Friday, July 5, 2013
The Golden Man tells the story of a government agent who is tasked with tracking down mutants. The title character, Cris, is a young, gold-skinned mutant who has the power of seeing all possible outcomes of every future scenario. The short story starts with him being captured...then hijinks ensue.
There are two problems with this movie: one, it absolutely sucks and two, it is nothing like it’s source material. I’m way more offended by the latter point because I love Dick’s writing and think it is stupid to “adapt” one of his stories and barely use any of his material. This movie literally only took the main character’s description from the short story, and none of the actual plot. I watched this movie right after I read the story and was disgusted that it was even associated with this great author.
8) Imposter (short story: Imposter)
Imposter tells the story of Spence Olham. When he is accused of being an android that was designed to compromise the Earth’s defenses, he must figure out how to prove that he is the real Olham by finding the real imposter.
Adapting a movie from a short story is a really hard thing to do. You really need to pick the right short story, one that begs to be elaborated, or one that has a really vast world to it. The problem with this movie is that the story is very short and to the point. There wasn’t a lot to expand upon, so the movie dragged a lot. The pacing was awful and made me want to die. Yes, it was faithful to the source material, but in this case...it wasn’t the best move.
7) Screamers (short story: Second Variety)
Second Variety is about a war between the Soviet Union and the UN. When the Soviets appear to be on the verge of complete victory, the UN develops robots that they call “claws” to sway the war in their favor.
This movie kind of suffers from the same fate as Next, where it is only a vague adaptation, but the movie was at least pretty good. They had the robots that were mentioned in the story, but they didn’t have the same backstory. They didn’t come from a war between the USSR and UN. While the movie was decent, it wasn’t a faithful enough adaptation.
6) Total Recall (short story: We Can Remember It for You Wholesale)
Anyone familiar with Total Recall could probably give me a pretty good description of We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. But it wouldn’t be quite perfect. The set-up is the same, with Douglas Quail wishing to go to Mars so badly that he goes to REKAL (a company that will implant false memories for a price. When they are about to implant the memories, Quail confesses that he is a secret agent and has already been to Mars. Then, all hell breaks loose.
Once again, another vague adaptation, but still pretty good. This one at least takes everything from the source material and then builds on it. And, upon several viewings, has the same base concepts of the short story. The thing I like more about the story, though, is that it doesn’t actually take us off planet or anything. It’s all very contained, and the ending is mad crazy. I do like the ending of the film though, because if you pay close attention...oh boy is it good.
5) Paycheck (short story: Paycheck)
Paycheck tells the story of Jennings, a brilliant engineer who accepts a lucrative contract with Rethrick Construction. He works for them for two years for an agreed upon amount of money, but after those two years, he has his memories erased (I guess the future has some insane NDA’s.) When he goes to get his payment, he finds out that he waived his fee, opting instead for an envelope filled with seemingly useless trinkets.
While Paycheck might not be as good of a movie as Total Recall, I find it to be a much better adaptation. It takes the exact same idea from the story (that a guy leaves himself items to aid him...because he has already seen his future) and builds upon it. All you need to do is add more items to get him out of more scenarios that you have added. It’s simple to adapt and they did a pretty good job of throwing the film together. The acting was decent, and the plot was straight Dick.
4) Adjustment Bureau (short story: The Adjustment Team)
Adjustment Team is a lot like the film adaptation...in principle. The story tells that of a man, Fletcher, who (because of a late bark) stumbles across a team of white-robed men during an ‘adjustment.’ Thinking he had a psychotic episode, Fletcher tells his wife what he saw, then the two delve deeper down the rabbit hole.This film came out after my Dick binge, but I managed to miss the short story. It wasn’t until I read that credits that I realized it was a Philip K Dick story...so I went and read it immediately. Just like Paycheck, it takes a cool concept and builds upon it in a way that makes it feel like it came straight out of a Dick story. They give more backstory into what the Bureau is, and we get to see more of the inner workings of the group. I found it all very cool, but they were missing the talking dog.
3) Minority Report (short story: Minority Report)
Minority Report is almost exactly the same as the story that it was based on. The story follows John Anderton, the creator of Precrime. Precrime is a system which uses precogs to view all crimes before they happen so they can be prevented. People are arrested and imprisoned for committing crimes in the future. But when the precogs predict that Anderton is going to murder General Leopold Kaplan, his world is turned upside down.
Of all of Dick’s short stories, this was the one that was screaming to be adapted. It has an amazing futuristic feel to it, with a high concept plotline and really fun ethical implications. It’s no wonder that Steven Spielberg decided to adapt this monster of a story...and he nailed it. The entire world felt so right and the added bits were excellent at building upon the ethicality of the entire Pre-Crime structure.
2) A Scanner Darkly (novel: A Scanner Darkly)
Bob Arctor is an undercover agent, known as Agent Fred, who assigned to spy on the drug den (read: household) of...Bob Arctor. Yea, that is the most normal thing about this book. The drug of choice of the residents of this house is Substance D (also known as Slow Death, Death, or just D.)
A Scanner Darkly was already a very weird book. When the novel revolves around the use of a psychoactive drug, it needs to have a real vision behind it, and Richard Linklater was the perfect man for the job. His choice to rotoscope this film was absolutely genius because it made all of the drug use and drug addled hallucinations even more crazy. Just like Blade Runner this film was ridiculously good (and was even more faithful than Blade Runner.)
1) Blade Runner (novel: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep)
Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter who is tasked with ‘retiring’ six fugitive androids, who are living under assumed identities. That is a very basic description of the book, but I find that the less people know going in, the more they get sucked into the philosophical aspects of the book.
I really like when an adaptation is faithful and good. Blade Runner is one of the few films that fall into that category. While it does seem to lean more towards a definitive answer on the question of if Deckard is an android or not, the film still carries a lot of the themes of the novel, but brings a beautiful style that Dick would have been proud of.
For any of you keeping track, there is only one adaptation that isn’t on this list, and that is because I haven’t seen it. It is Radio Free Albemuth, and I remember when it came out because I was trying to find it forever, and then gave up. Hopefully I’ll get around to seeing it soon, though!
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Overall, I think that, since Blade Runner came out in the 80's, we've seen a smattering of good adaptations of Dick's novels. Some are much better than others, but I would say that there was only really one bad one (which would be Next.) I hope to see more adaptations of Dick's excellent work (I'm pulling for a Man in the High Castle or Ubik adaptation next) and hopefully it'll keep up the pretty good streak!
