Sadly yes....a sequel we will most likely never get to see because they keep botching up the first movie. And I actually like the second book the best.
Maybe...I admit, I have a confirmation bias there, because I wasn't pleased with a number of decisions they made. I didn't like the choice of director (nothing against her, just not for this particular project), didn't like the cast (all too good-looking), didn't like the trailer (hard to explain, but they went big, and the books actually aren't big, they are overall quite small, which is exactly what makes them work so well).....and with the early reviews being mixed, well, I just don't expect to be surprised.
45% on RT. Interestingly, the majority of female critics gave it a Fresh and the majority of male critics a Rotten. Will still probably see it as what seem to be the chief criticisms ("too weird," "too twee and happy-dappy") aren't things that bug me much.
edited 7th Mar '18 3:13:55 PM by HamburgerTime
'Friendly' reminder for International Women's Day that things that are coded 'feminine' are seen as been worth less. Hooray!
To be fair I've also seen comments to the effect of it being kind of all over the place; but it's not like that's something that's not in the source material.
That's what made the books fun. So I'm going to reserve judgment until I see it.
So I was worried about the reviews but now seeing the split between female and male reviewers, this looks like a Girl-Show Ghetto situation.
Well, Fox News Hates it
, so it has that going for it.
Oprah's ultra-PC ‘Wrinkle in Time’ stung with bad reviews as ‘cringeworthy’ $100M Disney movie could bomb, experts say
edited 8th Mar '18 3:59:22 PM by megaeliz
The last adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time didn't fare so hot either.
I checked out the art book and was annoyed at some of the changes they made, like calling IT "the IT," adding action scenes in the Camazotz wilderness, and having IT reside in an organic cave instead of the central city. No problem with the actors or special effects, though.
edited 8th Mar '18 4:01:50 PM by lalalei2001
The Protomen enhanced my life.
probably not amongst the critics; but there was a contingent rooting for the movie to fail due to “forced diversity” or whatever.
Maybe bias is the wrong word for the male critics, maybe the film just resonates more with women, therefore they scored it higher. IDK, I’ve wanted to see this for awhile so I’m going either way.
The NY Times liked it pretty well.
I’m not gonna expect perfection from every movie; I’ll take some sincerity and hugs for my inner child.
I just saw it, and it was fine, I guess. There was nothing too objectionable about it, and it was better than the 2003 made for TV version.
Honestly my biggest problem was that it was just kind of slow. Everything felt a bit too slow paced, and the amount of time it takes to get to the actual story, doesn't really help. It also skipped over a lot of the more nuanced aspects of the book, and stripped Camazotz of a lot of it's satirical edge.
edited 8th Mar '18 6:40:24 PM by megaeliz
I feel like they sort of missed the point of Camazotz too, honestly.
At the time it was written, it was a commentary of the worst aspects of 50's suburbia and conformist culture, with a bit of Soviet style authoritarianism thrown in for good measure.
This almost completely drops the satirical aspects of Camazotz, and makes it loose a lot of it's edge and relevance. I feel like there was a missed opportunity to update it a bit to reflect society today, honestly,
edited 8th Mar '18 9:22:28 PM by megaeliz
A couple modern reviewers of the book took issue with Meg being somewhat weak and whiny, but I thought that was kind of the point of her character, that she could be indecisive and needy but still stand up when it counted.
The Protomen enhanced my life.Is it true that Aunt Beast was Adapted Out? :( She's one of my favorite characters.
I liked the design they had for her in the art book—it wasn't accurate to her description in the book but you could tell they put a lot of thought into it.
edited 9th Mar '18 10:29:34 AM by lalalei2001
The Protomen enhanced my life.An interesting thread on the movie’s mode of pacing and child-like perspective
. I’ll have to assess it for myself.
Aunt Beast and Ixchel get a blink-and-you-miss it glancing mention during the Happy Medium scene, but that's all. Presumably they cut the escape from and return to Camazotz because pacing.
Honestly, while there are some good bits and some great visuals, this film adaptation mostly misses the point. It characterizes Meg's problems as largely rooted in her grief and anger over her father's disappearance (with a garnish of adolescent awkwardness and self-image problems), where in the book her struggles go back much further and are, as mentioned earlier in the thread, partly of her own making.
Aside from a reference or two to his intelligence, Charles Wallace is almost a complete opposite of the character from the book: instead of being a thoughtful, articulate child who is so withdrawn around most strangers that he's thought to be a moron, he's precociously gregarious and unfiltered. His personal character arc is completely absent and his sibling bond with Meg takes a back seat to Meg's desire to get her father back; he's basically in the story to persuade Meg to join in the adventure and then need Meg to rescue him in the last act. Also, I'm sorry, but how on earth do you make an adaptation of A Wrinkle In Time and not include any reference to Charles Wallace's psychic abilities?
I did think Calvin was well-cast, but he also doesn't get a whole lot to do. The whole adventure is much more haphazard even in comparison to the book, and this version does the same thing the 2003 adaptation did with regards to making Camazotz and "the IT" the source of the darkness that threatens the universe, rather than Camazotz being just one example of a world that has succumbed to evil. This version at least doesn't claim that Meg defeated the IT, though. Camazotz itself is just a collection of surreal imagery and vague menace, neither retaining the book's period-relevant themes nor updating them to a more contemporary sensibility. IT wants Charles Wallace and particularly Meg for... some reason? and what IT intends beyond that is entirely unclear.
The one point where I felt like the movie almost hit the mark was the sequence at the Happy Medium where the children are shown how the darkness influences people on Earth and its results (with Mr. Jenkins, what's her name the Alpha Bitch, and Calvin's dad as cases in point), but since the themes of the greater universal conflict against the darkness and how it can be fought in many ways were otherwise mostly abandoned in favor of Meg's personal insecurities and a handful of random action sequences, there wasn't any particular follow-through.
I went in expecting there to be differences from the book and hopeful that it could still capture the spirit of the story, but I was pretty sadly disappointed.
