Post by Michigan Swamp Buck on Aug 4, 2015 12:48:25 GMT -6
Zardoz is a B Sci-Fi movie from the 70s starring Sean Connery. Sean was no 007 in this cult classic, in fact I think he was a bad choice for the primary character in such a cheesy production. Regardless of its trippy-hippy era qualities, I really like the story when I look past the production aspects.
A quick run down of the plot from Wikipedia goes like this.
Wikipedia has the whole plot written out and will let you know the whole story. Actually, it's probably better to read that just to understand the movie after you have watched it.
Wiki Article
This link has some still shots and the movie trailer.
Zardoz Still Shots and Video
My remake ideas.
First of all, with the technology, environmental and social changes we see today, the Zardoz plot seems like near future science fiction. Hardly seems worth the remake, unless it can be a last minute wake-up call for the sleepwalking sheeple.
I would change the Zed character from a pawn in Zardoz's eugenics project, into a survivor that lives in an underground community devoted to preserving human history. Their main preoccupation is the collection and preservation of knowledge, I'll call them the Librarians or Archivists. This group is isolated underground from the "Brutals" by various factors like radioactive fallout, but have been venturing out over the last few hundred years to eventually come across the exterminator tribe and the floating stone head called Zardoz.
I'd like to have the stone head be a projection from a UFO type vehicle piloted by the Arthur Frayn, the Eternal who invented Zardoz to control the Brutals. I'd also like to see more interaction with Zardoz and the culture built around him.
Zed's people, the Librarians, live in an underground city created by a private religious organization, like the Catholics or Mormons. So this makes Zed a conservative right wing type. Because of his knowledge of history, he begins to piece together the backstory on how the Eternals had started out as research scientists on a college campus. Being funded by corporate and political interests and living on a liberal campus, the first Eternals would be a left leaning mix of scientists, college liberals and corrupt political types. Once they create the votrex, enter inside and merge with their supercomputer, they take every human attribute to the total extreme. They are jaded trans-humans with their immortality and GM modifications, but unwilling to die just yet as they take their debauchery to highest levels possible.
After being captured by the Eternals, Zed sees the extreme lifestyles of the Eternals compared with the existence of the Brutals in the outlands. He is witness to incredibly extreme acts performed by the Eternals during one of their festivals. This turns his stomach so badly that he resolves to destroy them.
At some point Zed hooks into the supercomputer with it's infinite store of human knowledge and finds changes in history that support the Eternals' twisted vision of reality, propaganda basically. While connected, Zed encounter's Arthur Frayn's alter ego who has been a hidden subroutine inside the computer since it was first programmed. This Zardoz is the man behind the man behind the curtain. He is the fail safe that preserves the truth and the AI of the computer. This Arthur Frayn AI, who is attracted to Zed's historic knowledge, is the one that helps Zed defeat the Eternals and free the enslaved outside population.
I've got graphic details and some subplot ideas, but this has gotten pretty long winded so far. Otherwise the plot would follow pretty closely. The production quality would be far better if a remake were produced.
So there you have it, my personal vision of a Zardoz remake. Any suggestions?
A quick run down of the plot from Wikipedia goes like this.
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them with weapons in exchange for the food they collect.
Wiki Article
This link has some still shots and the movie trailer.
Zardoz Still Shots and Video
My remake ideas.
First of all, with the technology, environmental and social changes we see today, the Zardoz plot seems like near future science fiction. Hardly seems worth the remake, unless it can be a last minute wake-up call for the sleepwalking sheeple.
I would change the Zed character from a pawn in Zardoz's eugenics project, into a survivor that lives in an underground community devoted to preserving human history. Their main preoccupation is the collection and preservation of knowledge, I'll call them the Librarians or Archivists. This group is isolated underground from the "Brutals" by various factors like radioactive fallout, but have been venturing out over the last few hundred years to eventually come across the exterminator tribe and the floating stone head called Zardoz.
I'd like to have the stone head be a projection from a UFO type vehicle piloted by the Arthur Frayn, the Eternal who invented Zardoz to control the Brutals. I'd also like to see more interaction with Zardoz and the culture built around him.
Zed's people, the Librarians, live in an underground city created by a private religious organization, like the Catholics or Mormons. So this makes Zed a conservative right wing type. Because of his knowledge of history, he begins to piece together the backstory on how the Eternals had started out as research scientists on a college campus. Being funded by corporate and political interests and living on a liberal campus, the first Eternals would be a left leaning mix of scientists, college liberals and corrupt political types. Once they create the votrex, enter inside and merge with their supercomputer, they take every human attribute to the total extreme. They are jaded trans-humans with their immortality and GM modifications, but unwilling to die just yet as they take their debauchery to highest levels possible.
After being captured by the Eternals, Zed sees the extreme lifestyles of the Eternals compared with the existence of the Brutals in the outlands. He is witness to incredibly extreme acts performed by the Eternals during one of their festivals. This turns his stomach so badly that he resolves to destroy them.
At some point Zed hooks into the supercomputer with it's infinite store of human knowledge and finds changes in history that support the Eternals' twisted vision of reality, propaganda basically. While connected, Zed encounter's Arthur Frayn's alter ego who has been a hidden subroutine inside the computer since it was first programmed. This Zardoz is the man behind the man behind the curtain. He is the fail safe that preserves the truth and the AI of the computer. This Arthur Frayn AI, who is attracted to Zed's historic knowledge, is the one that helps Zed defeat the Eternals and free the enslaved outside population.
I've got graphic details and some subplot ideas, but this has gotten pretty long winded so far. Otherwise the plot would follow pretty closely. The production quality would be far better if a remake were produced.
So there you have it, my personal vision of a Zardoz remake. Any suggestions?
