War Games Remake
erco
Posts: 20,259
http://blog.games.yahoo.com/blog/797-wargames-remake-coming-from-king-of-kong-director
We all know & love this old "computer hacker" movie with the highly-visible Imsai computer as a background prop. Perhaps Parallax should strive to get some product placement in the upcoming remake, so future generations of DIY'ers can point to Stingrays and multicolor Penguins prominently displayed.
Shall we play a game, Dr. Falken?
We all know & love this old "computer hacker" movie with the highly-visible Imsai computer as a background prop. Perhaps Parallax should strive to get some product placement in the upcoming remake, so future generations of DIY'ers can point to Stingrays and multicolor Penguins prominently displayed.
Shall we play a game, Dr. Falken?
Comments
http://screenrant.com/will-smith-colossus-forbin-project-ron-howard-kofi-83916/
Isn't Dr. Forbin LocalRoger's Avatar? Maybe Humanoido and LocalRoger need to team up and make that happen.
C.W.
Thanks for clearing that up. My guess was Joe Haskell from Dark Shadows.
There's some talk in other posts about the Big Brain taking over. Do you think its brain growth from 1 Propeller chip to "now over 4-feet tall" has something to do with it? If it doubles in size again, and it could, do you think 8-feet tall is about right?
It reminds me of the WLS Chicago radio theater show in the 1960s about the Big Blob that got out of hand in some scientist's laboratory and continued to grow. Finally the last two survivors on planet Earth took a plane above it. In the end, it suddenly grew and there was radio silence. Anyone remember that?
I strung a hundred foot antenna wire outside, ran it through the window, and connected it to my am radio so I could listen to science fiction at night when I was supposed to be sleeping. I could pick up Mexico on skip but WLS was my favorite.
For those who are unaware, Colossus: The Forbin Project was a 1970s film directed by Joseph Sargent (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three). That film was based on the 1966 novel Colossus by Dennis Feltham Jones, about a supercomputer named “Colossus” which becomes self-aware and deems it necessary to seize control of the world. http://screenrant.com/will-smith-colossus-forbin-project-ron-howard-kofi-83916/
I'm not sure I can see Will Smith as Forbin. D.F. Jones couldn't quite get Forbin's age straight but it's clear he's not an action guy; he can play poltics when necessary, since he pitched his project and got it funded and built, but he is first and foremost a guy who sits behind a desk figuring out how to solve hard problems.
Anyway, I want to see how Will Smith would deliver absolutely the best line from both the movie and book:
Colossus: How many nights a week do you require sex?
Dr. Forbin: Every night.
Colossus: Not want. Require...
Dr. Forbin: [looks sheepish] Four times.
Will Smith could make an interesting "Dr. Forbin", but IIRC (Been a while since I watched Colossus) Dr. Forbin lost control of the situation, pretty much helpless to do much about things. I'm having a hard time picturing Will Smith playing that passive role. I keep seeing Will as punching the alien in the head, "Welcome to Earth!" -- kind of action hero.
Instead of re-making the classics, while don't they take the classics back to the big screen? I would gladly pay money to enjoy movies which were really best on the big theater screen. Starwars, Star Trek, Twister, ID4. All of these titles can't really be appreciated unless the screen is as big as my house.
OBC
OBC, part of the setup in Colossus is that Forbin is pretty much the the Alan Turing of his day, the smartest person alive at least with regard to AI technology, and this is why Colossus decides to make him its ambassador to the rest of us. The question lingers through the series (D.F. Jones wrote two more novels maing it a trilogy, though the others were rather inferior), does Colossus feel for Forbin or does it just find it expedient to use him? It is apparent that Forbin himself doesn't really know the answer to that question. Colossus' brutal lack of concern for human feelings would seem to make it unlikely, yet at least twice Colossus spares Forbin when it catches him with his hand in the cookie jar.
The collision between Colossus with its utter lack of empathy and the humans trying to gain any advantage make for a surprisingly sexually charged situation as the humans use Colossus' naivete to set up clandestine communications between Forbin and the resistance by pretending that he will suffer if denied privacy in which to enjoy the sexual favors of Cleo, even though his true relationship with Cleo is entirely Platonic. Eric Braeden -- my avatar -- played those scenes with a touching combination of duty, humiliation, and small humor. I really can't see Will Smith doing anything but hamming up that role. And that would seriously mess up the story, because this is the essence of the difference between Colossus and Forbin; it can snark ("You were not born wearing a watch") but it can't feel. And while Will Smith is a great actor who has done some wonderful roles, he's not the guy whose shyness and embarrassment remind you that we are different from machines. He's more like the guy who convinces you it don't matter how badass the machines get, we can be more badass still.
This is news to me... I must find these..
OBC
There's also a wicked naval battle. I never understood where that came from until I read D.F. Jones' biographical sketch. We write what we know.
While I understand DFJ's point I think this is one of the places where the story ages badly. It's the last gasp of the idea of biological exceptionalism, that there is something so special about feeling and emotion that it can't be emulated properly by any machine. I'm afraid that as far as I'm concerned Claude Shannon Benoit Mandelbrot sent that idea to hang out with JFK and Elvis.
Still fantastic stories though, to be appreciated in the same way we take Shakespeare; the world isn't the same, but Colossus and the Martians are kind of like gods, and humans have been writing stories about that relatioship for a long time.