Talking Meme #6
First, something I should have added to my first post of the day (sorry about the spammage!), but 
aralias took some B7 prompts and wrote a collection of fic for Gauda Prime Day, all of them not allowed to be focused on Blake/Avon. The fics all seem pretty awesome and include a great Tarrant/Dayna one for me. (Not the only Tarrant/Dayna in the set, either!)
And so, one more post for today - another meme post, this time: Why not tell us more about the three musketeers, or you could talk about the NAs? for
aralias
The Three Musketeers! I'm not sure whether
aralias meant just the Richard Lester film(s), but let's talk about the Musketeers generally, why not?
The first version of the story I came across was the 80s cartoon Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds, which left me very confused when I saw a comic sketch of the original, because who was D'Artagnan anyway and why was Juliet called Constance? It had a very catchy/annoying sing-a-long theme song. I went off it, though, because they kept repeating it (& it was long) and my younger sisters were watching it while I felt I'd moved beyond it. And that was that, though I was mildly curious about what the original was.
However, I can't remember whether I first read a Puffin abridged version of the book, or Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, which uses the book as one of the main books-as-clues part of the story (and I went on a mission to read all the ones I didn't know), and I was blown away by how much better it was than the cartoon & had to go read the full version, which in turn was a revelation, because of the tongue-in-cheek humour that runs through. (The narrator knows that really the Musketeers are pretty terrible, or at least not people you ever want to live next door to.) And I had decided I didn't want to see any other film/TV versions because they would never get the humour as well as the swashbuckling... and then my dad made me watch the Richard Lester version(s).
Basically, I don't understand why we have any more film versions (TV fair enough, that's another medium). You can stop, people, the 70s got it right! It does get the humour, and it has Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch, Roy Kinnear, Spike Milligan, Christopher Lee, and Charlton Heston. (And some dubbing by Richard Briars, apparently, which explains a lot.) I don't know what a person would want in a Musketeers adaptation, but surely that is more than enough?
(Tumblr graphic, made by me.)
I think it would be a fun thing to vid, but I've never seen it done. I suppose I could myself one day if I could think of a song, but isn't that always the problem? Even aside from my rubbish technical skills.
I could talk here about the thing where actually it was only supposed to be one film, and then they split it into two but only paid the actors once and there was a whole thing and now actors have something called the Salkind Clause (after the producer) written into their contracts to stop such shenanigans from happening again. But that's all I know, so there you go. Two films for the price of one! Bargain, except for the cast.
As a result, the only other version I've watched is the 2011, and despite the fact it had Andrew Davies writing it, some nods to the Lester films, Matthew Macfadyen as Athos and a ninja non-evil Milady and airships, it was terrible. It had a good opening scene and then it was epically rubbish and not really even in a good-bad way, which it ought to have been. I was too tired to even record The Musketeers last year, sadly, because that sounds like it was pretty good.
Also I love Milady and how evil she is. I know I shouldn't, but pfft. I love her being so inhuman and evil and relentless! (They try to do a similar sort of thing with her son in the sequel, but it's not as good.) I like that she's completely unredeemable and always was. Obviously, I get why people want to fix this sometimes, and it's not as if Athos behaves well, either (but see what I said about how badly the Musketeers behave) but I enjoy a good female villain, and Milady's one of the very best. (My secret vengeful streak coming out, maybe?)
So I like The Three Musketeers quite a lot in various versions, and I like how it plays into Fire & Hemlock (which also has an inhuman female villain and a hero and heroine who behave badly/have to behave badly to behave well, as well as the Dumas Quartet, and a yellow horse) & I did once love that cartoon, so I have a lot of fondness for it, whether or not I should.
(I might still talk about the NAs! I have to think about that one some more. Last time I really gave them any deep thought, I was full of teenaged feelings about them, but I've grown as a person since then and I no longer want to kill Peter Darvill-Evans.)
Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there:
aralias took some B7 prompts and wrote a collection of fic for Gauda Prime Day, all of them not allowed to be focused on Blake/Avon. The fics all seem pretty awesome and include a great Tarrant/Dayna one for me. (Not the only Tarrant/Dayna in the set, either!)
And so, one more post for today - another meme post, this time: Why not tell us more about the three musketeers, or you could talk about the NAs? for
aralias
The Three Musketeers! I'm not sure whether
aralias meant just the Richard Lester film(s), but let's talk about the Musketeers generally, why not?
The first version of the story I came across was the 80s cartoon Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds, which left me very confused when I saw a comic sketch of the original, because who was D'Artagnan anyway and why was Juliet called Constance? It had a very catchy/annoying sing-a-long theme song. I went off it, though, because they kept repeating it (& it was long) and my younger sisters were watching it while I felt I'd moved beyond it. And that was that, though I was mildly curious about what the original was.
However, I can't remember whether I first read a Puffin abridged version of the book, or Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, which uses the book as one of the main books-as-clues part of the story (and I went on a mission to read all the ones I didn't know), and I was blown away by how much better it was than the cartoon & had to go read the full version, which in turn was a revelation, because of the tongue-in-cheek humour that runs through. (The narrator knows that really the Musketeers are pretty terrible, or at least not people you ever want to live next door to.) And I had decided I didn't want to see any other film/TV versions because they would never get the humour as well as the swashbuckling... and then my dad made me watch the Richard Lester version(s).
Basically, I don't understand why we have any more film versions (TV fair enough, that's another medium). You can stop, people, the 70s got it right! It does get the humour, and it has Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch, Roy Kinnear, Spike Milligan, Christopher Lee, and Charlton Heston. (And some dubbing by Richard Briars, apparently, which explains a lot.) I don't know what a person would want in a Musketeers adaptation, but surely that is more than enough?
(Tumblr graphic, made by me.)
I think it would be a fun thing to vid, but I've never seen it done. I suppose I could myself one day if I could think of a song, but isn't that always the problem? Even aside from my rubbish technical skills.
I could talk here about the thing where actually it was only supposed to be one film, and then they split it into two but only paid the actors once and there was a whole thing and now actors have something called the Salkind Clause (after the producer) written into their contracts to stop such shenanigans from happening again. But that's all I know, so there you go. Two films for the price of one! Bargain, except for the cast.
As a result, the only other version I've watched is the 2011, and despite the fact it had Andrew Davies writing it, some nods to the Lester films, Matthew Macfadyen as Athos and a ninja non-evil Milady and airships, it was terrible. It had a good opening scene and then it was epically rubbish and not really even in a good-bad way, which it ought to have been. I was too tired to even record The Musketeers last year, sadly, because that sounds like it was pretty good.
Also I love Milady and how evil she is. I know I shouldn't, but pfft. I love her being so inhuman and evil and relentless! (They try to do a similar sort of thing with her son in the sequel, but it's not as good.) I like that she's completely unredeemable and always was. Obviously, I get why people want to fix this sometimes, and it's not as if Athos behaves well, either (but see what I said about how badly the Musketeers behave) but I enjoy a good female villain, and Milady's one of the very best. (My secret vengeful streak coming out, maybe?)
So I like The Three Musketeers quite a lot in various versions, and I like how it plays into Fire & Hemlock (which also has an inhuman female villain and a hero and heroine who behave badly/have to behave badly to behave well, as well as the Dumas Quartet, and a yellow horse) & I did once love that cartoon, so I have a lot of fondness for it, whether or not I should.
(I might still talk about the NAs! I have to think about that one some more. Last time I really gave them any deep thought, I was full of teenaged feelings about them, but I've grown as a person since then and I no longer want to kill Peter Darvill-Evans.)
Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there: