Food of the Gods

[Leatherhead]

antone else read Food of the Gods?

[mctoddridesagain]

Ooh, years ago. Strange book. As memory serves, the early part reads like classic scientific-romance Wells, the latter part lapses into Wells-the-sociologist.

[Luperis]

I haven't read that one yet. Would you reccommend it?

[Leatherhead]

yes

[marciano]

of course

[Leatherhead]

hmmmmm.. yesss.... hurumph hurumph

[D.A.V.E]

Have any of you seen the movies? I've not read the book, so I can't make any comparisons, but i've seen both. The 1976 original movie version, and then 18 years later, they made a sequel called Gnaw: Food of the Gods II, which was basically about giant rats on a college campus. They are some of the strangest films I have *ever* seen (well that, and Meet the Feebles) and I think I'm going to have to find a copy of the original source material and read it.

[mctoddridesagain]

The movies bear about as much relation to the novel as that 1979 abortion of a film 'The Shape of Things to Come' does to its source novel, i.e. bugger all.

All they did was nick the basic idea of Giant Animals and the title and apply both to a standard cheapo horror schlockfest.

The novel is strange, but typical Wells in that he takes what seem like sensationalistic ideas which in lesser hands would have served merely as cheesy pulp-novel actioners, and then uses them to make you think, treating them in a terribly understated manner.

[EvilNerfherder]

Damn, Wells was good, wasn't he?
Odd, though, that no-one has really,truly nailed a celluloid adaption of one (or any) of his classic stories (but 'The History of Mr Polly' starring John Mills was VERY good, I thought).
Many have tried but none, to my mind, has come close enough to capturing the spirit of his novels except perhaps Jeff Wayne (and that, until now, is purely audio.. admittedly with some great paintings to match). Why is that?
Is it a question of period settings, or is it just that moviemakers love his basic plot ideas but don't want to include the rest of what makes Wells' work so fascinating?
Ideas, anyone?

[marciano]

I read the food of the gods only four or five months ago. I love any wells novel
Exist a film of the book but is HORRIBLE

[mctoddridesagain]

nerfherder said:

...is it just that moviemakers love his basic plot ideas but don't want to include the rest of what makes Wells' work so fascinating?
Ideas, anyone?

Nail/Hammer Interface Scenario, Evilchops.

He pioneered most of the main themes of science fiction, a genre which lends itself all too easily to slipshod no-brain schlock. Unfortunately, popular (or big) movies are, on the whole, consistently years behind contemporary printed sf. 'Star Wars' (I'm talking ANH, 1977), for example, was/is lionised by generations of fans, but if we're honest, the plotline could be straight from the 1930s (and yes, I know Lucas wanted to recreate the old serials, but the fact remains).

So you take Time Travel, or Invisibility, or Giant Insects, or Aliens, or whatever, and as we know, a lot of big screen cr*p can ensue...

Of course, one film that did capture the thinking side of Wells was 'Things To Come' in 1936, for which he wrote the screeplay himself. But much as I love that film, I'll be the first to admit that modern audiences would probably find much of it laughable.

[sunnyrabbiera]

nerfherder said:

Damn, Wells was good, wasn't he?
Odd, though, that no-one has really,truly nailed a celluloid adaption of one (or any) of his classic stories (but 'The History of Mr Polly' starring John Mills was VERY good, I thought).

I can disagree, the George Pal version of the Time Machine was pretty decent...
People may hate Pal for his version of WOTW, but you cant deny his version of the Time Machine is very decent.

as for food of the gods, eh not that great of a book compared to Wells' other stuff at least in my opinion.

[EvilNerfherder]

Yeah, I'll give you Pal's 'The Time Machine'.
Having said that, James Whale's 'The Invisible Man' was very good (IMO), too.
There have been some decent movies of Wells' work.. but they are outweighed by the bad. So, rather than eat all of my words, I'll just eat some of them. The shorter ones, preferably .

[mctoddridesagain]

Actually, 'The Invisible Man' is a damn fine film version of a Wells novel.

Pal's 'The Time Machine' is great fun, but it does ditch the evolutionary sub-text, or rather, it alters it. Let's face it, an audience of 1960 was not going to appreciate the subtler points of the late Victorian English class system which gave rise to Wells's Eloi/Morlock juxtaposition. On the other hand, Pal was quite clever, IMHO, in casting the bifurcation in terms of a post-nuclear holocaust evolution - because that is what audiences of 1960 (and, I would argue, now) would understand.

[EvilNerfherder]

Yeah.. that goes back to what people have said before about filmmakers using 'topical' messages within adaptions of Wells' work.
That is actually why I can understand why people shy away from making period adaptions of TWOTW and put a modern day spin on it... so the audiences of the day can identify with it. I just wish they wouldn't. Just for once.

[mctoddridesagain]

To a point I agree, but it also depends on how skilfully the director has incorporated his 'new' interpretation into the story. For example, one of the various versions of 'Moreau' (I think the 1977 one with Burt Lancaster and Michael York) has the good Doctor as an early geneticist, presumably to tap into early fears of genetic engineering, and ditches the surgical horror, but it doesn't work because you then take away the whole meaning of the House of Pain and the like. Moreau simply becomes a bloodless tinkerer.

Some critics claim that Pal's WOTW expresses fears of Communist invasion, which really annoys some people who feel that has no place in a Wells adaptation, but I've never held much truck with that, as 1950s film-makers tended to express those fears in terms of more subtle takeovers such as 'Bodysnatchers'. But in any case, even if Pal did wish to draw a parallel with the Red Menace, so what? That would only be an update of one aspect of Wells's original novel anyway, which is to see it as the ultimate expression of the England Invaded War Scare Story, which ususally had the UK invaded by the French/Russians/Germans/Yellow Peril etc. In that reading, Wells's Martians just become better equipped versions of the vile Hun.

Of course, you'll know from other posts of mine in the past that I would actually prefer to have seen a decent, period version of WOTW, but all I meant above was that if you're going to update the setting, you have to update the 'message'.

Interestingly, some critics reviewing Jackson's new 'Kong' have written that by preserving the original 1930s setting, Jackson made it all the more believable, as it's much easier to imagine a lost island with ancient monsters on it in the past than it is now. That was one of my points ages ago in a very long debate with (IIRC) Zoe on the Pendragon thread that an updated WOTW makes it nigh on impossible to have your aliens come from Mars (hence Spielberg's bizarre new origin for them), whereas to have preserved the turn of the century setting would have made it perfectly acceptable; an audience, even one not that bothered about Wells, would find it easier to accept a nineteenth century inhabited Mars than a modern inhabited Mars.