So, there I am, in the movie theater, and I’m seeing the preview for the Three Musketeers movie…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38an1IAG1TA
…and I’m asking myself: Why? What was wrong with the ones that George MacDonald Fraser wrote the scripts for*? What are they going to possibly do differently, this go-round?
Then I see this on the screen.
Yup. Seventeenth-century lighter-than-air sky galleons with cannons. These beauties are apparently integral to the plot.
Well. That’s certainly… something new.
Moe Lane
*The answer to that is, by the way, NOTHING AT ALL WAS WRONG WITH THEM, DAMN YOUR EYES.
Was that Orlando Bloom I saw as one of the bad guys?
You hadn’t heard it was a steampunk re-imagining? I’m guessing they did it because of the wild success of all the other steampunk movies.
I always liked how Prothos never really seemed to fight with his sword in the George MacDonald Fraser version. He kept hitting people with other things.
I saw both of those in the theater when I was a child and still remember them fondly. Every other, umm, remake since then has paled in comparison.
What are they going to possibly do differently, this go-round?
Why, screw them up, of course! Every director has to give us his “unique vision” of a story … rather like a dog must put his own unique mark on a new fire hydrant.
Harlan Ellison tells the story of, back in the Seventies, talking with a director who had optioned Stranger in a Strange Land. He knew the encounter wouldn’t go well when the director waxed enthusiastic about all the “improvements” he was going to make to the story. Ellison had to leave the room when the director admitted, “Well no, I haven’t actually read the book — but my girlfriend has, and she’s got some really great ideas!”
This looks hysterically funny and other than the names, totally unrelated to prior versions.