Philip K. Dick adaptations have a hit or miss quality to them. I think the more faithful you are to the original story, the better the movie turns out:
- Blade Runner was not a direct adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but Ridley Scott eventually got Dick on board long enough to get him to support it (shortly before his death, unfortunately).
- Total Recall treacherously rewrote We Can Remember It For You Wholesale and we got what we got: A cheesy Ah-nahld vehicle.
- Paycheck more or less abandoned the short story.
- Minority Report did a good job maintaining Dick's themes, but Speilberg had to go and stick on the Hollywood blockbuster structure to it. I can't complain. It's definitely one of the best Dick adaptations.
Philip K. Dick adaptations have a hit or miss quality to them. I think the more faithful you are to the original story, the better the movie turns out:
- Blade Runner was not a direct adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but Ridley Scott eventually got Dick on board long enough to get him to support it (shortly before his death, unfortunately).
- Total Recall treacherously rewrote We Can Remember It For You Wholesale and we got what we got: A cheesy Ah-nahld vehicle.
- Paycheck more or less abandoned the short story.
- Minority Report did a good job maintaining Dick's themes, but Speilberg had to go and stick on the Hollywood blockbuster structure to it. I can't complain. It's definitely one of the best Dick adaptations.
I agree on all of these except for Paycheck. I know it wasn't a great movie but I still liked it.
Agree on Minority Report too, I thought there was a great story to be told, but Spielberg just kept tripping over himself as he told it. It's like I could see him reading it:
"Yeah thats great, but instead of that we'll have super assembly lines with awesome killer robots and stuff! And EXPLOSIONS, MORE EXPLOSIONS!!!"
- Minority Report did a good job maintaining Dick's themes, but Spielberg had to go and stick on the Hollywood blockbuster structure to it. I can't complain. It's definitely one of the best Dick adaptations.
You can say that again...don't even get me started on Ridley Scott and Deckard. The original theatrical release with the voice-over remains my favorite version.
agreed. it was wildly overrated IMO. Beyond the predictability of it all, there were little things that REALLY bothered me in the movie.
For example, when Cruise gets his new eyes, the doctor goes to PAINSTAKING lengths to tell him that if he takes the blindfold off before the timer goes off, he'll be blind. then, when the little spider things are coming to get him, they keep going back to the timer to show that he's nowhere near close to being ready to take the blindfold off. Then, he takes the blindfold off and... NOTHING HAPPENS. Why build all that tension up about his eyes and then ignore everything just built up?
And then he uses his old eyes to get back in the secret police areas... like they wouldn't have revoked his clearance the SECOND he was deemed a murder suspect?!
Come on. Those were just the little things.
Although, I like to think that the last 3rd of the movie
was really all his imagination. Early in the movie, when Cruise's character goes down to the archives, he sees all the people who have been halo'd and the guy in charge of them tells Cruise that they're not braindead. They're dreaming... living out their lives the way they want to... as if they get to dream up their own ending. So, he gets Halo'd at the end of the 2nd act when he's caught, right? And then he's sprung by... HIS WIFE? And then, they catch the real bad guy... and the twins end up happily ever after? Yeah, I like to think that he's STILL Halo'd and that's his dream forever, because otherwise, the end is complete and utter ********.
