Why I Don't Actually Hate The Movie: A Year of the Tesseract Post

[rockinlibrarian]

Series Intro: to celebrate the 50th anniversary of my FAVORITE BOOK EVER, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, I am filling 2012 with BLOG POSTS EXPLORING EVERY POSSIBLE ASPECT OF THIS BOOK IN GREAT DEPTH. I call it the Year of the Tesseract, and you can see what I've written already by clicking the year of the tesseract tag. There WILL be

Comments

[punterschlagen]

So, I just have to weigh in here...

I just CAN'T like the movie. But it's like the great lady herself said - "I expected it to be bad, and it was." Except for Mr. Jenkins, you were right about that - and Calvin's remarks to Mrs. Murry

[rockinlibrarian]

Even after writing this post, I still haven't figured out exactly why I LOVE some adaptations, I'm happy enough with others, and others just leave me bitter. Like Howl. I know I should TRY to see them as two separate entities, but I just couldn't do it! There was too much the same for me to separate it! (I even made a point of watching when I hadn't read the book in a long time, in hopes I wouldn't care about differences so much). Ironically enough I was quite fine with most of the changes-- the plot streamlining and condensation of secondary characters made sense, and I LOVED the castle-- except for Howl's bedroom, but that's probably tied to HOWL BEING TOTALLY DIFFERENT-- I just felt, like, personally offended by them turning Howl all boring. I think my experience was further tainted by watching the special features and NOBODY mentioned Diana Wynne Jones or the fact that it was based on an original book at all, though they kept raving about what a genius whatshisface, the filmmaker, was-- and all the english-overdub voice actors

[elouise82]

I have not seen this movie - unsurprising, given that I only READ Wrinkle for the first time a few years ago. But I agree with respect for the source material. That's why I loved The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe despite the changed details, because they obviously all loved and respected the book. And that's why, I think, the second and especially the third Narnia movies disappointed me so, because it seemed they veered from "let's remain as faithful to the book as possible while still making necessary changes for film" to "MONEY!!!!!" Interestingly enough, we re-watched the old, old Narnia adaptation of Silver Chair recently (the one with Tom Baker as Puddleglum) and I found that where I hated it as a kid for how lame it was, I actually appreciate it much more now simply because it is so obvious that, given their limited budget and the dearth of special effects back then, they were doing their best to tell the story as Lewis had.

Though Jill's whininess still bothered me. Because book!Jill is most definitely NOT a whiner.

[rockinlibrarian]

I loved the Lion Witch and Wardrobe movie, too! I thought it was masterfully done. Prince Caspian had always been one of my least favorites of the books-- I couldn't remember much of it as it was-- so I didn't notice the changes too much on account of, like I said, I couldn't remember it anyway. I still haven't seen Dawn Treader, but I imagine if it's as disappointing as you say I'll notice it more, since that one IS my favorite. I watched the old old adaptions way back when, but don't remember much now.

Really, you're not missing much not ever watching the Wrinkle movie, it's just not a complete atrocity, either.

[elouise82]

Some parts of Dawn Treader were beautifully done, and the kid who played Eustace was BRILLIANT. They just changed so much in the name of "but it's good filmmaking" except all it ended up doing was making everything that had been clear in the book confusing in the movie, and maybe I'm just an ignoramus but that DOESN'T SEEM LIKE GOOD FILMMAKING TO ME.

I've heard Collins herself is raving (in a good way) about the Hunger Games, about how well they manage to maintain her original vision while actually translating the story to screen. NOT to get your hopes up too much, but ... that's promising, right?!

[rockinlibrarian]

EVERYTHING IS PROMISING! Except I'm not sure about Haymitch yet, something about him seems off to me. But it's all wreaking havoc on my "go in with sedate expectations" policy!