SOMEONE...MAKE THIS MOVIE!! Dan Simmons "The Terror"
Written
on 30/1/08
God, I love a good book. And I love it when a good book is given a faithful adaptation to film. So that's why I want to share with you, dear reader, some of the books that I'd love to see translated to film. So with this first installment of SOMEONE...MAKE THIS MOVIE! I'm going to cover one hell of a great book that I think deserves the big screen treatment....Dan Simmons' "The Terror".
"The Terror" is a supernatural and scary-as-hell tale that is based on factual, historical happenings of the doomed search for the Northwest passage in the 1840's. The Franklin Expedition, headed up by Sir John Franklin on the HMS Erebus and Captain Francis Cozier on the HMS Terror, is searching the cold and dangerous arctic regions for the legendary Northwest passage when the two ships get stuck in ice. There were no survivors of this expedition found. However, some remains were found years later, some of them showing signs of cannibalism. No one knows exactly what happened during the 3 years the ships were caught in the ice, but author Dan Simmons gives us his take on the events and throws in a dash of the supernatural for good measure.
The crews of the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus have to face unrelentingly cold weather (-80 degrees in the sun!), quickly diminishing food rations, rampant disease, and no help in sight. But that's not the worst of it. There's something else out there on the ice with them. Something big. Something hungry. And it attacks and kills with extreme prejudice.
Simmons delivers his tale with some brilliant writing, sometimes in the form of a narrative, other times in the fashion of crew members diaries. It's one hell of a fast read, even at the 700 plus pages, because you just can't put it down. You'll be up late, covers wrapped tightly, reading page after page of this intriguing tale. The descriptions of the cold will have you shivering almost as badly as his vivid descriptions of the carnage and terror the creature on the ice invokes.
Yes. This is a historical novel. So that's one point in favor of making this into a film. Another point is that it's just plain scary. Put desperate people in a desolate situation with a supernatural creature stalking them, and you've got a hell of a book (and if a producer is smart and options this piece, one hell of a movie!). There is so much that is great about this book that I can definitely see it translating well onto celluloid. In the right hands we could see one of the scariest films ever created. This book is ripe for the picking if only someone would jump on it.
So please......SOMEONE MAKE THIS MOVIE!!
"The Terror" is a supernatural and scary-as-hell tale that is based on factual, historical happenings of the doomed search for the Northwest passage in the 1840's. The Franklin Expedition, headed up by Sir John Franklin on the HMS Erebus and Captain Francis Cozier on the HMS Terror, is searching the cold and dangerous arctic regions for the legendary Northwest passage when the two ships get stuck in ice. There were no survivors of this expedition found. However, some remains were found years later, some of them showing signs of cannibalism. No one knows exactly what happened during the 3 years the ships were caught in the ice, but author Dan Simmons gives us his take on the events and throws in a dash of the supernatural for good measure.
The crews of the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus have to face unrelentingly cold weather (-80 degrees in the sun!), quickly diminishing food rations, rampant disease, and no help in sight. But that's not the worst of it. There's something else out there on the ice with them. Something big. Something hungry. And it attacks and kills with extreme prejudice.
Simmons delivers his tale with some brilliant writing, sometimes in the form of a narrative, other times in the fashion of crew members diaries. It's one hell of a fast read, even at the 700 plus pages, because you just can't put it down. You'll be up late, covers wrapped tightly, reading page after page of this intriguing tale. The descriptions of the cold will have you shivering almost as badly as his vivid descriptions of the carnage and terror the creature on the ice invokes.
Yes. This is a historical novel. So that's one point in favor of making this into a film. Another point is that it's just plain scary. Put desperate people in a desolate situation with a supernatural creature stalking them, and you've got a hell of a book (and if a producer is smart and options this piece, one hell of a movie!). There is so much that is great about this book that I can definitely see it translating well onto celluloid. In the right hands we could see one of the scariest films ever created. This book is ripe for the picking if only someone would jump on it.
So please......SOMEONE MAKE THIS MOVIE!!
