Prince of Nothing film

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Baztek

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« on: August 05, 2017, 09:19:53 pm »
I smoked a fat ass blunt last night and started channeling the PoN trailer in my head pretty much. I was gonna post what I was seeing but that's silly, I can't communicate these images in text. I've got a really good sense for what could grab modern audiences without making the trailer feel like "ha ha this is movie of book I read!", like some corny trailer that reeks of a film adaptation for a niche book series. So here's what I'm thinking for what a PoN film would look like in a perfect world:

Number one thing is it'd need to be visionary, not Game of Thrones: Black Jizz Boogaloo, not some uninspired-looking fantasy film that vanishes from the box office in a week, but something almost 300-esque in its pop culture splash, something genuinely visually groundbreaking, a Kellhus who can communicate the tenderness of a beloved father and the cold menace and gravitas of a genetically engineered supercomputer, a Kellhus whose actor starts off as some no-name schlub and becomes something of a quasi-Christ figure in pop culture himself. An Achamian who is pathetic and endearing not in spite of it, but because of it. An Esmenet with arthouse muse-tier levels of beauty.


The pitch black doom and gloom needs to go. Bakker's world feels the most real when the characters are joking, when we hear Three Seas idioms or learn about some crazy shit that happened in camp because of an Ainoni who did this or a Conriyan who did that. Number one thing, again, is grandeur, something like Ron Fricke's Baraka/Samsara films, not just sweeping shots of the New Zealand countryside like in LOTR but an otherworldliness that can only really be communicated by striking use of color, sunsets, sunrises, exotic figures in exotic dress, shots of armies marching across Malick-esque vistas of desolation and beauty.

I think you can only really sell the beauty, the weight of a world like Earwa if you keep it grounded in the reality of its evil. The horror needs to be sharp, difficult, HR Giger-esque, but very restricted in application: you need to have audiences reeling from just the mention of the Consult, but not hordes of big-dicked white-skinned dog men bearing down on armies. I have no fucking idea how you could sell the Sranc, the Inchoroi and the Bashrag et al, sure, but something would have to be done about those turgid horns.

But I'm just bullshitting, you guys ever think about this shit

« Last Edit: August 05, 2017, 09:24:18 pm by Baztek »

Wilshire

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« Reply #1 on: August 05, 2017, 09:50:03 pm »
Can't say I think about it much, but there was a thread somewhere people discussing this.

I like what your saying, but i pretty much think that any book to movie adaption will piss off the book readers. So for me, step one is screw them, make a great movie as best you can and ignore the jabbering of 'book fans'.
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The Sharmat

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« Reply #2 on: August 05, 2017, 10:03:26 pm »
I maintain that an animated film or television series would be the way to go to translate the series most faithfully but western animation is dead and I refuse to see a kawaii anime Kellhus.

The pitch black doom and gloom needs to go. Bakker's world feels the most real when the characters are joking, when we hear Three Seas idioms or learn about some crazy shit that happened in camp because of an Ainoni who did this or a Conriyan who did that.
I half agree. I think it feels most real then because making jokes in the face of horror is really natural. It could be toned down a bit though, yeah.

Woden

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« Reply #3 on: August 05, 2017, 10:07:12 pm »
Sure. I was very pissed off with the LOTR & The Hobbit movies, and I don't dare to watch the adaptation of Stephen King's Dark Tower.
But for Bakker regardless of the quality of the adaptation would be a great economic issue.
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themerchant

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« Reply #4 on: August 05, 2017, 10:31:13 pm »
It makes me laugh thinking of the reaction to a film or series depicting TSA. Especially if it's completely faithful. If the prologue didn't get it taken off TV the Warrior Prophet epilogue would.

lol it would be mental.

They could of course change the sranc out for something more palatable and anything else. Some great characters though, some great scenes as well.


Baztek

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« Reply #5 on: August 05, 2017, 10:55:56 pm »
I think like any good author invested in his work Bakker is right to feel a little bummed no one wants to adapt this shit but it's kinda on him for making black cum smearing rape aliens fucking inextricable from the larger themes at work

The Sharmat

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« Reply #6 on: August 06, 2017, 12:08:04 am »
I think like any good author invested in his work Bakker is right to feel a little bummed no one wants to adapt this shit but it's kinda on him for making black cum smearing rape aliens fucking inextricable from the larger themes at work
IIRC he has actually been approached but then said the people that approached him essentially ran away screaming when he described the Inchoroi.

And are they inextricable? I guess it says some fucked up things about human psychology, but the same events would be far more palatable if the Sranc and Inchoroi just ate people and the epilogue of Warrior Prophet had them explain "We are a race of gluttons." I wouldn't like such a change, but would it actually alter the underlying themes, or just the aesthetic?

Baztek

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« Reply #7 on: August 06, 2017, 01:02:17 am »
A race of gluttons - "a race with a thousand names for the vagaries of a good burger" lol - would be interesting but wouldn't really dredge as deep as I think he wants to go for. His main point with the Inchoroi is what humans would do once they're able to short circuit the circle of effort -> gratification and skip right to the gratification, and gratification amplified to obscene levels. And the orgasm is more visceral than eating a lot.

The Inchoroi, and the Hundred, represent the boundlessness of hunger and desire, and sexuality is the hunger of hungers, and sexual violence the abyss of abysses. Eating a nigga's body is merely physical consumption, what the Inchoroi et al do is a consumption/violation of the self, the soul itself.

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« Reply #8 on: August 06, 2017, 02:27:46 pm »
Can't say I think about it much, but there was a thread somewhere people discussing this.

Same title even, if differing punctuation ;).
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Redeagl

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« Reply #9 on: August 12, 2017, 03:55:10 pm »
There is actually two threads discussing this, the TV show one and the one linked above :P
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solipsisticurge

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« Reply #10 on: August 12, 2017, 05:15:21 pm »
Would have to be a series, no way you can even begin to touch on the entire story and thematic elements in a three hour film. Probably break down to roughly a season per novel in the grand tradition of Game of Thrones because

1. it allows significant time for the storyline, and character/thematic development
2. it worked for GoT, and any network is going to love having a successful model to rip off

The actors, especially whoever plays Kellhus, would need to be ridiculously good to do it justice. Unheard of emotional range with excellent physical acting. (As an aside, I'd be very afraid that Kellhus fight sequences would become akin to the mega-choreographed silliness of the Jedi in the Star Wars prequels, where the combat would ideally be an area for the gritty realism to "shine.")

AS to the Sranc/Inchoroi, I think the biggest problem is overcoming the initial shockwave of revulsion on the part of the network. You can have your evil rape monsters, just takes clever editing, subtext and implication. Bakker's very much an author who's going to describe the minutiae insertion and climax, which won't work at all, but you can largely step around direct visual depiction of the carnal fury through clever trickery without changing it to cannibalism or just turning them into Jackson's orcs. The viewer doesn't need to SEE the giant, turgid phallus making new holes on the victim to understand what's happening in enough capacity to convey the thematic importance. Wouldn't be easy, but a skilled writing & direction team could pull it off.

Of course, this would be an expensive-as-fuck series to make. Large-scale military engagements with super-flashy magic. It would almost have to be a pet project for an established director/studio, leveraging their past successes into carte blanche from a network that trusts them to produce a financial hit out of whatever they get their hands on. No way to overcome Bakker's midlist status, shock value and the inherent expense of such a show otherwise, I'm afraid.
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TLEILAXU

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« Reply #11 on: August 13, 2017, 10:51:51 am »
There are several problems for translating this series into film/television.
1. A lot of the things going on happen inside people's heads. Might be hard to show Kellhus reading the fine details of people's emotions without confusing the audience.
2. Ethnicity. Most of the characters in the books are brown people, and most actors seem to either be white or black.
3. The violence. GoT has thankfully paved the way for hard violence in television, but I still think some of the violence, especially given its sexual nature, in Bakker's books might be over the top for studios.
4. Popularity. I'm not sure how popular ASoIaF was before GoT, but my impression is that Bakker has yet to reach that level.

Still, I really wish it would happen somehow. The magic in this series is described in such a vivid and beautiful way, I think it would be breath-taking on film.

Woden

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« Reply #12 on: August 13, 2017, 11:09:11 am »
The main problems for me will be the sexual explicit violence and the budget for battles and sorcery.
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The Sharmat

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« Reply #13 on: August 13, 2017, 11:52:14 am »
There are several problems for translating this series into film/television.
1. A lot of the things going on happen inside people's heads. Might be hard to show Kellhus reading the fine details of people's emotions without confusing the audience.
2. Ethnicity. Most of the characters in the books are brown people, and most actors seem to either be white or black.
3. The violence. GoT has thankfully paved the way for hard violence in television, but I still think some of the violence, especially given its sexual nature, in Bakker's books might be over the top for studios.
4. Popularity. I'm not sure how popular ASoIaF was before GoT, but my impression is that Bakker has yet to reach that level.

Still, I really wish it would happen somehow. The magic in this series is described in such a vivid and beautiful way, I think it would be breath-taking on film.

1. Just ape the Sherlock Holmes films interludes for fight scenes and do the same thing for Kellian psycho-analyses maybe?
2. There's shitloads of aspiring actors. Just because it's mostly white or black people doesn't mean there's not a large minority of people that can at least pass for vaguely near-easterners. It can be done.
4. Bakker is definitely not the phenomenon ASOIAF was before it was picked up for a tv series, that's true.

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« Reply #14 on: August 15, 2017, 03:13:26 pm »
There is actually two threads discussing this, the TV show one and the one linked above :P

Links or it didn't happen ;).
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