There’s a new movie coming out in a few weeks based on Philip K Dick’s ‘The Golden Man‘, one of his longer short stories. Of course the big question is: is this another Blade Runner, or is it more of a Paycheck?
We’ll have to wait and see whether Next is any good. It has the potential to be interesting, with Nicholas Cage playing a Las Vegas magician who can see the future and hence change it, but it’s definately more ‘based on’ the original story than faithful to it. In the original, the Golden Man was the next stage of human evolution – unable to communicate, but with the ability to see the future and a huge threat to mankind due to his extreme fertility and attractiveness to human females. Oh, and he was gold. Dick wrote a story that discussed the possibility of mankind being replaced by a species better suited to the world, but less intelligent – an animal in human form. The movie takes just one of this mix of ideas and puts together a pre-summer epic involving terrorism plots and lots of running away. So it won’t be considered a ‘Dick’ film by anyone other than the marketing folks who get more attention through using his name, but if you want mindless action I’m sure it’ll be just perfect.