A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

One of the reviewers mentioned that There is actually a scene in which two teachers do a giant exposition dump while Charles Wallace is listening to them...and that they even mention how smart the children are in the conversation, and how strange it is that the father went because he liked his family so much...is it true? Because if yet, it might summon up all the problems with the movie in one single scene. In: A major point in the books is how the village keep judging and therefore misjudge Meg and her family. Ie she is thought to be an idiot because she has trouble with everything which isn't math, and in math she also struggles because the teacher wants her to do it in a specific way, and she has just trouble to not use the various short-cuts she knows. And Charles Wallace is supposed to be an idiot because he doesn't talk the way other children do. So why remove that aspect from the story. But even more important: Why write in an awkward scene like this when there already is a perfectly fine exposition dumb in the book in the scene when Jenkins tries to convince Meg that her father won't be back because he thinks that acknowledging that he most likely run out of his family will help her.

Yes, that does indeed happen in the early part of the film. The scene with Mr. Jenkins also happens, but in this context it's more about establishing that Meg was a fairly well-adjusted and very academically successful student before her father's disappearance, with Jenkins telling her to stop using her father's disappearance as an excuse to act out and asking her what her father would think if he showed up at school right then and heard how she'd been acting. The answer, of course, is that the majority of Meg's problems would be solved if that happened, which is very much not true in the book.

I also found it very telling that in the last scene with the Mrs W's before the kids venture off into Camazotz, instead of giving each of the three of them some form of gift, advice, or warning, the Mrs W's focus solely on Meg and nothing much is said to Charles Wallace or Calvin beyond Mrs Which warning them to all stay together.

Urgh...yeah, this is really missing the point. I mean, yeah, the book is not easy to adapt, but the beginning of it is actually mostly the easy part. How do you mess THAT up?

3.5 on IMDb. Ouch.

IMDB is hardly an accurate gauge of rating a movie.

I mean it’s to a wild degree a subjective endeavour.

Personally, I thought it could best be summed up by So Okay, It's Average.

There's nothing offensively awful about it. The acting and production values are pretty good (mostly), and it even has a few scenes that really work, (I like their take on the Happy Medium), but it's not particularly good either.

edited 9th Mar '18 10:43:10 PM by megaeliz

I never read the books or saw the previous movie, but I always got the impression it is like Heart of Darkness and The Great Gatsby in that Hollywood has been obsessed with trying to get it right for a long time.

Not really. It's gotten just one previous adaptation, for TV, that isn't all that well known.

It's also been co-opted by racists. So...yeah.

Wait, really? First RT, now this?

Yeah I’m ....sceptical about this.

The bottom 1 film in IMDB's Bottom 100 is a 2015 indie political film that may have been downvoted deliberately. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/why-is-film-predicted-turkish-912837

"Right now the worst rated movie in IM Db history – worse than both Paris Hilton’s The Hottie & the Nottie (2008), which sits at No. 14 and Pledge This (2006), which comes in at No. 6 – is last year’s Code Name: K.O.Z.

While the Turkish drama may never have been an Oscar shoo-in for Best Foreign Language film, it appears its ranking may have cratered to its historic low due to the same high-level political dynamics that played out in the days following the country’s unsuccessful coup d’etat on the night of July 15."

I mean with The Last Jedi and Black Panther I can see how the negative ratings and reviews are from motives outside the creative choices from the film. With A Wrinkle in Time, it's hard to tell because from the reviews I heard from (particularly from Double Toasted which mind you is mostly of black critics), there's more to get mad at besides the diversity.

You know, those anti-movie racists and sexists are loud, but they have barely an impact on the professional critic rating. If any at all. And audience scores are nonsense anyway outside of meta critic.

I'd hardly call Double Toasted that good either given that they're known to be quite sexist.

Anyways, I just saw the film. It was...meh? I didn't particularly like it that much but it's hardly something to hate.

My biggest problem was how disjointed and off the pacing and the story were. I have never read the books so all of this weird mumbo jumbo they're doing was confusing. The Young Sheldon kid, I felt was really creepy without intending to be (which then when he got intentionally creepy made it work). Eight year olds talking like adults creep me out. The white boy just kinda showed up out of nowhere and was incredibly flat. The Misses likewise just kinda showed up without really explaining anything and the Young Sheldon kid just kinda...already knew about them? Some of it felt kind of cliche'd too. Dorky kid with not too good family life saves the world and is super important. I'm not complaining too much on that one because really, it's a cliche that's important for a reason. The emotional stuff though, I had no problem with. It was actually the best stuff in the movie.

This movie is really not worth any scorn. It's just meh. Not good but not awful. Not worth a 3 on IMDB.

I’m not sure if or when I’ll see this movie, To me, the trailers made this movie look like a mix between Alice in Wonderland and Doctor Strange, with the whole traveling to other worlds/dimensions. I’ve never read the book but now I may want to, then I’ll see the movie.

Just got back. Upper end of "okay" in my opinion. The effects and Mind Screw sci-fi stuff were gorgeous, and the kid was cute and a really good actor. The Mrs. Ws were well done, though I wonder what the thought process was in turning Who and Whatsit from quirky elderly ladies to significantly younger Manic Pixie Dream Girl types. Was there some Relationship Writing Fumble between Who and Calvin going on, or was it just me? Calvin was just kind of there, though that's how I remember him in the book too so whatever. Some changes were just kind of inexplicable, like reducing Ixchel and the Beasts to a cameo and the Man With Red Eyes literally being a puppet rather than a brainwashed Camazotzian.

ITs redesign was pretty cool, now looking like the inside of a brain with neurons and axons and synapses and all that. And like the 2003, this version composited IT and the Darkness as well.

edited 11th Mar '18 3:12:41 PM by HamburgerTime

So I just saw this movie and I understand I may be in the minority here, but I loved it, as did my parents. I haven't read the book yet, though, so I didn't go in expecting anything in particular.

I guess I can understand the pacing issues, but I didn't have trouble with it at all. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

I might have liked it better if I weren't familiar with the book, though I did my best to go in with an open mind and not expecting complete faithfulness to the source material.

I'd be curious to know your opinions if you were to read the book now.

More than likely there will be things I wish the movie hadn't changed and things I'm glad were changed, but overall I don't see my feelings on the movie itself changing too much. I've spent awhile complaining about accuracy to the books in movie adaptations and right now I just... want to enjoy a movie however loosely based on the book it's adapting it is. I understand and respect not everyone can or wants to do that, though.

I might be picking up the book from the library this week or the next, so I'm looking forward to that. Just from a quick read of the trope page and Wikipedia article, I'm wondering if this book would be better-suited to a mini-series rather than a movie.

edited 18th Mar '18 11:10:35 PM by MisoraMiyazaki

One thing I noticed in this one is that it's ambiguous whether Charles has any powers apart from being a Child Prodigy. In the book and 2003 version he's explicitly a telepath and telekinetic, and while he does display these powers in this version it's only while possessed by IT, leaving it unknown if these abilities are his or just ITs channeled through him.

He's not telekinetic in the books, but he is explicitly telepathic/empathic, and it's implied that Calvin is also. Most of the events once the kids reach Camazotz hinge upon that fact, which makes the movie's decision to brush over that whole plot element very odd to me.

Among other things, the scene in the movie where the Man With Red Eyes offers the kids food, but Charles Wallace complains it tastes like sand? In the book, the reason it had no taste to him was because it was actually flavorless synthetic food and IT was tricking Meg and Calvin's minds into perceiving the smell and taste, but Charles Wallace blocked IT out of his mind too effectively for IT to do the same to him.

"This film sucks' over and over

Gets really repetitive after a awhile