Chickenboy
Posts: 24520
Joined: 6/29/2002 From: San Antonio, TX Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: witpqs quote:
ORIGINAL: Chickenboy quote:
ORIGINAL: witpqs quote:
ORIGINAL: Chickenboy quote:
ORIGINAL: Onime No Kyo My argument is that the writers are either being very lazy or arnt very knowledgeable, neither of which is fair to me as a viewer. If youre a good writer, you can find more creative ways to produce drama than having your characters be idiots. For rank and file cast for mundane issues, I'll cut 'em some slack. If they're professional soldiers, or tactical gurus then I expect a modicum of composure and experiential expertise to go along with the characters. Nothing gets my goat quite as much as "subject matter experts" that are full of **** in their given field. Case in point, Jurrasic Park. The wildlife veterinarian seems completely baffled about a toxic plant issue in a triceratops at the park. Some Noob "paleobotanist" finds the answer by digging through some triceratops poop while the veterinarian stares on in slack-jawed ignorance. My father in law (retired nuclear physicist) laughed himself silly when the two little dweeb kids hacked the "Unix" mainframe at the park in that movie too. "Doesn't look like any Unix I've ever seen." I rooted for the velociraptors. You really should read Crichton's books. However good many of the movies have come out, the books are better. Even Jurassic Park is better as a book, although the movie had the advantage of visuals in front of you instead of purely in your mind. As to the point at hand, after reading some of his books and then seeing the corresponding movies, you will quickly get the idea that Crichton must have had trouble sitting down for several weeks after each of his books got the Hollywood treatment. That big of a difference. What makes you think I haven't, my Argletonian colleague? I read the Andromeda Strain many years ago. I thought it excellent, until the end, which rapidly devolved into rubbish. I vaguely recall reading Jurrasic Park when it was released (late 80s / early 90s?), but didn't follow up on the sequels. I just watched The Lost World with Chickenboy Junior and Mrs. Chickenboy. Boy loved it for the dinosaurs disemboweling people. Those parts were unfortunately infrequent enough to avoid the movie belonging to the pantheon of crapola Hollywood sequels. Yes, I'm sure Crichton was terribly disappointed about the tens of millions of dollars he received for movie rights to his Jurrasic Park series. That's why he did it repeatedly. Nothing at all wrong with that (selling out for major bucks), but I'll not assume his horror in the movie product. I forgot to mention that I was rooting for the bomber crew-the one with the Fuel Air Explosives-in Outbreak. What another rubbish film. Outbreak was a crap film. Did that one have something to do with Crichton? Jurassic Park and The Lost World were both good books, and far richer than the movies. A great deal of what they used to make the third Jurassic Park movie from was actually taken from the first book (third movie wasn't so great but very loosely paraphrasing you, the ancient birds did get their licks in!). Not sure why the fact that authors sometimes get lots of money for Hollywood to dip their work in crap should make a difference to my pointing out that the original work was much better and did not have some of the garbage that you accurately noted in the film version. A very stark example is Timeline, where the book was quite good and the movie... sigh. I originally wrote Hot Zone in my posting regarding the Fuel Air Explosives bomber. Then I realized it wasn't the Crichton film and was a different rubbish film Outbreak. Nothing to do with Crichton. Everything to do with suck. I referenced the 'getting lots of moolah to let Hollywood screw up your books' comment to your previous statement about how Crichton must have had difficulty sitting down after watching what had become of his movies. The rationale for his difficulty sitting must have involved a voluntary act on his part. Some people do that sort of thing for money. That's fine provided that there are no surprises and everyone knows where they stand. He undoubtedly knew exactly what he was doing and why. Repeatedly. Yeah, Jurrasic Park the novel was better than the movie. Andromeda Strain was a good novel, right up until the point when it ceased to be. Kind of like the movie too.
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