Books They Can Film Now

We just came back from watching Avatar. It's important to say first of all that the film has lots of flaws. The story is utterly predictable (it's Dances with Wolves in space); the script has sheer metric shit-tons of clumsy exposition ("See this, Sigourney Weaver? It's called Unobtanium and it's the reason we're here! It's worth lots of money! And the aliens are sitting on it! You should know this already so I've no idea why I'm telling you... it's almost as if there's an entire audience of people watching us who need the information and I'm compelled by some invisible deity to tell you so that they can overhear!"); the entire premise is based around the hoary and naff old trope that indigenous peoples are helpless and passive and at the whim of white people whether heroes or villains.

Yet there's no doubt it was a wonderful spectacle and a thrilling experience, and probably What Cinema Is For at the end of the day: madcap escapism and wonder. I found myself profoundly moved it, actually. The effort and skill put into its creation just has to be admired.

Anyway, a few weeks ago a friend emailed me about it and tabled an interesting proposition - namely, that if nothing else Avatar has demonstrated quite clearly that filmmakers can now make anything they want. There are no constraints anymore - technology has improved to the extent that the only limit left is imagination (setting aside acting and writing, of course). He then asked what fantasy or sci-fi books I would want to see made into films, given that they patently could be, and put forward a two-part adaptation of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun as the one he'd most like to see.

Here are mine.

• The Scar by China Mieville. I have my doubts about China. He's a little like the Quentin Tarantino of the literary world: he has all the talent, imagination and technique that a writer could want, and he can craft fantastic scenes, but there's something missing, some necessary ability to put together a really compelling story. The Scar is his one book that comes closest to being a genuinely good story as well as a great spectacle, like Jackie Brown is Quentin Tarantino's one movie that works beyond just being cool, and it's the one I'd most like to see made into a film. (Though I have no doubt the bathetic ending would have to be Hollywood-ised somehow.)
• The Night's Dawn trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton. There are parts of it that are totally ludicrous, and the main character is Ralph 124C 41+ with the serial numbers filed off - there's nothing he can't do, from seducing a mother and a daughter in the same day to pulling off impossible manouvers in his ship three times before breakfast. But it's a great read and an interesting idea and every single scene is something that would look absolutely amazing on the big screen.
• The Silmarillion, of course. I don't think this ever would be made into a film, because there just isn't a way to make it work on the big screen for non-Tolkien fans. It would be like trying to film the Bible. But that wouldn't stop me wanting to see it if somebody decided to make it.
• The Chrionicles of Amber, in all five parts. This was probably the most unfilmable of books once upon a time - before the CGI available today, how could anybody have possibly filmed Rebma, or the fight on the staircase to Kolvir, for instance? But now it's possible. Aside from that I think the films would almost write themselves; Zelazny was one of the most consistently entertaining writers of the last 100 years. The only question would be who would play Corwin. For some reason I think Clive Owen would be a good fit.
  

I'm also tempted to include The Lord of the Rings but without Orlando Bloom, and The Magician's Nephew, the one Chronicle of Narnia I just can't foresee being made into a film but the one with the most interesting ideas.