Science fictions big ideas dont translate well to the screen either smothered in syrup by directors (A.I.) or played for laughs (Starship Troopers). Does the latest Antonio Banderas robot blockbuster mark a new dawn?
Arthur C Clarke, Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov are often considered the big three of 20th-century science fiction. Yet only Clarkes genius has really been translated effectively on the big screen, via his screenplay with Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Heinlein would have detested Paul Verhoevens wonderfully bombastic Starship Troopers, which brazenly subverted the original novels rather fascistic leanings, and poor Asimov has seen his complex ideas about the development of positronic brains shoehorned into the overly sentimental Robin Williams vehicle Bicentennial Man and the rather ropey Will Smith action entry I, Robot.
Hollywood, it seems, prefers the pulpier concepts imagined by the great Philip K Dick. And who can blame film-makers when Rutger Hauers tears in rain death speech from Blade Runner sheds more light on the essential humanity of artificial life forms in less than 20 seconds than anything in Asimovs entire canon? (Dick, for the record, did not write the monologue, and we are talking here strictly in terms of cinematic impact rather than big ideas.)
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via Science fiction | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1t9aTjl
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