Paul Greengrass (of United 93, but not of Watchmen) has, in my opinion quite wisely, turned down a chance to direct the remake of Fantastic Voyage.
Fred Pohl talked about the movie in his Science Fiction: Studies in Film, way back when, and I was surprised to find it had been changed drastically from its original concept. Jerome Bixby (of Star Trek and Twilight Zone) and Richard Matheson* wrote the original script, which was more in the vein of a Jules Verne / "steampunk" adventure — "bronze laboratories, crystal instrumentation, that kind of thing", as Bixby put it. Then it was rewritten by Harry Kleiner, who took out all the fun stuff and put in Donald Pleasance — made it into "cops and robbers inside the human body".
The movie's interesting mostly for its effects work, which cost a ton of money and is fascinating today because it was all done in front of the camera, with the cast hanging from wires and with lighting and creative use of materials on the set instead of matte photography. It also featured an ending so dumb that Isaac Asimov's then-eleven-year-old daughter saw right through and out the other side.
The one innovation they plan to bring to the remake is to make it happen inside the body of an alien, or so it has been said. I think it would be best improved by making it happen inside the head of Ben Stein, so they could laser away the blood clot that turned him into a supporter of Intelligent Design.
Even stranger, by my book, is Robert Rodriguez picking up the rights to a live-action version of Ralph Bakshi's Fire and Ice. The original is mostly interesting for the sake of nostalgia value: Frazetta's design work looks better on the poster for the film than it does onscreen (it seems to consist mostly of putting people in as little to wear as possible), and the story's only intriguing if you're fourteen and still have Iron Maiden patches on your denim jacket. No offense to Iron Maiden fans.
* You know you've arrived when you don't even need to have credits attached to your name. I'd have to think I have to tell anyone reading this Matheson was the dude what wrote I Am Legend (the original story, you doof, not the lame movie), but hey, I guess it happens.
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Heh heh...I remember loving FANTASTIC VOYAGE as a kid--all flaws in the film be damned. Probably also ignited my interest in biology and science in general.
Didn't know that Matheson had a hand in the original script...but somehow I'm not surprised. The man has done a ton of work in regards to screenwriting for both movies and TV, and I'm sure that he's gone uncredited on a few projects.
Asimov wrote the novel based on the film, which led some to believe that the film was based on the novel! Years later, he would write the novel FANTASTIC VOYAGE II which was better on the science. There have been plans to re-make the film for years, with names like Jim Cameron and Roland Emmerich attached to it. Perhaps it could work--with the field of nanotechnology growing, it might be more relevant today. But that's just me.
As a fan of Iron Maiden, no offense taken. 8-)
I did remember seeing the trailers for FIRE AND ICE as a kid (before I knew who Frazetta was) and being intrigued by it. Seeing the film years later, I was...disappointed. I respect Bakshi to the nines, as well as Frazetta, but the animation itself was lacking and the story too generic. Bakshi himself stated that he was burned out during the making of the film; he was tired of animation in general.
If a live-action version is done, and done well, who knows? It could work, and it would be a fitting memorial to Frazetta.
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Matheson was, for a long time, one of the main go-to guys in Hollywood for dialogue polishes and rewrites for movies like this. He didn't want to even touch the script he was given; all it needed was some touching up here and there. In his mind, it should have been shot as-is. But they turned it into "a comic strip" (his words), and both he and Bixby were rightfully dismayed with what came out the other end of Hollywood's alimentary canal. If I'm soured on the idea of a remake amounting to much, it's only because so far such projects seem constitutionally incapable of amounting to much anyway. (I have a longer post about this in the works for later this week.)
What I've wanted to see for a long time is Frazetta's design work married to someone with serious filmmaking chops -- someone who could put us in the worlds Frazetta showed us, and make us feel like they were places inhabited by real people, not just sets that might wobble and fall over if we sneezed on them the wrong way. I also don't blame Bakshi for burning out, although I'm certain something like "Fire and Ice" wouldn't even get a theatrical release today; it'd be a direct-to-video item, and with a correspondingly slimmer budget.
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Good point on FV and remakes in general. I do understand the opposition to remakes in general (and the fact that most projects do turn out to be absolute s@%!) I do hold out hope though, optomist that I am, that a remake can hold up to the high standards of those remakes that have been better than the original films--Kaufman's remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS or Carpenter's remake of THE THING or DeMille's remake of his own THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, f'r instance. Or even the recent remake/reimagining of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.
But you are still on the ball when calling for Hollywood to put out more original films, not just re-making a film from years ago. Or how about doing a solid adaptation of a book? I once heard from someone--I don't remember who--that stated that there were thousands of films waiting to be made in the local library (and in all genres). But that's a tough task in and of itself.
You know, it could be much easier to create the type of worlds that Frazetta depicted in his works in live action, especially with the advances in film technologies (CG, for instance, if used right). But as you said, it would take someone with some serious filmmaking chops who also respects Frazetta's works (maybe del Toro?).
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