"Sound of Thunder" movie coming

[ToSeek]

The description (http://www.hollywood.com/movies/detail/movie/415866) makes it sound almost up to I, Robot in fidelity to the orignal. :roll:

[Glom]

Not more smegging causality paradoxes!

[gethen]

Trust Hollywood to turn an outstanding and classic short story into a two hour special effects extravaganza and you won't be disappointed.

[Gullible Jones]

Good lord. This is insane.

[Arkstatler]

When I first heard about the making of this movie I didn't hold out much hope for it. Then I heard the first director said "What if we got rid of the Butterfly?" And when he was promptly fired, I thought the movie might have a chance of being true to the book. Now I see I was overly optimistic.

[ToSeek]

I can't see how you could make a decent two-hour movie from the story, though it would make a darn good Twilight Zone episode.

[gethen]

I can't see how you could make a decent two-hour movie from the story, though it would make a darn good Twilight Zone episode.
I'm betting you can't.

[ToSeek]

I can't see how you could make a decent two-hour movie from the story, though it would make a darn good Twilight Zone episode.
I'm betting you can't.

Well, you might make a good movie, but any resemblance to the original is going to be remote.

[Eirik]

I can't see how you could make a decent two-hour movie from the story, though it would make a darn good Twilight Zone episode.
I'm betting you can't.

Well, you might make a good movie, but any resemblance to the original is going to be remote.

Personally, I don't completely disqualify a movie because it doesn't follow the original source material slavishly. Frankly, most written stories contain elements that are almost impossible to pull off on the big screen. Everything from internal character thoughts all the way to massive special effects.

It's far easier, for example, to write a convincing werewolf transformation, nuclear war or space battle than it is to pull it off onscreen.

Also, because print media allows for elements to be mixed a bit more fluidly, you can pull of things like abrupt transitions, asides, etc that are tough to pull off in filmed form. Likewise, sometimes very subtle subplots, or even major plot elements, have to be jettisoned because they would take up too much time to film.

That doesn't mean that if you're making a movie you shouldn't follow the original source as closely as is reasonable, but it's certainly why you don't see a lot of perfect translations to screen.

[Gullible Jones]

I just hope they never try making a movie of Childhood's End. That would be an utter disaster.

[Eirik]

I just hope they never try making a movie of Childhood's End. That would be an utter disaster.

I doubt they will just because it would be really tough to translate that to the big screen. I mean, there really aren't any villians to fight. It's the kind of story that works in a book, but would only translate to the big screen if you severely altered it.

It could almost be an intersting debate. Name a book that has been turned into a bad movie that *could* have easily been translated more faithfully. books that don't contain elements or themes that don't easily translate to film, but they botched it anyway. My vote there would be "The Postman", which seemed to share only the setting with the original.

[PeterFab]

It could almost be an intersting debate. Name a book that has been turned into a bad movie that *could* have easily been translated more faithfully. books that don't contain elements or themes that don't easily translate to film, but they botched it anyway. My vote there would be "The Postman", which seemed to share only the setting with the original.

David Brin has a good article (http://www.davidbrin.com/postmanmoviearticle.html) on his website (http://www.davidbrin.com) about the movie.

[milli360]

It could almost be an intersting debate. Name a book that has been turned into a bad movie that *could* have easily been translated more faithfully. books that don't contain elements or themes that don't easily translate to film, but they botched it anyway. My vote there would be "The Postman", which seemed to share only the setting with the original.

David Brin has a good article (http://www.davidbrin.com/postmanmoviearticle.html) on his website (http://www.davidbrin.com) about the movie.
It looks like Brin would disagree with Eirik. Notice, too, that he discusses The Postman, Contact, and Starship Troopers, and says "all three movies were somewhat faithful to good novels."

[Paul Beardsley]

Twilight Zone - not sure about that, but wasn't there an Outer Limits or something version of aSoT?

Adaptations - there's no doubt about it, what works well on film doesn't always work in print, and vice versa. (I'd say a space battle tends to work better filmed, though.) But if you're going to make a film, you should decide whether it's an adaptation or merely inspired by something.

If you want to make a film about a time machine, go ahead and do whatever you see fit. But if you want to film The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, don't change major elements (such as the Morlocks, the hero's motivation, the workings of time) beyond all recognition.

Childhood's End - there was a superb radio adaptation of it.

[TheGalaxyTrio]

A contrarian opinion... about the story, that is.

I recall reading it in a Bradbury collection years ago, and not being very impressed for two major reasons.

1. Stepping on the butterfly had a major effect, but the marking of the TRex and all the other preparations for the hunt didn't? Yeah, I know they tracked it through time and all that, but how about every bug or butterfly the now dead dinosaur *fails* to step on, or the other butterfly that the dying dinosaur falls on. There's just too many variables here.

2. OK. They change time enough to alter the written language, but there's still an election when they get back with the same two candidates and the only change there is a different person won? Huh??? If you're going to propagate a timeline resequencing from that far back, the world they returned to would be unrecognizable.

It just didn't work for me. I'm not trying to pick a fight here, but I've always been a little mystified as to the "classic" status this story always gets granted. Especially since Bradbury himself has admitted that he flubbed the timeline change aspect in interviews.

A far better story in the same vein is "The Brooklyn Project" by William Tenn. The story has continuity issues of its own, but it has a much more satisfying and disturbing conclusion.

[ToSeek]

I have to agree with you: It's a powerful story, but only if you don't think about it too much.

[Gullible Jones]

Bradbury stories are generally not based on hard science. (For example, he tends to ignore time dilation.) A lot of them are fantasy more than SF. They're all good stories, though. :wink:

[Paul Beardsley]

TheGalaxyTrio - yeah, what you say is basically true. I was lucky enough to read it when I was about 14, so the audacity of the idea (as it seemed to me at the time) made up for the flimsy logic. Having said that, even at the time it seemed slightly dodgy.

But it was a very memorable demonstration of a small change having a very big knock-on effect. I've often wondered if, in the distant future, people will confuse the butterfly effect with the events in the Bradbury story.

[milli360]

1. Stepping on the butterfly had a major effect, but the marking of the TRex and all the other preparations for the hunt didn't?
How do you know that? :)

The Sound of Thunder (http://www.sba.muohio.edu/snavely/415/thunder.htm)


Huh??? If you're going to propagate a timeline resequencing from that far back, the world they returned to would be unrecognizable.

How do...

nevermind. :)

[Sever]

Well I enjoyed the story...

[Tuckerfan]

It looks to me that the real problem is that they're trying to turn the story into a Hollywood block buster movie, instead of making a light, fun movie. The same thing happened with LXG. It wasn't a horrible movie, but it wasn't remarkable either. Just a totally formulaic picture.

[ToSeek]

1. Stepping on the butterfly had a major effect, but the marking of the TRex and all the other preparations for the hunt didn't?
How do you know that? :)



Presumably what made this hunt different from the others was the guy going off the trail and stomping the butterfly. Of course, maybe there was a mammal under the t-rex that we don't hear about that was the real key to the story - they were just lucky all the other times.

[milli360]

Presumably what made this hunt different from the others
You know what happens when you presume? You make Pres. out of U and Me.

ToSeek and milli360, in 2008

[ToSeek]

Presumably what made this hunt different from the others
You know what happens when you presume? You make Pres. out of U and Me.

ToSeek and milli360, in 2008

We'd get the Bad Astronomy vote, for sure! ;)

[gethen]

Headline: ToSeek and milli360 banned from BABB for political discussion.
[-X
:wink:

[milli360]

I am not a member of any organized politcal party. I'm a Democrat.

[SeanF]

Presumably what made this hunt different from the others
You know what happens when you presume? You make Pres. out of U and Me.

ToSeek and milli360, in 2008
We'd get the Bad Astronomy vote, for sure! ;)
I wouldn't bet on it. ;)

[ToSeek]

Headline: ToSeek and milli360 banned from BABB for political discussion.
[-X
:wink:

Only if we start discussing policy, such as our plan to expand the space exploration budget to $100 billion a year.

[milli360]

A paltry one billion of which would go to upgrading the observatory (http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/life/vpresidence.html) in my backyard.

[NerfTW]

I'm gonna delurk and mention two things.
One, I thought I remembered the story saying that the dinosaur was always killed right before it would have died naturally. The T-rex, for example, had a tree fall on it right after being shot.

Also, there was a series of books based off that story, written by Stephen Leigh, called Dinosaur World, Dinosaur Planet, Dinosaur Samurai, Dinosaur Warriors, Dinosaur Empire, and Dinosaur Conquest..
I only read the first two before I got really sick of the constant "Oh, we're ten feet away from eachother, but head off in different directions!" stuff. They constantly screw up time, then try vainly to fix it, screw it up again, and so on.
Basically, the premise is that Eckels jumps into the time machine, and escapes. Travis follows him, and winds up in the present time. He finds some kids, one goes with him, the other two follow, but wind up elsewhere, and some monkey named Mojo shows up in one of the realities.
Who knows how that travesty of temporal screwups ended.

So, I'm basically optimistic. Anything is better than that.

[ToSeek]

I'm gonna delurk and mention two things.
One, I thought I remembered the story saying that the dinosaur was always killed right before it would have died naturally. The T-rex, for example, had a tree fall on it right after being shot.



Still, it's virtually impossible that it crashed to the ground in the exact same position it would have been in had they shot it. Plenty of room for squishing butterflies!

[Tuckerfan]

He finds some kids, one goes with him, the other two follow, but wind up elsewhere, and some monkey named Mojo shows up in one of the realities.Were the kids a trio of girls named Bubbles, Blossom, and Buttercup? Was the monkey's full name Mojo Jojo? 'Cause it sounds like you're describing an episode of The Power Puff Girls. ;)

[NerfTW]

No, no definitely not. :wink:
The monkey thing was some sort of shapeshifting group conciousness that followed the first kid on the time machine, and wound up cut off from its world and stuck as an albino ape.

There were two guys and a girl.