Impossible Movies Left?

[geneweigel]

While trying to think of a good subject matter to talk about with some shallow people later, I stumbled into higher brow territory, I was thinking about all the movies that are being taken seriously because of the effects being able to match the visions of the past. Like for example the upcoming KING KONG VERSUS GODZILLA as a mainstream movie that might actually have the average person check it out.

H.P. Lovecraft is something that no one seems to do right. Even artwork is weak.

Effects-wise what seems still out of reach besides HPL?

"Book Conan" technically can be done but the Hollywood lummox factor just keeps failing. The comics seemed to have gotten his character fairly well and they keep hiring people who can't speak.

D&D is still surrounded by a "wall of morons" spell so the chances of an excellent take on the actual game are fairly low but thank the gods bad game formats can't translate into screen time.

Technically, most of the crap you watched as a cartoon or read in a comic could be adapted. What is the most bizarre set up? Herculoids? Micronauts?

Marvel has proven by forcefully injecting tons of nuances of a subject it doesn't even matter if the story isn't straight for example Ant-Man.

However, THE HOBBIT just showed us how a gigantic production with tons of entertaining scenes and source references can fail on a fundamental level. The same thing can be said for the recent Tom Cruise THE MUMMY outing.

What is the take on the Stephen King books in regards to this angle? He has been done in a massive percentage book-to-film but has the moment-to-moment feeling of a Stephen King "good read" actually been captured successfully? What movies are closing in and which are far from any road?

[Scott]

I don’t think there’s any impossibles. There are a lot of shouldn’ts, but that’s never stopped Hollywood if they thought there was a buck to be made.
I don’t think there’s much Lovecraft that translates well to film, but they keep trying. The better movies are the ones that don’t really stick to any one story.
For the most part, King moves have fallen short, but not because they don’t translate well, they just get the wrong people involved and they end up being shitty movies.
Amazon has there 2nd Age Middle Earth series coming out. I’m expecting a real GoT look and feel. I’d like to see 1st Age Morgoth material.
I don’t even want to see a D&D movie. It needs to be a series. I haven’t seen it in 20+ years, but I remember thinking Record of Lodoss War captures the feel pretty well.
There’s potential in a serious Land of the Lost (series) adaptation.

[GRWelsh]

HPL's work is inherently difficult to adapt because most of the material isn't ready-made for other mediums. It's mainly about creating a certain atmosphere and hardly ever about advancing a plot. Protagonists are often passive viewers or victims. You could even argue one of the reasons the stories work so well is that a lot of normal people can identify being in horrific situations and ending up as passive viewers or victims, however that doesn't lend itself to a traditional three act movie. Also, so much of the horror is hinted at with just enough detail to fire your imagination and let the reader do much of the work... That ability the best horror writers have is difficult to adapt to another medium, since what is unspeakably horrific to me isn't necessarily that scary to you, but you can imagine your own unspeakably horrific thing to fill in that blank when you're the reader.

I still think the swords & sorcery genre has a lot of movie potential. I'd like to see more of a return to the pulp sensibilities with new adaptations of Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Elric, etc. I can certainly imagine a quality D&D movie, and to me it leans in he direction of pulp adventure with some horror and a bit of humor. I thought the second D&D movie, "Wrath of the Dragon God," had a lot of the correct mechanics in place like with the party composition, actual spells and monsters from the game, and venturing into dungeons. I didn't even mind the acting, but it was lacking with effects and overall story and the villain was too cardboard.

I don't know how to feel about the 2nd Age Middle Earth series... It won't be a straight up adaptation of much Tolkien material since that is the time period he wrote least about, which is both good and bad. It means the show will have to succeed on its own merits and have a lot invented from whole cloth. Maybe it will have the overall framing story of Sauron arriving as Annatar, forging the One Ring and then making war in Middle Earth with Numenoreans showing up... What else could it be about? There's going to have be a lot of filler and bit parts which will all have to be invented. My guess is we will see Sauron giving out the rings to specific Dwarves and Men and we'll get to see them given names, realms and stories of their own falls into darkness. So, we'll get to see the Lord of the Rings actually interacting with a lot of Rings. Hobbits will show up as bit parts, comic relief or to foreshadow of future hobbit heroes.

[geneweigel]

Yes, the AMAZON Tolkien can go anywhere it seems.

I would like to see Elric but I think it can go South in many ways because the writing can lean in the wrong direction sort of the way Moorcock did over the course of his career. Where it just got fantasy incoherent over time. Is there a genre that they can place Moorcock in that is not s&s fantasy? Its like the British sci-fi with psychological identity issues genre more than anything else. To rein in Elric you'd have to get stupid but in the right ways and not in a Vin Diesel/Bruce Willis/Jason Statham sci-fi fantasy way it would have to have direct medievalisms to save it.

I would like F&GM Lankhmar but a PC version would suck.