Lovecraft film plot details leak, Cameron calls it a new Aliens
Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 9:31AM | Matt Sager 
TempleofGhoul's Dejan Ognjanovic got his hands on a copy of Guillermo del Toro's script At the Mountains of Madness, an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's novella of the same name. Based on his first impressions, the film is feels like "a Hellboy movie without Hellboy, with a light dose of Carpenter's The Thing. "
He basically sums up the entire plot in a few words saying that "It is a period piece: the frame story takes place in 1939, at the very beginning of World War II, but the bulk of the film is made up of a flashback narration by the last survivor of the previous expedition to the South Pole from 1930. In this version, it is somewhat simplified into: Scientists go to Antarctica, resurrect primaeval monsters, mayhem ensues."
Let's also not forget that before James Cameron begins his work on Avatar 2, he'll be producing this film, and he seems to be pretty excited about it. Here's what he recently had to say to Wired about it:
"It's going to be an epically scaled horror film, and we haven't seen anything like that in a really long time -- I guess since Aliens." He went on to say that "The thing about Lovecraft is he left a lot to the imagination. He never told you what they looked like. He managed to create a sense of creeping horror without specifics."
Based on Cameron's description, this movie sounds pretty friggin' awesome to us (the plot synopsis less so). There's no doubt that Avatar was a good film, but it never reached Aliens levels. Here's to hoping that Mountains can.
Aww this is awesome - the first major Lovecraft movie since the classic Re-Animator! Cameron, del Toro and Lovecraft - it's like they read my Christmas list!
Reader Comments (1)
Ok, as a die hard Lovecraft fan, when I heard that del Toro had a script for this (which just happens to be my favorite Lovecraft story), I was excited. I was even more excited when I heard that he refused to budge on the plot synopsis when he couldn't find funding for it (because they wanted typical hollywood trash - happy ending, love interest, etc.). If anyone in hollywood could pull this off and keep true to Lovecraft's original storyline, it was del Toro.
After reading this, I am not optimistic. First of all, it's painfully obvious that Cameron hasn't even read the story. "He never told you what they looked like." What?? There's an entire chapter in the story devoted to Lake's dissection of the creatures, and his rather detailed description of what they look like (not to mention the repeated frescoes seen in the city itself). Second, "Hellboy without Hellboy?" At the Mountains of Madness is NOT an action story. There's no action in it. AT ALL. It's a dark, gothic horror story. Third, "... by the last survivor of the previous expedition..." The original story had most of the expedition returning safely. Only Lake and his immediate group didn't survive.
My initial optimism for this project just sank like the Titanic. It looks more and more like typical hollywood trash - where they've taken an awesome story, simply grabbed the premise, and discarded everything that MADE the story great in the first place.