His books are great. The movies suck in comparison. Also see Tom Clancy.

Disclosure was pretty good as a book and movie.

I don't trust reviews that:

a. make fun of the 'concept'

or

b. compare it to easily associatable movies (all time travel movies with knights are just like Bill and Ted? durr).

Critics suck.

"If the movie is noteworthy at all, it's for portraying the French as heroes"

That's going to really help bring in revenue.....

I have read most of what he has written and just about all of it is exelent. I have found that the book version of a story is almost always better than the movie.

I was going to complement Timeline, the book, but it seems that today I can't get the good grammer and spelling part of my brain to work.

Timeline wasn't even that great of a book. After reading Prey I thought, "Hey, this could make a pretty cool movie if done right".
But with Timeline it was more like, "Bet they'll make this into a horrible movie with some slob like Paul Walker in the lead role".

Most book to movie transformations suck. I could barely put Gigli down when I was reading it.

Reimy

Timeline sucked in book form as well. It contained so many plot holes and inconsistancies that there was no saving it. THis movie was destined to suck

This is rough... that was one of my favorite Crichton books. Didn't really think it would translate well though... oh well I'm sure I'll see it anyway and complain to my wife for hours afterwards about how they bastardized a good story.

I just read a book that would be a great movie, The Descent by Jeff Long. Anyone else out there read this? Could do some really cool things cinematically with that one.

The thing is, they made all of his books into movies after Jurassic Park hit big. As in, they didn't care what it was - it's Michael Crichton, let's make it into a movie. Most of those never should have gone near a multiplex. (Congo) Prior to that, only a couple of his books were movies. They should have paced themselves.

I've read all of Crichton's books and I think all but two (of the fiction books) have been turned into movies. (The Terminal Man and the one with the patients)

Why doesn't he just write screenplays and give up on novels?

people usually expect too much when a book has been turned into a movie. Case in point, Jurassic Park. Great book, great movie, but both for entirely different reasons. If they'd done a word for word translation of the book into a movie it'd been boring as hell. So they took alot of dialogue and technical stuff out, and slapped in some computer graphic dinosaurs. An even trade IMO.

Now take something like Dreamcatcher... ok don't.

Michael Crichton meet Stephen King. Stephen has the same problem.

I haven't seen the movie but I read the book. I understand they reduced the deadline down to 6 hours and took out the jousting, the language barrier issues, and almost all the explanation about how the time travel is supposed to work. These were my favorite elements of the book right there.

Crichton has done several movies that there not books. Coma (written by someone else), Westworld, Runaway, and some I am sure I am missing. His first book to movie, The Andromeda Strain was great in book and in Movie form IMO

I saw it the other night and thought it was pretty good. It's pretty faithful to the book, IMHO. Worth the price of admission.

I agree with Vaeric. Timeline felt more like a movie script than a novel. It had a promising and exciting beginning, then slipped quickly into a rather dull action movie. There's very little of the "what if a modern person went back several hundred years" angle and a lot of "Look! Stuff on fire!!!" angle.

I had a feeling this was going to suck based on the fact that they've been advertising the shiat out of it for over a month now.

Speaking of (good) books made into movies...

While I was sick during Thanksgiving, I got a chance to finally watch the miniseries adaptation of James Clavell's book "Shogun," which by the way is farking awesome. It's hard to believe there is people out there who don't enjoy that novel. Anyway, the miniseries sucked big time.

I read "Timeline" a while back ago, and it's now one of my favorite Crichton novels. It's too bad they botched up the story so much on film...

The book was not bad. I like the concept and the brutality of medieval times seemed well illustrated. Heads being stomped by horses, beheadings, honry monks and such, good times.


/ quantum foam makes me roam

The only problem with Clancy's books being adapted into movies, is that it would take 18 hours of film to adapt one of his good books, like Red Storm Rising, Debt of Honor or Executive Orders, and do justice to his ability to craft a storyline. The Sum of All Fears movie should be burninated. It was bad to the point of being a disgrace to the abilities of Clancy.

Too bad, I just finished the book (read it after after hearing about the movie) and enjoyed it, and hoped that the movie wouldn't suck. Of course, even from the initial trailer you could see they bastardized the story with silly and pointless things. French guy mistaken as a spy? WTF? Father? WTF? In the book it was their professer, any real reason to make it the gits father? No? I didn't think so.

*sigh*

I'll probably download the divx or see it on a cheap tuesday matinee or something. Dissapointing.

Jurassic Park kicked all manner of ass. JP2 was good as a stand-alone action and special fx film but it was a total rape of the book. JP3? Basically 20 minutes of plot setup followed by 60 minutes of "Aaahh! Run! Dinosaurs!"

Speaking of Stephen King, I met him in the mall once. Tried getting his autograph until his wife went apeshiat on me. I was scared for my life. True story.

Otoscope - yea, I saw that pretty much in the trailers, and figured the movie would suck due to that alone :( Might be cool if you haven't read the book, but.... The explanation of the foam, multiverse theory, and how the did time travel was very cool.

And I've enjoyed a lot of the Tom Clancy translations to movies. Even The Sum of All Fears was ok, though truly, just ok.

Hopefully, they'll never attempt to turn The Bear and The Dragon into a movie. I read it all, then turned the book upside down and shook it, hoping there was some Crackerjack-like prize inside to provide entertainment in exactly the way the plot didn't.

One of the big disappointments of the book was that he danced around all the time travel paradox issues. I picked up the book expecting a time travel yarn, like Back To The Future. Instead, I got a "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" story.
But once I got over that it wasn't the book I was expecting, and after getting past the boring 150 pages of character setup, the book was not bad. Most impressive was the amount of research and detail Crichton put into researching the period.

'Prey' would be a pretty good movie is somebody good directed it, like me.

Stephen King went even further. His best book->movie conversion was 'The Shining', and what does King do? He has a craptacular remake made for no good reason.

Prey was plain thupid.
What I've heard of timeline sounds thupid also.

The book was only so-so. It was a great idea that was done half-assed. I give the movie a shot but am not expecting much.

a4dzac wins!

"You know what I'd do with a little extra money?"

"Bomb the French"

"No, I'm talking about a little extra money."

I liked Timeline enough to not see the movie at all.

If they make a movie of Prey... I might have to see it for the same reason I read/watched Jurassic Park... I enjoyed the hell out of both and wanted to see how they would get the story up to the screen.

"Andromeda Strain" was well done as a movie. It has been downhill from there.

Otoscope:
That's about right. They removed the explaination of how the time travel worked, and any difficulties of language, or really anything interesting, and reduced it down to the lowest common denominator.

"How did you discover time travel?"

"Well, you see, I was microwaving a burrito one day, and it somehow travelled through time. Enough about that. Let's get back to burning things, and guys with swords!"

Medieval Times book to movie (mini series) I would like to see is "Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett.
Too bad that won't happen.

Sadly, Terminal man was made into a movie also. It sucked, of course.

For the guy who mentioned "The Descent". Yes. It is being made into a movie.

You can sell anything to Anglophiles....

I watched almost half of sphere.

I suppose I will have to get this turkey when it comes out on DVD, pain is good for you.

(That last phrase is my ohio vally upbringing, people in the ohio vally think that way. The rest of the world just think that we are idiots.)

Actually, I think this fellows writing has improved over the years. When I read andromeda strain I was not impressed with the plot, nor was I very impressed with his knowledge of avionics (he uses WWII tech). Still, I have read a worse novel, last night as it happens.

Hint to the budding writer, if you are going out on a limb with science or technology, have one of your charactors say it. You can always point out that your charactor was not an expert in orbital mechanics, and the comment might be concidered funny, rather than pathetic.

Ah, who cares. I knew Timeline would suck diddly uck. Bring on ROTK, baby.

You want to see bastardization of a book? Read Congo and then see the movie. The movie looked like it was filmed with TV cameras, and it was really just a vehicle for a [what felt like] half-hour war against midgets in cheap ape suits!

Vaeric & mrCasual I totally agree with you. When I read Timeline the book it was like I was reading a fleshed out script. One of the things that I find interesting about Crichton is the way he latches onto a technology and twists it beyond its current capability into something interesting. If I remember the book correctly he was talking a lot about quantum entanglement (a hot topic at the time). It is a real phenomena that is just now being explored. It's being tested to use in encryption, "instant" communications and "teleporting" photons. He takes what is happening in science and says, "What if..." then they add the typical ticking clock, love interest, action scenes and you got yourself a cheesy 60 million dollar B flick.

It might be boring to others but I think the entire part of the book that deals with expectations vs. reality of a time period was interesting. I remember that they were surprised by how quiet it was and how things didn't smell bad like they thought they would. They didn't realize the impact of light pollution, noise pollution and air pollution have on them all the time until they went back to the time before they existed.


If you want to read a GREAT book that is sort of about Time Travel but really about an era; read Connie Willis' The Doomsday Book. It takes place in during the Black Death and is very interesting. I read it in France and my wife kept saying, "We are IN FRANCE NOW! Stop reading about it during the plague in that book." I was that gripped by the book.

Thera
Bring on ROTK, baby.

Hear motherfarking hear!