A mysterious object enters the solar system, soon revealing itself to be a gigantic cylinder, spinning quietly through space. Due to the ten-trillion-ton vessel's incredible speed, there is time for only one ship, crewed by an unprepared team, to rendezvous with the seemingly dormant craft before it heads back into the depths of space.
SF fans, rejoice! Hot off the heels of the controversial Fight Club, director David Fincher is still being touted as being interested in bringing Rendezvous with Rama, the 1973 Arthur C. Clarke classic, to the big screen. Should Fincher go ahead with the project, it will be his first foray into science fiction since his daunting feature debut, Alien 3 (1992).
However, fresh news on the Rama project has been hard to come by. Fincher was originally set to direct the film as a follow-up to his breakthrough Seven (1995) and the less successful The Game (1997), but other properties -- notably Sony Columbia's long-awaited Spider-Man -- have recently stolen the director's immediate attention, leaving Rama in limbo.
Regardless, Fincher's Seven colleague Morgan Freeman still owns the film rights to the book and is still set to star as the commander of Earth spaceship Endeavor, sent to explore the enigmatic alien vessel's shadowy interior. On its website, Freeman's production company Revelations Entertainment still lists Fincher as being attached to the project.
If Fincher ever brings the property to the screen, fans can anticipate that he will bring his trademark moodiness and tension to the alien craft. The object called "Rama" is a true "black box" modeled according to the same inscrutable principles that also spawned the monoliths of Clarke's 2001. Here, however, Rama is a dark world in itself, slowly coming to life under the heat of the sun.
"Rendezvous with Rama weaves politics, religion, science and suspense together with an epic scope and daring humanity. The result [will be] a breathtakingly taut and intelligent film that will push the boundaries of cinema and imagination, exploring the outermost in our solar system in order to discover the innermost in our selves."
-- Revelations Entertainment
Epic scope, daring humanity
Rendezvous with Rama is considered Clarke's finest works, grounded in a more literal, intellectual approach to the realities of interstellar travel than the immortal 2001 (1968). By paying careful attention to the laws of physics, Clarke deftly crafts the giant space ark as a believable enigma, an unknown factor that could very possibly come to pass.
Clarke's cerebral and highly conceptual novels have often proven untranslatable to the film medium. Childhood's End, perhaps his greatest work, remains untouched by Hollywood to this day.
Likewise, few of Clarke's shorter stories have reached the silver screen, perhaps due to fears of living up to the long shadow left by 2001, Stanley Kubrick's transcendental epic modeled after the Clarke story, "The Sentinel."
One hopes Rama will inaugurate a new cycle of intelligent SF movies as we move closer to our own future. Perhaps for New Years, 2001, when the millennium truly begins in earnest.
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