I am sure you are actually talking about the Hobbit movies. The Lord Of The Rings movies had TONS of practical effects. The sets are still up and are used as tourist landmarks in New Zealand!
On a Purely Technical Level, Are There Any Unfilmable Books or Comics Left?
- Thread starter JD
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As much as I have been hoping for a series adaptation of the Mars trilogy, I fear that you might be right. However, I think that under the right guidance, it could be adapted in such a way to make it engaging while maintaining the spirit of the source material. I think JMS could've done it, but I don't think he's the only one who could. But I do agree that a straight adaptation isn't the way to go.
I hadn't thought about that until now, but you're right. I read the books more than a decade and a half ago and my understanding of socialism (or economics in general, really) was far more limited than it is today. I should really sit down and re-read the whole series to see how my current perspective on life relates to the series now.
On a purely visual level I can't think of anything that outright couldn't be accomplished with enough time/effort and money. I remember in years past just trying to think up how they could do Wolverine justice which seems quaint now. Nowadays the behind-the-scenes videos that blow my mind aren't the mega blockbusters but when you see how much digital touchup and scenery is done on regular old cops shows and the like.
That's a good question. I actually recently read it, and it still stood up amazingly well. That said, I think maybe if the question would have been asked 15-20 years ago, I'd have said no, but with the advent of better and better CGI, I think a movie would be quite possible. I think it's a much more visually rich story than say, his Foundation series. It actually might be better off being a miniseries just to be able to do the scope of its themes justice.
That's my favorite example of a novel that's all but unfilmable. The first third is basically people in a lab discussing physics and alternate dimensions, while the middle third is told entirely from the POV of completely alien aliens who bear no physical resemblance to terrestrial life-forms whatsoever . . . .
I think it has been about 30 years since I read it. The aliens are really the only strong memories I have of the novel, I have never forgotten just how alien they were.
Too bad. One thing HBO does really well is people standing or sitting around in rooms set in fantastic worlds and making politics or philosophy interesting. I really think Foundation could have made a great series for HBO.
According to the relative state (aka many worlds) interpretation of QM due to Hugh Everett III, that's our reality. State vector reduction is a bolt-on fudge to allow calculation.
Tricky, although it would make it a lot simpler to untie knots or break people out of prison. However, four spatial dimensions would require a different form of gravity to make planetary orbits stable.
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I see there are two basic definitions of "unfilmable" being used here. The purely technical "can you put X on a screen?" and the rather more subjective "would X make for an entertaining movie?"
There's very few if any that can't be done from a technical standpoint anymore (assuming budget is no object) and there's certainly no shortage of the latter when it comes to the more cerebral prose.
I suppose the only ones that would fall under both definitions as truly "unfilmable" are the ones where the whole point of the story is the lack of visuals. Either because the author intentionally keeps the reader ignorant to certain aspects that a visual depiction would spoil in an instant, or books that are formatted to fully take advantage of the medium. Like for example a detective novel that is mostly just an assemblage of journal entries, article clippings and transcripts. Sure, you could dramatise and film every one of them, but that would negate the point. You'd only be adapting the plot, not the narrative.
'The Gods Themselves' is the closest example I can think of since visually defining the look of the beings while certainly possible for talented artists, would undermine the narrative and give away one of the core revelations.
Even then though, the essence of the story could still be "filmed" if said beings were anthropomorphised so it plays out as a human allegory (think, the alien visions/memories in 'The Three-Body Problem' by Liu Cixin.) Would still be probably end up arcane and trippy to the point of unintelligible though.
There's very few if any that can't be done from a technical standpoint anymore (assuming budget is no object) and there's certainly no shortage of the latter when it comes to the more cerebral prose.
I suppose the only ones that would fall under both definitions as truly "unfilmable" are the ones where the whole point of the story is the lack of visuals. Either because the author intentionally keeps the reader ignorant to certain aspects that a visual depiction would spoil in an instant, or books that are formatted to fully take advantage of the medium. Like for example a detective novel that is mostly just an assemblage of journal entries, article clippings and transcripts. Sure, you could dramatise and film every one of them, but that would negate the point. You'd only be adapting the plot, not the narrative.
'The Gods Themselves' is the closest example I can think of since visually defining the look of the beings while certainly possible for talented artists, would undermine the narrative and give away one of the core revelations.
Even then though, the essence of the story could still be "filmed" if said beings were anthropomorphised so it plays out as a human allegory (think, the alien visions/memories in 'The Three-Body Problem' by Liu Cixin.) Would still be probably end up arcane and trippy to the point of unintelligible though.
Yeah, I can't remember which one, but there was a cop show like that, and I was shocked to realize that practically every time they were outside something was added or taken away. I always expect that kind of thing on a SFF shows, but not on a real world cop show.
^ Here's a couple of examples of "casual FX"
Robert Forward's Dragon's Egg (about intelligent life that lives on the surface of a neutron star and a human first contact mission) could be put on film, but I don't feel it would work as a movie.
One book that has been filmed but shouldn’t have for a visual reason. The Human Stain.
For those not familiar, the main character is a black man who posed as white his whole life and then got his career destroyed on a PC racism incident (Two students who never showed up for his class, he said “What are they, spooks?” meaning ghosts but was interpreted as a racial slur because the students were black).
Imagining a man who is plausibly either white or black is one thing. Casting it is another. Who did they cast? Anthony Hopkins.
Not sure even with CGI you could generate a person who you can both believe he is black and also believe people accepted him as white for decades.
For those not familiar, the main character is a black man who posed as white his whole life and then got his career destroyed on a PC racism incident (Two students who never showed up for his class, he said “What are they, spooks?” meaning ghosts but was interpreted as a racial slur because the students were black).
Imagining a man who is plausibly either white or black is one thing. Casting it is another. Who did they cast? Anthony Hopkins.
Not sure even with CGI you could generate a person who you can both believe he is black and also believe people accepted him as white for decades.
Did you catch the recent TV miniseries I AM THE NIGHT? Without getting too spoilery, the plot hinged on a similar situation: is the heroine a black woman who can pass for white, or a white woman who can pass for black? (Based on a true story, no less!)
I thought the casting was reasonably effective in catching that ambiguity.
Wentworth Miller?
The OP used the word "Technical", so, no, from a pure technical point of view, if you can imagine it (and you have the money) you can film it.
Judging only the abridged synopsis, I don't think that Ubik would present any particulary difficulty.
Now, they would be watchable movies? This is a different story.
Now I see @Reverend expressed the concept better than me...
Judging only the abridged synopsis, I don't think that Ubik would present any particulary difficulty.
Now, they would be watchable movies? This is a different story.
Now I see @Reverend expressed the concept better than me...
There's unfilmable, and there's unfeasible.
Technologically, there probably isn't anything that we can't put on screen. The question is whether there is enough public interest in the work to recoup the expense of doing it, and that equation will change as the technology gets cheaper.
Technologically, there probably isn't anything that we can't put on screen. The question is whether there is enough public interest in the work to recoup the expense of doing it, and that equation will change as the technology gets cheaper.
That looked like what the Time Lords would have had before the TARDIS craft were invented.
