The Feynman Chronicles

[chromodynamics]

So I read this title of this article thinking, being a physicist, "How are they going to make the Feynman lectures, which while very important to physics and expecially quantum mechanics are still someone lecturing at a blackboard, into a movie?"

Then I read the article.

"Disney Opens The Feynman Chronicles

Because Indiana Jones has been away from our screens for so long, it’s only natural that young upstarts would try and take his place.

The latest in a long line of adventurers who think they’ve got what it takes the carry the bullwhip is Richard Feynman, a brilliant young physicist recruited by the US government to track down a mysterious object that falls from the sky and crashes into a remote mountain in 1940s Africa. He gets a little help from a sexy British lady spy and a cranky French pilot. But he’ll have to be swift – those dashed Nazis are after the object too…

That’s the concept for The Feynman Chronicles, a spec script by Ashley E Miller and Zack Stentz. The writing duo previously penned Agent Cody Banks 2 and worked on TV sci fi show Andromeda, which is not something anyone should really shout about. Still, Disney has snapped up their scribblings and will soon start looking for a director and cast."

Ooooooookay...

Comments

[malakym.livejournal.com]

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My god. It's. I can't stop cracking up at this but I feel it's only appropriate given his legacy and sense of humor that Richard Feynman would become the next Indiana Jones.

[chromodynamics.livejournal.com]

From what I have heard about his exploits, which are legendary for a physics professor despite not involving things from space in Africa and Nazis, I imagine he would be quite amused too.

[tefkas.livejournal.com]

*jaw drops*

Is this a late April Fool or something?

[chromodynamics.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what I thought too!

[wordplay.livejournal.com]

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OK, so you KNOW how much trouble I had with Feynman as an undergrad, how I kind of blamed him for the "aw, shucks, boys will be boys" sexism in phyics. There is a part of me that thinks this is his comeuppance and a part of me that wants to throw things across the room that he's still a boy hero.

[wordplay.livejournal.com]

Also, I forgot to burn that Joshua Radin album for you last night. Sorry, babe. I'll do that today.

:-*

[chromodynamics.livejournal.com]

It completely baffles me why they chose to you use a real and not fictional person in this role. Does the name "Richard Feynman" just strike everybody at Disney as "swashbuckling hero", facts be damned? Did the person who wrote this script hate his physics classes so much that he is out to sentence famous physicists to B-movie hell? Does Disney hope the throngs of Feynman fans will see this movie in mass, thereby automatically carrying the box office on opening weekend (yeah, right!)?

I mean, at least from the brief summary above, because other than both being physicists, it sounds like the movie will have nothing to do with his real life in any way.


And thanks for the album! :)

[sundancekid.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to comment and say that I too cannot stand Richard Feynman.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

yes but did you see the Matthew Brokerick movie?

[chromodynamics.livejournal.com]

Um, Infinity, right? I didn't see that movie, but from what I understand it was based on his love affair with his wife. I seriously doubt it was "truth", but I think it incorporated many of the facts about their relationship.

This new movie seems to me to be more along the lines of Shakespeare in Love. But the writer in that film was clearly providing a fictional account of how some of the real events of Shakespeare's life came about, specifically his plays.

What I find both hilarious and disturbing about the Feynman movie is that the writers appear to be taking a real person and instead of providing possible explanations or fictional accounts that lead up to some of the real events in that person's life, they throw that out the window and come up with a completely different script to their life.

Also, it's just weird to me that they said, "Let's take this somewhat mischevious college professor and make him an action-adventure hero!" It would be the same if someone came up with a gripping medical drama about Lewis and Clark, or a horror film about the haunting of Shirley Temple, or a western whose protaganist was Lenin (hence my other post). I suppose someone could come up with fictional stories like this, but why use real people for something so clearly outside their historical reference?