THE FOREVER WAR (TBA) - PREVIEW

Forever War (TBA)

Starring: TBA
Director: Ridley Scott

U.S. Opening Date: TBA

THEY SAY

Based on the Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel by Joe Haldeman first published in 1974.

The book tells the story of a conflict between humanity and the alien Taurans. Humans first bumped heads with the Taurans when we began using collapsars to travel the stars. Although the collapsars provide nearly instantaneous travel across vast distances, the relativistic speeds associated with the process means that time passes slower for those aboard ship. For William Mandella, a physics student drafted as a soldier, that means more than 27 years will have passed between his first encounter with the Taurans and his homecoming, though he himself will have aged only a year. When Mandella finds that he can't adjust to Earth after being gone so long from home, he re-enlists, only to find himself shuttled endlessly from battle to battle as the centuries pass.

This will be director Ridley Scott's first science fiction movie in more than a quarter of century. (Blade Runner was in 1982 and Alien in 1979.)

— Source: Amazon.com
 

WE SAY

Despite director Ridley Scott declaring that an adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World starring Leonardo diCaprio will “definitely be what I do next after Nottingham, the Robin Hood film (with Russell Crowe),” it would seem that he is putting off Brave New World in favor of another sci-fi book, namely Joe Haldeman’s celebrated 1974 novel.

“I first pursued The Forever War 25 years ago, and the book has only grown more timely and relevant since,” Scott said in an interview. “It's a science-fiction epic, a bit of The Odyssey by way of Blade Runner, built upon a brilliant, disorienting premise.”

Scott has got that right. It is an action-packed thought-provoking novel, one of those books that prove that there is more to science fiction than just spaceship battles and droids. Haldeman did military service in Vietnam and the novel is largely held to be a wider metaphor for the alienation that many Vets felt returning to America after the war. In Haldeman’s novel time passes much slower for the protagonist than it does back on Earth, meaning that centuries have passed back on Earth in the few months the novel’s hero spends in space fighting aliens. The culture shock he experiences upon returning to Earth again is profound.

The Forever War is justly considered a modern science fiction classic and deservedly won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. As you might have guessed by now it is definitely one of our favorite novels here at the Sci-Fi Movie Page. The mere thought that Scott – a stunning visualist whose Alien and Blade Runner redefined the genre on screen – actually intends filming it makes us want to literally pee in our pants out of sheer excitement.

However these are early days. Just like Brave New World, Forever War might never get made at all. Even though Fox 2000 has acquired the rights to the novel on behalf of Scott, a writer to adapt a screenplay has yet to be found. No casting has been announced either.

Besides, any Hollywood movie that has to explain Einsteinian relativity to popcorn gulping audiences who merely want to see stuff get blown up real good has got its work cut out for itself. Also, Hollywood execs who has to bankroll it might also blanch at the idea of a depressed central protagonist and the idea of an onscreen future in which homosexuality is the norm because the Earth government is encouraging it so as to prevent overpopulation . . . (There is after all a reason why so few genuinely intelligent sci-fi movies actually get made by Hollywood and unimaginative and derivative dreck such as Eragon and Babylon A.D. do get made.)

In the meantime there is still the novel, and if you haven’t yet read it, then do yourself the favor today. It is a sci-fi classic.