The director behind I, Robot is tackling another kind of machine - alien technology, in an upcoming adaptation of author John Christopher’s Tripods Trilogy first book The White Mountains. The novel is a coming of age story about a child growing up in a post-apocalyptic world governed by giant three-legged machines who rule over everything and keep the population under control through mind controlling “caps” placed on children right around the time they come of age.
Alex Proyas, who most people would rather remember for Dark City than I, Robot, told Sci-Fi Wire that the script is moving into a second draft right now, but he’s pretty happy with where it stands. While he plans to film the first movie independently, Proyas is hoping to film the entire trilogy eventually.
"That's something that I read when I was exactly the right age, which was about 11 or 12," Proyas told Sci-Fi Wire, explaining his interest in the project. "It's virtually a coming-of-age story with alien invaders. So that really struck a nerve with me as a kid, and it's haunted me: the notion of these creatures sort of capping us and putting these kind of mind-control probes on us to kind of indoctrinate us into the world of adults. I always found that a really powerful notion, so that's always been something that I've wanted to explore in those stories."
I don’t know much about the book series. Somehow it never came onto my radar, which is a shame because it sounds like it’s exactly the kind of story I’d have eaten up when I was a teenager. We’ve seen the harrowing idea of a world ruled by tripods pulled off somewhat convincingly by Steven Spielberg in his version of War of the Worlds. If Proyas can equal that when it comes to visual effects, but bring a better story to screens, this definitely sounds worth checking out.
