Riverworld?
 

Any buzz on Sci-fi's "Riverworld" movie? I usually despise these scifi movies, but they're touting Alex Proyas' name (although he's a producer, not a director as they insinuate). Looks like some good visuals, and it's based off a pretty well-known book. Any thoughts? Check it out, steer clear, run screaming from the room?

I don't know . . . I set it up on my Tivo and figure I can delete it or watch it on fast forward if it's bad. I didn't hear anything about Alex Proyas--I'm a huge Dark City fan, so now you've gotten my hopes up. :)

tasha

I love the book series, I think it's one of the best setups/backstories in SciFi... From the preview, it doesn't look like it follows any of the novel(s) very closely... The main character doesn't look like he's from the books at all... Keeping my expections low, but I'll be interested to see what they do with the basic premise...

Everyone who's ever lived on Earth, from prehistory to 203x, finds themselves ressurected--age 25, naked and confused--along the banks of million-mile river, with impassible mountains on either side... Food is miraculously provided 3 times a day. Anyone who dies is simply ressurected again a day later.

The books are great because you get to see all the world's civilizations and famous leaders--all starting over from scratch at the same time, battling it out and trying to figure out who's behind the massive "experiment"...

Who wrote these books? The premise sounds pretty nifty, but I don't think I've ever heard of them.

Philip Jose Farmer...

To Your Scattered Bodies Go (Riverworld Saga, Book 1)
The Fabulous Riverboat (Riverworld Saga, Book 2)
The Dark Design (Riverworld Saga, Book 3)
The Magic Labyrinth (Riverworld Saga, Book 4)
Gods of Riverworld (Riverworld Saga, Book 5)

It's a great premise, and well handled at the beginning... The series starts to falter about halfway through, but it's still very worth reading...

Lest we forget....
 

.... <A HREF="http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=136475" target="_blank">Book Talk</a>!

[;)]

Well, Riverworld looks one hell of a lot better and more interesting than Children of Dune. I'm more excited about it, but then I don't know anything about it, which probably is a good thing.

I won't watch it. It's on Sci Fi.

Ah, when is everyone going to learn boycotts don't ever work. The only one that loses are the people that boycott.

How do we lose by not watching Sci-Fi Channel?
We don't get to watch there awesome programming like.......like........oh, Tremors the Series! -rolleyes-

I would rather watch B grade material on Sci-Fi than watch those bull***** reality shows on the major networks. I think riverworld looks very interesting. Count me in.

famous last words.

D

Well, I changed my mind. I think this looks interesting, but I bought To Your Scattered Bodies Go on half.com instead. I haven't watched Farscape yet tonight, but I know I'll get all pissed off and won't want to watch usa2 for a while. Boycotting is probably pointless, but at least reading the book will probably be better than seeing yet another craptacular sci-fi original feature.

tasha

The visuals look interesting and I plan to check this out. I have some trepidation about their turning Burton into a rather more mundane astronaut (especially one played by ambulatory mannequin Brad Johnson.) We'll see.

Part of the problem might be that Farmer is one of those writers who has their main appeal in the actual reading of their brilliantly whacked out prose.

In the cold naked light of dramatization, especially one w/ no sense of humor or irony, they sometimes don't play well. Roger Zelazny and Phillip K. Dick are other prime examples.

Ack- That changes the whole storyline. Astrosnot visiting a planet.

SF is my worst cable-channel, so I'll wait for the DVD.

I thought it was pretty good, but the second half became too generic. So, does anybody know how it compared with the book? Also, this is going to be a new series, right? Does anybody know when that will start?

The first 10 minutes were good. And then it went straight downhill. Chop off the first 10 minutes and the rest could pass for an epsiode of Hercules or Xena.

After 30 minutes it became obvious that this was/is a pilot for a TV series.

D

Well, I did a search and it looks like they completely changed the book for the movie. Also, I was really surprised that the movie represented the first 2 novels since not much seemed to happen in the movie. I also read that scifi has no plans for further movies or a series at this time which seems really odd considering the point of the whole movie seemed to setup a series.

Hmm, maybe that is SciFi channel's new marketing idea. Keep airing shows that end with a clear expectation of further episodes to resolve questions left open, and then never air those further episodes. First Farscape "to be continued -- not", now Riverworld. Maybe they figure people will tune in continuously in the hope of catching the next episode :).

Those were my thoughts exactly!

I don’t know about the writer’s original intent, but the inclusion of Nero seemed to me like a rip off of Benito Mussolini’s character in the science fiction retelling of Inferno by some writer that I can’t recall at the moment and couldn’t find by searching (apparently the book “Inferno” is out of print and forgotten). I read it a long time ago and gave it back to the friend that I borrowed it from, so I cannot find out who wrote it. It’s driving me crazy already!

I really agree with Buck Turgidson’s comment regarding the prose of Zelazny and Dick. I’m just reading Valis right now and after that I’m gonna reread A Scanner Darkly. I love the books, but I’d be wary of any movie adaptations. (Unless Cronenberg or Lynch was helming).

That was a cheap shot to say “From Alex Proyas” too. Once I watched the opening credits, my hope meter dropped to yellow.

Maybe you're thinking of Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle which was written in 1976? I haven't read any of the Riverworld books yet, so I don't know when Nero was introduced, but the first book (To Your Scattered Bodies Go) won the Hugo in 1972, so if anything, the idea was Farmer's first.

I broke down and watched it since I forgot to cancel it on my Tivo anyway. I thought it was so-so, and think I'll have to struggle getting through the book I ordered (not much DID happen, and they acted like it was a surprise that the Riverboat guy was Samuel Clemens--duh, he was reciting Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn from memory in one scene.) I was a lot more interested in why they were there and who the Death guys were, but maybe that comes up in later books.

And I agree--I didn't see much evidence of this being something from Alex Proyas. :(

tasha

So is this a mini-series or just a 2 hour movie? They definitely took some major liberties with the storyline. I can't remember, but was Nero even a character in the books? I know the astronaut wasn't (he filled the role that explorer Sir Richard Burton did in the books).

They met lots of folks in the books who claimed to be lots of people. As you might suspect, Jesus, Mohammad, Moses etc, were everywhere.

I highly recommend these books. They're brilliant and they still stand up today. The Sir Richard Burton character is so intregal to the story line it's hard to believe they dumped him.

Herman Goehring was the nemesis in the first book To Your Scattered Bodies, Go. Not the obese, salmon-colored uniform wearing air marshall of WWII, but the cruel and dashing pilot of WWI.

Definitely disappointing... it took a great series of novels with a fantastic idea and -- as others have mentioned -- made a 2-hour Xena episode out of it.

Too bad -- even if they didn't follow the books, there is a *ton* of story potential here. The fact that the show was actually watchable and (somewhat) entertaining, even though nothing happened just shows what powerful material they were dealing with.

I don't want to be rude here (bah, who am I kidding ;)), but I hope I'm not detecting any surprise in this thread. To quote their own ad campaign: <B>this</B> is Sci-Fi. This is what you get and will continue to get from these people ... bad adaptations of books/old series/concepts that already have a decent following, heavy marketing campaigns, and misleading "presented by" silliness. This is the path we're on, and sadly I've been suckered into it myself many times, but no more ... don't let them keep doing this to you. The next Sci-Fi "Original" (term used VERY loosely) will likely sound really cool and then blow chunks per formula.

As for the comment that boycotts only hurt those who boycott, I would sometimes agree, but in this case I must express anger at the Hammer for a different reason. She's taken (no pun intended) all the fun out of a boycott. I haven't watched the station in nearly two years, and it's been too damn easy. This should be hard or require effort or something, but they're not even trying.

das

The next "Sci-Fi Original" is Cube 2: Hypercube in early April. No doubt the pattern will continue...

;)

<BLOCKQUOTE> • Quoth bboisvert •<HR SIZE=1>The next "Sci-Fi Original" is Cube 2: Hypercube in early April. No doubt the pattern will continue...

;) <HR SIZE=1></BLOCKQUOTE>

Looks like the pattern fails ... it doesn't even <I>sound</I> good. :)

das

Clemens, Monat, Alice... Only a few of the minor characters were actually from the books... The astronaut and Nero were definitely new, as was the whole "instant civilization" they were enslaved by...

I knew within the first few minutes the show was in trouble: Instead of ressurrecting everyone all at once, the movie just plopped its hero down into a world where others had already been there for 10 years or more, and could explain the ropes to them... It helped jump-start the action plot, but took away 9/10ths of the eerieness and awe... In the books, everyone starts from scratch at the same time... It's weeks before the mass hysteria and confusion wears off, and months before there are any inklings of civilization sprouting...

Of course, the whole "we can all understand each other" language crap was just for the movie's sake...

And they skipped the whole "no death" thing, which is one of the most important parts of the series... Anyone who gets killed is ressurected the next day somewhere else on the Riverbank... People routinely kill themselves if they're hurt or sick, or just to start fresh somewhere else... Those who want to travel upriver often just kill themselves hoping to end up farther north... People talk about the "Suicide Express..." Fear of death becomes nothing, only fear of pain without death...

I've seen Cube 2 . It's a pretty pale sequel to a decent movie. It goes for the high-tech CGI update rather than focus on what makes a movie good.

If you've seen the first one, you know enough of the story to skip the second.

Excuse me for resurrecting a dead thread about Riverworld, but I was just wondering if there has been any word about this becoming a regular series? I just watched the movie for the first time, and I was intrigued.

Doesn't look good considering Sci-Fi channel kept in on the shelf for about a year before airing it with no plans on continuing it, thus making it a movie with no ending.

It's on right now and I'm Tivoing it.

I watched the first 10 mins and its good so far, but then I came up to read up on it and now I'm not too sure.

There are definitely a lot worse ways to spend 2 hours... but it's ulitmately disappointing. Even putting aside the differences with the book, and accepting the movie on its own terms, it fails. There are some interesting/exciting ideas presented in the first 10-20 minutes, but then it just becomes a generic adventure show that you've seen dozens of times. Not terrible... just "meh".

It's too bad that they didn't at least attempt to launch a series for this, which would have given them an opportunity to explore the possibilities that this world presents.

Finished watching it... and while it did start out great (like everyone else here said) it quickly went the way of those UPN/WB adventures.

But I must say that it has intrigued me enough to find and read the first book.

Absolutely worthwhile to read the book. The whole series is really good.