An Actress to play Honor Harrington

Oh, and by the way. Zoe Saldana for Elizabeth Winton III. In Crown of Slaves, Michelle Henke is stated to be very much darker skin, aka more classically "African" looking, with the Winton's being of the same genotype but lighter skinned.

The only trouble with that casting [we know she'd be fierce enough] is that Zoe is much more kick-a$$ than Elizabeth gets to be anywhere in the series to date; she'd be chewing the castle walls inside a week. Of course, Henke doesn't get to hand out any degree of in-person mayhem either, so maybe instead of castle walls she'd be chewing on the bulkheads instead, or worse yet, looking like a trans-series-ported Uhura in slacks.

But IMMHO she'd be cool in the Honorverse anyway.

SharkHunter wrote:Oh, and by the way. Zoe Saldana for Elizabeth Winton III. In Crown of Slaves, Michelle Henke is stated to be very much darker skin, aka more classically "African" looking, with the Winton's being of the same genotype but lighter skinned.

The only trouble with that casting [we know she'd be fierce enough] is that Zoe is much more kick-a$$ than Elizabeth gets to be anywhere in the series to date; she'd be chewing the castle walls inside a week. Of course, Henke doesn't get to hand out any degree of in-person mayhem either, so maybe instead of castle walls she'd be chewing on the bulkheads instead, or worse yet, looking like a trans-series-ported Uhura in slacks.

But IMMHO she'd be cool in the Honorverse anyway.

Friendly reminder that the Wintons are not the only dark-skinned characters in the books.

I for one think Ms. Saldana would have a grand old time as Naomi Kaplan.

roseandheather wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Oh, and by the way. Zoe Saldana for Elizabeth Winton III. In Crown of Slaves, Michelle Henke is stated to be very much darker skin, aka more classically "African" looking, with the Winton's being of the same genotype but lighter skinned.

The only trouble with that casting [we know she'd be fierce enough] is that Zoe is much more kick-a$$ than Elizabeth gets to be anywhere in the series to date; she'd be chewing the castle walls inside a week. Of course, Henke doesn't get to hand out any degree of in-person mayhem either, so maybe instead of castle walls she'd be chewing on the bulkheads instead, or worse yet, looking like a trans-series-ported Uhura in slacks.

But IMMHO she'd be cool in the Honorverse anyway.

Friendly reminder that the Wintons are not the only dark-skinned characters in the books.

I for one think Ms. Saldana would have a grand old time as Naomi Kaplan.

In 10 or 12 years or so.

dr

Ah yes, she'd make a great Naomi Kaplan, but I was trying to give her an early promotion! I guess. OKay fine, I admit it, I completely forgot about Naomi because the first movies are so early in the Honorverse.

SharkHunter wrote:Ah yes, she'd make a great Naomi Kaplan, but I was trying to give her an early promotion! I guess. OKay fine, I admit it, I completely forgot about Naomi because the first movies are so early in the Honorverse.

First movies? Optimism! How refreshing.

Can I put the cat amongst the pigeons here and suggest that as a way of getting over the prolong and aging factors, Evergreen do a CGI film or TV series?

Use CGI to generate images of the actual actors who will be providing the voices.

Something similar to what was done with Avatar, that way features (such as eye shape) could be tweaked to give a better rendition of what is described in the books. And it wouldn't matter about any actor's age, as Sigourney Weaver's Avatar showed.

(Crawls away to hide behind a rock)

Too costly - unless you're ok with it looking as plain ol' animation.

It'd be my choice as well, but it's objectively not possible.

George J. Smith wrote:Can I put the cat amongst the pigeons here and suggest that as a way of getting over the prolong and aging factors, Evergreen do a CGI film or TV series?

Use CGI to generate images of the actual actors who will be providing the voices.

I'm still of the opinion that Prolong will not feature prominently in the screenplays. It creates a pretty major suspension-of-disbelief problem in a predominantly visual medium like film.

Command-level officers that look like teenagers present a huge plausibility issue without the multiple paragraphs (or multiple pages - this is RFC we're talking here) of exposition explaining the situation. No problem in a novel...huge problem in a film, where every single second of run time is precious. Screenwriters and directors are NOT going to want to spend the screen time establishing (then, later, reinforcing) the reason the officers look too young to go into a bar.

But without that exposition, every single viewer who is not a reader of the series would be seeing something profoundly counter-intuitive. To our 21st Century eyes, command level officers should be mature adults; having them depicted as teenagers is potentially immersion-breaking. It's also far easier to depict the difference between command officers and very junior officers at a glance with an obvious age difference than small differences in rank insignia detail (especially to non-military viewers).

If Prolong were critical to the plot, the filmmakers' hands would be tied. But it's not, frankly. Sure, it's profoundly influential in socio-political terms, in shaping the societies in which extended human life spans exist. But Prolong is not critical to how the plots of the stories unfold. An influence, perhaps...but far from critical.

If Prolong makes it into the films at all, I expect it to be depicted more like first generation, not third.

Hi Festival,

If I haven't welcomed you to the forums with your favorite cg beverage on the cg forum, I apologise and please have one now.

Thank for making this important and obvious point.

Prolong will have to be mentioned and explained, but could be done as extended maturity than decades of extended teenager-hood.

Did RFC or Evergreen reference any such problems with prolong at HonorCon?

Given how prolong plays such an important role in the series, it should have surfaced long ago.

L

Festival wrote:

George J. Smith wrote:Can I put the cat amongst the pigeons here and suggest that as a way of getting over the prolong and aging factors, Evergreen do a CGI film or TV series?

Use CGI to generate images of the actual actors who will be providing the voices.

I'm still of the opinion that Prolong will not feature prominently in the screenplays. It creates a pretty major suspension-of-disbelief problem in a predominantly visual medium like film.

Command-level officers that look like teenagers present a huge plausibility issue without the multiple paragraphs (or multiple pages - this is RFC we're talking here) of exposition explaining the situation. No problem in a novel...huge problem in a film, where every single second of run time is precious. Screenwriters and directors are NOT going to want to spend the screen time establishing (then, later, reinforcing) the reason the officers look too young to go into a bar.

But without that exposition, every single viewer who is not a reader of the series would be seeing something profoundly counter-intuitive. To our 21st Century eyes, command level officers should be mature adults; having them depicted as teenagers is potentially immersion-breaking. It's also far easier to depict the difference between command officers and very junior officers at a glance with an obvious age difference than small differences in rank insignia detail (especially to non-military viewers).

If Prolong were critical to the plot, the filmmakers' hands would be tied. But it's not, frankly. Sure, it's profoundly influential in socio-political terms, in shaping the societies in which extended human life spans exist. But Prolong is not critical to how the plots of the stories unfold. An influence, perhaps...but far from critical.

If Prolong makes it into the films at all, I expect it to be depicted more like first generation, not third.

lyonheart

Like your suggestion on visual media attitude to prolong.

Still doesn't solve the issue of 'aging out' over a 10-12 year (or more) series production cycle, IF casting of selected characters is too RL old to start with. I still think that the target ages for casting Honor and a number of other key figures is ~27 - 35+.

I've been to both the Evergreen Honorcon presentations. they don't seem to be particularly concerned about the impact of the existence of prolong on screen plot. I suspect they feel it will be relatively easy to either ignore or explain in throwaway, compared to some of the other issues {cough*Nimitz*cough*runtime*cough} of effective presentation.

dreamrider

PS - Festival & lyonheart: David rarely refers to any COMMAND-level officers as looking like teenagers in his third person narrative descriptions (Alice Truman may be an exception, since she is so petit.)

David's descriptions have reflected junior (but experienced and competent) officers, up through about LTjg, as looking immature. Also there have been some internal mental monologues by non-prolong recipients, mainly Grayson, that have reflected, with some implied hyperbole, that ALL the prolonged officers looked "like teenagers", to the POV char.

But David's descriptions of Honor and her 'contemporaries', 3rd gen prolong recipients aged 30-40 or more, who have 'finally grown into' their physical adult maturity, has generally been that they looked like 'young' or 'youthful', fit, adults.

That makes your only real 'teenager' casting problems for HotQ as Ensign Wolcott (bigtime!), and Scotty Tremaine.