I started last week with some thoughts on the plot and characters of the 2018 adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time. This week, I'll be finishing up my review/rant with thoughts on thematic and cinematic elements of the movie. This does contain spoilers. Thoughts--Themes
Obviously, everyone has a different thought on the theme of a book, so I can only speak from what A Wrinkle in Time did for me as a novel and what it did for me as a movie.
The movie picked up on some themes of the novel--the iconic love conquers all, for instance--and light vs. the darkness.
Light vs. darkness took an interesting twist in the movie adaptation. The discussion of giving into evil is turned into invasion of evil--an interesting choice for a world that doesn't seem to believe in a devil any longer. People's role in giving in to evil, choosing to satisfy their inner greed and jealousy, is sidelined for a theory that something from the outside comes in and fills the emptiness. It's a subtle change in nuance.
Unsurprisingly, they opted to eliminate Scripture references from the cinematic adaptation. While not shocking, I thought at least one of the quotes (John 1:5) would have been pertinent to the themes expressed in the movie. I was also mildly surprised at the neglect of referring to the Mrs. W's as angels (or even stars)--it seemed an interesting part of backstory that was cut out. It would be a far stretch to call the novel a Christian novel--it's really rather Universalist, listing Christ right next to Buddha as a warrior for the light. But someone would have thrown a fit over religion if it had been included, I suppose.
I was also disappointed that the concept of tessering was not explained further. There's a really interesting explanation in the book that's rather iconic and I thought they had set up a nice play into it with Meg's folding note she received from her father, but I suppose they thought it was a little overfull for a kid's movie.
On a really petty side note, I was also bummed that they didn't include one of my favorite lines--"Like and equal are not the same thing at all!" The neglect of it plays into the overall botching of the Camazotz plotline. I thought it would be an interesting play considering the increased diversity of the cast. (Which they didn't beat into your skull, so it worked nicely. It felt pretty organic, really, so points for that.)
Thoughts--Movie Stuff
Alright, here we get to the part that I don't usually get to review--the cinematic appeal of things. Overall, I felt the movie was just too bright. It's a sci-fi movie, so it'll by necessity have loads of CGI, but it felt like it went out of its way to be bright, obnoxious, and almost overly stimulating. Camazotz (with the exception of IT), felt just the same as Uriel, which was ludicrous. The portrayal of IT was unconventional, but creative--a series of neuron connections instead of a disembodied brain. I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of it, but hat tip for the neurons firing.
The music, overall, didn't impress me. It just felt overwhelming and climaxed a bit too much for my taste (every little thing got a music climax). The actual plot climax didn't feel like it got a deserving score. That being said, some of the tunes repeated rather nicely.
The CGI was good, though that's not always saying much anymore. There wasn't too much that took me out of the movie with thoughts of, "Holy cow, that's a green screen!". I'm still not sure why the changed the pegasi-creatures on Uriel into flying cabbage monsters, but I'd heard about that in reviews, so it didn't shock me too terribly much.
Alright, I think I finally got all the ranting out of my system. Any thoughts? How's NaNo going?
