Ridley Scott is currently in line to direct the adaptation to the futuristic war novel “The Forever War.” Fox 2000 has just acquired the rights to Joe Haldeman’s 1974 novel. The science fiction and futuristic setting would be familiar ground for Scott, due to his success with “Blade Runner” and “Alien.”
Scott’s most recent movie, “Body of Lies,” the Leonardo Dicaprio and Russell Crowe terrorism thriller bombed at the box office last weekend and his next project “Nottingham”, sounds like it could go either way. So it could be nice for Scott to begin working in a genre he feels at home in. Fortunately for Scott, he has finally gotten to opportunity to direct the film after years of trying, “I first pursued ‘Forever War’ 25 years ago, and the book has only gotten more timely and relevant since. It is a science fiction epic, a bit of ‘The Odyssey’ by way of ‘Blade Runner,’ built upon a brilliant, disorienting premise.”
“Forever War” follows an extremely intelligent university student in a futuristic earth as he is recruited to battle a far-off alien species. He returns a few months later to find out the time dilation due to the extreme speeds at which their spacecraft travels has caused a quarter century to pass on earth. The soldiers struggle to assimilate back into a society which has since instated homosexuality to deal with overpopulation. Unable to deal with the gay-centric society the (homophobic?) protagonist continues to go on countless more outerspace tours, only to become more and more disconnected from the world around him.
We wonder if they’ll drop or play up the homosexual/homophobia angle? It’s definitely an interesting twist to sci-fi. Scott is on a sci-fi kick of late, he’s also developing, Aldous’s “Brave New World,” with Leonardo DiCaprio. Maybe he’s finally realizing the sci-fi genre is what his audience really love him for? It hasn’t been his bread and butter in a long time, but we’ll see how it pans out.
In the US they could call it Nightmare Scenario and then all the fundamentalists could go and watch it. Or ‘When Homos Rule The World’. I wonder why he can’t deal with the gay centric society?
I reckon the opening shot will show a man showering in the lockerroom. He looks around and sees that all the other men are watching his arse. He runs out wet and naked to escape.
You should pitch the idea to Ridley Scott.
I guess in the seventies, the attitude towards homosexuality was still one of intolerance, but changing because of the Stone Wall riots (I wouldn’t know as the book came out the following year after my birth). Having done a little research, I came up with the following:
In 1952, the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) as a sociopathic personality disturbance. In 1956, however, Evelyn Hooker performed a study that compared the happiness and well-adjusted nature of self-identified homosexual men with heterosexual men and found no difference. Her study stunned the medical community and made her a hero to many gay men and lesbians, but homosexuality remained in the DSM until 1973.
Without reading the Forever War, I couldn’t tell you the exact premise or whether the author was anti or tolerant of homosexaulity, but it does seem that Joe Haldeman was anti-war and making observations that were parallel to the America/Viet War in the book. Perhaps he was also reflecting society’s changing attitudes towards the GLBT community?
If anyone has read the book, please add your thoughts below.