Hacker Cinema
Hollow Man
2000 · Film · 112 min
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
Cocky researcher Sebastian Caine is working on a project to make living creatures invisible. Determined to achieve the ultimate breakthrough, Caine pushes his team to move to the next phase — using himself as the subject. The test is a success, but when the process can't be reversed and Caine seems doomed to future without flesh, he starts to turn increasingly dangerous.
1 positive2 negative2 neutralfrom 5 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
5 comments on Hacker News
I imagine it could eventually lead to a full invisibility serum, as documented in the classic Kevin Bacon film Hollow Man. Of course, we need to be aware of the side effects (mostly murderous rampaging).
Does this story remind anyone else of David Manning?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Manning_(fictitious_writer)
Cause he was a fake 'expert' meant to shill products too. In that case, a fake movie critic created by Sony to sell its worst movies.
As it turned out, misleading customers that way was illegal, and hence as mentioned on the wiki page:
> On August 3, 2005, Sony made an out-of-court settlement and agreed to refund $5 each to dissatisfied customers who saw Hollow Man, The Animal, The Patriot, A Knight's Tale, or Vertical Limit in American theatres, as a result of Manning's reviews.
Wonder if something similar could happen here?
Once I had written a bash script to show a bubble notification on your linux machine after every X minutes, to remind you that you needed to be working. Just like in the hollow man movie.
I had written this script because I used to get distracted a lot while working.
Odds are that, if you read the book first, you'll probably hate the movie. They really are totally different. Personally, I don't believe fidelity to the source is necessary for an adaptation to be successful. Plenty of films have been made that are slaves to the source and are terrible as a result! Great films are often made from bad books, so why can't great films just be different from the great books they're based on?
I do think there's room for a more faithful adaptation of the book, but that doesn't change the fact that Verhoeven's film is brilliant and hilarious. If you go in expecting it to be faithful to the book (or you're a bit of a hawk yourself to begin with), I can see why you might interpret it as a serious, but bad flick. Great films aren't always intended for all audiences however!
If Verhoeven can be faulted, it's for making "Hollow Man". Now that flick sucked!
The central characters in Robocop were treated empathetically, the scathing social satire and black comedy were not central to the main storyline of heroes and villians, so there was still an engaging film even for those viewers lacking the social awareness needed to appreciate irony.
In Starship Troopers, every character was disposable, hence the gigantic 'whoosh'.
I recommend 'Hollow Man', Verhoeven's last, and largely forgotten Hollywood film, released in 2000. It's even more subversive, and the subversive message is even more subtle. So subtle in fact that I doubt even the film's producers were aware of what was going on. It's either a terrible B-grade hollywood sci-fi thriller, or brilliant black comedy, depending on whether or not you latch on to the subtext.