Ridley Scott's Forever War In 3D 296
bowman9991 writes "Ridley Scott's next science fiction film, his first since Blade Runner, will be a 3D adaptation of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, an action packed novel about the impact of the time dilation effect on soldiers returning from an interstellar war against the mysterious Tauran species. Scott recently decided to move to 3D after watching footage of James Cameron's yet to be released science fiction epic Avatar. The Forever War, Cameron's Avatar, and Scott's other upcoming science fiction project, Brave New World, will make the next five years a fantastic time to be a science fiction movie enthusiast."
How gimmicky is this 3D stuff? (Score:5, Insightful)
The 3D I've seen is more distraction than enhancement. I don't want to have to wear stupid 3D glasses every time I watch a movie. I saw Beowulf in 3D and the effect was sometimes neat, sometimes disorienting.
Have they made any improvements or is this just more of the same?
Re:How gimmicky is this 3D stuff? (Score:5, Insightful)
(One thing that does not translate from 2D to 3D - at least for me - is a cross-fade. That just breaks my brain. In 2D, everything's in one focal plane. In a 3D crossfade, I can't figure out where to focus as things are appearing and disappearing and it's all a confused blur until the fade's over.)
The other issue is that 3D can't make a bad movie good. My youngest kids enjoyed "Fly Me To The Moon" [imdb.com], but my wife and I... well, at least I had my PDA with me.
Re:Should be a fine film, if.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you read a different book than I did? One of the important plot threads is Mandella's fragmented-by-interstellar-travel romance.
If all you remember was the battles on remote planets and the clone armies and whatnot, you did not get the point of the book at all - it's Haldeman's Vietnam-era rebuttal to the largely pro-war stance of Heinlein's Starship Troopers. The human dimension is important.
Geek's psyche (Score:5, Insightful)
.....damn....another sounding-good movie from those Hollywood mafia guys. They keep bugging us with their "intelectual property" plans...They want to bring down The Pirate Bay....must hating them. We hating them.......Damn....trailer looks good....I will download bootleg....damn, it looks too good...oooh shiny...screw it, I will boycot them another time.
Re:How gimmicky is this 3D stuff? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't go to the cinema any more (too expensive, too many idiots making noise, uncomfortable seats etc) so I have to watch everything on my HDTV at home. All I can hope is that filming in 3D does not negatively impact the 2D BluRay release.
Re:Should be a fine film, if.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Forever War is fantastic (Score:3, Insightful)
As much as I enjoyed the book, I thought the crappy Troopers movie did a much better job with the question of why people fight (because they're brainwashed suckers... er wait) and the whole infosec/infowar thing than the book did. Too bad it was so crappy in every other way...
Re:Forever War is fantastic (Score:5, Insightful)
Unit cohesion is an answer on the individual level - on a larger scale his answer is simply that they fight to survive. This is pretty clearly illustrated in Juan's H&MP class when he is in the academy becoming an officer. Heinlein pretty much posits that all wars are a matter of population growth and limited resources.
I think that he does a great job of illustrating why war is inevitable. Then it makes sense that he venerates those who give completely of themselves to ensure the survival of others.
Haldeman just operates from another premise, that war is not inevitable and that we should all just get along.
Re:Excellent, more SF films. (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, 1984:Republicans as Brave New World:Democrats.
Re:Should be a fine film, if.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thanks an effn lot (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How gimmicky is this 3D stuff? (Score:5, Insightful)
The 3D I've seen is more distraction than enhancement. I don't want to have to wear stupid 3D glasses every time I watch a movie. I saw Beowulf in 3D and the effect was sometimes neat, sometimes disorienting.
Have they made any improvements or is this just more of the same?
The 3D technology itself has been much improved. It works a lot better. The effects themselves don't induce as many headaches as the old stuff. And they're better able to create real depth...instead of just having things either on the screen or floating several feet in front of it.
However, it is still up to the director/effects guys/writers/whoever to do a good job with it. Just like any special effects in any movie... It can be done well, or not.
It can still be disorienting. It can still be pointless and gratuitous. We'll just have to wait and see how well it is handled...
Re:Thanks an effn lot (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok who modded me as funny?
I'm serious when I say I am blind in one eye, and as a result any gimmicky attempt to project 3d at me fails miserably.
Honestly, you were modded as funny, because your complaint is funny. Especially since you phrased it in an lewis black-like, angry comic, fashion. You know, "thanks an effn lot."
Don't get me wrong. I'm not laughing at the fact you're blind in one eye. My father is also blind in one eye, and I get your frustration that you can't participate in the 3d movie experience. That said, complaining that they're making 3d movies because you can't see the 3d effect is a little bit like a completely blind man complaining that they're making movies and tv shows because he can only hear the sound, but not see the picture, or a green-red colorblind person complaining about the choice of colors used in a painting because it all looks the same. The rest of us can see the pictures, the rest of us can see a bigger color spectrum, the rest of us can see the 3d effects.
Your one-eye blindness is called a handicap for a reason. Just because you're lucky that it doesn't affect most of the things you do on a day-to-day basis doesn't mean you should be bitter when it does affect you.
Re:Excellent, more SF films. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny but I thought it was a rant about living in an amoral society where meaningless sex and drugs where a replacement for love and moral behavior.
The only real rules where to not make other people feel bad. It seemed like political correctness run amok too me.
The hero was an "old fashioned" man.
Re:How gimmicky is this 3D stuff? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thanks an effn lot (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually the 3d effect is not affected by color blindness. Assuming you are talking about those old blue/red 3d movies, then it will work fine enough. The colored lenses of the glasses filter the colors for you, leaving you with two slightly different images for each eye. Nowadays they use polarized light or something fancy like that though.
The actual color in the film will of course be lost on them howerver. ;)
Action packed.... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a bit like saying Animal Farm is concerned with the power struggle between different types of animal - true , but not quite the point.
Re:New 3D effects concerns (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite a lot, which will (a) give people a reason to go to the theatre to see movies, and (b) provide an incentive for the development and adoption, within a decade or so, of whatever the successor to today's home viewing technology turns out to be, supporting home 3D viewing. "Replicating the theater experience at home" is, as always, about hitting a moving target.
Re:Forever War is fantastic (Score:5, Insightful)
Limited warfare was the norm until the late 1700's
Limited warfare is mostly the norm today: you surrender, the aggressor stops fighting you to the death. If the aggressor doesn't stop that, then we stop calling it "war" and start calling it "genocide".
Of course, that's for an extremely literal definition of "limited"... but exactly what other definition does make the claim I've quoted above make sense? Try a search for "sack of", check out the first few dozen of the countless results, and make sure your definition of "limited" includes raping and pillaging from non-combatants, mass executions of prisoners of war, and other such war crimes that used to be status quo. I'll admit that Heinlein's post-WWII writing might have been distorted by some of that particularly-heinous context, but even genocide isn't a new thing in history. Ever read the Old Testament?
But suppose that total war and genocide have become particularly common in the last few centuries, perhaps because of the better killing technologies available... how exactly would that reflect poorly on Heinlein's arguments that preparation for war is a necessity for survival? If the temptation of and damage done by war are going up with the advancement of technology and the passage of time, then surely that makes it reasonable to postulate a technologically-advanced future where those factors haven't decreased back to "the norm" yet. This is science fiction, after all - noticing that the norms in human history have included limited war, horse-drawn carts, stone tools, etc. has little relevance to a genre of literature that's also noticed that the norm in modern history is for norms to be perpetually changing.
Re:Forever War is fantastic (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think they'd have gotten it right by now... (Score:1, Insightful)
Let's not think about the Creature from the Black Lagoon sequel in green and red or the potpourri of other thankfully lesser known black and white 3-D films that followed in the 1950s. Let's not remember "Friday the 13th III 3D", which vacillated between flatfilm and 3D shot?. Let's especially not remember "The Revenge of Jared Syn", which was entirely shot in stereoscope 3D?
You'd think that after nearly 50 years, directors would not only have the stereoscopic vocabulary nailed, but have a whole new language! Sadly, they haven't. Stereoscopic movies are a fad that crops up every 20 years or so. Rediscovered, lost. Rediscovered, lost. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Maybe that pattern will change this time 'round? Prediction: as BRD moves further into the mainstream, you'll see more 3D in the cinema as stereoscope, stadium seating, and, for the exhibitionist, room to grope your significant other, is all the future cinema will have over video.
Re:Forever War is fantastic (Score:2, Insightful)
Bear in mind that Heinlein's works don't necessarily reflect his actual, personal opinion on a given matter. He was noted several times to have said that his characters "speak for themselves", not for him.
In other words, assuming this is true, many of his works were intended to generate critical thought, and not necessarily push a set of ideas. I doubt Heinlein really supported a government elected and run solely by civil-service veterans (mostly from the military) any more than Huxley supported a government encouraging sterilization, drug use, and rampant sex to control the populace.
Re:How gimmicky is this 3D stuff? (Score:3, Insightful)
Coraline was excellent in 3D -- the first 3D movie I've seen which tried to be a movie first and 3D second, if you see what I mean, and thereby succeeded at both. The 3D was an enhancement, not a distraction.
Of course, that was animation. I have yet to see it done well in live-action. We'll see.
Damn gimmicky 3D stuff doesn't work for me (Score:3, Insightful)
I have amblyopia, so my eyes don't point quite paralell. 3D movies are worse than useless to me, I just get my choice of a blurry distorted image or a splitting headache.
Captcha says reject, which is what these movies make me think.
Re:Forever War is fantastic (Score:3, Insightful)
"Ask any economist and they'll tell you that wars are not only not inevitable, but there is no rational explanation for them at all,.."
This is utopian/socialist thinking, not real thinking.
If you want something, eliminating the person who has that something is a valid approach to getting it (outside of morals/ethics, of course).
-Jeff
Re:How gimmicky is this 3D stuff? (Score:2, Insightful)
Miniseries (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You'd think they'd have gotten it right by now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Technical limitations - and the economic limitations that spring from them - have limited 3D's usage to gimmicks before. They've done red-green 3D... but that can't do color. They've done vertical and horizontal polarization... but that requires you to keep your head almost perfectly vertical, or else the 3D effect vanishes.
These days they're using circularly polarized light with opposite signs. Clockwise in one eye, counterclockwise in the other. That way the 3D effect can be maintained even if the viewer's head is quite a bit further off vertical, making the whole experience a lot more comfortable. In the future, framerates can be made high enough, and LCD shutters can be made cheap enough, that alternating frames to allow 3D may well be economical.
Economics actually argues for 3D now, instead of against - movie theaters need a draw that's hard to duplicate at home. I already wait to see most movies on DVD, or Blu-ray at most, 'cause I've got a decent-sized flat-panel and good speakers.
The past can be a good guide to the future... but it's not an infallible guide.
Re:so ... (Score:3, Insightful)
It wasn't an adventure novel about blowing up the Bugs - it was about military insanity and the political madness that permits idiot wars that kill millions for no sane cause. The war against Spain, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the War against Communism, the War against Alcohol, the War against Drugs, and the king of them all, the War on Terrorism, which is a war on a noun with no referent, a war on anyone we damned well don't like.
The author was a Vietnam vet fresh back from the Forever War against ???, and he wrote what he knew.