I have three loves: cats, coffee and Michael Crichton. Unfortunately, I have yet to see any of them transfer well into the world of cinema. Movies about cats are creepy (I’m a firm believer that films with CGI-enhanced domestic animals should be left on the cutting room floor with Mel Gibson cameos and more Madea movies) and a rom-com adventure flick about the lives of Starbucks baristas has yet to make it to the silver screen. The most disappointing of all, however, is the fact that the film adaptations of the brilliant works of Michael Crichton have been less than deserving of my adoration.
Fans of boy wizards or those who walked out of “The Da Vinci Code” in disappointed tears could testify that movies just aren’t as good as their book counterparts. But from killer gorillas to ethical corruption in the study of genetics, Crichton touched on nearly every subject in the Nerd’s Guide to Perpetual Bliss. With intelligent, fast-paced sci-fi novels that practically beg to be cinema-sized, why hasn’t a decent Michael Crichton flick surfaced?
A major hindrance in the Crichton quest to cinematic excellence could be the subject matter itself. Science fiction is tricky. It’s often misconstrued as nerds babbling about things “normal” people wouldn’t care about, so the genre can be polarizing. Done correctly, it can be a major success (right, George Lucas?). In the case of Crichton’s “Congo,” “Timeline” and “Sphere,” however, the sci-fi elements came off as cringe-worthy and embarrassing.
The appeal of “Congo,” a jungle adventure with treasures, ancient lost cities and murderous apes, was completely dwarfed by the way director Frank Marshall had the animals portrayed: by actors jumping around and pounding their chests in gorilla costumes, or by puppets.
“Timeline” coupled sci-fi with another popularly mocked genre: fantasy. The mash-up made it goofier than most Crichton novels, and the plot - which tackles time-travel, quantum physics and medieval life – had the 2003 film dead on arrival. From clunky visual effects to awkward medieval garb that looked like the costumers had raided a sixth-grade production of the “Sword and the Stone,” the film was a commercial flop and a stab in the heart to Crichton fans.
The thrills in “Sphere” are largely psychological and mind games are hard to portray to movie audiences. Sci-fi feeds off of the abnormal – which a potentially mind-controlling giant squid certainly is – but the lack of action left the 1998 film boring.
I’d be Twitter-stalking him like crazy if he were alive today, but Michael Crichton did admittedly have a penchant for writing weak female characters. While the women are scarcely portrayed as flimsy, overly emotional embodiments of female stereotypes, they just don’t get as much attention as their smart, capable male peers. This gender inequality could be easy to get over when you’re reading a book, but Crichton’s substandard female characters come across as even more inferior to their male counterparts in the film adaptations. Laura Linney’s Dr. Karen Ross may have been an essential team member in “Congo,” but she is easily overshadowed by scenes of Dylan Walsh’s Peter Elliott interacting with Amy the sign-language speaking gorilla, who is the true female lead.
Crichton knew his stuff: he graduated from Harvard (University and then Medical School) and did a medical fellowship at the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies. So honestly, his chapters filled with paragraphs of hefty scientific hypotheses would be any film adaptation screenwriter’s worst nightmare. Even established sex symbol Sharon Stone couldn’t make lengthy conversations about metaphysics universally appealing in “Sphere.” That’s where Crichton films have gone wrong: they’ve tried to dumb down the whip-smart scientific material in the hopes of an explosive action-adventure or they’ve kept the intimidating nerd-speak and hoped that enough of Crichton’s book fans would support the film.
Alas, there is a dinosaur-sized contradiction to my claim. “Jurassic Park,” the 1993 classic about the consequences of reviving dinosaurs via DNA from ancient mosquitoes and then placing said dinosaurs in a “controlled” theme park, had a couple things going for it that other Crichton adaptations did not. One, the film stands as the only adaptation where Crichton helped pen the screenplay. The result is a healthy balance between showcasing intelligence (Jeff Goldblum’s preachy mathematician/chaos theorist is a central character) and smidgens of unexpected humor (Samuel L. Jackson’s bit part as a techie at InGen). Secondly, the movie
flourished under the control of Steven Spielberg, the biggest name by far to helm a Crichton adaptation. Spielberg’s directing expertise resulted in famous scenes of cups of water trembling with Tyrannosaurus-sized bass thumps of doom and a showdown finale that made kids everywhere scared to venture into hotel resort kitchens.
“Jurassic Park” not only proved that dinosaurs are still completely badass post-extinction, but that it’s completely possible to make a successful movie out of a Michael Crichton novel. It just takes more effort than adapting a formulaic Nicholas Sparks romance. The directors and screenwriters have to be willing to consider the polarizing effects of the sci-fi genre, the sometimes lackluster character development and overwhelming underlying scientific data. And absolutely no more gorilla suits are allowed. --
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