BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Phillip K Dick on film

  
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
22:07 / 04.04.07
Looking through IMDB at the list of films under Phillip K Dick makes me kind of sad. It contains some good films, but mostly forgettable poo.

What I would like to do with this thread is discuss pros and cons of the films based on PKD's writing.

So, onto the films (chronologically)

Blade Runner (1982) (novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)

This film can easily be considered a classic. Ridley Scott's vision of a not-quite-but-almost distopian future is spot on and has been used by writers and film makers ever since. One could argue that the cyberpunk genre might not exist if this film had not been made.
While certain themes of the novel come through in the film, a lot is lost. Some of this was corrected in the directors cut (and more in the rumored final version Scott should be putting out this year) but there are still missing pieces. When people who have not read the book ask me about it, I usually compare it to Apocalypse Now, another great film that uses set pieces from its source material (Heart of Darkness) but doesn't follow it exactly.

In my ideal world someone will make a true to the book movie of Do Androids..., but I am not holding my breath.

Total Recall (1990) (short story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale)

I really want to tear this movie apart, but after seeing it again recently I can't QUITE do it.

This is not a great film, or a great adaptation. The movie take the basic premise of the short story (virtual vacations beamed into your head as memories) as well as a bit of the actual plot (an average guy want a virtual vacation where he is a super spy) and runs off with it into a strange direction. The idea is that the guy who wants to be a spy is, in fact, a deep cover agent with repressed memories. These memories come to the surface when he is hit with the false vacation memories and all hell breaks loose. While the book is about the ravel agency trying to cover their asses the movie becomes about Arnold Schwarzenegger blowing the shit out of Mars.

The only redeeming quality of the film is that there is the chance at the end that this is all fantasy, and Arnold's character is only remembering his implanted vacation. While the story ending is a bit more interesting then that, I think the film works on that level at least, even if the bulk of it is throwaway action movie junk.

Confessions d'un Barjo (1992) (novel)

Based on Confessions of a Crap Artist. I have only seen this once, and it was more then 10 years ago. I can't really comment on it, but hopefully someone else here can.

Screamers (1995) (short story Second Variety)

Second Variety was one of my favorite short stories years ago when I was reading as much PKD as I could find. Something about the whole set up, with earth uninhabitable because of the weapons we had designed, humans living on the moon, and our own weapons trying to get there to wipe us out.
The film moved the location to a random planet being fought over for a contrived reason (as opposed to a 3rd World War). We are still given robotic killing machines built by one side of the conflict which have evolved and a group of soldiers stuck out there with the things.
Many of the elements which come from the story direct are done well, the injured child variety robot being one of them.
Overall the film is OK. The ending is unfortunately ruined for the film though. In the novel, the last two humans make their way to an escape rocket which will take them to the moon so they can tell their leaders about the new evolved varieties of the claws (screamers in the film). When they get to the rocket they find it is a one seater, and the man tells the woman she should go. She agrees and as the rocket heads to the moon more claws enter the base and the man sees that they all look like the woman (pretty classic PKD twist ending there).
The movie ends with Peter Weller telling the woman to get in the rocket just as another version of her enters the bunker. Weller pushes past them and gets in the rocket himself while the robot he was with fights the other version of herself. As he flies off into space she confesses her love for him, and he makes some comment about them evolving far enough to kill each other.

Abre los ojos (1997) (novel Ubik) (uncredited)

This is the film which was remade in english as Vanilla Sky. It is generally accepted that the original was a far better film. I think the original is better because it contains 100% less Tom Cruise, but that is just me.

This film is included in the list on IMDB but the link is (as seen above) uncredited. I quite like Ubik, and I can see thematic similarities, but I don't honestly think that there is enough evidence to say that one the movie is based on it. This was the late 90s, and artificial virtual universes were all the rage. I figure if this is on the list the The Matrix should be listed under Grant Morrison as an uncredited writer. I think someone on IMDB got over zealous.

Impostor (2002) (story Impostor)

This one was actually pretty good, even if only 10 people saw it. During a war with unseen aliens a scientist is accused of being a robot imposter of himself. According to his superiors he will sabotage Earth's defenses when he is given a code phrase. He is then forced to prove that he is the original and the other him is the imposter.
This is some classic PKD, dealing with issues of identity and self in sci fi setting. An enjoyable read and a pretty good film as well.

Minority Report (2002) (short story)

More Tom Cruise unfortunately in this one. Another of my favorite stories is used to make a big budget action film.
In the story 3 precogs are used to predict crime, so that future criminals can be arrested and held before they break the law. The head of the PreCrime unit is confronted because the precogs say he will assassinate a high ranking official. The investigation reveals that if the precogs dont agree a 2-1 Majority Report is used, and the Minority Raport is tossed out. This reveals a weakness in the system, who is to say the Minority Report is not the correct version of the future? Because of that it is possible that some future criminals will never commit the crimes they are held for. The head guy believes in the good of the system so much that when he has a chance at freedom he chooses to commit the murder in order to prove that the system works.
The movie, on the other hand, had Tom Cruise in it. Tom is accused of a future murder so goes on the run, fueled by product placement and special effects. It turns out that the man he is supposed to kill is the guy who killed his son years ago, but thanks to the precog (who he had kidnapped) he chooses not to kill they guy and instead begins to arrest him. The guy he is meant to kill says that if he doesnt get shot then his family will get nothing and commits suicide by cop by grabbing Cruise's gun.
It turns out he was set up by a politician who killed the precog's mother because it seemed Cruise was about to solve the crime. The movie ends with the politico killing himself and precrime getting shut down, while Cruise and his ex get together and get pregnant.

This movie is not worth a second viewing in my opinion.

Paycheck (2003) (short story)

This is, in fact, my favorite PKD short story.

The protagonist is an engineer who is in a waiting room after working on a 2 year project. Part of his contract was that after it was up his memory would be erased because it was top secret. When he goes to collect his huge pile of cash he is told that another part of the contract is that he could make changes to his payment during the term. Instead of being given money he is given an envelope full of seemingly random trash.
As the story unfolds he finds each item becomes useful in saving his life. It turns out that he was working on a device which allows people to see the future, and after seeing future events he left himself the items that would be needed to get out of them and get back to his bosses to blackmail them.

The movie follows the basic idea pretty well, although the specifics are a bit actioned up for Hollywood. A lot more items are added to his inventory and they are used in a more spectacular way (a watch alarm goes off telling him to run exactly when he needs to, a bullet is used to blow up the time viewer).

Over all a pretty good romp and fairly true to the spirit of the story.

A Scanner Darkly (2006) (novel)

There is a fairly recent thread about this one, so I wont go into it too much. Also, it is time to leave work. I might return to this one later.

Next (2007) (completed) (novel story The Golden Man)

It looks like the story about a golden skinned mutant who can see the future and whose race will eventually replace humanity has been mapped to the modern day and Nick Cage can see the future and the feds want him to stop a terror attack. I assume this movie will be terrible, and I am not sure why they felt the need to even associate the story with The Golden Man.

So, Barbelith, did I miss anything? Are my opinions full of shit? What would make a GOOD PKD movie do you think?
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
03:24 / 05.04.07
Part of the reason that I love Blade Runner is because of its deviation from the source material; they're too separate entities with commons genes. Siblings, or cousins. While many adaptations deviate and become shallow dopplegangers, Scott added things and demonstrated a desire to flesh out the world he was building. Many of the characters are developed in ways that never come up in the book - I'm thinking specifically of Daryl Hannah's Pris, who is very much my favourite element in the film.

Minority Report's biggest flaw, in my mind, was removing Tom Cruise's character to stasis-prison three-quarters of the way through, suddenly taking his two-dimensional ex-wife and forcing her to be the main character, and then reversing the decision right at the end. It felt like they'd cut vast amounts of development out of her character arc that would have justified making her so central to the climax. That and Tom Cruise is a Monster wearing meat clothes and EMOTES!FOR!OSCARS!.
 
 
Spaniel
05:48 / 05.04.07
And that Spielberg just can't leave family sentimentalising alone these days.
 
 
PatrickMM
21:12 / 06.04.07
I'd argue that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, while not a direct PKD adaptation, actually captures the feel of his work better than any other. Reading PKD, I never picture the shiny future world of Minority Report, I picture more of a rundown 70s neighborhood, a crushingly ordinary world. Eternal has that vibe, of weird stuff happening in a completely ordinary world, and it has the sort of hallucinogenic emotional quality that a lot of PKD's stuff has.

A Scanner Darkly is also quite accurate, though I'd aruge that the animation detracts from the film, making it only good, not quite great. The PKD novel I've always wanted to see adapted is The Man in the High Castle, as an Altmanesque ensemble drama.

I used to wonder why so many of these lame films came out based on PKD short stories, but we never got adaptations of the major works, so I asked PKD's daughter about this at a Scanner Darkly event. She said that they'll gladly sell the rights to the minor works, but closely guard the more personal stuff. So, don't expect to see a Valis movie any time soon.

And, another film you might want to add to the list is The Man Who Fell to Earth, which is the basis for the film that the characters in Valis go to see. It fits in to that same crazy 70s sci-fi world that PKD's work is a part of.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
23:03 / 06.04.07
While many adaptations deviate and become shallow dopplegangers, Scott added things and demonstrated a desire to flesh out the world he was building.

Something that always surprises me that hardly anybody really picks up on with Blade Runner is how its final message is essentially the polar opposite of that of Do Androids Dream. The book says that humanity is defined by its ability to empathise with other living creatures, the film says that this isn't a unique quality and therefore *can't* be used to define us. It's like the antimatter version of the story.
 
 
NewMyth
03:28 / 25.04.07
"An Englishman's Castle," a 1978 English production, BBC?, had a somewhat similar plot to The Man In the High Castle. Nazi Germany won WWII, and the protagonist writes a popular tv series called An Englishman's Castle, about England's struggle during the war. I believe the protag's eyes are opened, and he plans to air something against the Nazi's.

Not exactly plagiarism, but a couple strong similarities.
 
 
grant
17:20 / 25.04.07
It's like the antimatter version of the story.

This might be a funny observation, but reading the book, I always had the feeling it was filmed in natural light. Sunlit ochre catching dust in mid-air. And lots of big, decrepit spaces, marked with the grime of people who'd left.

The movie had a different quality of grime; it was crowded and cramped and lit with blue neon and everything was shabby because it was overused.

I think there's something important about that feeling of space and emptiness that the movie misses out on. On the other hand, why *did* Scott give it that name?

Wikipedia, by the way, mentions sequels and "sidequels" to Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream..., including something called Soldier, starring Kurt Russell, Sean Pertwee, Jason Scott Lee as a replicant and Michael Chiklis as somebody called "Jimmy Pig."
 
 
Spatula Clarke
19:40 / 25.04.07
This might be a funny observation, but reading the book, I always had the feeling it was filmed in natural light. Sunlit ochre catching dust in mid-air. And lots of big, decrepit spaces, marked with the grime of people who'd left.

No, I get that too. It's explicit in the house where Roy Batty holes up, iirc - it's all crumbling brickwork and sandy browns, not the tech art deco of the film. The whole business with the Mercer Box backs that up - decayed nature and natural decay.
 
 
This Sunday
19:50 / 25.04.07
See, that's what's annoying about that film (between that film and 'Watchmen' I'm working on a good killjoy capacity, I know), is that nobody can drive out of town and look at the desert. No turtles. No froggies. No kicking a sheep on the roof because someone slept with your model but dissed you.

And, really, it's not that the androids haven't any empathy, so much as they haven't any empathy for anything not their kind isn't it?

Soldier - and I like the film - as a sidequal to Blade Runner sort of sums it all up for me. Although the sidequal is a little bit closer to Dick's novel than the adaptation was. Same thing happened with the Starship Troopes films, too, though.
 
 
NewMyth
23:50 / 25.04.07
Something that always surprises me that hardly anybody really picks up on with Blade Runner is how its final message is essentially the polar opposite of that of Do Androids Dream.

Yes, an SF-purist friend of mine always points that out as a corruption of Dick's message. I don't like having an author's intentions altered, but in a way, the film seems a bit deeper. The artificial life develops more feelings than the real people. Plus the ambiguity re Deckard possibly being a replicant.

I recall in interviews, Dick said he was trying to understand the inhumanity of the Nazi's (which he also explored in High Castle,) and used the android as an unfeeling creature. Which to me seemed a bit simplistic. I thought the film had more subtlety.
 
  
Add Your Reply