Book Vs. Movie

This weekend, I learned that Byzantine is secure enough in who he is to go to Blockbuster on a Saturday evening, by himself, and rent the teen vampire romance (vampmance? romire?) movie “Twilight” for us to watch.

No, really!

Have we lost our minds, you may wonder? Are we jealous that the word “tween” hadn’t yet been invented when we were that age, so we want to find out what we are missing? Did Fussypants abruptly advance in age by a decade and insist we let her watch it?

No, actually we watched the movie with the accompanying Rifftrax, which was very funny. I doubt either of us could have sat through the movie without it. You would have to come into the movie very, very invested in watching Edward and Bella (the two main characters, if you didn’t know, and I love what you’ve done with the bottom of that rock) stare at each other.

Staaaarrrrreeee and staaaarrrrreeee and staaaaaaarrrrrrrrreeeeee. For really really looooooonnnggggg periods of time. And very, very frrrreeeeeequuueeeentlllllyyyyy.

That is basically all that happens in this movie, really, I am not exaggerating. That is what the movie is about. A couple of other things happen briefly towards the beginning and end, but what the movie is about is Edward and Bella staring at each other.

So anyway, what I liked:

1. Jacob! Yup, I’m in the Jacob camp. (He’s a werewolf, and Edward is a vampire, and they don’t like each other, or something. But the important thing is he seems like a pretty nice normal guy, while Edward seems like kind of an idiot.)

2. The damp Pacific Northwest woods reminded me of the X-Files.

3. The evil vampire coven. They provide the main conflict in the story, although they receive about 5 minutes of total screen time out of this two-hour movie, because the movie is not about them (see above) although they are by far the most interesting characters.

4. The yummy looking diner food Bella and her dad are always eating.

5. The Bella actress has very pretty hair.

What I didn’t like…well, I’m not 13, I’ve never read the books, and my cat stares at me like 14 hours a day so I get enough staring already. But the movies aren’t for me. I don’t have any philosophical problem with them, when I was that age it was just something else we were swooning over, and it was probably something on tv (Kirk Cameron, I think, although I can’t really believe it myself) rather than books, so at least the kids are reading these days. So go hit the library, kids, and get off my lawn.

I’ve rated the Rifftrax above, since giving Twilight a star rating would imply I have an opinion about it.

So Byz, do you have any reflections on the movie (vampire joke haha)?

So there’s a new Sherlock Holmes movie coming out—check out the hi-def trailer. It has plenty of swashbuckling, pugilism, and double-entendres, along with (I assume), long exposition of brilliant deduction from Iron Man Holmes. I’m not familiar enough with the Holmes canon to know if this will be a travesty of modern re-imagining, or if it’s within the spirit of Doyle’s original Holmes. I need to finally get back into my Complete Sherlock Holmes to see, though it’s a safe bet that there are Holmes fanboys pre-emptively tearing the movie apart on the internets. I am sorry to see that there is no mention of Moriarty on the imdb page, but I suppose every movie needs to leave room for a sequel these days.

Nerds seem to have an affinity for Holmes. Two immediate examples that come to mind: TNG’s Holmes episodes, and Jon Bellairs’ Lewis Barnavelt, who dons his own deerstalker to solve mysteries. Anyone know of more nerdy tie-ins?

Extra credit: this post contains some blatant fanboy-bait; I assume any true Holmes fan is frothing at the mouth to point out my error. Find it!

I saw this several weeks ago but have yet to come up with much to say about it that Happy Simpleton hasn’t already covered. Really, I try not to be a “the book is so much better than the movie!” sort of person (although it did take me several viewings before I really made peace with Peter Jackson’s LotR movies). But if you’re going to (presumably) pay Richard Matheson for the right to do a movie based on his kinda-famous novel, isn’t it a bit weird to then make a movie that is almost nothing like the book?

OK, the basic setup—the last man alive on earth faces off against scary zombie-esque creatures—is similar to the book. And for a while, the movie hints that it will stick to the spirit, if not the letter, of the novel. But I don’t exaggerate when I say that the movie’s final 30 minutes is the complete opposite, morally and thematically, of the book’s finale. The novel features a major plot shift towards the end that explains the title and makes an otherwise average survival-horror story really memorable. The movie just… never goes there at all. And it thus remains a thoroughly average survival-horror movie.

This movie could easily have been done with bothering to call it I Am Legend. In fact, as it is, it’s pretty much just a PG-13 version of 28 Days Later. It’s not an awful movie; in fact the first hour is pretty good viewing. But for some reason, they decided to remove the really good stuff and replace them with characters and an ending that are, I promise you, significantly less interesting than they are in the book.

Oh well. Maybe I’m just a “the book is better!” snob after all. But if they’re not going to at least pay lip service to the original work, what was the point of making this movie at all?

The other day I read an article on I Am Legend and it described it as a remake of The Omega Man but made no mention of the original book. The article irked me, but after watching the movie I’m unirked, and find the disconnect appropriate, given the disconnect that is the new movie.

If they referred to the movie as “OTHER TITLE : A wicked loose ‘adaptation’ of the original, very sweet novel, ‘I Am Legend’”, I would be able to appreciate the movie for what it is … a Hollywood fun time money-maker. By using the original title, however, they set me up to expect some level of respect for the book. Not so much. In fact, the whole point of his being “Legend” in the book was completely absent.

So how is the move actually like the book?

1. It shares the name
2. The main dude is named Robert Neville
3. There is a lady and a dog, for what they are worth

How are they different?

1. Everything else

If you do not have high expectations you will likely enjoy this movie. It is a fun watch once you get past the ridiculous “lions eating huge herds of deer in NYC opening scene”. After you finish watching it, do yourself a favor and read the book if you have not already.

And now I will move on to The Omega Man and
The Last Man on Earth and see what they have to offer.

P.S. I enjoyed the trailer comments over at Digg.