fearless' battle with Sirius should take a good 45 minutes alone. A TV series would make it much easier to portray all you wanted, rather than rush events like the theatrical Dune.

Simon_Jester · Post by **Simon_Jester** » 2010-11-16 01:17pm

TOSDOC wrote:Not just that, but just setting the stage off Earth for the general audience, including the strategic and economic value of the Manticore Wormhole Junction, Haven's problems and actual reasons for going to war, and setting up the parallel between the Napoleonic Wars and the Honorverse. It'd be nice not to do it with just a simple opening crawl.

I don't know. The biggest weakness of the Honorverse is the sheer scale of the exposition you have to push through to see what's going on; it would be nice to have an adaptation that doesn't make you burn half an hour reading about how hyperspace works before you get to the interesting stuff.

Coalition · Post by **Coalition** » 2010-11-16 07:38pm

Simon_Jester wrote:Scale the wedges down until they're roughly the same size as the ships, make them look like mildly glowy force fields that flare bright when something hits them or something. Trying to represent massive gravitational distortions onscreen is pointless, and the audience really doesn't need to know anything except "the wedge is what makes the ship go and what acts as its shields, oh and there are holes in it here and here, and these parts are tougher than those parts."

I'd start with a fleet look at the glowy wedges of a fleet in formation. Zoom in on one of the wedges, until you start seeing small blurs of light. Those blurs reveal themselves as missiles zooming by. A missile detonating at long range shows that the missiles use bomb-pumped lasers, and flares of light in the distance. Close in following a wave of missiles, and you get the first counter missiles in operation. Closer will reveal lasers being used to shoot down the missiles. Closer to the ship will reveal glows in a certain area being hit by lasers, and it is revealed to be a flat plane protecting something. Zoom in more until the ship is revealed behind it. Zoom through the hull until you get to the bridge, and you have people reporting on what happened.

Tactical displays show missile waves approaching, with countermissiles going out. Have a bit of fuzzing when the countermissiles are launched to hint to sensor effects. Sensor operators report on what the screen displays so people can make the link.

Similar to the infinite pullback they did in First Contact, but in reverse.

The whole thing is revealed to be a simulation being run on a secondary bridge. From there you get the story starting.