Philip K. Dick is one of the best American writers . The themes he tackled time and metre again have had a wakeless influence on what we know as modern science fable today . So , with the latest Dick adjustment , Adjustment Bureau , premiere this Friday , March 4 , and a director forUbik finally declare , I thought I ’d take a look back at all the film that have been adapt from his massive repertory of short narration and novels over the year and see how they all stack up .
Top image : Blade Runner art byStephen You ll .
I ’ve put the films in order of my own personal predilection . Obviously many of you will probably take issue with my society , but I conceive because I run to enjoy Dick ’s earlier written material which tends to lean towards mellow concept , fast paced scifi weirdness I run to go for the more gruelling scifi , or activeness orient films .
Blade Runner
While opinions vary on each PKD adjustment that comes along , Blade Runner still continues to be believe the granddaddy of all the Philip K. Dick picture show . In fact , the film still top most “ good scifi movie of all clock time ” lists almost 30 years after it was first relinquish . To me , everything about the film still holds up . The dreamlike pacing , the enceinte plaster bandage , Ford ’s performance , Vangelis ’ amazing score and the virtual FX piece of work still stick after all this sentence .
How faithful is it to its source fabric , the oddly style “ Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ? ” In flavour , I ’d say the film is stagnant on . The dystopic creation Ridley Scott paints is an overcrowded megalopolis where nobody connects and everything ’s synthetic , which is thematically in line with Dick ’s novel . The narrative is very unlike however , the most celebrated change being that there is no give-and-take of organized religion which is a vast part of the character in Dick ’s book .
Bottom line : A classical scifi film that lives up to it ’s classic germ cloth .
9/10
Total Recall
Paul Verhoeven ’s Total Recall may not be the most faithful PDK adaption , but bloody if it ’s not still one of the best , mind - bending scifi actioners of all time . To me , it epitomise the Schwarzenegger era with its epic body counting , unabashed boobage and classic one - liners ( Screw you , Benny ! ) .
Made justly on the leaflet of the digital FX rotation , Total Recall benefits from a pure blend of practical visual FX include miniature , matte painting and complain ass make up FX from the passkey , Rob Bottin , and just the right amount of CGI . Thankfully , it does n’t push the CG too far . I still think seeing the X - ray scanner scene for the first time and being blown aside and while it ’s starting to look dated that scenery still care to mould cracking .
The flick is based on the short story “ We Can Remember it for you Wholesale , ” first bring out in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1966 . In classic PKD fashion , Quail ( not Quaid ) is barely a Schwarzenegger , but rather a regular working class schmuck ( I think an comptroller ) who incur himself wrapped up in folly .
In the movie , Verhoeven plays up the belief that the film could have all been bring out in Quaid ’s head giving it an added layer of what - the - hell - is - really - going - on - here that lift the film ’s
8.5/10
Screamers
come across a pattern here ? Yeah , I wish the old ones best . Screamers is n’t gross , but for a mid - nineties actioner with a budget of only $ 20 million or so , it pack a punch and stand as a bang-up lesson of how Philip K. Dick ’s short stories have the ability to ignite the imaginativeness to create entire world .
The motion picture , directed by Christian Duguay ( artwork of War ) , is based on the story “ Second Variety ” which is really simple and has a couple great twists . Since , as usual , the statute title does n’t really give away the plot , I recall the first fourth dimension I interpret the level I was shocked by a couple of its divine revelation . It ’s not wonder author Dan O’Bannon ( Alien ) examine potential in it .
Dick said of his narration , issue in 1953 : “ My grand stem — who is human and who only appears ( masquerading ) as human ? — emerges most in full . Unless we can individually and conjointly be certain of the answer to this inquiry , we face what is , in my view , the most serious job possible . Without answering it adequately , we can not even be certain of our own selves . I can not even make out myself , let alone you . So I keep work on this stem ; to me nothing is as important a question . And the answer comes very intemperately . ”
Well said , sir .
7/10
Minority Report
I still say that if this movie had terminate with the shot of John Anderton being lowered into suspend life , Minority Report would be one of the good scientific discipline fabrication movies ever , perhaps even surpassing Blade Runner , and one of the best PKD adaptation . Because not only does Spielberg ’s movie for the most part delay true to Dick ’s story of the same name but it is exciting and visually striking to bang . Personally I think there could have been a style that Anderton could have become beguile in the paradox of the Pre - Crime prediction , become a hero and still been immure . The news report would have more resonance that way . But nope , Spielberg had to get all Spielbergy on us and end with everyone populate happily ever after .
But you know what ? Despite that , Minority Report is still a gamy point in science fiction of the unexampled millenary . A perfect blend of future noir , action , ideas and whimsy Spielberg , turned Philip K. Dick ’s desperate high concept about a “ utopia ” where criminal offense can be forecast so it no longer exists into a rollicking Indiana Jones style chase moving-picture show full of OTT cliffhanger set pieces and government cabal . Good stuff when you may get it .
8/10
A Scanner Darkly
purist will debate , but I imagine Richard Linklater ’s adaption of A Scanner Darkly is probably the most close adaption of any PKD movie ( Radio Free Albemuth coming in a very stuffy second ) . For one thing it has n’t been re - tooled to produce an action risky venture mystery story like most of Dick ’s work is when it ’s prepared for the screen . Some details are shifted around to make the film , well a flick , but for the most part it ’s all there which is why some viewers take the air aside a petty perplexed by it .
Another rationality A Scanner Darkly is so unlike from the bulk of moving picture based on Dick ’s work is that the novel was written in the later 70s , a darker period when Dick was working through drug addiction , failed marriages and intimate turmoil . Arguably his most powerful period though , his late hooey also turn over us works like VALIS , which nerds will know as a “ Vast Active Living Intelligence System ” .
In what is now Linklater ’s signature fashion , A Scanner Darkly is rotoscape animation and looks passing trippy – which is befit the tale – and allows for hooey like the Scramble Suit to work and depend outstanding . The picture is about a totalitarian society in a near futurity where you ’re always being watched . An hole-and-corner detective , Bob Arctor , workds with a little time group of drug user prove to give the big distributor of a brain - damage drug called “ Substance D. ” His duty assignment is promote by the recovery centre New Path Corporation , but presently Bob begin to lose his own identicalness and exhibit schizoid behaviour .
Radio Free Albemuth
Radio Free Albemuth is the newest Dick adaptation to rack up and like I read above it ’s an highly faithful to the reservoir textile . I know most , if not all , of you have n’t had the chance to see it yet , but it was lately outdo up by 7 Arts for distribution so I expect all you Dick head out there will be able to see it soon .
When Ben Austwickreviewed a workprintthat block out at Scifi London last year he state “ I follow forth from the film with that unique Dickian sense of unease , insignificance and wonderment , and it ’s skillful to see his work regurgitate so faithfully on the bountiful covert , flawed or not . ”
The film is about Nicholas Brady , a even guy wire who runs a Berkeley record shop . His biography is going nowhere until he pick up a potent night - meter vision urging him to move to Los Angeles . The achiever he detect in the city vindicat an increase obsession with his dreams , which he trust are being beamed to him by an orbiting alien satellite shout Valis . His partner Rachel is less positive , and puts Nick through therapy to heal what she sees as a genial illness putting serious strain on their relationship . Their novelist friend – Philip K Dick himself , or at least a very Dickian reading of him – is more sympathetic , and is gradually sucked in to the complex confederacy Nick witness himself at the heart of .
Paycheck
All correctly , now we ’re really getting into the fluff . It really starts to become a toss up in terms of which one of the next few title you opt . They ’re all fairly similar in quality and it probably comes down to whether of not you like Nicholas Cage , Ben Affleck or Gary Sinise .
Me ? I like John Woo , even when he ’s sort of ruin one of my favourite Philip K. Dick stories bid Paycheck about a guy with no store who gets a package of random objects from himself and has to visualize out what they mean and how they can help him . It ’s a classic Dick escapade concept and when I first read it I remember wishing I could adjust the screenplay myself . Well , it was n’t too much later on that I found out Dean Georgaris stick me to it .
Do n’t get me incorrect here . Paycheck is a fun pic with good deal of twists and turns and a nifty we - can - see - into - the - future plot gimmick that keeps the matter proceed . And Woo was going for a classic Hitchcock vibration which help . However , I ’ve run across the film a few time since 2003 and it seems to age worse and worse as each twelvemonth run . No curiosity Woo went back to Asia .
6/10
Next
get Angry ’s Nic Cage plays a Las Vegas magician cursed with the ability to see a few mo into the future in Lee Tamahori ’s Next , ground on the novel “ The Golden Man ” .
sound like a reasonably awesome ability to have right ? Except the FBI want cage to stop a atomic attack and , well you have sex Cage , he just desire to be left alone to sulkiness and be disturbed so he and his new lady friend Jessia Biel go on the lam .
Next is very much in the mineral vein of Paycheck . It ’s an easily digestible , mid - budget scifi adventure romp that is fun while it lasts , but is ultimately not as fulfilling as Dick ’s original tale . They ’ve kept the canonic concept , bestow some new characters and place and wound up with something raw . Also , upon another viewing , the CGI is start to attend a lilliputian Rider Haggard , which considering there ’s only two or three scenes with big pieces of it it ’s really a shame .
Imposter
To be honest my memory board of Impostor is develop dim . I have n’t seen it in probably four or five years , but the things I do remember are the left hand over Starship Troopers costumes used to dress the United States Army , Madeline Stowe ’s bushed smutty center and Gary Sinise strap to some James Bond style laser machine . Not much to go on I guess .
In Impostor , Gary Sinise bring an engine driver who creates the ultimate weapon in a on the face of it never ending battle against unknown . Is he hail as a king and savior to human kind though ? Well , this is a PKD story , so nope . He ’s promptly suspect of being an foreigner himself and has to go on the run .
Impostor feels like a TV original , but it really got a pretty all-inclusive theatrical exit in 2001 . Far from perfect , it ’s still a sport matinee scifi sashay and if you ’ve never seen it you probably should .
5.5/10
Barjo
Barjo is a French Canadian film based on the novel “ Confessions Of A Crap Artist . ” I have n’t seen it , so I ca n’t comment on it but it has an IMDB rating of 6/10 and is apparently reasonably crackers .
This article by agentorangeoriginally seem at Quiet Earth .
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