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Re: The Mysterious Island

From: James Keeline <keeline~at~yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2012 09:39:50 -0800 (PST)
To: Jules Verne Forum <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

My observation has been that "Hollywood" (wherever the work is done) is more focused on previous film and television productions rather than the source literature itself.  Any discussion of a new 20,000 Leagues will be compared with the 1954 Disney, the 1916 Universal, and the more recent television movies than the book.  Hence, a memory of a good or bad film will drive the future projects more than the merits of the novels. In order to capture Mysterious Island, it would probably need to be seen as a series of vignettes of the developments.  It's not so much a question of whether it could be done this way as to whether the project has the necessary elements to stroke the ego of the director and actors and find sufficient funding when it isn't really possible to do product placement advertising in a period piece. A great number of the programs shown on Syfy are made specifically for them by a few companies.  Many of these are knock offs of plots or themes which seem to be popular at the time.  A great number of them are laughably bad.  I don't know if this one will fall into this last category.  Watching the trailer makes me wonder if they have confused elements of Mysterious Island with films like The Island of Doctor Moreau. As far as orangutan actors, the method employed in the latest Planet of the Apes film used motion capture with the actor who has made a specialty of this kind of work and then computer generation.  In this way, they can get the creatures do exactly what is desired without having to train animals.  Now that the technique has been established and refined, it will find itself used in cheaper productions such as the ones used for Syfy made for television films. I saw an appeal to have Spielberg's technique for Tintin applied to other genre films.  Again, it's not a question of whether it could be done as to whether it will be done.  For example, if Tom Swift (the original series) were done this way, it could have great potential.  The trouble is that it has been long enough since the books were widely available that they are fading from the large-scale collective consciousness.  I have looked a great deal into the various attempts to make some kind of Tom Swift film or television program as early as 1914.  With the exception of a television pilot that was not connected with any of the five book series, none of the projects have succeeded.  Most make it to the screenplay level and a few further than that. Since the Fitzroy Edition Verne abridgements were featured in Verniana recently, my thoughts return to a notion I had back in the 1990s when I managed an antiquarian bookstore.  These versions feature a lot of the lesser-known stories (sometimes the only English translation) and focus on the plot- and action-driven parts of the stories.  As such, if some filmmaker wanted to do something Verne but not the same six or so stories that have been done repeatedly, they should look to these stories for inspiration.   James D. Keeline _____ http://www.Keeline.com http://Stratemeyer.org * Tom Swift Guide to Life* Tom Swift Ked's Book Reprints *2012 Edward Stratemeyer Calendar * http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/24PalmerStreet >________________________________ > From: Craig Weatherhill <craig~at~agantavas.org> > >The book has its exciting moments:  the escape from Richmond and the deflating balloon in the storm;  the orang-utan raid (as long as they're looked after a whole lot better than the two who played Clyde in the Clint Eastwood films, who were shamefully mistreated); Tabor Island; the pirates and the shooting of Herbert Brown; and of course, the eruption of Mount Franklin. > >Craig >
Received on Fri 06 Jan 2012 - 19:40:01 IST

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