You have an awful lot of valid criticisms of the movie, and Disney-styling in general Vector, but I feel it's objectionable to compare it to the book. It was meant to be it's own thing, so enjoy it for being exactly that.
I am never, ever going to enjoy that movie. It has not that much to do with the novel, really... I hated it the first time I saw it, without even any other movies to compare it to. There is an extra level of hatred due to familiarity with another narrative, but a lot of that really has to do with seeing the points where a particular action or emotion followed with an event in the book. See, the result is that I end up having a heightened sense of confusion, because rather than simply saying "... What?" I end up saying "What?" followed up by "why did that happen?"
In the first instance, I'm just confused by the entire story and totally clueless. In the second, I have some projection as to what might have happened and end up another flavor of confused.
Hence a lot of the confusion over Frollo and Quasimodo's behavior (Esmeralda is a cardboard cutout with "spunk" scrawled on in purple crayon, and Phoebus is so different to the original that I really can't compare the two). His actions make no sense. A few slivers of them make me go "Ah, I feel like I know where I am!" and then I look at everything else and say "wait, fuck, no."
There's so much mood whiplash, basically, and so much nonsensical character development, that I get almost hopeful when something like Hellfire shows up to be a sort of cross between the original and the new. I
did like that song. I
did like Esmeralda's "God Help the Outcasts," though that was definitely a Disney thing not at all in the original novel and completely outside of the domain of her character.
And, on the other hand, the other thing is that I am never going to get over Quasimodo's puppyification. There's a number of things I can forgive as narrative liberty. Aging up Esmeralda, okay. Tossing Gringoire, okay. Phoebus is the main love interest rather than a sleazeball, okay. Making Frollo an unprincipled racist, rather than a tortured priest... I'm deeply unhappy about that, but that's mostly because he's my favorite character. I can deal with him being a judge, though it feels really weird.
The part where Frollo's name was changed from "Claude Frollo" to simply "Frollo" pisses me off a bit because "Claude" is from "Claudius," meaning "cripple," and that was always very interesting to me. But that's a minor nitpick.
But we have this collective idea about this character, Quasimodo, and who that is. The original novel was changed and censored in its initial publication here to raise him to the position of the hero, rather than a mere actor upon the stage--I'm not even just talking about the title shift, either. We have a certain idea in collective culture about who this person is, and what his existence is supposed to mean. "A good heart beneath a hideous exterior." The shift of Quasimodo's degree of hideousness frankly bothers me, much as it bothered me when the Andrew Lloyd Weber version of PotO (both movie and play, but especially the movie) made only half of the Phantom's face ugly--compared to the full-bodied hideousness of the novel.
The message of acceptance is greatly, greatly weakened. The damage done to Quasimodo's temperament is really superficial.
It's the good old myth that "within every ugly exterior, there's a totally normal person waiting to get out, not really shaped at all by their external appearance."
And, I guess, that's what really bothered me.
I have to admit the power dynamics of abuse also really got to me, which made the movie quite a bit less enjoyable in certain aspects. The "yes, master" things... hurgh.
I definitely laughed at the alphabet, though. For me, that was probably my favorite part of the film.
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9495092 times)