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Fantasy Series - Great Films (If Only They'd Stop Messing Around)

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MrAHR Ahr river from ಠ_ಠ Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: A cockroach, nothing can kill it.
Ahr river
#26: Jan 16th 2013 at 8:14:24 AM

Yeah, The Lightning Thief wasn't that bad. I actually enjoyed a few changes they made to the plot, mostly in terms of the Lotus Hotel.

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Zarek Rollin' rollin' rollin' from Jakku Since: Sep, 2012 Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
Rollin' rollin' rollin'
#27: Jan 16th 2013 at 10:03:13 AM

Yeah, I'm in the same "Lightning Thief was a terrible adaptation but an okay movie" camp. And [up] definitely agreed about the Lotus Hotel. They don't even explain the mythological importance of it in the book. And while I hated Grover's Character Derailment, he was one of the better parts of the film.

Also, for another fantasy(ish?) series that would make a good movie, Midnighters. Although it might work better as a mini-series, they're already somewhat...cinematic, for lack of a better word. Unfortunately, only five people in the world have ever heard of the series.

"We're home, Chewie."
darkabomination Since: Mar, 2012
#28: Jan 18th 2013 at 8:41:49 AM

Yeah, I've always had the impression that the Midnighters was supposed to be a show before it was written. It's just begging for a visual adaptation. Especially with descriptions of the Midnight when it gets into colorplay and the very noir esthetic I get from it.

Sorastitch Eden from Last Seen in The Shadowlands Since: Dec, 2011
Eden
#29: Jan 18th 2013 at 10:54:40 AM

I have the feeling I could have written a better Percy Jackson adaption with a hand behind my back.

my drawing blog ya'll UPDATES 10 TIMES A MONTH WOW, THIS IS STRAIGHT UP MUH SOGGY KNEE
supergod Walking the Earth from the big city Since: Jun, 2012
Walking the Earth
#30: Jan 20th 2013 at 5:55:00 AM

Something from the Dying Earth. It's probably next to impossible to make a believable adaptation for today's audiences, but it would still be cool to see.

I'd also like to see a decent Conan adaptation.

edited 20th Jan '13 5:55:42 AM by supergod

For we shall slay evil with logic...
tricksterson Never Trust from Behind you with an icepick Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Never Trust
#31: Jan 20th 2013 at 7:52:38 AM

[up]Double plus on the Conan adaptation, preferably one that stuck to the original Howard stories.

Other candidates: John C. Wright's Chronicles of Chaos, Michael Scott's Nicholas Flamel books and Garth Nix's Old Kingdom trilogy

Is there a thread like this for science-fiction books into movies?

edited 20th Jan '13 7:55:36 AM by tricksterson

Trump delenda est
Crewe Li'l Punk from Gravity Falls, Oregon Since: Apr, 2010
Li'l Punk
#32: Jan 20th 2013 at 5:38:39 PM

A Bartimaeus movie would be so. awesome.

Agreed on Percy Jackson. Those books deserved a better adaptation.

Victory! Honor! Destiny! Mutton!
Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#33: Jan 20th 2013 at 5:48:02 PM

[up][up] Maybe we could expand this thread?

BrotherMycroft Dapper Gentleman Since: Jul, 2012
Dapper Gentleman
#34: Jan 21st 2013 at 4:42:02 PM

Forgive me for beating the subject to death somewhat, but precisely what was it that was appealing about the movie version of The Lightning Thief's portrayal of the Lotus Hotel and Casino? True, they remembered to include the lotus flowers themselves, but then I seem to remember a montage set to Poker Face taking up the remainder of the time spent there. Including the moment with the taxi and the Lotus Card would have been great, but no...

Anyhow, I digress. They may not technically be conventional fantasy, but I'd love to see movies made of Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan trilogy. This would call for integration of live-action and CGI on an Avatar-like scale, but in the right hands it could be fantastic. A purely animated The Edge Chronicles could be good, too, provided that the distinctive style of the illustrations was preserved.

edited 21st Jan '13 4:42:49 PM by BrotherMycroft

"And every life is a special story of its own." —The Stargazer, Mass Effect 3
Zarek Rollin' rollin' rollin' from Jakku Since: Sep, 2012 Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
Rollin' rollin' rollin'
#35: Jan 21st 2013 at 6:08:51 PM

Some people like montages set to Poker Face. And, like I said, they actually explained what the Lotus Hotel was based on.

Also, satyr dancing renders your argument invalid. tongue

"We're home, Chewie."
MrAHR Ahr river from ಠ_ಠ Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: A cockroach, nothing can kill it.
Ahr river
#36: Jan 28th 2013 at 8:40:28 AM

If Poker Face hadn't been a modern song I'd like it more. As in, I think it actually fit trying to show the mood, even though it had been a song picked because it was currently very popular at the time.

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tricksterson Never Trust from Behind you with an icepick Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Never Trust
#37: Feb 4th 2013 at 5:39:44 AM

Hs anyone brought up S. M. Stirling's Emberverse yet?

Trump delenda est
RLNice Bigfoot Puncher from a computer Since: Sep, 2010
Bigfoot Puncher
#38: Feb 7th 2013 at 5:50:02 PM

I only just finished book two of The Wheel of Time, and I must say, it would make a good film series. But of course, it consists of fourteen doorstoppers, so adapting the series on a one-book-one-film basis would take 50 years or so to finish. And I think there's only a gap of a few months between each novel? Although I hear the books in the middle are filler, so I guess some of it can be cut out.

A fistful of me.
Xtifr World's Toughest Milkman Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
World's Toughest Milkman
#39: Feb 8th 2013 at 10:50:30 AM

I'd love to see a good adaptation of The Chronicles of Amber, but there's so much that could go wrong with a standard Hollywood treatment that I'm afraid to ask for one.

I think that Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser could work, though. Yes, it's a much-copied classic that could lead to some "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny reactions, but it's also an ahead-of-its-time deconstruction of popular sword-and-sorcery tropes that are still in wide use, and I think people would get it.

I'm less sure about The Elric Saga, another much-imitated classic deconstruction-in-its-day, but if done well, it would be so cool that I'm not sure I'd care. :)

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.
TamH70 Since: Nov, 2011 Relationship Status: Faithful to 2D
#40: Feb 9th 2013 at 8:07:26 AM

Elric wouldn't fly in this post-Twilight sparkly vampires are the new black world. You would have to do so much explaining that Meyer didn't invent pale and interesting villain protags that it would be a waste of time.

Xtifr World's Toughest Milkman Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
World's Toughest Milkman
#41: Feb 11th 2013 at 12:09:29 PM

[up]I think there's more danger of Elric being confused with something from Goth culture. He's not a vampire, and the presence of BFSs and dragons, plus the utter lack of romance (outside of The Lost Lenore, with its interesting incest-squick elements) should help avoid any confusion with anything like Twilight. It's not like it's something you'd even particularly market towards women.

Ok, pale, scrawny and still sexy...that is something it might share with Twilight. But I think it could still easily be distinguished.

We are assuming the filmmakers do a decent job with these (thus the "If Only They'd Stop Messing Around" in the thread title).

Heck, I think a bit of added-on goth flavoring might even benefit Elric. It's already pretty close to being an unmade-trope version.

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.
Izeinspring Since: Jun, 2012
#42: Feb 11th 2013 at 1:34:10 PM

Mostly everything mentioned so far in this thread is too darn long and overly serial to make good movie material - It worked for the harry potter films because they were willing to commit to 8 movies. What you need is something short with strong imagery and characters that grab you. Most suggestions so far are more likely to get raided for TV series materials

Nation (Terry Pratchett) would make a good life-of-pi-only-with-overtly-anti-religious-messaging...

Tregillis, The Milkweed books? WWII, nazi scientist develops process to give people superpowers, mayhem ensues.

Westerfelds Darwinist/mechanist war books? Effect intensive, but that is not all to the bad. Needs an androgynous, yet attractive actress for the lead, tough.

..

Use Of Weapons. Banks. Yeeesssss.

edited 11th Feb '13 1:36:09 PM by Izeinspring

RLNice Bigfoot Puncher from a computer Since: Sep, 2010
Bigfoot Puncher
#43: Feb 11th 2013 at 1:40:12 PM

Well then, I guess something by Neil Gaiman that hasn't been adapted yet can be a good contender. Not that I've read anything by Neil Gaiman, that is, but I hear praise about his work a lot.

A fistful of me.
Xtifr World's Toughest Milkman Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
World's Toughest Milkman
#44: Feb 11th 2013 at 2:19:55 PM

[up][up]Hey, as long as we're dreaming, I think we're free to dream of high-quality long movie series. But I don't think the thread is really supposed to be limited to theatrical movies. In some cases, I think what we want is the production values of a movie, but otherwise more like a TV series. :)

That said, fantasy (especially these days) does seem to tend towards long, sprawling epics that can't be shoved into a movie format very well. But the more episodic fantasy series, like Elric, or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, could work in the same way that, say, Conan the Barbarian worked. The movies can be standalone, so you start at the beginning, and maybe make a couple more as needed. No reason to try to cover the whole story in a series of movies, because it's really a series of standalone stories.

Discworld is another example—even though the movies that have been made so far are Made-for-TV, they're still basically standalone. The series as a whole is huge, but so episodic that you don't have to commit to tackling the whole thing. There's a lot of stuff I'd be quite happy to see done as well as the BBC has done with Discworld.

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.
Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#45: Feb 11th 2013 at 3:40:57 PM

I know Disney was interested in Mort but apparently they would have had to buy the movie rights to like a quarter of the series to get it, and the asking price was extremely high.

JMQwilleran Let's Hop to It! Since: Nov, 2011 Relationship Status: Singularity
Let's Hop to It!
#46: Feb 11th 2013 at 9:09:12 PM

Well, if not something long, then The Bartimaeus Trilogy definitely stands out as a prime candidate, if they can ever get off their duffs and just do it. It's three books, four if you count the prequel book, and none of them are exactly doorstoppers. Even Ptolemy's Gate, the final book in the series, is only 512 pages long. And since it's already done and dusted, it's self-limiting by nature.

Ironeye Cutmaster-san from SoCal Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Falling within your bell curve
Cutmaster-san
#47: Feb 26th 2013 at 1:07:48 PM

The first time a studio (don't recall whether or not it was Disney) was looking at adapting Mort, they wanted to lose the Death angle. Try for a second to imagine Mort without Death.

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.
RLNice Bigfoot Puncher from a computer Since: Sep, 2010
Bigfoot Puncher
#48: Feb 26th 2013 at 1:48:17 PM

Not sure if this counts as fantasy, but I staunchly believe that Dinotopia would make for a great film. No, it has not already been done.

A fistful of me.
Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#49: Feb 26th 2013 at 5:03:26 PM

[up] It would be nice to see an attempt at a true utopic film. I'm really tired of dystopias.

The nonexistent movie would have really failed at it.

edited 26th Feb '13 5:03:49 PM by Zendervai

DomaDoma Three-Puppet Saluter Since: Jan, 2001
Three-Puppet Saluter
#50: Feb 27th 2013 at 5:52:43 AM

I think the Emberverse should just be one long movie covering the first three books. I think that could be done.

Hail Martin Septim!

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