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Cross-posted at the WEF cos I can't be bothered to rewrite. Spoilers, spoilers everywhere.
"One day men will look back and say that i gave birth the the 20th Century..."
- Jack The Ripper, 1888
And so FROM HELL gets off to an immediate bad start by displaying the above words on a black screen, presenting - seemingly as fact - a fictional quote by a person who was never actually seen or heard by anybody, and as such is unable to be quoted.
I've seen a *lot* of poor films adapted from superior novels, but generally I shrug them off.
FROM HELL made me *angry.*
Even now, hours since I left the cinema, I'm still grinding my teeth at what a colossal disaster The Hughes' have made of the comic. It is a crass, superficial bastardization that demonstrates quite clearly, in my opinion, that the people involved with its creation didn't even fully understand the source material they were adapting.
I understand the need to condense a 500-odd page graphic novel in order to make a two-hour film. I appreciate that in order to do this characters must be omitted and combined, events reshuffled. I understand that what works in print doesn't necessarily work on film. But by their decision to restructure the story so that Gull's role as the killer is kept secret from the audience until the last 20 minutes they've completely *ignored* the entire purpose of Moore's story. At the end, Gull is being tried by a Masonic court for his crimes, and he tells his judges "none of you can understand the black art that I have wrought" (paraphrasing). Well, neither can the audience, because there's no attempt to explain it in any meaningful way.
Oh sure, there's nods to the comic throughout - oh look, there's a quick shot of Cleopatra's Needle! There's John Merrick! There's Christchurch! Here's Walter Sickert appearing for less than 10 seconds in a completely pointless "cameo"! But every reference to the comic is glib and superficial, completely without purpose or resonance, existing only to justify the tenuous link to the source material. Why even bother to claim heritage from the comic when they've completely thrown out everything that made it unique?
And completely aside from missing the entire raison d'etre of the comic, but something that's no less infuriating to me, is the complete lack of historical accuracy - yes, it's a work of fiction, but Moore was very careful to not contradict any established historical fact, and speculated what went on *behind and between* documented events. Here we have incorrect chronology, invented characters and events that have absolutely no basis in history but are only there to conform to the typical Hollywood action-thriller formula (cases in point: George Godley kicking a flaming barrel of gunpowder into a courtyard where it blows up reeeal good, creating a distraction so the newly-created-for-the-movie Evil Police Detective won't catch Abberline sneaking in to the top-secret file room to find evidence of the royal baby! Said Evil Detective kidnapping Abberline but in the ensuing struggle being killed in a (yawn) spectacular horse-and-carriage crash in the streets of London! Abberline's dramatic face-to-face showdown with the Ripper! Abberline's DEATH, for fuck's sake, from a heartbreak-inspired drug overdose at age 30! And more!) And while they pay so much attention to recreating the streets of 19th century London, and they hire the very best Queen Victoria and Prince Eddy lookalikes they can find, they blow it with characters like Gull and Sir Charles Warren, and even Abberline, that bear NO resemblence whatsoever to their real-life counterparts! REAL PHOTOGRAPHS of these people exist, for god's sake, would it kill them to check up on them?
Even assessing it as a film on its own merits turns up nothing of value - everyone but Ian Holm is woefully miscast, the soundtrack is intrusive and uninspired, the "whodunnit" plot they've constructed is surely incomprehensible to anyone who's not already familiar with the real events or the comic...it is an unmitigated piece of shit on every level. I had loooooow expectations going in, I knew it wouldn't be the same as the comic, but this is lower than I could have imagined.
Aggh....I could go on and on and on...but I won't. I'm tired.
The one positive thing is that the guy in front of me in the cinema heard me ranting about all this as the end credits were rolling and started asking questions about the comic - he seemed interested in finding a copy after hearing me go on about how much better it was....
[ 21-10-2001: Message edited by: CameronStewart ] |
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