Dragaera

I just had a thought

Mon Dec 16 06:30:06 PST 2002

Erik Berman wrote:
> I'm not sure if some of the books I'll name count as "good Books" but
> I've found a few.

[snipping movie-book combos I haven't read and watched]

> "Dune"  (it's old, it's long, but it has Patrick Stewart, Sting, and a
> host of excellent actors)

I'd agree that it was a great film, but it was clearly an adaptation and as
others have said, the weapons used by the Fremen under Paul's command were a
bit surprising.

> "Fellowship of the Rings" (call it what you will, but I can't say that
> it is a pale reflection of the novel)

FotR is a great flick.  I haven't yet seen the longer edition that's on the
Platinum edition DVD.  It may add back the one major character (Tom
Bombadil) and two or three chapters that were not in the theatrical release,
but this was much closer to the text than Dune.

The problems that both of these movies had to overcome is that there is a
lot of the text that is not conversation.  Jhereg would have a much shorter
plot summary than either one, but also much less material that could be
excised.  All the internal narration from Vlad needs to be there.  How do
you handle that on the screen?  You can perhaps use a framing device that
allows Vlad to be telling the story to our historian, but...

Anyway, psionics are not easy to convey well on the screen.  Not nearly as
easy as simply putting the text in italics.

Casey