Again, and, as before, this is just my opinion, but I think we all need to give this film a chance. Is it the DS (meaning the original) that we all love? To me, for the most part, yes. It contains the original story line of Barnabas, but with modifications. For example, Vicki, again (as in the '91 remake), turns out to be the reincarnation of Josette, while in the original it was Maggie. I always preferred the Maggie/Josette thing rather than the Vicki/Josette thing (and it appears there isn't even a Maggie in this version at all - heresy!; but I'll forgive). The '91 version not only rerouted from Maggie to Vicki, it also turned my beloved Maggie from a innocent, virginal coffee-shop hash-slasher to a slatternish smokey-bar hootch-mootcher. I didn't like it, but I survived.
Are there comedic elements in this film (despite both Burton and Depp insisting it is not primarily a comedy)? Well, obviously. It goes from subtle to slapstick. Is that so bad? Like I said before, the whole concept of a man trying to adjust culturally from 1772 to 1972 with hardly a workshop on adaption can, should, and would make for comedic material. As much as I love the original and what followed, from HoDS to the '91 remake, I thought the whole thing about Barnabas showing up at Collinwood within days of being released and dressed in current clothing and being able to fit in without anyone wondering why he has no clue as to what My Three Sons or The Brady Bunch or Roseanne is is utterly ludicrous. Yes, DS is fantasy, so maybe we should overlook these things, but this film is also fantasy.
And is having fun with DS, or making fun of it, so bad? Don't we do it all the time, even here? We have a chuckle at the inconsistency of the original. We have our own comedic categories here, quite often poking fun of the show itself, in the threads such as "Complete the Phrase" and "Caption This." Does that make us "disrespectful" of the show we love? Absolutely not. So what if Depp and Burton have done a bit of what we've done. They've both said they were loyal and passionate fans, just like us. Like so many of us, they ran home to watch the show while growing up, and it was always Depp's dream to recreate Barnabas. And what about "Dank Shadows" on youtube? It's done by fans and rips their and our beloved show a new one, and it's all hysterical. It doesn't take away one iota that DS was a massive, groundbreaking TV show, so much to the point that, despite all its many faux pas (and there are many, oh, are there many, and we all know it), it has become the most successful soap opera in history. Is there any other soap opera that has all its episodes re-aired for decades and available on tape/DVD? Does any other soap opera command an annual festival that brings in thousands of fans? I attended only one (in 2003) and at one of the question-and-answer sessions with the stars on stage, there was a fun bantering of questions between audience and star participants regarding the many misfires of the show. One of the funniest questions and answers had to deal with the piano in the drawing room (leave it to DS to screw up an entire show because of a piano).
There are plenty of things to find at fault with the original. There are plenty of things to find at fault (even more so, because by then they should've known better) with the '91 remake. I can't comment on the '04 attempt at another remake because I didn't see it. I loved the original despite its many faults. I enjoyed the '91 remake despite it not being what I thought was the original "vision." (And I thought, and still think, that, save for Jean Simmons, it was horribly miscast, and way over the edge.) I was in heaven when I went, in October of 1971, to see HoDS in an overflowing movie theater and rather than viewing the subtlety of the original was exposed to Hammeresque blood and gore with a movie chopped down to emphasize blood and gore and a total lack of character development. I also enjoyed NoDS a year later (played in a double bill with HoDS) even though not one - not one - of any of the characters from the original series or movie appeared in it. Again, despite the massive studio-ordered slash-and-burns (hopefully eventually restored) that made it disjointed and nothing associated with the original, I still liked it.
The original DS isn't perfect. Even when I was a child, and then a tween, and then a teen, watching it, I would stop and say: "Hey, wait a minute..." But I loved it. It's reimagining in two previous movies wasn't perfect. It's '91 remake wasn't perfect. But I (and many of us fans) still loved it all because it was DS. DS, unlike many other shows, has survived to the point where it's now a multi-million dollar movie with big names and stars. Don't expect it to stand up to perfection to the original because the original wasn't perfect. It had incredible things that went with it and incredibly awful things that went with it. I "romanticize" DS (and when I wrote a couple a couple novels about it, I tried to clear up those awful things that the original writers should've thought of). I appreciate what it did and tried to do, but there were times when it thought it had a "big head" and could get away with anything. We fans have always been smarter than that even though it has never bothered us a bit.
We shouldn't let this film bother us because some of us don't think it stands up to the "purity" of the original. The original wasn't pure. This revision just might clean some of that up. I can't wait to see it. I can't wait until our DS party being planned for it happens. All we need for the party (which includes either brunch or "dunch" [dinner-lunch, depending on if we decide to eat before or after we see the matinee on the 12th]) is for a good recipe for Mrs. Johnson's mayonnaise.
Gerard
Topic: Depp/Burton DARK SHADOWS Is In Production!! (Read 719901 times)