Maximum ride

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Maximum Ride is a nine-part fantasy novel series by the American author James Patterson . The first volume ( The Pandora Project ) was released on April 11, 2005 in the USA. The books are about the six children Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gasi and Angel (the "crush"), who grew up in a laboratory called "School" and had to endure terrible experiments there before they Jeb Batchelder were freed from the "white coat" (name of the swarm for the scientists). They are 98% human and 2% birds, which is why they have wings and an altered anatomy . In the first three books, The Pandora Project , The Cerberus Factor and The Prometheus Code , which have been published in Germany so far, most of the time the swarm is on the run from the "Eraser" - beings created by the school's scientists who are half human, half wolf - who they want to bring back to school and kill. In book four the children mainly fight against global warming , in book five they are about saving Max's mother Dr. Martinez and the Fight Against Pollution, book six is ​​about saving fangs. The books are divided into the “Refugee Books” (1–3) and the “Protector Books” (4–7). There are also some similarities to two other works by Patterson: The Day the Wind Carries You and The Icarus Gene . The seventh book Angel: A Maximum Ride Novel was published in the USA on February 14, 2011, and James Patterson announced that the eighth and final volume will hit American stores in 2012.

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The Pandora Project

The first book is mostly about saving Angels, the youngest member of the swarm. The children were safe in their home in the Colorado mountains until a group of erasers (cruel and bloodthirsty human-wolf hybrids) showed up and kidnapped Angel. To free them, the crush must return to the dreaded "school", a place full of terrible memories from their childhood. They are shocked to find out that Jeb Batchelder, the kind-hearted man who had looked after them since he freed her from prison four years before the narrative began and suddenly disappeared two years later, after which they believed him dead, angry Figure returned on the side of their enemies and his seven-year-old son Ari had been turned into an eraser. Max, Fang and Nudge set out for California to free Angel, Iggy and the gas man reluctantly stay in Colorado on Max's orders, but the two of them forge plans to protect themselves against attacking erasers. On her way to “school” Max sees from the air how a young girl is threatened by three guys and can't help but help her. She makes a meeting point with catch and nudge and separates from them. Although she manages to enable the girl named Ella to escape, one of the boys shoots her and injures her arm and wing. She wanders through the forest and by chance, completely exhausted, discovers the house of the rescued Ella. She speaks to her and is immediately taken care of by her and her mother Dr. Valencia Martinez added. Since Dr. Martinez is a veterinarian, she immediately begins tending to Max's wounds, discovering her wings, although she is surprised but not deterred. She and her daughter offer Max to spend the night with them, which Max accepts, since she realizes that there is no other option. The vet takes the injured baby bird to her clinic the next day to take an x-ray of her arm and wing. In doing so, she discovers a small chip in Max's arm, which she seems to have had since she was very small, which is why it can no longer be surgically removed without taking too high a risk. In the meantime, Nudge and Fang have quartered in the small cave on Lake Mead, which was arranged with Max as a meeting point. A group of hawks nests there, where they can learn some flight techniques. When the two were having lunch on the roof of a fast-food restaurant the next day, Nudge discovered a street sign that read Tipisco , a location that was given in her school file as the only clue to her origin. She makes her way there, hoping to find her parents. Although he thinks it's a bad idea, Fang accompanies them out of concern for their safety. In a trailer settlement in Tipisco, the two see a black woman, possibly Nudge's mother, who is rude to them. Shortly afterwards they are surprised by Ari and after a little fight they flee back to their cave with the hawks. At the same time, Iggy and Gasi set various traps for the erasers in their Colorado home, but in the end have to flee from there and after a while encounter nudge and Fang. Meanwhile, Max says goodbye to Ella and Valencia Martinez with a heavy heart and flies back to the rest of the crush. After the reunification, the five set off again to save their little ones. After they have managed to free Angel from school in an uphill battle, the crush flees to New York City , where they find the "Institute for Higher Life", a branch of the school. They break in, hack into the computer, and find a folder that says where they are from. Apart from that, they manage to free a whole group of experiments from their cages in the institute. When they escape, however, they are intercepted by Ari. Max stands in his way, while the rest of the swarm flees to the exit together with the rescued experiments. In the scuffle, Max accidentally breaks Ari's neck and kills him. In the second book, however, he appears again because Jeb has revived him in an unknown way. After their successful escape, the crush sets out to find their birth parents.

The Cerberus Factor

After they rescued Angel, found data on their origins, killed Ari, and added a black Scottish Terrier named Total to their group, the second book begins, in which the crush searches for their real parents. Max is still disturbed by the enigmatic shout from Jeb after she killed Ari: “He was my son! You killed your own brother! ”On their way, the swarm encounters a group of flying erasers with attached wings, an improved version of the original wolfmen, including the resurrected Ari. In the fight against her, Fang is critically injured and there is no avoiding the need for hospital treatment. There Max and Iggy donate a liter and a half of blood to him and he can be saved. Of course, during the investigation, it turns out that the children are all mutants and the FBI that has been notified questions them. But they all pretend they have never seen Jeb or the Erasers and have no idea about a laboratory called "school". The FBI agent Anne Walker offers them to take them into their house as long as Fang is injured and unable to travel, which they finally accept for lack of alternatives. During the time the crush spends with her, Anne becomes more and more of a mother figure for the children and enables them to lead an almost completely normal life. She even enrolls them in a public school , with real teachers, lessons, and classmates. Max becomes seriously jealous when she sees Fang kissing his pretty classmate Lissa, whom Max always calls the “red-haired wonder”. But she too “falls in love”: with her admirer Sam from her English class (quotation marks, since neither Fang nor Max were really in love with Lissa or Sam, but actually only had feelings for each other the whole time). She meets with him and kisses him at the end of their date. And as if that wasn't enough, it turns out that Hund can speak totally and that Fang and Max can track down Iggy's birth parents, whereupon he leaves the flock. Yet all of the people who surrounded the crush during their "normal" lives were not who they appeared to be. The unfriendly school principal actually works for the Higher Life Institute and sets a trap for the children at school. They can escape and fly back to Anne's house, but where Jeb and Ari and other white coats have already shown up and it turns out that Anne had belonged to them all along. As they flee, Iggy reunites with them as his parents wanted him to be a circus attraction when he confessed to them that he has wings, after which he ran away and rejoined the crush. Later Max is kidnapped and replaced by a clone (referred to in the book as "the other Max") who looks exactly like her, but has a completely different nature and does not have enough knowledge about the actions of the real Max in certain situations and the crush has, which is why at least Fang and Angel knew from the start that it was not "their" Max, which they keep to themselves. Meanwhile, the real Max is able to free herself from her prison and a fight breaks out between her and her clone, in the end of which she wins.

The Prometheus Code

In the third book, Max is faced with the task of saving the world from the company Itex (the company behind the "school") and its evil director, who want to wipe out all recombinant species and reduce the earth's population by half, all of which are "useless" People who have any weakness will be eliminated. While all of this is happening, Fang tries to convince Max that they have to find a place to stay forever to forget all their troubles and kisses her - it finally becomes clear to the reader that he loves her . After some dramatic experiences during another stay at school, Max assumed that Ari was her brother. They even develop something of a friendship after Ari tells her that he has a not-too-distant "expiration date" on his neck. All erasers were killed and replaced by robots (the swarm nicknamed them "Tin Guys"), only he would have been spared, since he is Jeb's son and is now allowed to live on his neck until that date. She even offers him to join the crush, whereupon Fang, who cannot or does not want to forgive Ari that he has beaten him almost to death twice, leaves the group in an argument with maximum, Iggy and Gasi accompany him. The book is told alternately from two perspectives: that of the girls and Ari, who are traveling to Europe to continue their mission, and that of the three boys, who are trying to find as many allies as possible among all children in the world in the fight against school.

Adaptation

Comic

The Korean NaRae Lee drew a manga-style comic for the novel series , which has been published in Yen Plus magazine by Yen Press since July 2008. The chapters have appeared in six volumes in Germany so far: the first in February 2010, the second followed in April, the third in January 2011. The fourth volume appeared in the USA in April 2011 and the fifth in the same year. Tokyopop publisher brought out all German versions . Volume two was on the New York Times' manga bestseller list for several weeks.

filming

In September 2007, the production of a film based on the Maximum Ride novels was announced. Writer James Patterson would be executive producer, and Avi Arad and Steven Paul would also produce. On August 7, 2008, it was announced that Columbia Pictures had acquired the image rights and the film was announced for early 2013. Catherine Hardwicke was to direct, while Don Payne ( Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer ) wrote the script. In January 2010 it was announced that the film was going into pre-production when director Hardwicke requested a revision of the script because she wanted to add more action and delayed the premiere until mid-2013 at the earliest. In 2014 production was finally stopped and a web series was announced instead.

On September 29, 2016, a film adaptation of Maximum Ride was released as video on demand. This is from a different team than the previously announced film.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.thewrap.com/collective-digital-studio-will-turn-james-pattersons-maximum-ride-into-a-web-series/
  2. ↑ Maximum Ride. Film releases, accessed December 31, 2016 .