The most dispiriting half-sentence I’ve read in a loooong time….

Updated on October 26, 2009 By Ken Begg 15 Comments

“Orci & Kurtzman Producing Doc Savage; Shane Black to write the screenplay.”

E-gad!

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  • Gristle McThornbody

    “Orci & Kurtzman Producing Doc Savage; Shane Black to write the screenplay.”

    …Michael Bay to direct.

  • JoshG

    I thought Sam Raimi was supposed to be involved with the production.

  • I said dispiriting; not suicide-inducing.

  • Ericb

    Michael Bay’s next project will be a remake of All Quiet on the Western Front.

  • I want to see the Michael Bay remake of Whose Life is it Anyway?

  • Reed

    I can’t access IMDB at work. Yes, I can access Jabootu but they block IMDB. Go figure. In any case, what has Shane Black previously written to make his involvement dispiritting? I don’t recognize the name.

    Honestly, I have read a lot of Doc Savage (nowhere near all of them, but a lot of them), and it seems like it’s really cornball stuff to pass off for modern audiences without major re-writing. They need someone who can make a Raiders of the Lost Ark thing happen, but I think it’s much more likely that they’ll end up with something like The Shadow. If we’re lucky.

  • Black was the go-to guy for ’80s action, but even his better stuff (Lethal Weapon, Monster Squad) has always left me cold. Meanwhile, his lessor stuff–Last Boy Scout, Long Kiss Goodnight–I find actively repugnant and vilely vulgar. Black is basically, as a screenwriter, a combination of Michael Bay and Joe Eszterhas. Not exactly bringing the incredibly light, Raiders or Rocketeer-esque touch that a great Doc Savage movie would require.

  • …it seems like it’s really cornball stuff to pass off for modern audiences without major re-writing.

    Which is how we ended up with “The Spirit” unfortunately.

    I can see how we’d want to avoid “Shadow” syndrome, but I blame that mostly on that film’s wildly untalented director.

    (Sorry if this is a double post)

  • There’s a lot of really good stuff in The Shadow (the fight on the bridge is dynamite; the explication behind “Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men” is nifty, etc.), but the wildly inconsistent tone kills the movie. The apparent impulse to add camp to these sorts of films kills them; the horrifying George Pal Doc Savage, The Shadow, even the Schumacher Batmans. Meanwhile, films that play them fairly straight have consistently been pretty good: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Phantom, The Rocketeer.

    I’m not saying these films don’t have humor, mind you. All of the above films have that. I’m talking about camp, the winking “Hey, we know this stuff sucks too” sort of thing.

    I know a lot of people liked Flash Gordon, which was camp, but it wasn’t my bag. Same with Barbarella, Danger: Diabolik, etc. The old Batman TV show was good, though.

  • You know, the circles I roll in are filled with Doc Savage fans, and I find it inexplicable. The works I’ve read are bombastically bad, and in every case i was hoping the unlikable Savage and his too-perfect homies to take a fall.

    If an obscure pulp icon needs to be brought to life why can’t it ber someone cool like Solomon Kane or John Carter?

  • Actually, both Kane and Carter appear to be headed for the big screen. Carter has a significantly bigger upside, in that his movie is due to be Pixar’s first live action film, and they’ve made nary a misstep yet.

    As for Kane, I can’t see how he doesn’t get totally screwed up in the process of being Hollywoodized. The guy’s a fervent Puritan Christian, and as thus not the most tolerant fellow. I can’t imagine this element, which is his primary character trait, won’t get completely obliterated in the translation. I see more of a Van Helsing thing happening there.

  • jason hyde

    The Soloman Kane trailer doesn’t look terrible, but also not really what I want a Kane movie to look like, and I don’t think they’ve really gotten the character right:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lalm_kkczVM

    It’s got Max von Sydow and Alice Krige in it, though, and they’re the sorts that should be in a Solomon Kane film.

    The pulp hero that really needs to be a movie is The Spider.