A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

If I'm going to be honest, my opinion on the 2003 version is pretty much that it isn't very good, with the occasional good scene or effect. Oh, and missing the point of the book ending entirely. Yeah, in the book IT isn't actually defeated completely and Camazotz is still under thrall but a huge part of the point of the book is that regular everyday people are needed to defeat the darkness. Yeah, Meg is kind of weird by our standards, but she's just kind of a nerdy, isolated girl. But, she's not ordinary and normal on Camazotz. Her saving Camazotz doesn't do anything to help the underlying issues that made Camazotz vulnerable to IT and the Black Thing in the first place.

edited 22nd Aug '17 10:16:09 AM by Zendervai

That is my worry. A lot what makes the book so compelling is that it does pretty much the opposite of what most stories do. Meg's outsider status is only partly because she is misunderstood, an ongoing theme is that she makes herself her life difficult. The heroes are a girl and a much, much younger brother who is practically still a babe during the first book. And the whole adventure is not about rescuing a foreign planet, it is about rescuing Meg's father. The point is not to help another world, but to protect our own world to take the same path. I just don't trust any studio to actually go with this and leave the audience with something kind of unsatisfying on an emotional level and instead something very satisfying on an intellectual level.

The '03 movie also stated, weirdly, that IT was the creator of the Darkness rather than a symptom of it. So with IT dead, are we supposed to believe, like, nothing bad will ever happen again in the entire universe ever? I like happy endings, but that's a bit much.

edited 24th Aug '17 6:57:16 PM by HamburgerTime

To be (minorly) fair, the Darkness never actually shows up again in the books. Future books mostly involve creatures called the Echthroi. Granted, it's very unlikely they'll make any sequels, just because of how weird the sequels can get.

edited 25th Aug '17 5:26:22 AM by Zendervai

The second book is actually my favourite.

They're very good, but I have absolutely no idea how anyone would pull off the mitochondria stuff from A Wind in the Door. A Swiftly Tilting Planet might work, but Many Waters is weird enough that I don't think it would be a good idea.

I don't think that the description of the environment is necessarily that important. What makes the book so good is the whole philosophical discussion in it, and the whole process of Meg having to learn to appreciate her teacher. I actually tend to skip over the big finale when I read the book, but I am always totally immersed in her having to find something to love about a person she despises - and the conclusion that she is able to do so because she recognizes the humanity in him, with all the flaws.

Got a casting notice looking for a Chris Pine-with-beard standin.

Nice leaf beast.

It looks amazing.

Very cool.

I'm really looking forward to this. I really like the change made to Uriel, the whole everything is a plant thing. It's not exactly the untouched paradise the book talked about, but I think it works a bit better. I'm still wondering what that huge storm is, but maybe it's what makes Meg and Calvin tesseract to Ixchel? But maybe they'll actually do Ixchel justice in this version, instead of just making Aunt Beast an eyeless wookiee.

Was anyone else spooked by the, er, thing in the 1:41-1:42 mark?

Jumping Jiminy, I remember reading the book when I was a kid, but the visuals here are throwing whatever I tried to visualize out the window...and I mean that in the best way possible.

Refresh my memory, Uriel was the winged Minotaur thing in the cover, right?

Uriel was the paradise planet that the Black Thing hadn't reached at all. The winged centaur thing (and apparently the flying cabbage leaf thing) was Mrs. Whatsit and that was on Uriel.

But I really like the idea of everything on Uriel being a kind of plant because that would indicate that Uriel doesn't really have a food chain. That is, it's a paradise for literally every living thing on the planet.

On the first cover there was a female centaur with and unicorn horn and butterfly wings. At least, on the German version.

The second had wings and a lot of eyes and the third a winged unicorn.

I remember there being a centaur with wings instead of arms.

That was in the ABC movie. In the book it was simply a centaur. Maybe Disney couldn't afford the budget for arms yet like VeggieTales.

First time I saw the trailer, my thought was "wait, didn't Event Horizon use that same exact method for warp travel?"

Huh, so this is apparently the first film with a greater than $100 million budget directed by a black woman. I'll probably see this just to support that milestone (and because I loved the book as a kid), unless it's like, sub-25 on RT.

...I just realized the girl playing Meg looks so much like my little sister.

It's an actual theory. The whole explanation they used in Interstellar is practically identical to the one in the book.

It's pretty likely that A Wrinkle in Time is the reason the theory was well known in the public sphere in the first place. A ton of kids would have been exposed to the idea in the 60s and 70s and beyond since the book is from 1962 and it was really popular.

Madeleine L'engle was actually told that her book would never sell because she used real ideas and science mixed in with the mystic stuff and it would go over the kids heads. Turns out the kids tended to get it more than their parents did.

edited 21st Feb '18 3:00:06 PM by Zendervai

Yeah it's only really an issue in her books when the science becomes disproven or outdated. But the weird science mixed in with Christianity, in an interesting metaphysical way was part of what I liked as a kid.

Well, early reactions are mixed...I wish I were surprised.

When they visit the civilization inside the cell of a body, that's from the sequel, right?