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Post by thegreyelf on Sept 11, 2009 13:34:44 GMT -6
www.traileraddict.com/trailer/solomon-kane/trailerNot directly based on any Howard story, this is more of an origin story showing us how Kane became the avenging angel he did...the next two films (Purefoy is signed on for 3) are supposed to be direct REH adaptations. Whatever comes out of this...it looks badass.
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Post by Finarvyn on Sept 11, 2009 13:56:42 GMT -6
Not to be a real nay-sayer because I'm really pumped about this movie, but you have to wonder why they didn't base the first movie off of an actual Robert E. Howard story. I mean, REH is one of the greatest swords & sorcery authors of the pulp era and whoever penned this flick probably isn't.
I had the same complaint with one of the Solomon Kane comic books, which was based on a fragment of a REH story. Why not use one of the complete stories to launch the comic and eventually use fragments when you run out of other REH material? Makes no sense to me.
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Post by James Maliszewski on Sept 11, 2009 16:16:29 GMT -6
Not to be a real nay-sayer because I'm really pumped about this movie, but you have to wonder why they didn't base the first movie off of an actual Robert E. Howard story. As I understand it, the director of the film indicated that, to sell the films to Hollywood, he had to make sure there was an "origin story," which is what we're getting with this film. I can certainly believe it, but that doesn't make me any happier, since, as Fin says, the guy who wrote the screenplay is almost certainly not the equal of Howard. Moreover, part of Kane's power as a character is that his backstory is largely unexplained and left to each reader to imagine for himself. There's a mystery about him and having an explicit origin story will, I fear, destroy that. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I doubt I will be.
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Post by coffee on Sept 11, 2009 17:59:40 GMT -6
As I understand it, the director of the film indicated that, to sell the films to Hollywood, he had to make sure there was an "origin story," which is what we're getting with this film. That's part of the problem with Hollywood. They have to understand things at their level, not everybody else's. Another problem is that every subsequent film has to be bigger and badder than the first. And based on that trailer, some of Howard's own Solomon Kane stories just aren't (in a Hollywood sense) "bigger and badder." Moodier, more evocative, and just downright more creepy, yeah, but "bigger and badder," no. So, it looks to me like we won't be getting Ian Fleming's James Bond R. E. Howard's Solomon Kane, but rather a Solomon Kane-flavored "action hero".
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Post by James Maliszewski on Sept 11, 2009 18:34:29 GMT -6
So, it looks to me like we won't be getting Ian Fleming's James Bond R. E. Howard's Solomon Kane, but rather a Solomon Kane-flavored "action hero". That's my gut feeling too, but, as I said, I'd love to be proven wrong.
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delve
Level 4 Theurgist
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Post by delve on Sept 11, 2009 19:57:55 GMT -6
One good thing is that the movie will introduce people to the writings of Robert E Howard. I think conan is being made as well or it may be rumor. As long as they don't water it down and add an overdose of CGI and explosions for people with low attention spans it could be worth while going to see.
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Post by Finarvyn on Sept 12, 2009 7:21:56 GMT -6
One good thing is that the movie will introduce people to the writings of Robert E Howard. I hope this is true, but I fear it won't do this at all. Lots of folks who are familiar with Conan or Kull probably have never read any actual REH Conan or Kull stories. Heck, I hadn't read any "real" Conan stories until the past few years since the Conan books I read in high school were the DeCamp/Carter edits. Lots of people equate Ah-nold with Conan, and the character from the movie is but a shadow of the true REH Conan. Unless they have some sort of movie-book tie-in, I suspect that few will discover the REH Solomon Kane. Even worse, some hack will probably crank our a movie novelization geared so that fourth graders can follow along as they watch the movie, and folks will think that is the real Solomon Kane. Again, I hope I'm wrong about this....
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Post by Finarvyn on Sept 12, 2009 7:28:53 GMT -6
To just add a comment about the original post, thanks to Greyelf for posting it. I think that the Solomon Kane movie looks a lot better (based on the trailer) than I would have expected, and it looks a lot better than the Conan or Kull movies.
One has to wonder if they had today's CGI technology back when Schwarzenegger made the Conan movies if they would have been a lot better, too.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2009 7:51:56 GMT -6
I hope this is true, but I fear it won't do this at all. Lots of folks who are familiar with Conan or Kull probably have never read any actual REH Conan or Kull stories. Heck, I hadn't read any "real" Conan stories until the past few years since the Conan books I read in high school were the DeCamp/Carter edits. Lots of people equate Ah-nold with Conan, and the character from the movie is but a shadow of the true REH Conan. What do you think of Lee Horsley's "Talon" in The Sword & The Sorceror? While I don't that film nailed "Conan" perfectly, I felt that Talon was quite a bit closer to Howard's Conan than Shchwarzenegger was in the Conan films.
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Post by thegreyelf on Sept 12, 2009 8:32:06 GMT -6
I disagree that the power of Kane's character comes from his lack of a back story--at least where any cinematic viability is concerned. Things work in print that don't work on the screen, and throwing a character who just happens to be--for no apparent reason--an avenging angel that hunts down evil and fights it--again, with no apparent motivation than "it's wrong"--comes off on the screen as very 2-dimensional and difficult to sympathize with. I don't begrudge them the origin story, particularly since in an early review I read it seems to cover only the first 15 or 20 minutes of the film, for the millions of people out there who have no idea who REH is. Remember, not everyone's a geek like us . The next two movies, as I understand, will be based directly off Howard's stories, though I expect some major alterations at least to the ends of the stories in those as well. Nobody wants to see a movie where the hero is constantly up against nuts he can't handle and the hand of God saves him every time. The one downfall of REH's SK stories is that they rely all too often on a Deus ex Machina to save Kane at the end. Not to mention, for today's audiences, they're anything but politically correct. That being said, if there is one story that I really hope gets done, it's Red Shadows. Following that, I'd love to see the entire African story arc mashed together into one epic film. Hell, I'd even forgive them letting Le Loup survive the end of Red Shadows, to become some sort of pawn for the big villain at the end of the third movie. My greatest fear? I am absolutely certain that uneducated simpletons in droves are going to say this movie (and Kane's look) are nothing but a "ripoff of Van Helsing."
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Post by Finarvyn on Sept 12, 2009 9:33:32 GMT -6
My greatest fear? I am absolutely certain that uneducated simpletons in droves are going to say this movie (and Kane's look) are nothing but a "ripoff of Van Helsing." My thoughts exactly. I was trying to explain Solomon Kane to my son, who has never read any of the stories. Van helsing was the closest parallel I could come up with. Fortunately, he liked Van Helsing. He said he'd go with me to the movie when it comes out. Sad that it had to be compared that way.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2009 9:49:56 GMT -6
Been lurking for a while, this thread got me to chime in.
Looking forward to the movie and I hope they don't mess it up.
Solomon Kane is probably the best hero that Howard ever wrote becasue he has more soul than the others. Conan has become a stereotype, even if he came before the stereotype. Kull is known more as a Conan rip-off. Francis X Gordon is an exciting hero but isn't motivated by any real passion. Solomon Kane IMO topps them all becasue he has a reason to be an avenger and is not just fighting evil as a hobby.
Anyways, this is a great board and maybe someone will write an OD&D module for Puritain Age for Solomon Kane style adventures.
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Post by thegreyelf on Sept 12, 2009 13:13:15 GMT -6
Welcome to the forums, and love your screen name! Only two issues with your post. The first is a quibble--Kull isn't a ripoff of Conan because he was created first. It's more accurate to say that Conan is an evolution of Kull. Secondly, that's the point I'm making. In the stories, Kane doesn't have a reason to fight evil. He does it just because it needs doing, and he doesn't think too much about it other than that. That's partially why I like giving him a reason. It gets me even more invested in the character than I was before, and if the reason they give him fits seamlessly (which it seems it will) with the few hints REH dropped, I'll be happy to accept it as "official" when I run my Solomon Kane RPG sessions
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Post by doc on Sept 12, 2009 17:52:00 GMT -6
I remember being introduced to REH through my grandfather when I was about 9-10 years old. He didn't want my brain to be turned to mush with books like "Hardy Boys" and the like, all of which he considered childish. So instead he bought me reprints of the old pulp fantasy stories that he'd read back in the 30's and 40's in magazine form. Of all the writers, my favorite was Robert E. Howard. And of all REH's characters, my favorite was Solomon Kane. My take on Kane was that he'd been a soldier and later freebooter under Francis Drake. He'd been captured by the Inquisition ("The Inquisition, what a show!") and was tortured so severely that he suffered a psychotic break with reality and began to believe that he was God's Avenging Angel. Reading the stories it sometimes seemed like maybe Kane wasn't seeing things the way that everybody else was seeing them. Of all Howard's characters, I liked Conan the least (though I still enjoyed the Conan adventures, just not as much as his other stories). It seemed like Conan was just a cypher; a wandering mercenary with no emotional ties or long-term responsibilities that Howard could just drop into any setting and any storyline as needed, and the setting itself was the real star. I found Kull and, especially, Bran Mak Morn to be far superior. But that's just me. What a lot of folks don't seem to remember about REH was that he could be very funny. He wrote many Western and adventure tales with a decidedly humorous bent to them. His Steve Costigan stories, about a very tough and well-intentioned, though not very bright sailor (kind of like a less outlandish Popeye) are just absolutely entertaining from start to finish and make me grin whenever I read them. REH also did a fair number of historical horror stories that still stand out some seventy years later. He did stories based on the Crusades, and even a few based on prehistoric Earth where emerging man fought against eldritch monstrosities for the survival of the species. As REH was a fan of boxing and even participated locally in the sport himself there are also plenty of boxing tales (many of which have been collected into the "Boxing Stories" book), You can get most of REH's stories in book collections on Amazon. Just type in his name and see how many listings you end up with. You won't be disappointed with any of them. Doc
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Post by Morandir on Sept 12, 2009 18:23:23 GMT -6
My greatest fear? I am absolutely certain that uneducated simpletons in droves are going to say this movie (and Kane's look) are nothing but a "ripoff of Van Helsing." Absolutely. Unfortunately, IMO, this movie does look like a ripoff of Van Helsing. People are just going to see this as another installment of "goth wannabe fights supernatural nasties," and will file it away in the same mental slot as VH, Blade, those insipid Underworld movies, and the like. And having "from REH, creator of Conan" in the credits doesn't help, because people will see "Conan" and think of Ah-nuld. The big problem here, for me, is that these movies are creating in the popular mind an image of REH and his work that is so far from reality as to be truly appalling. Mention Conan to people and all you hear is "de lamentation of de women!" And no one knows of Kull except as that movie with the guy from Hercules. It gives the image that Howard was just a hack writer. How many people are going to be turned off to REH because their first contact with his work was through these films? I know I resisted reading anything of Conan for years because of the film. I'm a bit cranky about these things, but it just seems to me that Howard's stories deserve better treatment than what they'll get at the hands of the "pander to the lowest denominator" Hollywood machine. You don't need fancy CGI effects and big glowing demons to "jazz up" the stories. Let them stand on their own merit. Mor
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Post by machfront on Sept 13, 2009 6:06:54 GMT -6
I'm really looking forward to it. It actually looks really cool. Plus, since I'm a huge movie geek, I don't suffer under the sad delusion that films inspired by novels/stories should be or can be exactly the same. Cinema, as an art form, is a totally different language.
It makes me think of someone who'd say something like: "Hey, that painting based on that sculpture isn't exactly like the sculpture." Well...no s***. It's a painting. Not a sculpture.
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Post by James Maliszewski on Sept 13, 2009 7:08:15 GMT -6
It makes me think of someone who'd say something like: "Hey, that painting based on that sculpture isn't exactly like the sculpture." Well...no s***. It's a painting. Not a sculpture. And fair enough, except that this movie isn't even "based on a sculpture," so to speak; except for the name of the main character, this is wholly an original film. That may be good or bad, depending on how well it's done, but the connection to Howard, which I think is what's important to a lot of us, is pretty minimal -- likely less than even Milius's Conan the Barbarian, which was rather un-Howardian as it is.
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Post by Finarvyn on Sept 13, 2009 9:07:06 GMT -6
This comes back to a fundamental question: is "bad" X better or worse than no X. (In this case X could be movies, sequel novels written by other authors, or whatever.) In other words, maybe you don't like the Conan movies. Is it better to have no Conan movies at all? I think in general I'd rather have the movie, but if I don't like it I don't have to watch it more than once. I hear this same argument with the Brian Herbert Dune books, the John Betancourt Amber books, the scifi channel Dune miniseries, and so on. The problem is that each reader of a book takes away his or her own vision of what the words look like, and when a director puts his version onto the screen it might not match your version or my version. Hopefully it somewhat resembles the original material somewhat, but sometimes directors try to "fix" things to fit their own perspective of what it should have been. My wife hates movies done from books. She says that when she reads she gets a vivid image in her mind, and the movie never quite matches that image. I'm sure that's true to a certain degree for all of us. Sure, I'd like for the Solomon Kane movie to exactly fit my own concept of what SK should look like, should act like. However, the comic books so far haven't really caught the essence of the way I envision SK and I can imagine that the movie won't exactly match it, either. I did like what I saw in the trailer, however. I'm excited to see this movie when it comes out!
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Post by greentongue on Sept 13, 2009 9:24:31 GMT -6
Secondly, that's the point I'm making. In the stories, Kane doesn't have a reason to fight evil. He does it just because it needs doing, and he doesn't think too much about it other than that. That's partially why I like giving him a reason. It gets me even more invested in the character than I was before, and if the reason they give him fits seamlessly (which it seems it will) with the few hints REH dropped, I'll be happy to accept it as "official" when I run my Solomon Kane RPG sessions Sorry to tangent here but, why is "Because it needs doing" not a good enough reason to do something? Being a Pulp fan I often encounter the sentiment that characters need a reason to oppose EVIL. Because it is EVIL does not seem to be good enough and someone else should do it, my character would not profit from it is used as an excuse not to. I think that Solomon Kane is a good example of someone who Takes Action when action needs to be done. The Cost is not counted at the time. It Needs To Be Done is enough. =
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Post by thegreyelf on Sept 14, 2009 5:44:42 GMT -6
Yes, greentongue, and in a pulp story from the 1930's on paper that works brilliantly. In a film for a modern audience, not so much. People need a reason to empathize with a character. Making him as 2-dimensional as Kane (and indeed most pulp heroes of that era) flat-out doesn't work for most people.
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Post by coffee on Sept 14, 2009 12:09:20 GMT -6
I have no problem with making a character 3-dimensional by adding to them. That's fine, that works. But if they make the character 3-dimensional by changing him, that doesn't work for me.
Case in point: I loved the film adaptation of George of the Jungle, starring Brendan Fraser. They caught the tone, the playfulness, the mood -- it was great. So when Brendan Fraser also starred in Dudley Dooright, I was right there.
What a piece of crap!
They changed him. Sure, he was the same loveable doofus in the beginning, but halfway through, he started to think. Dudley Dooright is not cut out for thinking, and we know it. As a result the movie tanked. (I saw it on cable -- I never even knew it was in theatres, that's how fast it tanked).
The point I'm making is this: Sure, they can give Solomon Kane an origin. But make sure it's compatible with the character we've already come to know. You don't have to change things to make them "more popular" when you're working with a popular character already.
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Post by thegreyelf on Sept 14, 2009 12:32:37 GMT -6
On that we agree...but based on what I've read so far, the origin in this is compatible with the few hints REH dropped about Kane's past in the stories.
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Post by blissinfinite on Sept 16, 2009 9:32:46 GMT -6
I totally agree with this. I accept that the film may/will have to change the story from a novel or whatever a bit to make it work on screen. And in one sense, the film actually has to stand on it's own. The problem is if they change it too much to mainstream it or Hollywoodize it. If they take the essence away. I just recently watched the original Conan movie. I feel it's a great film in it's own right. Is it pure Howard? No. But I feel it has a positive Howard influence. Beyond that it's influenced quite a bit by Frazetta and the Buscema Marvel Comics version of Conan with good and bad results. Each interpretation of a character changes it slightly from what the original author envisioned. And, as we all read these stories, we all have different pictures in our mind. That's why the stories are so great and personal and all other interpretation will fall short in some way. I enjoyed the trailer and am looking forward to the film. Do I need an origin story? Probably not. They could have hinted and an origin over the course of a film or two and made it more of a mystery, but then that would have been ballsy and we all know what Hollywood is lacking. Oh, btw, the second Conan move (whose name I shall not utter) was a disgrace and insult!
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Post by thegreyelf on Sept 16, 2009 10:37:36 GMT -6
What I always say about the Conan movies is that they're great Hyborian Age films. They just happen to be about a different Conan.
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Post by redpriest on May 15, 2010 18:14:21 GMT -6
I can't really get a handle on this film. Considering it's been ready since at least April '09, it never achieved an actual release. It's been touring film festivals for the past year, and its going to be released in August in the U.S. ... on DVD. That' leads me to believe that the film has SUCK written all over it, yet there are far more positive reviews (from those lucky enough to attend film festivals I suppose) than negative. It even rates 82% fresh on rottentomaotes. So, what gives? Thoughts?
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