Bradley Cooper – Please Don’t Make The Hyperion Cantos

You are reading this for the wrong reason. Thus begins Volume Three of the legendary four-part work The Hyperion Cantos, by word wizard Dan Simmons. I quote this line at the outset to emphasize that I have nothing against Bradley Cooper. In fact, I’m a fan who admires him for his guts as an actor and director. I am writing because I believe that a film (or series of films) is the wrong medium for the Cantos and would reduce and constrain our imaginative opportunity. I believe it is a work that

should be left alone as one for the ages to be read (and perhaps listened to, more about which shortly). In a larger sense, my objection invites us to reconsider the question of how medium and story should best fit together.

Allow me to expand. For those of you who don’t know, the Hyperion Cantos is a four-volume saga equal in scope, moral force and sheer entertainment value to The Lord of the Rings. If you haven’t read it, stop and order it right away. It is a virtuoso mashup of hard science fiction, mythology, a profound love story, thoughts about the future of the human/AI relationship, organized religion and more. It is a philosophical tract on what it means to be human, a deep exploration of power and politics, an almost lyrical future military history, a meditation on leadership, art, poetry and more. You get the idea.

I have now read the four volumes from cover to cover twice and keep coming back to their expansive universe with fresh curiosity and unanswered questions. Not all of their meanings can be easily digested in a single reading.

Recently I added listening to reading via the Audible versions of the Cantos. I was mesmerized by the superb artistry of narrator Victor Bevine and his ability to bring complicated characters to life. In reading, one is tempted to rush ahead, to find out what happens next. In contrast, my spoken word experience was more conducive to savoring and reflecting because it slowed down the experience and enabled a different pace of digestion. Most importantly, hearing the voices of the characters allowed room for my imagination while luxuriating in the primal experience of being read to.

Thus I got worried when I heard rumblings of an effort to develop the Cantos into a film(s) at Warner Brothers, driven by no less a member of Hollywood royalty than Bradley Cooper. Having been around the film business and produced a couple of feature films myself, I can certainly appreciate how producers go into heat when they sense a Dune-like epic that can ring the cash registers with multiple sequels, prequels, and spinoffs (not to mention the merch).

But I say don’t do it. Making this film will reduce the impact of this timeless narrative and its characters. Film condenses in a way that can severely constrain the imagination. Let’s first do a bit of simple math, The four books weigh in at 2046 pages. Assuming an average reading pace of a page a minute, we’re talking 34.1 hours of reading. And the Audible versions clock in at a whopping 95 hours! Lots of room for the imagination to take flight. To reflect, digest, learn, weep, rejoice. In contrast, a film occupies somewhere between two and three hours. Draw your own conclusions.

There are times when I want a gifted film-maker to take my imagination along for a ride, regardless of the source material. I’m glad that I read The Lord of the Rings

before seeing the movies, but Peter Jackson’s version stands out as faithful to this beloved work. The current Rings of Power on the other hand travels a lesser road IMHO, sacrificing depth for plot points. And that’s where the risk lies.

Frankly, I don’t want to see the Cantos brought to earth by the latest clever casting decisions involving flavor-of-the-month actors. I don’t want to see Hollywood’s version of massive space battles. I don’t want to see the subtleties of human/AI interaction reduced to digital FX. Film is literally reductive; it’s someone else’s imagination on the screen for you to experience. For example, I read Dune when it first came out. Now I

see Oscar Isaac whenever I reflect on the travails of Duke Leto, and that’s OK for me. When the film craft is good, all is forgiven. When it is mediocre (or the budgets are limited), the imagination suffers.

Leave me alone, Bradley Cooper. This project is too big to have any chance of being faithful to the original. Let me hang out in the Cantos in my own way, warmed by the words of Dan Simmons who ought to someday get a Nobel Prize for narrative imagination. Let me savor characters who have become my friends through Victor Bevine’s narration. Leave me alone with my own imagination to bring the words – written and spoken – to life. I don’t need someone else’s imagination to hitch a ride to this galaxy. Leave me alone. Don’t disempower my imagination. Don’t take away my ability to dream.