Wow, lots and lots to talk about. I love it when a conversation kicks into high gear like this, though it can be hard to address every interesting point adequately. I'll give it a go...
I really enjoyed The Matrix, and continue to enjoy it on rewatches. The story is simplistic and full of holes, but, like wirthling hinted, there is more to a film than story. The Matrix is pure entertainment - concentrated and distilled. Sure, many of its ideas are blatantly stupid, and most of its good ones are borrowed from other sources, but the finished product is wonderfully entertaining. I love a good story as much as anyone, but I think a movie can be great without a great story.
Then there's Johnny Mnemonic, which is, sadly, a humongous pile of arse, but that is another story...
I don't read enough hard SF (though I always enjoy Jack L. Chalker and Larry Niven when I get the chance - Niven's co-written Dream Park trilogy is one of the best series of any genre I have ever read, as is Chalker's Rings of the Masters) but then, I hardly read at all any more. Good heavy SF is still around, though. One guy you might want to pick up is Greg Egan, an Australian writer who made an international name for himself about a decade ago, and went on to win a truckload of genre awards. Michael Crichton writes an enjoyable SF romp, too, though he sometimes gets a bit engrossed in his science and forgets such trivialities as "characters" and "plot".
Yecchh... I read the first few chapters of KJA's Star Wars novel Darksaber and it read like a fucking Golden Book. Utterly idiotic. He couldn't let a mention of a movie character go past without throwing in a handful of trademarked words (no TM symbols in the actual text, but I bet they were tempted). You read shit like, "Luke Skywalker, the young, blonde Jedi Knight, stepped from the back of the bantha, followed by Han Solo, his rugged but charming roguish friend..." Revolting prose - had it not been a library book, I would have thrown it away.
There are a few different "clubs" in the Book Was Better party. There are those who think that a movie version of their favourite book somehow pollutes it. These guys are completely irrational - do not argue with them! Then there are those who don't hate the idea of a movie, but want it to be exactly as they see it in their heads. When the pictures on the screen clash with their knowledge of the book, they get angry. I fit into the third group - change it if you need to, change it if it makes it better, but for God's sake, don't change it because you felt like it, and never change it to the detriment of the whole.
I enjoyed the first Harry Potter movie. I felt it could have been done better, but it was still a top-class effort from a director who really seemed to want to do the right thing (and didn't want to get crucified). Changes were made, things were omitted, and I understand that. The same will happen with The Fellowship of the Ring - characters wil be merged or entirely deleted, plotlines will simplify or vanish, dialogue will be made more concise. However, I know Peter Jackson is a man of deep integrity and a great fan of Tolkien's works, so I trust him to do the best job possible.
Compare this to Jurassic Park. I adored the book, and apparently scriptwriter David Koepp liked it too, which is why he decided to keep three scenes from it and write the rest from scratch. Most of his changes did not improve the film, and many of them made it much worse. JP1 was a bad film, but its best moments were, predictably, those parts retained from the novel. Apparently it wasn't so bad as source material after all, though - both sequels have taken liberally from the first novel. tLW:JP had more of the first book in it than the second.
*reads over preview*
Fuck, this is a bit long. I'll end it now.
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