Back from LA with Honorverse move news

jthoma8318 wrote:I'm still holding out for Hale Berry for Her Majesty Queen and Empress Elizabeth II, (OK the kiwi can tear me up on my lousy protocol LOL)

Yes!!!!!!


And a younger reincarnation of Pam Grier for Adm Henke.

Taurus2 wrote:
... well, I'll just quote WEB du Havel from Crown of Slaves: "Today's universe assigns [Henke] to command navies, and doesn't even think about it."

On the topic of Mike Henke, perhaps she and Alice Truman could be combined for the films?

Yes, a very dark skinned blond would do the trick there. (kidding)

If you are going to show, as rfc does in the Honorverse, that all humans are the same no matter their skin or any other physical attribute, then we need to see Henke, if we ever do see her (she is not in HoQ), as rfc has conceived her.

Truman is really a necessary character--go through the cast of characters in one of the more recent books and cross out all the names that do not appear in HoQ. Commander Truman is a vital character in HoQ and and a continuing presence in the series.

You DO realize that this movie was one gigantic, product promotion for a game that is suitable for 5 year old children?

As unrealistic as the movie was, the scene where they are using oceanographic sensors to target an enemy that was far, far beyond visual range was accepted by the audience. That was my only point.

If you can't sit your brain in the seat beside you at the theatre so your analytical brain will not prevent you from enjoying the movie, you should not be going to the movies.

Weber puts a lot of effort of getting some aspects of the physics right in his stories. I notice MANY failures. Just one example is the impeller drive. It doesn't just violate the laws of thermodynamics, it rapes them. I don't allow this detail to distract me from enjoying a good story. I would enjoy seeing as much realism as possible in the HotQ movie, but I will not be anal retentive about it.

Seawolf509 wrote:

namelessfly wrote:They certainly proved the concept of combat at realistic range in the movie Battleship. I loved Wrath of Kahn but it set a horrible precedent for the Star Trek genre.

Sorry Namelessfly Battleship was even worse than Wrath of Kahn for ranges. The Big Mo and the alien ship were in 50 cal range of each other when they started firing the 16" guns that were designed to engage the enemy while miles apart. At least in WoK it was due to the interence of the sensors that lead to the short ranges. (Sorry Battleship was just so bad a movie. Niether side could detect each other outside of visual range but the CWIS and AIM-120 were able to see and lock on to the weapons of the aliens)

Follow up when DDG was engaging using missles and the buoys. Ship was firing Harpoon missiles which have sensors on them to initiate a terminal pop up manuver to hit the target when it senses it. Since alien ship can't be seen no way for missle to hit. Only way could have worked would be if they fire tomahawk missiles using a GPS target. Yes it a movie and it does not have to be close to reality but if you going to use current military hardware there should be some degree of realism IMO of course.

I've always been a fan of what Star Wars did with its energy weapons to help veiwers (or Game players in X-wing) diferentiate whom was shooting at whom. Red vs Green.

Make all Manticoran energy weapons(including PD clusters and Missile Laser heads) red. Haven can be Green(evil Empire analouge). The Grayson's can have a Yellow/Orange. While the Masadan's can have yellowish green.

Clear color designmation's to show good guys shooting at bad guys, also an associated color scheme to show alliance affiliation.

It never has to be stated that thats whats going on. But it'll be very clear at a glance who is fighting.

Cheers,

rdt wrote:

Taurus2 wrote:
... well, I'll just quote WEB du Havel from Crown of Slaves: "Today's universe assigns [Henke] to command navies, and doesn't even think about it."

On the topic of Mike Henke, perhaps she and Alice Truman could be combined for the films?

Yes, a very dark skinned blond would do the trick there. (kidding)

If you are going to show, as rfc does in the Honorverse, that all humans are the same no matter their skin or any other physical attribute, then we need to see Henke, if we ever do see her (she is not in HoQ), as rfc has conceived her.

Truman is really a necessary character--go through the cast of characters in one of the more recent books and cross out all the names that do not appear in HoQ. Commander Truman is a vital character in HoQ and and a continuing presence in the series.

Maybe they could have Alister portrayed by a actor that is black then? Not a huge change and I don't think most would have any issues with it

rdt wrote:

Taurus2 wrote:
... well, I'll just quote WEB du Havel from Crown of Slaves: "Today's universe assigns [Henke] to command navies, and doesn't even think about it."

On the topic of Mike Henke, perhaps she and Alice Truman could be combined for the films?

Yes, a very dark skinned blond would do the trick there. (kidding)

If you are going to show, as rfc does in the Honorverse, that all humans are the same no matter their skin or any other physical attribute, then we need to see Henke, if we ever do see her (she is not in HoQ), as rfc has conceived her.

Truman is really a necessary character--go through the cast of characters in one of the more recent books and cross out all the names that do not appear in HoQ. Commander Truman is a vital character in HoQ and and a continuing presence in the series.

I'd say that if characters have to be combined and/or eliminated, and that can be taken as a given, then combining Truman with McKeon and not Mike would be a good idea. Those two, frankly, are similiar roles, and all the secondary ship commanders need to be reduced in order to keep the focus on Honor herself. The combined Truman/McKeeon character can provide the role of Honor's military friend/confidant/backup commander, or can be Honor's exec to keep the focus on HMS Fearless as the prime ship, with the others being basically background scenery.

jthoma8318 wrote:Maybe they could have Alister portrayed by a actor that is black then? Not a huge change and I don't think most would have any issues with it

I know I wouldn't. The one's I listed earlier are the ones I would be...highly upset at if they changed. I am more wanting the general percentage to stay the same as in the books. Its just the Queen and family is a big deal, to me at least, on how they are portrayed. Ramirez, while not as major a character, sets the tone for an entire planet. So much so that changing who plays him would have a major effect on later movies.

runsforcelery wrote:

hvb wrote: ... Eh, I will just snip this part ...

Wow.

"Wow"? What do you mean "Wow"?

My post was only about 3/4 as long as the shortest of your three preceeding ones in this thread.


As for visible "lasers" (even those outside the visible spectrum), sigh, yes we know that one is a given. ... and I am sure the wedges and sails will be visible not only during bleedoff after a transilation or in a grav wave ...

Btw. there could be refraction, diffraction, and all sorts of lensing effects when a maser intersects with a wedge, a sidewall, or those 10 km deep particle shields, so be sure to point those nifty visuals out to Evergreen if they haven’t already thought of it (I am sure they have the effects for such already written, from other projects). So maybe keep the maser beams to a moderate brightness, and fire off a lightshow when they hit the passive defenses (maybe missing the hull, and maybe not).

That being said, please inlist a squad of inhouse goons over at Evergreen to smack anyone over the head who goes "if we cut these three minutes of plot-critical storyline content we can spam this awesome 3-D seqence all over the screen!"


On the distances involved, having the tactical officer say something like "first volley launched, flight time two-and-a-half minutes" when (s)he fires the first volley, and doing cuts between the bridges of both sides interspersed with outside shots and shots of the CIC 'tank' (or the bridge ditto; also showcasing the tech span between the navies at a glance) could help here. "Fifth salvo launched" followed by a cut to the other bridge: "CM launching at their second salvo"; that sort of thing, and use the flight time to get those plot-relevant discussions out of the way.

Maybe a (semi-prominently located) display on each bridge counting down time on target for each volley, outgoing in a blue/green column, incomming in orange/red ... which just happens to end up somewhere in the background of most shots of the bridges involved; maybe once or twice as the foreground when that bridge is cut to early on, the camera then panning to refocus on the crewmember about to speak up. ...

As for the blood and gore PG-13 stuff ... while we don’t hold no truck with that sort of thing over here, I can see how some scaling back may be necessary (outside of a Director’s Cut at least), but your own point about 'military porn' should be honored. We may not get to see the gristly consequenses much, but a shot of desperate corpmen early on and a few pithy comments from sickbay during the damage raports must be a minimum requirement.


About that Director’s Cut: Could we get that with a side order of without the ionized "wakes" following ships, sounds in space, and ... lasers only visible when they diffract in a sidewall/wedge/particle shield or go through a gas? Along with the additional storyline content, I mean. (pretty please.) I can take a pass on the extra helpings of realistic bloody remains though. (OK, so maybe just one, for form’s sake)


On the uniforms, remember that the overdone peacock look ... which may or may not have inspired the Neo-Comedia fashion, the time seems to me to fit well with the initial roll-out of the Fleet 2000 effort ... is the sole preserve of the Invincible Solarian League Navy, where even an Ensign looks like an Admiral when wearing formal dinner kit. (When they say color coded by branch or MOS, they don’t mean a stripe or shoulder patch, they mean the whole uniform!) So leave enough room for them to stand out!


And wholf359 is right to caution against a ”White wash” of the cast. This obviously goes for the named characters, whose appearance needs to be paid as much service as casting concerns allows (makeup can help where need be); but the extras in the background need to be as diverse as their respective home nations:

Manticore may be predominantly caucasian, but predominantly is far from exclusive (and with no emphasis on "screwing in-round", most will be of mixed ancestry by now); it would be bad if casual moviegoers are taken aback when they see Honor’s XO in SVW is as black as the spades! Canon needs to establish this as part of the normal mix.

The Havenites will be even more mixed; a "no more than 40% of any race" rule of thumb would probably be good to keep in mind, to avoid the trap of the default caucasian extra. Grayson and Masada are US midwest, which would mean a large minority of blacks (~80% caucasian now, but by the time they form the colony effort that may well have declined somewhat), plus of course a bit of everything else.

Solly seems to default to middle eastern/indian in my mind for some reason (unless the name suggests otherwise of course), but that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a heavy levening of them everywhere else, especially among the Havenites.

At any rate, write up a "demographic target mix" guideline for each polity or system, and try to keep within spitting distance of it in most scenes (and keeping it consistant between movies if the series becomes a reality).

hvb wrote:Grayson and Masada are US midwest, which would mean a large minority of blacks (~80% caucasian now, but by the time they form the colony effort that may well have declined somewhat), plus of course a bit of everything else.

Grayson is out of Idaho, which isn't US Midwest by any definition I've ever seen (and which is... umm... very, very white), though the only thing we know for sure is there are almost no ethnic east Asians ala Honor's Chou relatives.

Regarding 3D movies:

Two words - they suck.

More precisely, the movies themselves are decent, but the 3D effect sucks. I have yet to see one that actually looks like more than a pop-up book, not to mention, everything is still constrained inside the borders of the screen, making for quite a bit of artificiality in the alleged 3D effect.

Oh, and let's not forget the requisite throwing/shooting/crashing-something-directly-at-the-camera scene(s) . This is probably the most cliche and stupid thing in 3D movies. You'd think after 60-odd years of off and on 3D movies that *some* studio or director would get past that cheesey "thrill".

I won't go as far as to say that I'll refuse to watch it if it's available *only* in 3D, but it'll be a tough decision.