[B5JMS] Writer's Question-Lensman and Character Continuity

[b5jms at mail.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu]

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From: Professor <David.Butler.NACC at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 05:11:12 -0700 (PDT)
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When the rumors started about JMS doing a movie on something called
Lensmen, I ran out and bought the book series and read them back-to-
back. Now that I have a few months of the stories behind me, I am
attempting to understand how a writer would put such a vast story and
myriad of characters into a movie. One particular issue is that of
character development. Each Lensman Chronicle has unique characters
within it and each book is separated by at least on generation, often
times many more. If you were to write a movie script that ran the full
timeline of Lensman, how do you keep the audience interested in the
story if the characters keep changing? I was trying to find an film
example from memory, but could not. Star Wars, main characters
throughout, Matrix Trilogy, main characters throughout all three,
Alien(s), there is the Sigourney Weaver character in each of them.

Do American and Western European audiences need to have the same
characters repeat in each movie of a trilogy to enable the connection
with the character and to make it successful? Or has a writer never
tried to do it differently (that I know of) and thus we don?t know if
it will work or not? If the Lensman books can hold an audience with
different characters between chronicles, why can?t a movie, or is that
a false analogy?
David



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From: "jmsatb5 at aol.com" <jmsatb5 at aol.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:15:45 -0700 (PDT)
Lines: 35

On Sep 16, 5:11=A0am, Professor <David.Butler.N... at gmail.com> wrote:
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> =A0 =A0 [ Your display is set for the "ISO-8859-1" character set. =A0]
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>
> When the rumors started about JMS doing a movie on something called
> Lensmen, I ran out and bought the book series and read them back-to-
> back. Now that I have a few months of the stories behind me, I am
> attempting to understand how a writer would put such a vast story and
> myriad of characters into a movie. One particular issue is that of
> character development. Each Lensman Chronicle has unique characters
> within it and each book is separated by at least on generation, often
> times many more. If you were to write a movie script that ran the full
> timeline of Lensman, how do you keep the audience interested in the
> story if the characters keep changing? I was trying to find an film
> example from memory, but could not. Star Wars, main characters
> throughout, Matrix Trilogy, main characters throughout all three,
> Alien(s), there is the Sigourney Weaver character in each of them.
>
> Do American and Western European audiences need to have the same
> characters repeat in each movie of a trilogy to enable the connection
> with the character and to make it successful? Or has a writer never
> tried to do it differently (that I know of) and thus we don?t know if
> it will work or not? If the Lensman books can hold an audience with
> different characters between chronicles, why can?t a movie, or is that
> a false analogy?
> David

In brief, and withoiut getting into details that are still in the
process of being worked out, I've chosen to focus on the story of
Kimball Kinnison, using his story as the fulcrum by which I can get
into the whole history of the Lens and outward from there.

jms