TV/Movies Megathread

[Sheilbh]

Obvs

[Syt]

If Nolan set the movie in Space or 1930s South or some other fantasy realm people would not be nearly in such a tiff. I couldn't care less whether the armor and boats are appropriate to the era (pick: Bronze Age Greece or Homer's later period). I'm more interested in whether it tells an interesting, compelling story. That said, Nolan's style of film making usually leaves me pretty cold and emotionally unengaged, so I'm not holding my breath in that regard.

[garbon]

Obvs

 

[crazy canuck]

If Nolan set the movie in Space or 1930s South or some other fantasy realm people would not be nearly in such a tiff. I couldn't care less whether the armor and boats are appropriate to the era (pick: Bronze Age Greece or Homer's later period). I'm more interested in whether it tells an interesting, compelling story. That said, Nolan's style of film making usually leaves me pretty cold and emotionally unengaged, so I'm not holding my breath in that regard.

Sure, but the point we were discussing is that there are those were very upset with the skin colour of Helen.  But they have no concerns about all of the obvious historical inaccuracies.  Including having a White American Odysseus.

[The Minsky Moment]

I am definitely not in the camp of "Your scene of fictional heroes fighting a mythical giant monster with one eye is unrealistic because it clads the heroes in Iron Age attire rather than the late Bronze Age."

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, we should definitely dump it down. I mean why even try to suggest that the Odyssey has more significance the wheel of time.  It's all just fiction, right?

[The Minsky Moment]

Yeah, we should definitely dump it down. I mean why even try to suggest that the Odyssey has more significance the wheel of time. 

Let's not got carried away.  I agree there are limits, excessive candle use should be absolutely out of bounds for the Odyssey. 

I don't deny the Odyssey's significance.  But it's a Hollywood treatment no matter how you cut it.  I think it's possible to do it just as respectfully to the source material, without recreating every scrap of 1186 BC apparel, and replacing the entire cast with Shakespearean stage actors pronouncing their lines in strict BBC RP accents

[The Brain]

My problem with the screenshots is costumes that look like they're from a tired 90s fantasy TV show. And the infamous Gladiator/Batman crossover helmet.

[Duque de Bragança]

My problem with the screenshots is costumes that look like they're from a tired 90s fantasy TV show. And the infamous Gladiator/Batman crossover helmet.

Since this was one of the first screenings, I got the movie poster depicting the LARP-like Excalibur scene. 
No viking ship (knörr?) for me.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, we should definitely dump it down. I mean why even try to suggest that the Odyssey has more significance the wheel of time. 

Let's not got carried away.  I agree there are limits, excessive candle use should be absolutely out of bounds for the Odyssey. 

I don't deny the Odyssey's significance.  But it's a Hollywood treatment no matter how you cut it.  I think it's possible to do it just as respectfully to the source material, without recreating every scrap of 1186 BC apparel, and replacing the entire cast with Shakespearean stage actors pronouncing their lines in strict BBC RP accents

This isn't about re-creating every scrap.  It's also not a respectful adaptation.  This is more of a fantasy war movie loosely inspired by the Odyssey.

I think what you are hearing is a great deal of disappointment that they could've and really should've done better given the source material.

[Sheilbh]

Respect is a marble tomb.

And I'd almost argue the opposite - the "worse" or less artistically interesting the source material is the more important it is to respectfully pick up the plot points and the costumes and the details because there is nothing else there. When you're dealing with "better" art the fact that there is so much more of atmosphere, tone, character, the dreaded themes is precisely what liberates (or should liberate) its adapters.

It's not for nothing that the greatest adaptation of Jane Austen is Clueless, for example. Or the vast various permutations that Shakespeare's works have experienced. Or, for that matter, in literary terms that Homer's work inspires Dante (with Ulysses as a particularly interesting character), obviously Joyce - but also I think two of the greatest works of poetry in the 20th century, Derek Walcott's Omeros (more Iliad also playing on Dante) and Christopher Logue's astonishing War Music which is sort of the Iliad in Vietnam.

No doubt it'll be Hollywood and of its time but all adaptations are of the time and from within the cultural and social conditions that its produced. There is no "faithfulness" because it's illusory and would in any event just be a faithfulness to our own times' idea of what was faithful. Odysseus can be a white American (because it is impossible for him to be an ancient Greek) just as surely as Lady Macbeth ca be a provincial Russian merchant's wife. Good art worth adapting and re-adapting doesn't provide a story but lines that can be riffed on through time, in each time, making it its own - the more plot-driven work is less adaptable in that sense.

[crazy canuck]

Look if we're gonna live in a world where clueless is the best adaptation then yeah, fucking give Odysseus a spaceship and have done with it

[The Brain]

Clueless was awesome.

[Sheilbh]

I don't see any issue with Odysseus having a spaceship. It's about home and the yearning for it and his journey etc so would work really well in a sci-fi adaptation.

[crazy canuck]

I don't see any issue with Odysseus having a spaceship. It's about home and the yearning for it and his journey etc so would work really well in a sci-fi adaptation.

Yeah, it's pretty obvious. You wouldn't have an issue with it.