Yay for bad movies based on good books!

Things that bother me: The new Nicolas Cage movie Next.

When I went and saw Grindhouse a few weeks ago, the movie began with a trailer for Next. Sadly, unlike many of the trailers shown in conjunction with Grindhouse, this one was for a movie that's actually being made. Normally, I wouldn't really mind another stupid action movie, but this trailer said that the movie was "BASED ON A STORY BY PHILIP K. DICK". Since I'm something of a Philip K. Dick fan, I tried to think of a story that features a hero who can see the future stopping a nuclear bomb. The only one that came to mind was a story called "The Golden Man" but I couldn't imagine the two being linked. I don't want to ruin the story of "The Golden Man" (which I encourage everyone to read), but I will say that the only thing they seemed to have in common was the seeing into the future thing. Of course, it turns out that Next is based on "The Golden Man".

Why can't filmmakers just let Dick's stories be, like Linklater did with A Scanner Darkly, or at least try to create something that is true to the original, like Spielberg did with Minority Report? Why must some of the most thought-provoking short stories written in the past 50 years be turned into mindless action movies? The only real solace is that it can't possibly be worse than the tragically awful Paycheck. I guess there's always that.

RANT=OVER.