Miss Peregine's Home for Peculiar Children: Part Two The Film
The last movie I talked about here was Tomorrowland. I hated that movie. It was such a disappointment. I didn't hate the Miss Peregrine film adaptation. It wasn't terrible. It also wasn't good. Why? That's tricky to unpack.
If you asked me what the theme of the Miss Peregrine book series is, I'd tell you it's about the conflict between wanting to be locked away and safe, versus wanting to go out into world and to maybe make a difference. In the first book of the series, we find out that the Peculiar kids are all hidden away in a time loop that is safe but also a prison for them. One boy left and was killed by the monsters. Another boy left, fought human monsters as well as supernatural ones, got married, had a family and eventually was hunted down by the supernatural but not before doing a lot of good. Stay in the time loop and you're safe, but you can't move forward and you can't make a difference. Leave the time loop and you can live life to its fullest and do a lot of good, but the monsters are always out there. The book's answer is that yes, we should go out and fight the monsters and maybe we might even defeat them and even if we fail it's a better option than hiding away, waiting for them to maybe get us anyway.
If you asked me what the theme of the Miss Peregrine film is, I'd say ummm... friendship? That's my best guess.
If there's one thing that puzzles me, it's the decision to make one movie that seems to be based on all three books in the Miss Peregrine series. These are bestselling books. You'd expect a studio to be filming three films all at once, since that's how franchises seem to roll these days, and maybe hoping they'll do so well that the last movie can be broken into two parts. Instead, we have one movie. Did they just plan for one? Did they decide at the last minute that there would be no sequels and then they kind of slapped on an ending? Allison Janney plays the big bad of the first book, but then it turns out she was Samuel Jackson all along and he's a composite character of her role and the main big bad of the series and he can shape shift. Since he's a shapeshifter, Samuel Jackson's character is also played by Rupert Everett who is given very little to do with it and seems to serve no real story purpose, so was Samuel Jackson too busy to be in this more? Was there supposed to be a bigger story for him and then they gave up on it? I understand the need to cut things down to get one movie from three books, but if you're going to cut then why make things needlessly complex? Don't get me wrong, there's set up but it just doesn't pay off in a way that feels satisfying. We don't set up monsters who can shapeshift which would create a sense of urgency and a reason to want to hide away in a time loop. We set up a shapeshifter so he can turn into the hero at the end because no one has ever used that trope before. This trope is an excellent use of our limited screen time.
Another weird set up and pay off is the use of a crossbow. Apparently, there's a monster in the time loop and every day, at precisely the same time, Miss Peregrine shoots it to death with a crossbow. I don't know what this establishes other than that she has a crossbow. I mean, we already saw a monster in another scene, so we know about them. Maybe the writers thought we forgot about the monsters? And needed a reminder? Did we need to know that monsters can be killed? I think we could work that one out when we see them get killed later. Did we need to see the crossbow? Couldn't we see it later when Samuel Jackson takes Miss Peregrine hostage? Maybe one of the kids could reach for it and she could make a face like "No, that is a terrible idea. Don't do that." Or maybe it could just be sitting on a table and she tells someone not to touch, so that way we know it's there. I just don't see why we need to establish that a random monster can be shot with a crossbow when later on, with no crossbow training at all, the hero can shoot at a monster with a crossbow. He misses. Maybe we needed to know that Miss Peregrine is better at it than he is? Or that's she a badass? She's played by Eva Green so I just kind of assumed that she was a badass. Maybe we need to know that this whole monster situation would have been easily solved if our hero spent more time at SCA events with crossbows? That's probably it.
This is a minor nitpick. The first action sequence goes on too long and gets boring. There's a CGI monster throwing a CGI kid around and our hero is trying to shoot it with the crossbow. We have never seen him use a crossbow. We haven't set up any situation where he shot at a monster and missed or maybe shot and hit the wrong thing. We have no idea whether he has any crossbow skills. So, waiting around for him to fire isn't interesting because there is no emotional payoff. I guess they just wanted us to see that their CGI monster throwing a CGI kid into walls looks better than the troll from Sorcerer's Stone. They spent the money to render it and they need to get their money's worth.
I don't understand how you can access a timeloop of 2016 from 1943. Also if they went with the book's timeline it should be 1940 but whatever. I don't get it. In the book, all the timeloops are old. That's why the kids are all stuck in them- the current time is too far in the future and they would all age. I think the producers just didn't want to pay for a set that looked like 1852 or something. Also, when they go into the 2016 timeloop, it looks just like 1943. They go through a carnival ride, so maybe the carnival is run by rabid preservationists and they just refurbished the ride so that it would look the same. Or they reused the set. Because it was cheaper.
There are things I do like. I like the visuals. I like the cast. I like the monsters vs skeletons battle that feels like a nod to old stop motion effects and is pretty well paced. I like having an ending that wraps up the story because I didn't really need to see two more movies. I might read those books, though.
Sometimes things happen in the movie because they happened in the books. I wish someone had told the filmmakers that when you're adapting three books into one story, it is okay to skip things that aren't important. In the book, an old man who runs the local museum and provides lots of information to the hero gets gruesomely murdered by monsters. It's upsetting because we know him and we care about him and shows that people we care about are in danger. An old man dies in the movie but we don't know who he is and we never spent time with him so it's more like "oh okay, he died. We've established that the monsters kill people like when they killed the hero's grandpa who was Terrence Stamp and we cared because the hero cared and we spent more time with him... yeah we didn't need this to be in the movie."
I feel the ending was meant to set up a sequel and then the filmmakers were like "No, Tim Burton, we are not going to make a sequel. Go film one more totally unnecessary scene to wrap this up in case the audience is too stupid to figure it out." The hero comes home and finds his grandpa alive because if you're a monster and you kill someone in January 2016 and then in, like, February 2016, you go into a 1943 time loop and die then I guess it means you died in 1943 and nothing you did in the years after 1943 counts somehow. No, I don't get how this works. This is not how it works in Star Trek. So grandpa's alive and the hero is back home and grandpa gives him money and a map to find the other time loops, maybe so he can tell them that everything is cool now but they're still stuck in a time loop for no reason. Ha ha. No, he has to find his love interest and she's in a time loop. They find each other, but it is still unresolved because she can't leave the time loop. I'd have had some sort of magical explosion when they defeated Samuel Jackson and then they'd say "Well, that explosion just fixed our time loop problem. Now everything is fine. Everyone can go out and live a full and rewarding life in 2016 and also, all the monsters are dead, so that's another bonus."
I don't hate the movie. It lacks the mystery and build up of the first book, but it also has action beats that the book lacks. The film doesn't have to stop and look at pictures, so it can have a smoother flow. It just chooses not to. I guess it's one of those movies that I'd put on the background like The Phantom Menace or Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland or any of the Resident Evil movies except the first one because I will watch the hell out of that first Resident Evil movie.
Tomorrow, I am going to Target to buy Rogue One... and also pretty much every single thing in the dollar bin area.
If you asked me what the theme of the Miss Peregrine book series is, I'd tell you it's about the conflict between wanting to be locked away and safe, versus wanting to go out into world and to maybe make a difference. In the first book of the series, we find out that the Peculiar kids are all hidden away in a time loop that is safe but also a prison for them. One boy left and was killed by the monsters. Another boy left, fought human monsters as well as supernatural ones, got married, had a family and eventually was hunted down by the supernatural but not before doing a lot of good. Stay in the time loop and you're safe, but you can't move forward and you can't make a difference. Leave the time loop and you can live life to its fullest and do a lot of good, but the monsters are always out there. The book's answer is that yes, we should go out and fight the monsters and maybe we might even defeat them and even if we fail it's a better option than hiding away, waiting for them to maybe get us anyway.
If you asked me what the theme of the Miss Peregrine film is, I'd say ummm... friendship? That's my best guess.
If there's one thing that puzzles me, it's the decision to make one movie that seems to be based on all three books in the Miss Peregrine series. These are bestselling books. You'd expect a studio to be filming three films all at once, since that's how franchises seem to roll these days, and maybe hoping they'll do so well that the last movie can be broken into two parts. Instead, we have one movie. Did they just plan for one? Did they decide at the last minute that there would be no sequels and then they kind of slapped on an ending? Allison Janney plays the big bad of the first book, but then it turns out she was Samuel Jackson all along and he's a composite character of her role and the main big bad of the series and he can shape shift. Since he's a shapeshifter, Samuel Jackson's character is also played by Rupert Everett who is given very little to do with it and seems to serve no real story purpose, so was Samuel Jackson too busy to be in this more? Was there supposed to be a bigger story for him and then they gave up on it? I understand the need to cut things down to get one movie from three books, but if you're going to cut then why make things needlessly complex? Don't get me wrong, there's set up but it just doesn't pay off in a way that feels satisfying. We don't set up monsters who can shapeshift which would create a sense of urgency and a reason to want to hide away in a time loop. We set up a shapeshifter so he can turn into the hero at the end because no one has ever used that trope before. This trope is an excellent use of our limited screen time.
Another weird set up and pay off is the use of a crossbow. Apparently, there's a monster in the time loop and every day, at precisely the same time, Miss Peregrine shoots it to death with a crossbow. I don't know what this establishes other than that she has a crossbow. I mean, we already saw a monster in another scene, so we know about them. Maybe the writers thought we forgot about the monsters? And needed a reminder? Did we need to know that monsters can be killed? I think we could work that one out when we see them get killed later. Did we need to see the crossbow? Couldn't we see it later when Samuel Jackson takes Miss Peregrine hostage? Maybe one of the kids could reach for it and she could make a face like "No, that is a terrible idea. Don't do that." Or maybe it could just be sitting on a table and she tells someone not to touch, so that way we know it's there. I just don't see why we need to establish that a random monster can be shot with a crossbow when later on, with no crossbow training at all, the hero can shoot at a monster with a crossbow. He misses. Maybe we needed to know that Miss Peregrine is better at it than he is? Or that's she a badass? She's played by Eva Green so I just kind of assumed that she was a badass. Maybe we need to know that this whole monster situation would have been easily solved if our hero spent more time at SCA events with crossbows? That's probably it.
This is a minor nitpick. The first action sequence goes on too long and gets boring. There's a CGI monster throwing a CGI kid around and our hero is trying to shoot it with the crossbow. We have never seen him use a crossbow. We haven't set up any situation where he shot at a monster and missed or maybe shot and hit the wrong thing. We have no idea whether he has any crossbow skills. So, waiting around for him to fire isn't interesting because there is no emotional payoff. I guess they just wanted us to see that their CGI monster throwing a CGI kid into walls looks better than the troll from Sorcerer's Stone. They spent the money to render it and they need to get their money's worth.
I don't understand how you can access a timeloop of 2016 from 1943. Also if they went with the book's timeline it should be 1940 but whatever. I don't get it. In the book, all the timeloops are old. That's why the kids are all stuck in them- the current time is too far in the future and they would all age. I think the producers just didn't want to pay for a set that looked like 1852 or something. Also, when they go into the 2016 timeloop, it looks just like 1943. They go through a carnival ride, so maybe the carnival is run by rabid preservationists and they just refurbished the ride so that it would look the same. Or they reused the set. Because it was cheaper.
There are things I do like. I like the visuals. I like the cast. I like the monsters vs skeletons battle that feels like a nod to old stop motion effects and is pretty well paced. I like having an ending that wraps up the story because I didn't really need to see two more movies. I might read those books, though.
Sometimes things happen in the movie because they happened in the books. I wish someone had told the filmmakers that when you're adapting three books into one story, it is okay to skip things that aren't important. In the book, an old man who runs the local museum and provides lots of information to the hero gets gruesomely murdered by monsters. It's upsetting because we know him and we care about him and shows that people we care about are in danger. An old man dies in the movie but we don't know who he is and we never spent time with him so it's more like "oh okay, he died. We've established that the monsters kill people like when they killed the hero's grandpa who was Terrence Stamp and we cared because the hero cared and we spent more time with him... yeah we didn't need this to be in the movie."
I feel the ending was meant to set up a sequel and then the filmmakers were like "No, Tim Burton, we are not going to make a sequel. Go film one more totally unnecessary scene to wrap this up in case the audience is too stupid to figure it out." The hero comes home and finds his grandpa alive because if you're a monster and you kill someone in January 2016 and then in, like, February 2016, you go into a 1943 time loop and die then I guess it means you died in 1943 and nothing you did in the years after 1943 counts somehow. No, I don't get how this works. This is not how it works in Star Trek. So grandpa's alive and the hero is back home and grandpa gives him money and a map to find the other time loops, maybe so he can tell them that everything is cool now but they're still stuck in a time loop for no reason. Ha ha. No, he has to find his love interest and she's in a time loop. They find each other, but it is still unresolved because she can't leave the time loop. I'd have had some sort of magical explosion when they defeated Samuel Jackson and then they'd say "Well, that explosion just fixed our time loop problem. Now everything is fine. Everyone can go out and live a full and rewarding life in 2016 and also, all the monsters are dead, so that's another bonus."
I don't hate the movie. It lacks the mystery and build up of the first book, but it also has action beats that the book lacks. The film doesn't have to stop and look at pictures, so it can have a smoother flow. It just chooses not to. I guess it's one of those movies that I'd put on the background like The Phantom Menace or Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland or any of the Resident Evil movies except the first one because I will watch the hell out of that first Resident Evil movie.
Tomorrow, I am going to Target to buy Rogue One... and also pretty much every single thing in the dollar bin area.