My eyes, my beautiful eyes! ( AKA Timeline, Arrrggggh! )
Has anyone ever read a Michael Crichton novel?
Come on, own up to it, they’re not bad! They are entertaining, possibly plausible stories that generally involve technology gone wrong, or gone terribly right. An entertaining read that quite often just cannot be put down.
Has anyone ever seen a film based on one of those books?
Yeah.. so Disclosure wasn’t bad, Jurrasic Park I & II were kiddy films, The 13th Warrior at least had decent atmosphere, JP3 was more true to the books than the first two.. and let’s just ignore Sphere for a while shall we?
I know it’s almost a universal truth that when a book is turned into a film, the book is better ( the reverse is true of films turned to books I’ve found ), but Timeline… guh!!
* Characters are introduced just to die.
* Characters are changed so that they are related to other characters. Would we not believe that people would put themselves in harm’s way if it wasn’t a blood relative in danger?
o Malcom’s daughter in JP2 is not really his daughter
o Chris is not the Professor’s son in Timeline.
* Interesting concepts get scrapped for no apparent reason other than playing to the lowest common denominator.
o The parallel universes in Timeline become a stable “wormhole” ( because that isn’t an overused plot device!
o Genetic Learning Vs Social Learning in Lost World becomes… oh look, the dinosaurs can talk!
I could understand this happening once or twice, goodness knows that if someone waved a big enough cheque in front of my face I would let them fiddle with my stories, but this keeps happening to really -good- books. We’ve seen that complex films can be made into films that work on many levels. We have extended editions of Lord of The Rings for just this purpose. The masses can watch an enjoyable film with swordfights and whatnot, and the fans can see all the little bits that while important are not essential.
Makes no sense to me.
Timeline: My opinion, Read the Book.
April 5th, 2006 at 11:00 am
JP3 adapted well to film because it read like a film script. The screen in the book where the car was being pushed off the cliff and they were hanging on inside was written because it would look good in a movie. Books can focus on internal suspense. Movies tend to focus on the gratuitous.