Sunshine Writer Joins Logan's Run Remake 216
bowman9991 writes "Remember to check your palm to ensure that your crystal hasn't gone black. If it has, you better start running. The 1976 science fiction classic Logan's Run, starring Michael York, is being remade in 3-D with British writer Alex Garland now onboard to write the screenplay. Garland's film Sunshine, directed by Danny Boyle, was one of the stand-out science fiction films of the last decade, and he wrote the screenplays for Leonardo DiCaprio's The Beach (based on Garland's own novel) and the science fiction horror 28 Days Later (a massive adrenaline rush of a movie). This should give first-time director Carl Rinsch some great material to work with — a great premise meets a great writer."
This is good news (Score:5, Insightful)
Logan's Run is a classic in every sense and, in my opinion, shouldn't be fucked with. Still, if someone HAS to do it, the guy that wrote Sunshine (which was a modern day masterpiece) is certainly a good choice.
Why 3D? (Score:3, Insightful)
There's nothing in Logan's Run that needs 3D. Are they going to do weird bullet-time Matrix-like effects of the needlers and rippers flying around?
Classic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why remake perfectly good classics? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? Because Hollywood is incapable of coming up with an original idea. Apparently all the good stories have been used up. Now we are left with movie remakes of TV shows, 10th sequels, or plots that have been re-made for the 3rd or 4th time.
Why? Because it's less of a gamble - they have an assured audience $$$ using the known formulas.
Re:Why remake perfectly good classics? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can do that too!
2001 was that wanky nonsense that veered from intelligent design to a psycho computer and stumbled to its finale with a bunch of trippy bullshit.
The Fly was about Jeff Goldblum inventing a teleporter and turning into a big scary bug that kills people grusomely.
The Matrix was Johnny Mnemonic with a lot more explosions, shooting, and fighting.
There is slightly more to a movie than the IMDB synopsis and what you've heard from other people who haven't seen it but are outraged at the premise.
Re:This is good news (Score:5, Insightful)
which was a modern day masterpiece
Implausible premise, implausible technology, and completely ridiculous story peopled by totally unrealistics characters. The most important rescue mission in history is crewed entirely by psychologically unstable children who routinely make trivially imbecilic decisions for no readily apparent reason.
I guess as a reflection on how vacuous and self-involved modern Western culture it has some artistic merit, but not very much.
To be great art there has to be at least a thread of internal logic that makes for a self-consistent story. Sunshine didn't have that: a culture so completely degenerate as to crew a ship on such an important mission with such a bunch of losers would never have been able to build the ship in the first place.
Re:This is good news (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm the only one who really didn't like Sunshine? The premise was ludicrous, the science was laughable, and it devolved into a fantasy slasher film half way through. I prefer my science fiction to have a bit more basis in science personally.
Re:This is good news (Score:3, Insightful)
Modern-day masterpiece is probably overselling it. I think its aesthetic, both visual and aural, is utterly definitive, but the storyline and dialogue favoured efficiency over the depth the concept offered. That said I think that Garland's big achievement on that picture was knowing when to sit back and let the setting tell its own story. Striking the audience with awe at the grandness and power of space, as an end in itself, has a certain thematic appropriateness.
Re:It's already been remade! (Score:2, Insightful)
The Island was a remake of The Clonus Horror, not Logan's Run.
Re:Why remake perfectly good classics? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a LOT of good ideas. It's just that hollywood execs are too stupid to try anything new...
HEY this made money 30 years ago.... let's remake it!
Hey let's remake CasaBlanca but this time use Vin Diesel!
We can remake the epic Ben Hur in 3d with laser swords on a sand planet.... Let's combine Dune and Ben Hur! Dune Hur!
Classic? What classic? (Score:4, Insightful)
The original novel came out at the height of the baby boom hitting adulthood; across the developing world, the population explosion was making it look like the whole world was kids. (Erlich's "The Population Bomb" was just out, too.) So they had this world where you were shot at 20, there were only teenagers. How the high-tech machinery kept running was never explained.
The movie raised the 20 to 30 to accommodate a not-nearly-teen Michael York. Who kept the lights on was still never explained; everybody seemed to lounge about in day-glo party clothes.
Of course, it was terrible science fiction; many analysts were pointing to dropping birth rates in the developed world and debunking Erlich even at the time. The youth explosion of the decade was a blip. Now the world faces an increasingly aging population and it's the loss of 50-somethings from the workforce that is creating concerns.
Apparently, they are good at keeping the lights on.
Re:Dune + Ben Hur? (Score:4, Insightful)
That is, without a doubt, the most horrifying ideas I have ever heard.
It doesn't make sense any more (Score:3, Insightful)
There is another reason to NOT make this movie. It doesn't make any sense, from a historical perspective, to do so. Back when the book was written, the world was concerned about the population explosion, and that it seemed the average age was going YOUNGER. There were going to be a bunch of young people around and no way to support them. The way it's worked out, however, is that the population has actually gotten OLDER. There are many more older folks now, as a percentage of the population. Overpopulation also has not become as large a problem as anyone thought. If we could figure out food DISTRIBUTION, then there wouldn't be anyone going to bed hungry.
And, yeah, "The Island" kind of already was a remake, albeit a lousy one.
The original, goofy as it was, is a classic, and they won't be able to add anything of substance.
Re:This is good news (Score:1, Insightful)
There's a subtle difference between fiction and inaccuracy.
A novel where Napoleon wins the battle of Waterloo would be fiction. One where Wellington wins because he had tanks would be inaccurate.
Re:Why remake perfectly good classics? (Score:3, Insightful)
2001 was that wanky nonsense that veered from intelligent design to a psycho computer and stumbled to its finale with a bunch of trippy bullshit.
Yes, pretty much. Watch 2001 today on a small screen and it's pretty dull. The plot is pretty thin, the production values are low by modern standards, and the ending is interminably long and apparently only enjoyable with the aid of psychotropics. I enjoyed the book immensely, and have reread it several times, but once was quite enough for the film as an adult, although I did enjoy it (once) as a small child.
The thing that made 2001 special was the effects. Long scenes of space ships docking with realistic motion and Strauss in the background was, according to my father, at least, utterly spectacular on a cinema screen in 1968. Now, even Babylon 5 had better spacecraft scenes, and they're so common making them slow doesn't make the audience enjoy them, it makes the audience bored.
Show 2001 to someone who has never seen it before, and you're unlikely to get a positive reaction now. It's only important in cultural perspective.
The Fly was about Jeff Goldblum inventing a teleporter and turning into a big scary bug that kills people grusomely.
I've not seen The Fly, but that's pretty much the description I've heard. Was there more to it than that?
The Matrix was Johnny Mnemonic with a lot more explosions, shooting, and fighting.
You're actually using The Matrix as an example of a movie that survives on more than just hype?
Seriously though, I'd not even heard of Sunshine until I read this article, so it doesn't have the same cultural impact as 2001 - which I had heard of and even seen, in spite of it being produced over two decades before I first saw it. Do you think Sunshine will still have people talking about it in 2030?
From the synopsis on Wikipedia, it sounds a very long way from hard science:
And that's not even going in to the complete failure to understand high school physics of thinking that heat loss is even a small danger when making a suit-less space crossing. Do they not have vacuum flasks in California?
Define "Stand-Out" again? (Score:3, Insightful)
Garland's film 'Sunshine,' directed by Danny Boyle, was one of the stand-out science fiction films of the last decade,
Stand out in what way?
It was a commercial flop, it was boring, it had a ridiculous plot, it had horrible acting, it had little to no character development at all. It was an all-around horrible movie from start to end as far as I'm concerned, and most of the movie-going public seems to agree with me.