Books to movies

[Zapranoth]

I would love to see a well-done movie of Fred Saberhagen's original Sword trilogy.

Or of _The Empire of the East_, also done by Saberhagen.

But no movie would be done as well as Saberhagen wrote those books, so I would inevitably be disappointed.

(But I said that about the Lord of the Rings, years ago, and was proven wrong.)

[Master Blaster]

They should put the storyboard and script together. If nothing else it'd make a hell of a comic.

[Fearless Freep]

I'd also love to see film version of Elric, but it would probably have to be anime to include the scale of things, the look of the people, the sense of doom, and the sheer violence of it all.

That would be really cool...

[Blue.Brutal]

Before I get going, just to make sure I actually make a comment that has something to do with the topic of the thread, I would love to see a decent big screen treatment of The Hobit; I'm not hopeful that it will happen, but one can dream.  I also wouldn't complain about seeing a properly low budget treatment of "The Navidson Record" from Mark Z. Danielewski's brilliant and atmospheric House of Leaves.  Glen Cook's Black Company series would be absolutely wonderful if done right - great storytelling in a consistant and facinating fantasy world.   I'd camp out for tickets.

That having been said, I feel the need to jump in here to defend the Enderverse.

Ender's Game is a brilliant novel, and I don't think I'm going to get a lot of arguement out of anyone for that.  Although it was based on a short story, however, the novel was actually written as a set up for Speaker for the Dead (which I didn't much care for) - Speaker wasn't any kind of attempt to cash in on Ender; if he were going to do that, wouldn't Speaker and the rest of the later books at least bear a passing resemblance to Ender's Game?

The Shadow series is a harder arguement to make, but I found that Ender's Shadow, if taken as a companion piece to Ender's Game, is actually an excellent story.  It also helps explain Bean's attitude, and it even poses the question of what it means to be human, and handles it without cop-out, simplistic answers.

I loved Ender's Shadow and I read it every year right after I finish Ender's Game, usually some time in January.  I also enjoyed Shadow of the Hegemon and Shadow Puppets (two more books about Bean after the Bugger Wars), but they aren't as good (althought they do for Petra what Ender's Shadow did for Bean in a lot of ways).  Shadow of the Giant (the most recent book, published earlier this year) is pretty much crap, and a lousy way to end the Shadow Series.

Anyway, yeah, theoretically there'll be an Ender's Game movie in 2008, and one of the reasons it's taken so long is that OSC flat out refuses to let them age the characters to provide more mass appeal.  Personally, I always found it kind of disturbing having 5 year olds killing people, but, hey, what can you do, right?

[odinn7]

Man, I just can't wait until they make a movie of that great book "Battlefield Earth". Hm? They already did and it sucked? John Travolta? Oh man...

[Yaddo 42]

Don't forget he threatened to make a sequel based on the other half of the book, even though the first one bombed......