Smashbomb

Search

Search results

All (2602)

Content

WildLife - America: Your own wildlife park

Games and Entertainment

(0 Ratings) Rate It

App

Look after wild animals and nurse them back to health: in WildLife - America you can care for...

David McK (3557 KP) rated Congo in Books

Jan 28, 2019

Congo

Michael Crichton | 1980 | Fiction & Poetry

7.1

(12 Ratings)

Book Rating

Yet another of [author:Michael Crichton|5194]'s science-thriller turned-into-a-movie novel, in which the movie bears only the slightest resemblance to the source material.

While the basic outline of the plot is the same in both - discovery of the lost city of Zinj in the Congo, expedition to said city that includes a Gorilla taught American Sign Langauge - the particulars of both are different, with the movie (form what I remember - it's been a decade or so since I last saw it) making far more of the exploration of Zinj and the fact that it is guarded by a new breed of vicious gorillas specially bred for the purpose by the original inhabitants than the novel does.

The characters in the novel are also less sympathetic than those in the movie - it's hard to take Tim Curry seriously as a hardened mercenary - while it has, also, aged somewhat due to the reliance on (then) state of the art electronics explained therein - a computer has a whole 256k of memory! Wow!!

Kudos

David McK (3557 KP) rated X-Men: Days of Future Past in Books

Jan 30, 2019

The inspiration behind the X-Men film of the same name, in which a member of the team (or rather, therir consciousness) is sent back in time from the dystiopian future of 2013(!) to the early 198os to stop the assissination of a US Senator: an assiassination that directly leads to fear and mistrust of mutant-kind, and the creation of the robotic Sentinels who police their society.

What is interesting is just how much of this is similar to the events of the movie - often times, the movie bears the barest resemblance to the source material - even if the particulars are different.

For instance, in the movie it's Wolverine who is sent back in time; here it's Kitty Pryde (is she even in any of the movies?). Magneto plays a much larger role in the movie than here; where he's in the future but not so much in the past. Finally, Mystique's role is much enlarged in the movie - perhaps as a direct result of Jennifer Lawrence's star power?

But in either case, the main beats are the same.