Going Postal
Jun. 3rd, 2010 12:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcThat was brilliant. With reservations.
The casting was brilliant, the city and the clacks towers superbly realised, and the story and dialogue sung.
However ... while I'm not one of those "Change is bad! They should film the book exactly as it was written!" people, there was two things that bothered me.
1) The deaths of the previous postmasters. I don't object to them changing elements of the story, just to them changing them a bit without checking for internal consistency. Mr Gyle killed them? But never got round to burning the Post Office down before? In the book, the reason the Post Office is still standing is that Gilt simply doesn't see it as a threat. And, therefore, has no need to kill postmasters.
2) Adora Belle. Yes, most of the time she was exactly the character from the book, but there were lapses. Her on-again off-again hatred of Moist, as opposed to knowing she couldn't trust him but liking him anyway, seemed a bit like they were pulling it from a book of romance movie cliches, and not doing a terribly good job of it. And then it lead to her yelling at the Golems, which is just wrong.
But then, the film's Adora Belle Dearheart apparently uses her chain-smoking spikyness to mask how upset she is about her situation, and is eventually able to let go of this persona. As opposed to the book version, who is simply a spiky chain-smoker, whatever the situation.
The casting was brilliant, the city and the clacks towers superbly realised, and the story and dialogue sung.
However ... while I'm not one of those "Change is bad! They should film the book exactly as it was written!" people, there was two things that bothered me.
1) The deaths of the previous postmasters. I don't object to them changing elements of the story, just to them changing them a bit without checking for internal consistency. Mr Gyle killed them? But never got round to burning the Post Office down before? In the book, the reason the Post Office is still standing is that Gilt simply doesn't see it as a threat. And, therefore, has no need to kill postmasters.
2) Adora Belle. Yes, most of the time she was exactly the character from the book, but there were lapses. Her on-again off-again hatred of Moist, as opposed to knowing she couldn't trust him but liking him anyway, seemed a bit like they were pulling it from a book of romance movie cliches, and not doing a terribly good job of it. And then it lead to her yelling at the Golems, which is just wrong.
But then, the film's Adora Belle Dearheart apparently uses her chain-smoking spikyness to mask how upset she is about her situation, and is eventually able to let go of this persona. As opposed to the book version, who is simply a spiky chain-smoker, whatever the situation.
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Date: 2010-06-03 01:23 pm (UTC)Well, one small reservation. The discovery of the 150,000 dollars being attributed to Ofler instead of, correctly, to Anoia the Goddess of Things Stuck in Drawers. That tiny detail is really a colossal change to canon and will cause huge problems if they ever film 'Making Money'.
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Date: 2010-06-03 01:27 pm (UTC)Does it make much difference to MM? I mean, it's my opinion that the final explosion of Cribbins's teeth is divine intervention (they're spring-loaded metal, and in the wrong place. Close enough), but I don't think it'd harm the story if that interpretation wasn't present.