If Lawhead made a movie. . .

[myrddinemrys]

i voted for the pendragon cycle. I think it would be great as a series, or even as a few feature length films. SoA would also be wonderful. Peter Jackson should direct them

[Joshua]

The King Raven Trilogy.

[Jherprincess]

NO! Peter Jackson can't make them because I'm going to! ;D IN fact, I think I shall make ALL of SRL's books into movies. In my spare time of course.

[myrddinemrys]

Go for it!

[strider]

I wanted to vote for both the Pendragon Cycle and Song of Albion... I settled for PC. Why? Nostalgia for one - Taliesin was my first SRL way back in the early 90s and I read and re-read Taliesin - Merlin - Arthur more times than you could imagine. I've since devoured most of his post-Arthur books, love them all, and would dearly love to see SoA made into a film... BUT!!!

In addition to nostalgia, there's the NEED factor. We NEED to see Arthur on screen as Lawhead imagined him. I'd read everything you could get in Wagga Wagga on King Arthur before I read PC, but somehow this series managed to encapsulate everything the Matter of Britain was about. Sure it's not strictly historical - bit hard given the haziness of Arthur's historicity - but the Cycle manages to be convincingly proto-historical while still giving the nod to the canon time and time again. SRL has achieved in the PC what no film-maker has. Let's examine them.

Excalibur? Probably a good action movie, but quite dated and lacking historical consistency (if you want to base your Arthur on Malory, be consistently medieval folks!). I admit openly that I haven't seen it for years, but my impression was one of too much use of the fog machine, too much traipsing around in the same wintry forest (adventuring season is summer folks, c'mon!!), and a general 70s-ish/early 80s-ish feel that is less the case with, say Empire Strikes Back.

First Knight? Sean, why did you do it? Nuff said.

King Arthur? Too much mish-mashing of different left-field historical theories, again failing to hit consistency or accuracy. If the film didn't CLAIM to be historically accurate, I might have been able to forgive it.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail? The best so far. Sure it's parody, sometimes even satire, but it's probably the most well-informed of the Arthur movies from recent decades. Ironic huh? Well-informed it is, enjoyable it is, but a serious interpretation of the full depth of the mythos and history it ain't. And of course it never intended to be.


We need Arthur, and since the film industry is one of the key vehicles that tells the stories of our pasts the film industry OWES it to Arthur to do him justice. SRL does justice to Arthur in the Pendragon Cycle, and an adaptation of this work to film would do just that.

Mr Lawhead, if you're reading this, please listen!!!

KT

PS. I reckon SoA would work really well on film as well, especially the Paradise War. I'd love to see either PC or SoA handled by Peter Jackson, with Alan Lee and John Howe as chief designers. I've seen Alan's Arthurian art and it's beautiful - it'd be perfect for either series. Oh and another idea - can someone turn the Mabinogion into a film please? ...

Soap Box time over.

[jacobpotts1]

Perhaps the question the thread asks might be changed to improve clarity.

A film is a collaborative piece of art. Mr. Lawhead could no more make a film by himself than he could jump from Eaeth to Moon by himself. A film, especially a good film, requires large numbers of highly-skilled people who serve the many roles necessary to turn the words of a single author into the sights and sounds we experience in a movie.

Perhaps this thread should be retitled, "Which of Mr. Lawhead's book would be best or easiest to make in to a film, or a series of films?" I don't know what woud be best: I am just suggesting. :-)