James Patterson’s young adult novel series, Maximum Ride, takes flight cimematically this week from Paramount Pictures. I read the first book when it came out in 2005. It was fun, engaging. Patterson is a very entertaining and imaginative writer, and Max seemed perfectly suited for exploration in other media. The downside to this big screen…
Tag: source material
The Shannara Chronicles: Season 1
Fantasy television series always have a hard time proving themselves on television. For every Game of Thrones or Xena: Warrior Princess, there’s a Wizards and Warriors or Covington Cross. While television viewers are happy to welcome superheroes and aliens into their living rooms on weekly basis, elves, dwarves and trolls have had a tougher time…
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005) -Garth Jennings
Grab your towel and Don’t Panic! Douglas Adam’s classic tale gets a big screen adaptation, of his book/screenplay, which had previously been so well used by the BBC as a miniseries, and before that a radio programme. There are things that work in this version, and things that don’t, but the effort is there to…
Judge Dredd (1995) -Danny Cannon
You need to worry about any movie that thinks it’s a good idea to use Rob Schneider as your comic relief, and this, my next stop in the Sci-Fi Chronicles book is filled with potential, but those involved just didn’t seem to get the source material. Danny Cannon presents a busy MegaCity, a fairly familiar…
Heavy Metal 2000 (2000) – Michael Coldewey & Michel Lemire
Almost 20 years after the first film, Heavy Metal 2000 returns with more animated science fiction, as I continue to work my way through the Sci-Fi Chronicles book. While the animation may be stronger this time around, everything else seems to suffer. Eschewing the anthology format that served the first film so well, not to…
Total Recall (2012) – Len Wiseman
The Sci-Fi Chronicles brings me to another remake, this time Total Recall. Based ever so loosely on the Philip K. Dick tale, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, it also seeks to prove itself a worthy successor to one of the biggest films of the early 90s. Most viewers will only know the…
X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) – Bryan Singer
There’s probably a good, or at least a passable story somewhere amongst the mutants, Singer as a director has done some nice work with Marvel’s X-Men franchise in the past, but this time, it just feels like too much flash, and no substance. To say the visual effects super-saturate this film is an understatement….
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) – Brett Ratner
The Sci-Fi Chronicles book continues its travels with the X-men, but this time around the mutants aren’t guided by the sure directorial hand of Bryan Singer. Taking the helm this time around is Brett Ratner, and you can tell from the off that it doesn’t have the same emotional depth, or action beats that…
The Mind Reels 