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glitter_n_goreA couple weeks ago, the following trailer was released for the upcoming movie adaptation of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children:
Honestly? I think it looks fun. I'm a big fan of reigning Queen of the Goths, Eva Green, and was immediately excited when I heard she'd been cast as the enigmatic Miss Peregrine herself. Also, say what you will about Tim Burton--he knows his audience, and he still has the capacity to create some stunning visuals and memorable characters when he starts with a good story. And this is a good story.
If you haven't read Ransom Riggs' novel--or the two subsequent books, Hollow City and The Library of Souls, respectively--it centers on this kid Jacob and his attempts to find out about his late grandfather's mysterious past on this island in Wales. You see, his grandfather was killed by a monster only Jacob can see, and there was a lot of time and money spent on therapy to convince Jacob there was no monster, only a defense mechanism his brain made up to come to terms with the death of a loved one.
And you can interpret the rest of the story through that lens if you want to, but if you don't, there's a lot of cool stuff about time-loops, magical powers, immortality, and saving the world. The main draw, however, is a marketing gimmick in which Riggs went through several old-timey black and white photographs with varying degrees of creepiness, building his story around the images and plopping them into the text as reference points. That gimmick isn't something that will work in a movie adaptation, though. The story has to stand on its own.
It's difficult to tell from a single trailer whether this adaptation is going to hold up or not. The biggest difference I see right off the bat is that the main love interest, Emma, now has the ability to control air instead of fire. Which is daft and absurd. You don't improve on controlling fire, dude. Pyromancy is the best power. Period. That's my own personal bias, but still--Emma was a pyromancer in the book. Why would anyone change that?
I have no idea whether Tim Burton is planning to adapt the subsequent books or just the first one. I guess it depends how well this one performs at the box office. From what I can tell, the buzz so far has been pretty positive, but with some hesitant "What if. . ?" noise thrown in for realism's sake. I do love Eva Green. But you never know with adaptations.
With that in mind, I have decided to pick that as my next review series topic: YA adaptations. There are many reasons an adaptation of a beloved book series--or even one that's kinda well-known but not as blockbuster popular as others--can work, versus not. I've seen many of them, as have you, but most of the biggies have been talked to death by now: Harry Potter. The Hunger Games. Twilight. So I'm going to look at the ones I haven't seen a million internet think pieces on before, take the time to read the books and watch the movies--at least the ones I haven't checked out already, and if there's a TV series instead, we'll watch that--and see what I find.
The read/watch list for this project shall be as follows:
The Mortal Instruments / Shadowhunters
Beautiful Creatures
The Maze Runner
Vampire Academy
The Last Apprentice
Inkheart
City of Ember
Warm Bodies
Hugo
Stardust
I'll end it with Miss Peregrine once the movie actually comes out this September. Other than that, the order is kind of dependent on what I can get hold of and actually consume in a timely fashion.
Meanwhile, what is the best/worst adaptation of a YA book you've seen recently, or ever?
Honestly? I think it looks fun. I'm a big fan of reigning Queen of the Goths, Eva Green, and was immediately excited when I heard she'd been cast as the enigmatic Miss Peregrine herself. Also, say what you will about Tim Burton--he knows his audience, and he still has the capacity to create some stunning visuals and memorable characters when he starts with a good story. And this is a good story.
If you haven't read Ransom Riggs' novel--or the two subsequent books, Hollow City and The Library of Souls, respectively--it centers on this kid Jacob and his attempts to find out about his late grandfather's mysterious past on this island in Wales. You see, his grandfather was killed by a monster only Jacob can see, and there was a lot of time and money spent on therapy to convince Jacob there was no monster, only a defense mechanism his brain made up to come to terms with the death of a loved one.
And you can interpret the rest of the story through that lens if you want to, but if you don't, there's a lot of cool stuff about time-loops, magical powers, immortality, and saving the world. The main draw, however, is a marketing gimmick in which Riggs went through several old-timey black and white photographs with varying degrees of creepiness, building his story around the images and plopping them into the text as reference points. That gimmick isn't something that will work in a movie adaptation, though. The story has to stand on its own.
It's difficult to tell from a single trailer whether this adaptation is going to hold up or not. The biggest difference I see right off the bat is that the main love interest, Emma, now has the ability to control air instead of fire. Which is daft and absurd. You don't improve on controlling fire, dude. Pyromancy is the best power. Period. That's my own personal bias, but still--Emma was a pyromancer in the book. Why would anyone change that?
I have no idea whether Tim Burton is planning to adapt the subsequent books or just the first one. I guess it depends how well this one performs at the box office. From what I can tell, the buzz so far has been pretty positive, but with some hesitant "What if. . ?" noise thrown in for realism's sake. I do love Eva Green. But you never know with adaptations.
With that in mind, I have decided to pick that as my next review series topic: YA adaptations. There are many reasons an adaptation of a beloved book series--or even one that's kinda well-known but not as blockbuster popular as others--can work, versus not. I've seen many of them, as have you, but most of the biggies have been talked to death by now: Harry Potter. The Hunger Games. Twilight. So I'm going to look at the ones I haven't seen a million internet think pieces on before, take the time to read the books and watch the movies--at least the ones I haven't checked out already, and if there's a TV series instead, we'll watch that--and see what I find.
The read/watch list for this project shall be as follows:
The Mortal Instruments / Shadowhunters
Beautiful Creatures
The Maze Runner
Vampire Academy
The Last Apprentice
Inkheart
City of Ember
Warm Bodies
Hugo
Stardust
I'll end it with Miss Peregrine once the movie actually comes out this September. Other than that, the order is kind of dependent on what I can get hold of and actually consume in a timely fashion.
Meanwhile, what is the best/worst adaptation of a YA book you've seen recently, or ever?
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no subject
Date: 2016-03-30 04:19 pm (UTC)I haven't read the following books, have no desire to, and I'm not really interested in the movie--no matter how much I like Eva Green. (Though Penny Dreadful is coming back in a couple months!)
I will defend Vampire Academy as a good adaptation (probably the best IMO) even though it does stray from the source material. Whatever. I like that movie.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-31 06:09 pm (UTC)Vampire Academy is seriously underrated both as a book, and as a movie. I blame the timing personally; I feel like if it had come out just a few years either earlier or later, it would've been hugely successful. But that's why I picked it for the list--people need to know.
And oh crap, I just thought of The Moth Diaries, which I just read this month. Possibly the best vampire book nobody ever talks about or remembers. It's like Carmilla meets Girl, Interrupted.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-31 07:44 pm (UTC)Another thing about the photographs: They are spooky and gothic, and as I was watching the trailer, I was like, "this doesn't have the same vibe as the book." And I think a lot of that is the photographs; so Burton could've used the photos for, like, the ~aesthetic. Like, the photos remind me of early Burton (Beetlejuice and even Sleepy Hollow). I'm not digging Burton's latest CGI-filled aesthetic.
Agree the timing for VA was super bad. Again: It's a shame because it's not the typical YA paranormal story. It's about friendship and dealing with social cliques and puberty and feeling like a freak in HS.