Sep 23rd, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I thought I Would Sail About a Little
Terrifying film adaptation concepts:
“Our vision isn’t your grandfather’s ‘Moby Dick,’ ” Cooper said. “This is an opportunity to take a timeless classic and capitalize on the advances in visual effects to tell what at its core is an action-adventure revenge story.”
The good news is that Moby-Dick is in the public domain, so some day what we’ll actually get is an opportunity to take a timeless classic and capitalize on the falling cost of visual effects to make an uncompromising film adaptation.
46 Responses to “I thought I Would Sail About a Little”
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September 23rd, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Only people who have never actually read Moby Dick think it is “an action-adventure revenge story.” It is actually a gothic, existenstial tragedy.
September 23rd, 2008 at 4:41 pm
I wouldn’t mind seeing Matt’s grandfather’s Moby Dick, or even his father’s . . . (Moby Dick: the Frightening?)
September 23rd, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Why do people keep making terrible film adaptations of Moby Dick? It’s a really good book; people should either stop making mediocre movies out of it or stop trying to adapt it altogether.
September 23rd, 2008 at 4:49 pm
This is being written by the 2 hacks that wrote the Olsen Twins movie “New York Minute”. At least the John Huston version had a screenplay by Ray Bradbury. At least they tried.
September 23rd, 2008 at 4:55 pm
I prefer Martin Sheen’s musical stage adaption. It’s very highbrow, with an “inner whale.”
September 23rd, 2008 at 4:59 pm
See, it seems to me that Moby Dick is quite reasonably imagined as a maritime romance that gets way, way out of hand. It may have shattered the genre from which it arose, but it’s still a genre piece, like the Maltese Falcon or Treasure of the Sierra Madre, to follow up the John Houston reference. That doesn’t mean the movie will be good–it’ll probably be bad. But probably being able to give a better sense of the immensity of the whale will make the visuals more compelling than poor Gregory Peck in a soundstage bathtub.
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:10 pm
This is a joke, right?
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:11 pm
I’m a Billy Budd man myself…
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:27 pm
A remake of Moby Dick could be a very, very good film. Done properly, it could be to nautical adventures what Apocalypse Now is to war movies.
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:38 pm
If they keep the line “Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian”, all will be forgiven.
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:40 pm
This would clearly be the preferred adaptation. The poster itself is superawesome.
That aside, I’m generally anti-adaptation (of anything) but, again, thinking that the essence of Moby Dick is in the harpooning is like thinking the essence of Crime and Punishment is a murder mystery.
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Your grandfather’s Moby Dick? You mean the really smart, experimental one that explores race relations and man’s relation to god/the universe and the archetypal quest? That Moby Dick? How good of you to “modernize” that tired old chestnut into an “action/adventure revenge story” for us.
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:49 pm
“At its core” it’s not an action-adventure revenge movie. At its core, it’s a meditation on the nature of human existence.
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Everything good about Moby Dick is its insane, experimental style. How could anyone adapt it?
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:59 pm
To be fair, Cooper isn’t saying anything that generations of crass movie moguls haven’t said when dumbing down classics for the mass audience. He’s just a new-generation Hollywood philistine.
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:59 pm
This reminds me of the Monty Python sketch about making a movie of “Scott Of The Antarctic”. The director decided to throw in a giant penguin with electric tentacles…you know…for the kids.
September 23rd, 2008 at 6:13 pm
I thought at its core it was a poetic, anti-Christian diatribe. I’m amazed Sarah Palin didn’t try to ban it.
September 23rd, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Isn’t it he drum solo on the second album?
No adaption necessary, in fact pretty silly to cover a drum solo.
September 23rd, 2008 at 6:25 pm
I didn’t think the one with Patrick Stewart in it was so bad…
September 23rd, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Cooper should be informed that my grandfather’s Moby Dick rocks.
“insane, experimental style.”
And much of it isn’t even narrative, let alone visual. It’s like when people have tried to adapt Homer. They have to cut out all the tedious poetry!
Some of the things the whale does are simply absurd, and would probably look ridiculous visually if portrayed as Ishamel tells it. Ishmael’s not the most reliable narrator, obviously; but some Michael Bay wannabe is going to try to render it all straight up. Because we have the effects to do it!
It reminds me of how Star Wars fans used to say, in awe, that “Lucas was waiting to do the prequels until the special effects technology caught up with his imagination.” I wonder how that all turned out.
September 23rd, 2008 at 7:04 pm
The best part of Moby Dick was the writing. How will they portray that on screen?
September 23rd, 2008 at 7:10 pm
One of my friends is of the opinion that a lot of older books, like Moby Dick, would’ve been better if the author had an editor that made them remove all the political crap from the story.
I tried to explain that the story is a vehicle for imparting ‘the political crap’ so that wouldn’t make any sense. He thinks Moby Dick is a story about the whaling industry. I bet he’ll enjoy the hell out of this adaptation.
September 23rd, 2008 at 7:13 pm
That’s about the last thing I’d describe it as (unless I had never read it).
September 23rd, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I think they need to update the story by adding some love interest. If they get Gretchen Mol to play “Sheequeg,” I’ll pay the $11.50 admission just for the camp value. And if she says the line “Call me, Ishmael” at any point in the movie, I’ll tip the usher an additional dollar.
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:08 pm
“Falling cost of visual effects”?
Er, not so much– Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow not withstanding.
Our capabilities grow, but so to do our standards and expectations.
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:11 pm
The greatness of Moby Dick is its wealth: it really is a great action-adventure revenge story (indeed, it’s the template for the genre), but it is also an existential tragedy, a meditation on the mysteriousness of God, an astounding good encyclopedia of whaling techniques, and on and on. Looked at this way, it makes sense to make more one movie version of the story. Probably this one will not be the final word on the book, but so what? Good stories can stand more than one adaptation; it’s the bad ones that sink like a stone after a single attempt.
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:22 pm
How could you beat Gregory Peck as Ahab?
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Wow.
A Moby Dick film by Terrence Malick might just be the most incredible film of all time.
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Forget Gregory Peck. What about Orson Welles as Father Mapple? I don’t know if that character was in the novel, but his sermon in the film would be hard to match now.
September 24th, 2008 at 1:00 am
James Gary = my new favorite commenter ever. “Sheequeg.” Ha!
September 24th, 2008 at 4:01 am
This adaptation is pretty faithful.
September 24th, 2008 at 6:47 am
Why do people keep making terrible film adaptations of Moby Dick? It’s a really good book; people should either stop making mediocre movies out of it or stop trying to adapt it altogether.
You’re not talking about John Huston’s version, are you?
September 24th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Yes, on James Gary’s “Sheequeg” — that’s just what it needs! With Leonardo DiCaprio as Ishmael, we can start the movie with a hot sex scene, and then introduce Kurt Russell as the grizzled, no-nonsense Whale Fighter, Cap’n Ahab, and Bill Pullman as Starbuck, the macho leader on the front lines.
And the whale, of course, is really a disguised high-tech steampunk submarine, the bad guy’s ultimate weapon for controlling the seas. Ahab is all that stands between us and world domination. Much better to cast Dennis Hopper as a flesh-and-blood adversary than to go with the book’s original villain . . . God.
September 24th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Actually rm, that sounds like a pretty kick-ass anime.
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