OBT Forum

The Blood of Kerensky Trilogy for me JP.

If I were to pick 1 novel to base a movie on it would be Decision at Thunder Rift.  The scale is small enough to make it work and really you don't need much of the overarching BT background to understand it. 

"We're knights in 'Mechs fighting battles for like two salvos, then withdrawing like the Redcoats, because no one can fix anything after a hundred or so years of war."

Honestly this discussion just proves to me we need to toss out the idea of the Mad Max Third Succession war.  it has hindered plot development for 30 freaking years.

Scrounging supplies wouldn't be a good use of screen-time. Feints, probes, fighting withdrawals, parleys, truces, surrenders and ransoms, on the other hand, seem much better plot-wise than watching half the combatants destroyed irreparably every 80 seconds.

Focusing on a single planetary campaign, or some subset of a planetary campaign, also sounds good. Even better (like Knightmare was saying) if it's in an era (like the 3rdSW or Dark Age) where House Lords take a back seat to the local strongmen... which also negates the need for pointless or confusing faction-specific details.

Or set factions to maximum and set it in the Capellan Crusades!

And have a Clan Warrior along. Not in the best 'Mech, and never make any effort to explain Clan culture. Just along to be the weird alien who acts & talks & expects different things than the other protagonists do.

PS, another fan video (the german one with the woman on foot): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al_SlO5DAkw

To be perfectly honest, I'd put even money that a writer would find the Dark Age an even easier starting point than the morass of tied up and bundled history that is the Third Succession War. We're talking about a war spanning decades, versus a period of time that can largely be summed up as "Apocalyptic war. Enforced peace from new faction. Humans are idiots. Here we go again."

Okay, to be fair, more than a few eras can be summed up that way. But the 3rd SW has a whole lot of relevant back story and side stories tied into as near integral. I don't see that same issue with the Dark Age.

Which back and side stories are you seeing as integral? I can see how Anton's Rebellion would affect everything in that region for a while, but otherwise most campaigns seem pretty compartmentalizable. I mean, it's not like the raid on Galtor is really going to have a noticeable effect on a movie or story set +/- a few years somewhere else on the Kuritan/Davion border.

I dont see DaTR having a  unseen issue. Just use the reseen.

That assumes (like someone pointed out up thread) that the movie won't redesign the models anyways. Best notion might be to design completely new 'Mechs for the movie and preview them in a BT publication shortly before release.

Plot wise you would be absolutly right, but it falls right into the unseen minefield, and there would be next to no chance of seeing the mechs that are iconic to the franchise right now.

It also runs into the problem of being an iconic example of BT's deathgrip stranglehold on the whole "future of the 1980's! Now with worse hair and even goofier tech!". That will not translate well on-screen to a larger audience. There's some hefty revisioneering (that's totall a word, right?) that would need to be done on the presentation side.

I don't recall a whole lot of floppy disks and modems dialing up in PacRim. The only outdated tech I recall being used in Transformers was the old hardline computer in the Hoover Dam scene. Presenting a future with big stompy robots with weapons that put Transformers to shame, but seems to have the level of civilian tech sophistication found in the Breakfast Club would be a quick way to ensure that you get one single movie which doesn't see a whole lot of profit. Goofy tech was perhaps not the best description. Battletech cannot make the leap to a major market film release with the future of the 1980's philosophy as such a core guiding concept as it remains within the game now.

Civilian Technology in the Battletech Universe is kind of hinted at as being barely more advanced then Civilian Tech in the 21st Century... I recall in one movie mention of a 1200 Watt Microwave oven, which has been commercially available since the 1980s