I laid down the law, so what the hell are we here for, I laid down the law
So sometimes ignorance is bliss.
A few years ago, I saw the movie Jumper. It didn't do amazing at the box office or anything, and a lot of people fluffed it off since it was kind of soft core sci-fi, government-conspiracy-is-trying-to-cover-up-people-with-special-powers movie. A lot of people compared the main character, David Rice, to Nightcrawler. And not in a positive way.
But I loved the movie, so I defended it. Told them it was a brilliant concept.
So the other day, I'm at Valu-Village, and I found the novel Jumper. At first I thought it was a novelization of the movie, because the front cover is Hayden Christenson standing on the head of the Sphinx, which happens to be one of the posters for the movie.
But it's not. It's the book the movie was based on.
Badly.
As I started reading, the author Steven Gould took me away to another era - the original book was set in 1989, after all - and another brilliant world. David Rice was a young man born out of adversity and abuse, and spread his proverbial wings to become a man with a strange talent, matched only by his depth of character, his genuineness, his deep commitment to the bettering of the lives of other humans. He was a young man in love with a girl, desperate to make her love him back, terrified that she would reject him because of his "gift" - or because he stole a million dollars from a bank when he was seventeen. A young man whose mother had been ripped away from him when he was twelve, then again when he was eighteen and she became a victim to a plane hijacker with a bomb. It was a story of revenge carefully planned, and causing sweeping changes in the lives of those he taught a lesson.
It was brilliant.
And the more I read, the more I realized how different the book was from the movie. Not just in little details like changing the race of the main "bad guy" - Cox from the NSA. Not just in that Millie was suddenly a girl he liked in high school rather than a girl he met during the intermission of "The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" on Broadway. Not just that in the movie he causes something like an earthquake every time he jumps, and in the book, it's stressed over and over that there is no sound, there is no flash, there is no indication that he goes anywhere, he's just there, then he's not.
The biggest difference?
Davy Rice from the book was a boy forced to become a man, who read too much, and always sought what good he could from those around him. A boy who was a virgin when he finally slept with the girl he loved, a boy who gave twenty thousand dollars to a homeless man because he hoped he could use it to get off the streets. A boy who lived in a shitty neighbourhood without even realizing it, and dressed in neat suits, and took a cab everywhere, and paid for everything he took. David Rice from the movie is an arrogant, cocky son of a bitch, a womanizer who lies at every turn, and exploits his ability to be the biggest ass on the planet - and then gloats about it.
I don't like the movie anymore. Sure, I like Gryff - but the movie's the only place you'll find him, because no such character ever appears in the book.
Why does Hollywood feel the need to make characters with depth into characters with more ego than brains? Davy was a genuinely deep character. David is an arrogant pinhead.
...this doesn't mean I don't still want to write Jumper/PUSH crossovers, though. Those are definitely still ruminating in my head.
A few years ago, I saw the movie Jumper. It didn't do amazing at the box office or anything, and a lot of people fluffed it off since it was kind of soft core sci-fi, government-conspiracy-is-trying-to-cover-up-people-with-special-powers movie. A lot of people compared the main character, David Rice, to Nightcrawler. And not in a positive way.
But I loved the movie, so I defended it. Told them it was a brilliant concept.
So the other day, I'm at Valu-Village, and I found the novel Jumper. At first I thought it was a novelization of the movie, because the front cover is Hayden Christenson standing on the head of the Sphinx, which happens to be one of the posters for the movie.
But it's not. It's the book the movie was based on.
Badly.
As I started reading, the author Steven Gould took me away to another era - the original book was set in 1989, after all - and another brilliant world. David Rice was a young man born out of adversity and abuse, and spread his proverbial wings to become a man with a strange talent, matched only by his depth of character, his genuineness, his deep commitment to the bettering of the lives of other humans. He was a young man in love with a girl, desperate to make her love him back, terrified that she would reject him because of his "gift" - or because he stole a million dollars from a bank when he was seventeen. A young man whose mother had been ripped away from him when he was twelve, then again when he was eighteen and she became a victim to a plane hijacker with a bomb. It was a story of revenge carefully planned, and causing sweeping changes in the lives of those he taught a lesson.
It was brilliant.
And the more I read, the more I realized how different the book was from the movie. Not just in little details like changing the race of the main "bad guy" - Cox from the NSA. Not just in that Millie was suddenly a girl he liked in high school rather than a girl he met during the intermission of "The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" on Broadway. Not just that in the movie he causes something like an earthquake every time he jumps, and in the book, it's stressed over and over that there is no sound, there is no flash, there is no indication that he goes anywhere, he's just there, then he's not.
The biggest difference?
Davy Rice from the book was a boy forced to become a man, who read too much, and always sought what good he could from those around him. A boy who was a virgin when he finally slept with the girl he loved, a boy who gave twenty thousand dollars to a homeless man because he hoped he could use it to get off the streets. A boy who lived in a shitty neighbourhood without even realizing it, and dressed in neat suits, and took a cab everywhere, and paid for everything he took. David Rice from the movie is an arrogant, cocky son of a bitch, a womanizer who lies at every turn, and exploits his ability to be the biggest ass on the planet - and then gloats about it.
I don't like the movie anymore. Sure, I like Gryff - but the movie's the only place you'll find him, because no such character ever appears in the book.
Why does Hollywood feel the need to make characters with depth into characters with more ego than brains? Davy was a genuinely deep character. David is an arrogant pinhead.
...this doesn't mean I don't still want to write Jumper/PUSH crossovers, though. Those are definitely still ruminating in my head.