Wednesday, December 11, 2013

All You Need Is Better Dialog

We're working on a mockbuster of the Tom Cruise sci-fi movie Edge of Tomorrow. So I figured I'd read the book it's based on.
I'll go ahead and call it.
All You Need Is Kill is a touchstone of military sci-fi.
Does that mean it's well - written? No. Not at all. I suppose it could just be the translation, but all the dialog (even the title), the metaphors, etc., is/are just... terrible. I mean embarrassingly bad.  On-the-nose bad.
And seriously, the red woman? She only needs one nickname. And "Full Metal Bitch" isn't it. The "Red Valkyrie" would have been more than fine. "Full Metal Bitch" is just... stupid. The title of the book is just... stupid.
But the story is pretty cool.

I like to believe it's the translation. But it could be that's where Japanese novels are at.
Fun fact with our mockbuster -- we already blew our wad with a Groundhog Day story with our Prometheus Trap. So this time we're going in a very different direction. We're pulling out the time travel elements altogether. Wish me luck on that one.

5 comments:

Kangas said...

Is the title of the book All You Need Is Kill? Cuz I like that a lot.(and think they should have left that as the title of the movie--Edge of Tomorrow sounds like some super vague movie of the week). Haven't read it though.

Andrew Bellware said...

The title of the movie is super vague. But I don't like "All You Need Is Kill". It doesn't even really make sense. "The Forever War" would have been better but, you know, it was already taken. ;)

Joe Falcon said...

Japanese titles always seem to translate poorly, sounds better in Japanese basically.

"Seek and Destroy" would of worked as well and you could of licensed a Metallica song to boot.

Ah the Forever War, that would if you kept the subtext be a rather poignant movie. The shadow of the Vietnam war, when war lost it's glamour and romance.

Andrew Bellware said...

Not that "Edge of Tomorrow" is that much better. ;-)

Joe Falcon said...

Ack,some text was missing. I mean that "Forever War" the novel would make a great movie if the subtext was kept, but I don't see a Major Studio doing that.