Daniel X: Extremely Good or Extremely Unfaithful?

James Patterson’s The Dangerous Days of Daniel X is possibly going to transition to the silver screen. One of most incredible things about the situation involves the speed at which the novel was optioned. Daniel X was released in July 2008, but New Regency Productions had already obtained the rights to make a movie in May of that year. Of course, there has already been a Daniel X: The Ultimate Power Nintendo DS release. That game came out in 2010. As with other pieces of writing that have video game releases in connection with them, it will possibly influence the making of the film.

Some fans of science fiction will probably realize that James Patterson was granted another film project. The movie based on his Maximum Ride stories is set for a tentative release, and actually has had some real fan involvement in that it used social networking to reach out. In February 2011, that franchise’s Facebook page asked fans whom they wanted to cast as Max in the film. There is some real promise with that movie, and one might consider the future of film making if the character of Total is included. After all, it might encourage a live action Naruto movie to be made centered around the Pakkun character.

However, it might be quite difficult to actually portray the Daniel X character in a realistic manner. With Maximum Ride, the characters have a strict limit to their powers. They are simply human-bird hybrids. However, this novel goes much further, and Daniel X is given the power to create matter with only his thoughts. He could even form people if he so wished. Super strength and speed are also among his gifts. Though some people might argue the book did not avoid using these to excess, the text did attempt to hold back to the level that most readers of science fiction might be comfortable with.

On the other hand, motion picture is a different medium. The suspension of disbelief is perhaps more difficult to establish when the action is playing out live as opposed to being sculpted in the eye of one’s mind. A good deal of CGI is something that many fans naturally loathe, but many filmmakers have learned to totally rely on this method for producing special effects. One can hope that this won’t ruin the story for anyone, but the promise of alien outlaw action might be able to overcome it anyways.

Nevertheless, there is also the possibility that some aspects of the alien outlaw plot are removed from the film in general. If this were to be done, theatergoers might be stuck with yet another lackluster thriller. Maybe the fact that there has been so little news on the issue indicates that there have been some script rewrites, and fans can only hope that these will be accurate to the story.