Timeline-Fastpaced, Entertaining, and Faithful

[Torgo]

Michael Crichton became one of my favorite authors when I read a marvelous book called Sphere. I saw the movie before I read it and it left me emptier than it should have. But the book was fantastic. After Sphere, I picked up his latest book (at the time) which was called Timeline. First 200 pages were surprisingly slow. Surprising because all the reviews on the book called it fastpaced, it left me thinking "What were they reading?" But halfway through the book things started picking up and damn! Once we started we didn't stop! This book left me breathless!

Going into the movie, I knew it wasn't going to compare to the book. Nothing could have. But I still really wanted to see it, just to see Donner's version of the book. I was right, it didn't compare, but it's still very good. Mostly because of it's faithfullness.

Something I've noticed in Crichton adabtations, it's either extremly faithful or extremely unfaithful. Let's take a look at the faithful ones for comparasson, most notably Terminal Man, Sphere, and Jurassic Park. Terminal Man is probably the most faithful movie a book could ask for, but it's slowness really made it awkward. Sphere was faithful, but it cut to many corners. It ended up cuting major plot points. Now, finally what is probably the most comparable to Timeline, Jurassic Park. JP cut stuff out but mostly action. The basic story was the same with a nice pace. Now the pace is where Timeline differs a bit. Timeline's pace is very fast, especially in the opening 30 minutes. It cuts corners in the expaination of the technical mumbo jumbo. It goes by so fast it would be hard for the audience to understand it without reading the book first. I recomend you do just that before actually seeing the movie.

The cast is pretty good. Paul Walker is surprisingly deacent as Chris. I can see why Donner chose him. Gerard Butler is excelent as Merik. He the most impressive of the bunch. I loved David Thewlis' interpretaion of Doniger. Crichton established him as an evil business man early on in the book, but we slowly find out in the movie. Billy Connolly is average as the Professor. Nothing special there. Perhaps the biggest cast complaint is Frances O'Connor as Kate. She's not terrible but she looks completely lost half the time.

Timeline is basicly a compressed version of the book. Those who will get the most out of it are those who already read the book and loved it. That's my catagory, so I liked it.

[Torgo]

Forrest said:

The Lost World (the sequel to jurassic Park) was a very good book. Though it dragged on a lot, the book' action sequences and storyline were very good. But the movie! My God, it sucked. THe little girl kicking the raptor with the gymnastics stunt...come on! And the San Diego scene...oh boy, that really sucked. Speilberg ruined the series right there. Could it get any worse?

I didn't like the Lost World novel. I don't remember why, I read it a long time ago.

I remeber thinking the movie was much better than the book though. The movie was very dark and dirty. While I agree on the gymnastics thing, I pretty much liked everything else about the movie. The San Diago scenes were there because people wrote to Speilberg and said that they wanted the Dinosaurs on the mainland. He was just giving people what they wanted. So blame yourselves if you didn't like it. Speilberg just caved in.

[Torgo]

Forrest said:

On my Lost World DVD, Speilberg said he made up the San Diego scene last minute, only because he wanted to try something different.

But that doesn't eleminate that people may have wanted him to put it in in the first place. Last minute cave in, maybe.

I don't have the DVD, I got my info from interviews.

[Afgncaap5]

One thing I noticed about the third one that I *did* like, just to play Devil's Advocate for a bit....I think that they used a scene from the first book in the third movie. That scene in the bird cage with the....pteranadons?

[Torgo]

Afgncaap5 said:

One thing I noticed about the third one that I *did* like, just to play Devil's Advocate for a bit....I think that they used a scene from the first book in the third movie. That scene in the bird cage with the....pteranadons?

That's what the third basicly was. An excuse to put scenes from the original book on film. They put in the "bird cage" and something resembling the boat ride.

They just filled it up with B-Movie material with high production values.

[Afgncaap5]

I can see that. I never read all the way through the first book, but I did glance over it and saw the chapter about the bird cage. Then about five years later, they make movie #5 and I recognized that scene. I'll have to read that first book sometime.

[Torgo]

Afgncaap5 said:

I can see that. I never read all the way through the first book, but I did glance over it and saw the chapter about the bird cage. Then about five years later, they make movie #5 and I recognized that scene. I'll have to read that first book sometime.

I haven't read JP for a long time. I should read it again.

But right now I'm reading Timeline again, sort of a post movie comparison.

Crichton's a good writer. I recomend checking out a few of his books. Notably Sphere and Timeline.

Although I will say that his latest book, Prey, left a little to be desired.

[Torgo]

Prey was an interesting concept, but I don't feel it went where it should have. I could see the ending coming a mile away.