celluloid fantasies
Oct. 18th, 2008 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseSo I would pretty much sell my soul for a decent Prydain movie.
I've been under the weather for the past few days, so there's been lots of curling up with comfort movies - notably the entire original Star Wars trilogy and the Anne of Green Gables miniseries. And comfort fic. And all sorts of fanbrain-oriented stuff. But I've also been having Prydain fanbrain since summer, and I realized this afternoon that the thing I really wanted was a Prydain movie. Or a Prydain miniseries!
There was that terrible Disney abomination, but their characterization of Eilonwy is so utterly wrong that I can't even get any sideways pleasure out of it. It's borderline criminal, the way they de-fang and engirlify her. Plus they let Taran get away with far too much - there's a reason why Alexander's narrative is always kicking him down, why it takes him three, or possibly five, books to actually get to be the hero. The Disney lets him draw Dyrnwyn right off the bat, and it's like, guys, do you have any idea what makes this character tick? Clearly not. They build him up and break her down, and it adds up to something without any possible satisfaction value in any way.
But the books would be fabulous on film - they have lovely sweep, and elegance, and they even fit in pretty well to our expected hero-narratives. They're simple enough little things that they wouldn't need any sort of dumbing down. Just let them play out and be pretty, and don't screw up the mythological patterning of the characters and the plotlines, and you'd be golden.
Why has no one done this? It would give me such a total happy!
I've been under the weather for the past few days, so there's been lots of curling up with comfort movies - notably the entire original Star Wars trilogy and the Anne of Green Gables miniseries. And comfort fic. And all sorts of fanbrain-oriented stuff. But I've also been having Prydain fanbrain since summer, and I realized this afternoon that the thing I really wanted was a Prydain movie. Or a Prydain miniseries!
There was that terrible Disney abomination, but their characterization of Eilonwy is so utterly wrong that I can't even get any sideways pleasure out of it. It's borderline criminal, the way they de-fang and engirlify her. Plus they let Taran get away with far too much - there's a reason why Alexander's narrative is always kicking him down, why it takes him three, or possibly five, books to actually get to be the hero. The Disney lets him draw Dyrnwyn right off the bat, and it's like, guys, do you have any idea what makes this character tick? Clearly not. They build him up and break her down, and it adds up to something without any possible satisfaction value in any way.
But the books would be fabulous on film - they have lovely sweep, and elegance, and they even fit in pretty well to our expected hero-narratives. They're simple enough little things that they wouldn't need any sort of dumbing down. Just let them play out and be pretty, and don't screw up the mythological patterning of the characters and the plotlines, and you'd be golden.
Why has no one done this? It would give me such a total happy!
no subject
Date: 2008-10-19 03:10 am (UTC)I can see why Alexander would have been done with cinema after that. Poor book, how it was abused!
Now you've got me trying to mentally cast the thing. I'm thinking Henry V - era Christian Bale as Taran, or maybe Ben Barnes from Prince Caspian. Or that sweet leading laddie from Stardust, can't remember his name off of the top of my head. SMG will forever be Buffy in my head, but I could go for a younger Amy Adams, or go all the way back in time to Molly Ringwald.