Posted on 04/30/2002 7:09:08 PM PDT by Liberty Tree Surgeon
Has anyone caught the previews for the movie, "The Sum of All Fears"? In it, they specifically tell the audience that the evil terrorists are European neo-nazis. I refer you to Yahoo! Movies for a brief description to this effect.
The only problem with this is that in the book, the terrorists responsible for blowing up the Super Bowl are Islamic Fundamentalists working out of Lebanon.
So, did Clancy sell out, or sell the film rights without keeping a degree of creative control?
LTS
Anyway, the single thing I remember now from Buckley's review, which is what triggered my memory here, was that he said the book, whatever its title, read less like a novel than like a movie treatment, ready to be turned into a shot by shot screenplay.
Well, he's conservative on the 2nd Amendment. At his home on the Chesapeake Bay he has an indoor shooting range and when you drive up the road to the house there's a tank sitting at the top of the hill.
(I was a gopher for a while and drove someone out to his house.)
Timeline, while interesting, was nothing but a screenplay. I felt like I was "reading" a movie the whole time.
It's just gotten worse since Jurassic Park!
However, after saying all this I still like Crichton and my favorite was/is Rising Sun. The way the walls start to close in was disturbing.
Most author's sell(sell-out) when turning their book into a movie. They let the producers screw with the books however they please.
Clancy's are some of the worst regarding the original text. It's not just that they screw up some plot or subplot, but the overall tone as well. They turn Conservative>Liberal. Clear and Present Danger was pathetic in turning everyone into a bad guy. They even had Ryan testify before Congress. What P.C. B.S.!
Now they change Arabs into Neo-Nazis, granted this was before 9-11. But the plot is to try and get Russia and the US into a war which leaves the Neo-Nazis with what exactly? A Nuked E.U?
More PC B.S. which leaves the producers with huge egg on their face. Clancy cashed the check, sadly that's all that matters to him.
That's why Crichton even directed a few of his own books.
Bottom Line: It's just about the $$$.
Which is to say, NOT AT ALL</b. I won't waste a dime on seeing this flick.
Of course, I may end up liking the movie a lot better. I didn't much care for the novel Sum of All Fears.
In any case, to expect a true rendition of a novel to a screenplay is often expecting too much. Lord of the Rings is possible, but not too many others will avoid changes, IMHO.
Precisely. Like it was designed to be a Spielberg (sp?) movie--complete with built-in commercials (references to drinking brand-name softdrinks, etc.) Truly awful literature.
Truly awful literarure has traditionally made good material for cinema. Except that in the 1930s and 40s truly awful literature was still written as truly awful literature and not cynically as screen treatments which is what Crichton, Clancy and James Michener (now thankfully, not writing, or shall I say, typing anymore!) have been doing. Why, some great films have been made well into the 1970s from truly awful literature written in the 30s and 40s, but, interestingly enough, not more recently, when truly awful literature such as the Al and Tipper's Love Story was typed.
I suppose this may be because truly awful literature focuses on action and plot rather than on thought, motivation and other non-visual elements. Heck, porno literature would be just perfect (and some quasi porno has been turned into good cinema, as a matter of fact.)
But what's interesting to me is that in this we see literary trash turned into cinematic art. Go figure!
"when you sell a novel to Hollywood, get out at the California line, toss it over, turn around and don't look back."
(Paraphrased from memory.)
For those of us raised on Robert A. Heinlein such characters are exactly who should populate novels.
As far as his writing skill is concerned, consider the huge volume of coherent sentences he produces [or used to produce] in a year. It's hard to argue with someone who can kill entire rainforests and cause printer's ink to be purchased by the trainload just by pushing a few keys on a typewriter or scribbling a little with a fountain-pen.
Sherry Lansing, the head of the studio that made this thing, was quoted not too long after 9/11 proudly saying that this change had been made, because, as we all know, Islam is a religion of peace!
This change is nothing though, compared to what they do to a more serious work. Allen Drury wrote Advise and Consent, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and was a conservative book about the workings of the Senate. It was made into a play on Broadway, and kept the conservative outlook. When Otto Preminger made a movie out of it, all the good guys became bad guys, all the motivations were changed, and it became a typical liberal movie. Preminger laughed about the way he had changed the meaning of the story. Drury had to take his check, and write a series of sequels, but swore he would never again sell a book to the movies.
I have no interest in seeing Sum of All Fears because of the PC crap about changing the terrorists. Islamic terrorist nuking things makes sense, Euronazis don't. I hope this movie loses boatloads of money.
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