11. Morning Star - H. Rider Haggard
I have a soft spot in my heart for cheesy adventure novels, ever since I read Haggard's She
in high school. She and King Solomon's Mines, Haggard's two most famous novels, have received the film treatment numerous times. Morning Star
is like a lost middle child, published a quarter century after his much more famous works and featuring neither Ayesha nor Allan Quatermain. It's still a fun adventure read, with lots of ghosts and magic and cool sword fights. It doesn't deserve to be forgotten while Allan Quatermain goes down as a legendary adventurer and inspiration. Then again, he also must forever live down the fame of the movie version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, so at least Morning Star's Neter-Tua is spared that shame. The biggest reason I want to see this on the screen, though, isn't because of any particularly amazing visuals or for the sake of nostalgia. Rather, Morning Star was unusual in its time for having a nonwhite, nonmale protagonist. It's hard to say how much of a negative impact that two-fer against Victorian sensibilities that had on the book's lack of legacy, and how much of that was just pure bad luck. But it's a new, enlightened century now, and we're ready to give stories about nonwhite, nonmale characters the screen time and respect they deserve, right? By the time someone gets the idea to mine this public domain adventure story for a script idea, Amandla Stenberg will be old enough to play the lead, or maybe Quvenzhané Wallis if they really drag their feet on this. I have other casting ideas too, Hollywood. Call me.