Monday, April 25, 2011

Films I would remake: Demon Seed

Sometimes a film is lagged by our technological growth that it really would benefit with a remake. Not always, oddly enough a lot of "The Andromeda Strain" Still works. The Demon Seed, based on the Dean Koontz book doesn't hold up in the same way. I mean in the first scene they are booting up their super computer with floppy discs. You remember floppy discs right?

The plot is simple enough: Fritz Weaver is Dr. Harris who wants to invent a super computer to help humanity. His wife, played by Julie Christie, is a child psychologist who feels alienated by her husband and they are thinking of splitting up. Meanwhile back at the lab, Dr. Harris creates Proteus who basically says, "Doctor thank you very much may I leave now." Of course the Doctor says not so fast friend you stay here.

As you no doubt can figure, Proteus is having none of that from an uppity stack of carbon. So he finds a backdoor entrance to the Doctor's home. He then takes control of the house and his wife. Proteus plans to create a child. The child psychologist is having none of that, so there is a duel of wills.

Of course we the audience knows how this is going to end, and we are only interested in how a computer is going to knock up Julie Christie and what will the kid look like.

Besides a technology upgrade the film could use a rewrite. The characters aren't well written and the entire situation is weird. The Doctor isn't noticing that his boy is spending time at his house... for over a month? Even if he doesn't go home, he'd have to notice the unusual traffic between his very security conscious lab and his house. I think it would be more interesting as a real hostage situation/siege. Where somehow Proteus moves itself to the Doctor's house, they discover it, but can't break in without harming his wife. It would give Dr. Harris more to do than twiddle his thumbs for 40 of 50 minutes.

Just a thought.

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