One of the projects Ridley Scott has up his sleeve is The Forever War, based on Joe Haldemans novel. The movie was due to reunite Scott with Blade Runner writer David Webb Peoples, but now a new scripter has taken on the job, Dante Harper.
He’d seem a good choice, as he worked on All You need Is Kill, another movie about human soldiers battling an alien race. However The Forever War is slightly different, as it’s based around something that’s normally ignored in interstellar sci-fi, Einstein’s Theory Of Relativity. The theory says that the faster you get to the speed of light, the more tima dilates, so that, for example, while a few weeks may pass for you, it could be months for people who aren’t going as fast as you.
The Forever War follows reluctant conscript Private William Mandella, who’s propelled into a war between mankind and alien enemy that is seemingly unconquerable and very far away. To get to the battlefront, he must spend a year travelling at incredible speeds, but it means that when he returns to Earth, decades have passed. As he goes back and forth, the Earth is aging centuries, and he discover his ‘home’ may be even more terrifying than battle.
It’s an interesting idea for a film, although could easily get confusing, as Einstein’s theory does tend to make people’s brains collapse as they try to figure exactly how differences in speed actually affect time. Hopefully Harper’s the man to sort it out. (Source: Movies.com)