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Sci-Fi Media Movies

A Sound of Thunder 154

Posted by michael from the storm's-a-coming dept.
blamanj writes "One of the great sci-fi short stories, Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder is scheduled to be released on film next month. Links to the trailers (QT, Real, WMP) can be found here. The original story prefigured chaos theory in its 'small changes, large effects' premise. Indeed, when I first heard the term 'butterfly theory,' I assumed it was based on Bradbury's story. Unlike the original, however, the film won't be touching on dystopian politics, but appears to have been turned into a 'Jurassic Park'-style creature feature. Sigh. Oh, well, we can hope that the new Fahrenheit 451 will be treated with a bit more respect."
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A Sound of Thunder More

A Sound of Thunder

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  • Clicking on Ray Bradbury's name brings you to a link about "A sound of Thunder", and clicking on "A sound of thunder" brings you to Ray Bradbury's main page. Mixup, eh?

    How good a movie it will be in comparison to the book, I don't even want to speculate. As far as just looking at it as a movie and not as a movie adaptation of a book, it looks alright, maybe something to rent on DVD.

    • Re:Mixed the links up? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @09:48AM (#10157321) Journal
      What book? "A sound of thunder" is a cheesy 2 page short story where a guy goes back in time, steps on a butterfly, and rewrites all of history.

      For a 2 pager, it's a good story. But sheeit, get a grip on it people, it's not the greatest story I've read by a long shot.

      I'm surprised anyone thought it was worth a movie. It was barely worth the Simpsons spoof.

      I have a feeling what happened was, someone wrote a script about going back in time to hunt dinosaurs, suits noticed the similarities in plots, and just bought the rights to the story rather than risk a copyright suit down the road.

      I like Bradbury and all, but this just seems like a goofy short story to get worked up about.

  • Its already happened (Score:5, Funny)

    by MeridianOnTheLake ( 691931 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:26AM (#10156815)
    I watched the preview and my theory is that this has already happened. Some doofus stepped off the path and killed a butterfly, because the rest of the trailer bears absolutely no resemblence to my memory of Ray Bradbury's story.
    • Well, it's kinda difficult to make a short story of maybe 1500 words stretch out into a 2 hour feature film without adding something.

      Unfortunately, to me, the film looks like an amalgamation of Paycheck, Timeline, The Butterfly Effect, and The Day After Tomorrow. Oh yes, and Jurassic Park. ;-)

      • Re:Its already happened (Score:4, Insightful)

        by cmacb ( 547347 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @02:39PM (#10158587) Homepage Journal
        "Well, it's kinda difficult to make a short story of maybe 1500 words stretch out into a 2 hour feature film without adding something."

        Funny though, usually Hollywood uses the fact that in adapting a *novel* they have to figure out what to omit.

        One wonders if someone were to make a movie out of something in-between short story and novel size would Hollywood get it right.

        My guess is that length has little or nothing to do with it. "I, Robot" had a dozen short stories (which were related in such a way that you could mix and match them all you wanted) but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what the movie and the stories had in common other than the "Three Laws of Robotics", Asimov's name, and the word "Positronic".

        I enjoyed the movie, but re-read the stories just to verify that they were not used for the movie. I really think the people in Hollywood are just too self centered to use something from the 50's. They want the name recognition, the guarantee that a million or so sci-fi fans will turn out, and other than that, the flexibility to let the dozen or so hollywood stars of the moment play themselves one more time. There is no Will Smith-like character in "I, Robot", so toss the stories in the trash and keep the title.

        Like some operating systems I know, this formula is old and BORING and not worth the premium price asked for it by the "developers".

        • Funny though, usually Hollywood uses the fact that in adapting a *novel* they have to figure out what to omit.

          Sometimes they do get it right. The English Patient [imdb.com] was made into a good movie (if you like weepy romances, which in this case I happened to). It was derived from a mediocre book of the same name [abebooks.com], but in fact focused on a single eposode. The main characters of the book became peripheral characters in the film, and vice versa.

          I hate to praise a generally creepy industry like Hollywood, especial

          • I agree. Hollywood gets it right sometimes. As I said I DID actually enjoy "I,Robot" the movie. While it didn't resemble any of the Asimov stories that I could find it was a "nice" plot. But my guess is they cast the film first and then put together a screenplay to fit the cast. Just a guess.

            In the short stories, the "hero" is often an unattractive female "robopsychologist" who figures out the mystery after all her male coworkers have failed (ahead of it's time).

            Lay the Asimov robot stories, both sh

  • Audiobook (Score:5, Informative)

    by chrispl ( 189217 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:32AM (#10156834) Homepage
    The on-tape version of this story was one of my favorite tapes for a long time. It featured truly excellent acting and sound effects and was better than any movie I can imagine. The horror in the voices of the travellers having returned and discovered what they had done still sends a cold shiver down my back.

    I found a copy at my local library, definatly something to look up before it gets picked up by the movie fan masses.
    • Interesting... do you know if this is available online in some form? A quick search through the usual P2P networks returned nothing.

      Perhaps if the copyrights on the tape allow it you would care to encode it... ;)

  • IMDb Link (Score:3, Informative)

    by bobbis.u ( 703273 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:34AM (#10156842)
    IMDb link here [imdb.com]

    Not much info there yet, but might be worth bookmarking for the future.

  • Hollywood (Score:5, Interesting)

    by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:39AM (#10156850) Journal
    Oh, well, we can hope that the new Fahrenheit 451 will be treated with a bit more respect.

    You don't know Hollywood very well do you?

    • Re:Hollywood (Score:2, Interesting)

      by theKinkyRabbit ( 809823 )
      You don't know Hollywood very well do you?

      Well, Frank Darabont [imdb.com] at least has some experience when it comes to turning a novel into a movie.
      Unlike the bunch [imdb.com] who worked on "A Sound of Thunder".

      This, at least, can cast a little bit of hope on the project (until some exec blasts into the editing room asking for a truckload of changes, that is).

      • Re:Hollywood (Score:5, Funny)

        by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:48AM (#10156874) Journal
        It will probably be turned into a comedy chick flick.

        FARENHEIT 451 - THE TEMPERATURE THAT *LOVE* BURNS!

        Starring Ben Stiller & Cameron Diaz
        • Wait until the pr0n-makers make a knock-off. I'm sure that there must be a "Jurassic Pork" flick out there. Gack, why did I bother even searching? [bgafd.co.uk] Some other weird stuff [archive.org] too.

        • Re:Hollywood (Score:3, Funny)

          by Spoing ( 152917 )
          1. Starring Ben Stiller & Cameron Diaz

          Unfortunately, I can see that;

          Ben: What is that? Is that a book?

          Cameron: Yes, it's a book. What's the big deal.

          Ben: They burst into flames...get rid of it.

          Cameron: That's silly. It's just a book. Why are you so scared?

          Ben: I'm not. [grabs book tosses it out the window] [book hits Fireman on the helmet]

          Cameron: Hey! I was reading that!

          Ben: Books are bad for you. [flaming book comes back through the window, hits Ben]

          Cameron: Ah! Put it out put it out!

          Ben:

    • Re:Hollywood (Score:4, Insightful)

      by silverfuck ( 743326 ) <dan.farmer@gCOBOLmail.com minus language> on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:35AM (#10157032) Homepage
      the new Fahrenheit 451

      Oh, you mean this [allmovie.com]?

      <Sigh>... Why is it people are always remaking movies, is Hollywood not inventive to come up with new plots itself? (Yes, that was rhetorical.)

  • Propaganda (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:46AM (#10156867)
    I wonder about all these "remakes" where the message of the book is erased (I even include "I, Robot" in that...). How many people will not read books because they saw the films and think they know what they were about, desite the films being sanitised, pro-corporatist and watered-down?
    • Happened to me already, with a friend who saw "Contact" - he didn't care much about the movie and thought the book wasn't worth it. Took me a while to convince him to give it a try, and now he's grateful.

      Slightly OT, but check http://maddox.xmission.net/c.cgi?u=i_robot [xmission.net] for a rather accurate description of my feelings torwards "I, Robot". The book was only OK, but the movie completely butchered it.
    • How many people will not read books because they saw the films and think they know what they were about, desite the films being sanitised, pro-corporatist and watered-down?

      Probably no more than would not read the book if they saw the movie and really did get to see more or less everything that was in the book.

      By the way, your insinuation that science fiction isn't "pro-corporatist" (whatever the fuck that means) is misleading. Sci-fi authors - at least most of the ones I've read - aren't usually pushing

      • Re:Propaganda (Score:2, Interesting)

        by 0xdeadbeef ( 28836 )
        By turning "evil" corporations and governments into cartoons, they whitewash the real malfeasance that goes on everyday. Science fiction literature at least tries to maintain a sense of reality, as ironic as that sounds.

        Ever try explaining to a non-geek why the RIAA is bad? "Well, they're just trying to make money." If it isn't an Enron-type scandal, most people don't understand or don't care, because they've been conditioned to accept it.

        Starship Troopers is genius. He used the movie to critique the boo
        • No offense, really, (because I felt the same way after I saw the movie) but have you read the book?

          After I read the book I realized that Paul Verhoeven had completely perverted the story so he could critique it. He's seems to love making movies about a utopia that really isn't (i.e. Robocop, Total Recall), and he seems to love to show intense gore, real blood and guts.

          For instance, in Heinlein's book you can serve without being a soldier, in fact soldiers are a chosen few; well trained and given advenc

      • On the subject of political mangling, the worst was "Starship Troopers", where Verhoeven was so fixated on Heinlein's militarism that he turned the characters into fascists, missing not only the entire point of the book but also the libertarian philosophy that runs through most of Heinlein's work. To be fair, Heinlein often said in discussions that a main point of his proposed government system in Starship Troopers was that people had to genuinely serve the citizenry in a capacity the society chose before
    • Despite the article's statement, "A Sound of Thunder" really isn't about the politics, it's about a guy who goes back in time to shoot a dinosaur and changes the future. The politics thing is just a convenient way to show the effects of screwing up the timeline.

  • So like... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dj ( 224 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:54AM (#10156887) Homepage
    Instead of the hero returning and blowing his brains out because everything is misspelt and someone else won the election.... they decide in the movie version to hey, have a movie, with stuff in it.

    Those.... BASTARDS. :)

    • Have you read the story? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:43AM (#10157053) Journal
      He didn't commit suicide. If the "hero" was killed it was because the hunter shot him. Although it never says anything except that there was a sound of thunder. Wich could be a poetic way of saying gunshot but that is not clear. Nor needs to be clear. Maybe the hunter killed himself after all he is the one who objected most in the story to the guy now in power.
    • So why did they decide to make a feature length movie out of it, that needed 6 writers to blow it up? Couldn't they have done an episode movie like The illustrated Man or Twilight Zone?
  • Funny how I should see this news just an hour after watching Ray Bradbury Presents for the first time. Guess which episode was on? I found it to be a fairly well done version, for a TV show, sure the dinosaur was very animatronic but it looked fun to shoot at.

    I haven't read the book but I was aware of the story, I wonder if anyone has any opinions on the TV show version versus the book.

  • Spoiler (Score:4, Funny)

    by GoofyBoy ( 44399 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:11AM (#10156941) Journal
    Thees is goo chort storrie.

    Mee hapie Bush waz re-ellectd.

  • Will it beat the Simpsons version? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Quizo69 ( 659678 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:14AM (#10156951) Homepage

    Treehouse of Horror V [tvtome.com]

    The episode is called "Time and Punishment" and features Homer repairing a toaster which then sends him back and forth through time. Each time he comes back he's messed things up worse than the last.

    "I've gone back in time to when dinosaurs weren't just confined to zoos." - Homer

  • Originality? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by shawnseat ( 453587 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:30AM (#10157011)
    I couldn't let this one pass. In the late 19th century it was known that the roughness of the surface of a tube effects the amount of fluid that flows through a pipe under pressure (look up any discussion of the Reynolds Number and pipe or tube flow). The roughness of the pipe is a very small cause that causes a large macroscopic effect.

    • Re:Originality? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by AndroidCat ( 229562 )
      For the want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost;
      For the want of a horseshoe a horse was lost;
      For the want of a horse, the rider was lost;
      For the want of a rider, the message was lost;
      For the want of a message, the battle was lost;
      For the want of a battle, the war was lost;
      For the want of a war, the kingdom was lost;
      And all for the want of a horseshoe's nail.

      Author unknown, but it probably dates back further than the chopped version Ben Franklin quotes.

    • Re:Originality? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by blair1q ( 305137 )
      No it isn't.

      The roughness of a tiny section of a pipe would be a very small input.

      The roughness of a theoretically infinite length of pipe is a very large input.

    • Re:Originality? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Forbman ( 794277 )
      ...but on the other hand, GM flipped this on its ear. They had a radiator that was very nicely engineered, with smooth coolant flow throughout the radiator. Well, it didn't work worth crap.

      They finally realized that the turbulent flow created a bunch of vortices in the flow that helped carry away more heat, because it increased the relative surface contact area of the water.

      In certain conditions, a turbulent boundary layer increases the efficiency of flow for the entire fluid body because it sets up a nic
  • This has been my rule of thumb for movies adapted from books (most movies, BTW). I will admit that there are a very few exceptions (usually where the book was adapted from the movie - Star Wars), but the vast majority of the time the book is better. Even when they do a really good job on the movie, like with LotR or The Princess Bride, there's still no comparison with the book. Don't get me wrong, I love those movies & can't think of many practical ways they could have been improved (three movies each for FotR, TTT, and RotK...), but IMO the books are still much better. I know a lot of you will start yelling "Apples and Oranges" at me, but I guess that's kind of my point. With very few exceptions I like oranges better than apples. I honestly think that books are a better form of entainment media than movies. Not that movies aren't great, but books are better.

    I also want to say that I don't think there shouldn't be movie adaptations of books - like I said above I love the LotR movies. But as I am something of a bookworm (never would've guessed, huh?), it really bugs me when Hollywood takes a book and totally screws it over. And all too often that's what they do. Just a couple recent examples: I, Robot. That movie just really ticked me off. It would have been all right (well, the movie still would have sucked, but I wouldn't have cared so much) if they had just come up with their own title for the movie, and not had any connection to Asimov or his stories. He just had to be spinning in his grave over that movie. For those that don't know, I, Robot was a collection of short stories and essays by Asimov; and one of the things he makes very clear was that the whole reason he started writing Robot stories was because he hated the cliched plot "Man builds robot. Robot goes crazy and kills everyone." What's the plot in the movie?

    One last example of a book Hollywood screwed over recently: Cheaper by the Dozen. Remake of a movie adapted from a stageplay adapted from book. The first movie and the stageplay were done well. The 2003 movie never should have been made. Cheaper by the Dozen is a comedy revolving around two points: a large family (12 kids), and the Father working as an efficiency expert consultant for large corporations. He is not, I repeat NOT , a football coach. Hollywood just blew away half of the premise.

    Like I said, I don't think Hollywood should stop making book adaptations, but they should stay true to the book. If you don't like the book's plot, then don't make a movie claiming to be an adaptation of it, when less than half the movie is related to the book, or worse goes completly against the book.

    All right, rant mode off...
    • The movies Planet of the Apes and Rollerball were better than the stories they were semi-based on. (The orignal movies. I haven't seen the remakes.)
    • Simply stated, a really good writer can write a really good book ...
      along comes a MEDIOCRE Hollywood writer / director / producer and turns the book into a mediocre movie.

      It's all about talent levels. Bradbury wrote a good short story. But the writer(s) who expanded it to movie length probably were NOT in the same league as him.
    • Hollywood takes a book and totally screws it over. And all too often that's what they do

      The opposite happens too. "Forrest Gump" was a decent movie from a bad book. (At least, if you use popularity as a measure of quality)

      Arguably, "Total Recall" was better than "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" and "Blade Runner" beat "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?".

      I think the "Jurassic Park" movie was better too- but only because the purity of admiring CGI creature effects beats endless mumbo-jumbo on c

  • What about Ray? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Vinnie_333 ( 575483 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:39AM (#10157044)
    Martin: As your president, I would demand a science fiction library, featuring the an ABC of the overlords of the gentre: Asimov, Bester, and Clarke.

    Milouse: What about Ray Bradbury?

    Marin: I'm aware of his work.

  • Release date pushed back. (Score:3, Informative)

    by ghoghogol ( 232850 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:48AM (#10157068) Homepage
    You guys are gonna have to wait until 1st quarter 2005 to see this one as the release was pushed back by Warner Bros.

  • Quick summary of the original story (Score:3, Informative)

    by hellfire ( 86129 ) <deviladv AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:58AM (#10157118) Homepage
    I never read the story but I saw the TV version of this story on a Ray Bradbury theater episode. The trailer is mostly correct in the beginning. There is a company that figured out time travel and uses it to go back in time to offer people the chance to hunt creatures they could never hunt before. Everything is strictly controlled, and they do kill a T-rex. In the story, the T-rex is sickly, and was going to die anyway, which is the point, to preserve the time line.

    However the guy who hired the company to go on this expedition stepped off that path, a special path designed to isolate the time travellers from all the other organisms and not cause damage to the timeline.

    When the travelers get back, they are in a whole new world. The company is still there, the people are too. However, in this world, Germany won the second world war and the third reich is in power.

    The story ends with the leader of the expedition locating the butterfly on the shoe of the client who stepped off the path. In the show, which I'm not sure was in the story, the leader puts a bullet between the eyes of the client for basically messing up the time line. Again I'm not sure that last action was in the story.

    And that's it. That's all that's needed for the lesson in the timeline. This crap WB turned it into is just another hollywood suspense action thriller with the same damn plot as all the others. Blah.
    • It doesn't take that long to read the original story, and it's the first link at the top. There's no Nazi Germany involved.
      • Actually, Germany is definately implied as this story was written just after the end of World War II (Ignore the date at the end of the article, that was the date that the collection of stories was published). If it is late 1940's and people with names of German descent are used, it is definately pointing towards Nazis.
    • You're mixing up your Ray Bradbury with your Harlan Ellison, my friend. In Ellison's Star Trek episode, Kirk saves a girl from being run down in the street, she is able to organize a protest that delays the US entry into WWII, and the Nazis win, the Federation ceases to exist, and Kirk & Co are stuck at the "City at the Edge of Forever" [ericweisstein.com].

      In Bradbury's story, english spelling and the outcome of the presidential election (and who knows what else) are affected.

  • There's no movie _in_ the story (Score:3, Informative)

    by samael ( 12612 ) <Andrew@Ducker.org.uk> on Saturday September 04, 2004 @09:22AM (#10157216) Homepage
    If you _really_ stretched the story you could make it last 10 minutes. So expecting a 2 hour film to do more than take the story as a starting point (which it does seem to do) is asking a bit much.
  • Stream links for those without clients which support the proprietary stream meta data formats: WMP: mms://demand.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/windows /wbmovies/asoundofthunder/trailer/trailer_500.wmv [demandstre...iler500wmv] Real: rtsp://demand1.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/real/ wbmovies/asoundofthunder/trailer/trailer_500.rm [demand1str...ailer500rm] I could not get the url out of the QuickTime meta data. Anyone? Surprsing they don't have Ogg Theora or at least MPEG-4 (XviD). People could of cause email them [maito] asking for modern format support ;) n

  • It's the Election, stupid (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mhackarbie ( 593426 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @09:34AM (#10157267) Homepage Journal
    If there was ever a perfect occurrence of amazing science fiction prophecy, the connection between the upcoming election and the one in the story is it.

    The people who removed that are idiots.

    mhack

  • Peter Hyams [imdb.com] is the director. End of Days certainly applied to Arnold's film career....
  • It must be difficult to balance faithfulness to the original story with hopes of commercial success. On the one hand, you have Star Ship Troopers, which was turned into a bug hunt by minions of a fascistic superstate. Enjoyable and profitable I believe, but nothing resembling Heinlein's original story. Then you have Dune, which came about as close to a faithful rendition of Herbert's novel as one could achieve on film, and it was a commercial disaster (I personally loved it). Moviemaking is ultimately suppo
    • Which Dune are you talking about. The horrific Dino DeLaurentis version of the 1980s (with Sting as Feyd Rautha and a soundtrack by Toto) or the SciFi channel version. The 1980s version was horrible. You had Kyle Maclachlan playing an absolutely wooden Paul Atreides, the pilots of the spacer guild basically travel through space by eating the planet and then shitting it out their ass (go look at the film again if you don't believe me) and much of the sets and SFX look as if Dino DeLaurentis recycled them fro
      • Which Dune are you talking about. The horrific Dino DeLaurentis version of the 1980s (with Sting as Feyd Rautha and a soundtrack by Toto) or the SciFi channel version.

        The Dino DeLaurentis version. Obviously we're in disagreement about it. I thought the sets were brilliant, as was the screen adaptation of the story. The acting is another matter, and not relevant to my point of faithfulness to the novel itself.

        • The reason nobody watched it was that it was 1) impossible to understand without reading the book first, and 2) _way_ too long. You just didn't have 3 hour films back then.

          This is, of course, an irreconcilable problem. The solution would have been to draw out the explanations of what was going on a little longer, and split the result into a few manageable chunks.

          The SciFi adaptation was actually pretty good at this. There were very few "huh?" moments in that version. It was, of course, something like

  • Great spot for a TV commercial (Score:5, Funny)

    by hellfire ( 86129 ) <deviladv AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday September 04, 2004 @09:56AM (#10157364) Homepage
    *Fade up, its a dystopian world 2054, things constantly break down, the sky is polluted. Cars with the MS logo are crashing randomly on the side of the road. Computer screens flicker, and some of them even show BSODs*

    *Cut to scene in a corporation*

    Salesrep: We offer time travel services! Go back in time and play pranks on you favorite CEOs!

    Client: Sounds like fun! Can i throw a pie in bill gates face?

    Salesrep: your in luck! He gets pied in history. We'll send you back in time and it won't disrupt the timeline.

    Client: great, I want to pay that SOB back. I look around and see all the things that have gone wrong and I get so mad.

    *cut to time machine*

    Expedition leader: remember... stay on the path. Now ready your pies!

    *time machine starts, expedition walks in, cut to scene in japan. Bill Gates is attending a conference. A japanese prankster sneaks up on bill with a cream pie.*

    Leader: get ready... he's almost there... now!!!!

    *Bill is pied from every direction. He quickly ducks into a bathroom to freshen up*

    Client: woo hoo *gets a little excited, but slips on pie on the path. He catches his balance but not before stepping off the path*

    Leader: get back on the path! now! Everyone back home quick!

    *cut back to corporation as the expedition comes home*

    *scene has dramatically changed. It's more utopian. Everything works flawlessly and is clean. Cars in near collisions find ways to avoid each other safely and automatically.*

    Leader: what happened?

    Salesrep: sir? Nothing has happened, you've returned safely.

    Leader: Damnit we changed the timeline. I have to find my wife!

    Salesrep (looking puzzled): you can use that terminal there to email her, use the search engine to locate her, or place voice call even.

    Leader: what? no! Thats impossible, Microsoft computers don't work that well, it would break down or I'd send her a virus! I can't risk that!

    Salerep: Microsoft sir? Microsoft has been dead for decades. Everyone uses Linux now.

    *Leader turns to client, pushes him into a chair and lifts the client's boot. Under his boot is an MSN butterfly, crushed and dead.*

    Announcer: Change your future with Linux!!!

  • The great thing about Ray.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by thellamaman ( 631602 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @10:05AM (#10157407) Homepage
    The great thing about Ray Bradbury is his amazing ability to captivate with simple short stories. He doesn't even describe what happens at the end of this story, it just ends with the chilling line, "There was a sound of thunder." There's no way even a faithful short film adaptation can capture that magic. In a feature-length film, I'd be surprised if there were any magic left at all. Oh, well. At least the first half of the trailer was enjoyable.
  • I think there is another story fairly similar to this one also written by Ray Bradbury. It involves another hunter who is hunting a Brontosauraus and congratulating himself on his power and bravery to be able to kill something so big. He does kill the animal and is turning to go home feeling very pleased with himself when the ( huge ) lice and parasites who used to live on the Brontosauraus leap on him and eat him to death. I cant remember the explanation given for him to be there hunting dinosaurs though.

  • Bad Science Fiction (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Long-EZ ( 755920 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @10:28AM (#10157510)

    I hope they do better than they did with Robert Heinlein's classic Starship Troopers.

    I love good science fiction, and constantly wonder why it's so rare at the movies. Phillip K. Dick's stories have done better (Blade Runner). I liked Gattica, as a thought provoking and cautionary tale of technology bent by society and politics, but the Hollywood touch renders most science fiction into a festering mound of low-brow special effects poop.

    Why does Hollywood usually wait until science fiction authors have died before converting their work into a movie? I have a couple of theories:

    1) The author has seen other SF movie adaptations, and thus adopted the policy, "Over my dead body."

    2) Hollywood wants to lessen the chances of a lawsuit based on misrepresentation, libel, etc.

    • Getting input from a variety of people with differening opions and coming up with a product that satisfies all concerned is hard. It is just easier to organize if you have one less opinionated person in the mix.

  • Quicktime (Score:1)

    by Pasc ( 59 )
    Did anybody else have repeated problems with corrupt Quicktime files? Annoying.

  • dupe (Score:4, Funny)

    by Temsi ( 452609 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @12:09PM (#10157975) Journal
    Hollywood executives aren't the only ones who do the same thing over and over... now Slashdot does it too!

    Previous version of this story here [slashdot.org]

  • Here's hoping this one's a little less insulting than "Lawnmower Man".

  • All hopeful posts.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lord Bitman ( 95493 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @01:23PM (#10158299)
    didnt watch the fucking trailer.
    Remember Timecop [imdb.com]? No? Good. May the same be said of this load. "Time Ripples" are always unforgiveable.
  • So it's yet another lazy attempt at depicting the consequence of time travel.

    You have a choice. You can have time travel with causality in your own universe, or you can have free will, but not both.

    You simply can't travel into your own past without "altering" it. To be present, you have to displace air molecules. To observe you have to intercept photons. By the time you've "accidentally" stepped on a butterfly you've already "altered" things in innumerable ways. So if you "alter" the past by entering it,
    • You have a choice. You can have time travel with causality in your own universe, or you can have free will, but not both.

      You use "free will" when only "non-predestination" would be correct. They are different.

      Regardless of someone else's ability to completely predict your actions, they are still YOUR actions.

      You simply can't travel into your own past without "altering" it. To be present, you have to displace air molecules.

      That's true. If you really could travel back in time, you'd be equally likely

      • If Matrix Reloaded had a good screenwriter, it could've really mastered the topic (and been an entirely different movie- but the setting of a global VR network is the perfect backdrop to explore predestination)

        Unfortunately, every popular movie ends up dumbing itself down to try to appeal to everyone.

        I personally loved Ros & Guil, but people who hadn't read the play beforehand were royally confused.

        How many people have heard of and seen The Matrix? How many have heard of and seen Ros & Guil

      • The only film I can remember that does use either fallacy is "12 Monkeys" (prehaps also Terminator 1). It supports a fully predestined theory of time-travel, where the only "changes" the traveller makes are exactly what was required to reach the future he came from.

        With regard to the protagonist's life, yes. However, things aren't quite fully "self-contained." For instance, why is it that the protagonist's messages are only "found/decoded" in the future AFTER he makes them? Furthermore, watch the en

        • For instance, why is it that the protagonist's messages are only "found/decoded" in the future AFTER he makes them?

          Repeat that to yourself slowly... It should be completely obvious that no message is ever read until AFTER it is written, which means in the FUTURE. Even without time-travel, that rule holds.

          If you meant to ask "Why aren't his messages read until a point in the future shortly after he left on his time-trip?", that's a little harder. The most plausible explanation is that they actually WER
    • You're right... either there is choice, or there isn't. Although, sometimes perceived choice may not be a choice...

      Basically, the way I see it, if we were to assume physical time travel was possible, there could be only two basic possibilities here, from the basis of which there are lots of variations.

      1. your presence in the past was already in your timeline and therefore you had no choice but to go, which opens up a whole slew of philosophical questions, as you not going would be a paradox which would
  • ... i first hered this story. I rember the day, i remer the room i was in, i rember it all.

    it was 7 years ago, 6th grade, my english teacher took us all the way to the science labs just to read us the short story :P.

    he wrote the two diffrent sighns on the black board, with the second one covered up.

    i forgot the vary ending, the sound of thunder.

    great story.
  • Does the resulting wind generated from Ray Bradbury spinning in his grave create a tsunami in Japan?

    Wait, you mean he's not dead yet? Errr...he was in the last timeline I visited.

  • The wrong guy wins a close election because of a problem with a butterfly [cnn.com]?
  • A Retro-Hugo, that is. (No Hugos were handed out in 1954, so this is a "fill-in-the-gaps" award.)

    1954 Retro Hugo Winners [blogs.com]

    Best Novel - Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

    Best Novella - "A Case of Concsience" by James Blish

    Best Novelette - "Earthman, Come Home" by James Blish

    Best Short Story - "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke

    Best Related Book - Conquest of the Moon by Wernher von Braun, Fred L. Whipple & Willy Ley

    Best Professional Editor - John W. Campbell, Jr.

    Best Professiona

  • C'mon, that was the lamest thing about the story. The air smells different, the alphabet works different, history has been re-written -- but the guys running in the election hasn't changed, and it's supposed to be a big deal that the guy who won is the guy you didn't want to win at the start.

    Isn't that a little bit out of proportion to the change that has happened? Hasn't the hunting party done more damage in an hour than the new leader might reasonably do in his entire term?

    Maybe it's just me...

    TSG

  • Is this yet another travel-in-time nonsense movie?

    I would really like to see ONE movie or novel that deals with the time-travel impossibility. Or are paralleluniverses just too complex for the average viewer's brain?
  • funny, I took fahrenheit 451 DVD a couple weeks ago (Truffeau sp?), watched for about 20 minutes and returned it. Did not like the screen adaptation at all. Hard to explain why. The book has lots of tension, power, truly apocaplitic future. The movie? Cartoonish, two-dimensional, almost like Woody Allen 'Sleeper' but trying to be serious.

    A good movie on a basis of 451F is possible in principle, and with a current adminstration on a loose, the whole story is something more of us should become familiar with.

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