Not a film version but ... (was: Re: UotNS and how it screws with your head)

Pedro Pereira · 29 Jul 2010, 12:31 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: domus_artemis at hotmail.com (Pedro Pereira)
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:31:42 +0300
Subject: (urth) Not a film version but ... (was: Re: UotNS and how it
 screws with your head)
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Personaly I never had problems with a movie (or trilogy or something) version of BotNS. Some people have expressed the idea that it is impossible to capture all the complexity of the books in movie format (and making it comercially successful doesn't help) and that so it would be better to not make it at all.

I disagree. Even a "lighter" version of BotNS would have the disirable effect of probably capturing the interest of more people to the books and that for me is a positive thing. I don't think that a movie (or series of movies) needs obligatorily to capture all the intrincacies of Wolfe as if it was a reproduction of the Urth's Discussion List + "academic" treatises on Wolfe. Wolfe has a very good thing going for it which is that it can be read on many different levels. The first time I read the BotNS I was like 12 or 13 years old and I absolutely loved it while I certainly didn't even began to grasp the intrincacies of the books. That's the beauty of Wolfe. The books can be read at face value like any other "fantasy" books and it works. It would be extremely difficult to capture the "second level" reading nature of Wolfe in movie format and I honestly don't think it is needed to be a good desirable project. Plus, it's a beautiful story full of great imagery that would be a beautiful movie if done by the correct director/studio combination. That alone is already a good reason.

But that's just me.

Pedro

Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:36:50 -0400
From: miltonwjackson at gmail.com
To: urth at lists.urth.net
Subject: Re: (urth) Not a film version but ... (was: Re: UotNS and how it screws with your head)

I used to think I'd like to see Book of the New Sun made into a movie. Unfortunately I doubt even the best filmmakers could make a successful version of it. The intricacies of the story just seem to preclude the possibility of a faithful and watchable series of movies, even in anime format.

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 8:45 PM, Lane Haygood <lhaygood at gmail.com> wrote:

Ever since I saw the Japanese book covers for BOTNS I've had in mind
that a really subtle anime studio could probably do the series
justice.  Damn near incomprehensible quasi-gnostic puzzles are the
bread and butter of a lot of sci-fantasy anime.

If I win the lottery, I'll finance it.

LH

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 7:32 PM, Jane Delawney <jane_delawney at sky.com> wrote:
> On 13/07/10 18:27, Gerry Quinn wrote:
>>
>> Was thinking of this the other day.  BotNS could be adapted for a movie
>> (perhaps animated) but the story would have to be simplified and spelled out
>> much more than in the book.
>>
>> Have any of Wolfe's works been made into screen versions?
>
> Don't know whether any have; but regarding BOTNS did you know that
> Innovation attempted to produce a *comics* series back in 1993? I think it
> was originally supposed to be a 12- issue limited series (that would have
> covered vol. 1, Shadow, only, as far as I know).
>
> Only 3 issues actually made it on to the newsstands. Although there was some
> interesting artwork in there (The Matachin Dance made it on to the page
> pretty impressively) and the script was apparently approved by Wolfe
> himself, the whole thing was so compressed as to be unsatisfying to the
> Wolfe/BOTNS fan, and consequently so dense that the average X-men fanboy
> would have found it incomprehensible and left it on the shelf.
>
> Kudos to them for trying, though! Even in the world of comic-books that took
> some hubris.
>
> JD
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> - Gerry Quinn
>>
>>
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