The Prisoner Reimagined
Aug. 3rd, 2009 12:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eponymous_roseFor those who haven't seen it yet, here is a nine-minute preview of AMC's The Prisoner, which is, of course, a reimagining of the 1967 classic, this time starring Sir Ian McKellen and Jim Caviezel.
I'll jump on the bandwagon and say this: I think it'll be enjoyable on its own merits, but not particularly as a remake remake. McKellen looks spectacular, and I'll probably be swayed by Caviezel eventually, and I very much like the look of it, but it seems a lot like two of my favourite things will be changed up quite a bit.
The first is the sheer, giddy surrealness of the Village itself. The original seemed more... I don't know. Over-saccharine in frankly impossible ways, which made the undertones of menace much more effective. This new Village looks a lot like it's trying very hard to show you just how gosh-darn weird the place is, honest. It's tricky to judge based on the preview, which is all about the creepy jump-cuts and such, but this version seems to be purposely pulling out all the gimmicks that we've seen in TV and movies a million times before - the ones where we smile sagely and go, "Ahh, non-linear storytelling. Oooh, surrealism. I remember this." It's risking cliché, is all I'm saying.
Also, and I'm not sure about this one, but it looks like they may have cut the espionage part of it? Is this all just happening to ordinary people? Or are we being nice and subtle and revealing bits of Number Six as he figures them out himself? (One of the things I really liked about the original was that Number Six's level of self-awareness and memory seemed to change from episode to episode - he was losing bits of himself all along. Essentially, where the reimagining seems to be about his defeating a sort of self-amnesia, literal or no, the original was about slowly and inexorably acquiring that same loss of self. They could well be telling the same story from two different directions, here.)
Anyway, it's all sort of a moot point, because it's a reimagining, and I for one am extremely interested to find out how much different our Village is now, 42 years later.
I'll jump on the bandwagon and say this: I think it'll be enjoyable on its own merits, but not particularly as a remake remake. McKellen looks spectacular, and I'll probably be swayed by Caviezel eventually, and I very much like the look of it, but it seems a lot like two of my favourite things will be changed up quite a bit.
The first is the sheer, giddy surrealness of the Village itself. The original seemed more... I don't know. Over-saccharine in frankly impossible ways, which made the undertones of menace much more effective. This new Village looks a lot like it's trying very hard to show you just how gosh-darn weird the place is, honest. It's tricky to judge based on the preview, which is all about the creepy jump-cuts and such, but this version seems to be purposely pulling out all the gimmicks that we've seen in TV and movies a million times before - the ones where we smile sagely and go, "Ahh, non-linear storytelling. Oooh, surrealism. I remember this." It's risking cliché, is all I'm saying.
Also, and I'm not sure about this one, but it looks like they may have cut the espionage part of it? Is this all just happening to ordinary people? Or are we being nice and subtle and revealing bits of Number Six as he figures them out himself? (One of the things I really liked about the original was that Number Six's level of self-awareness and memory seemed to change from episode to episode - he was losing bits of himself all along. Essentially, where the reimagining seems to be about his defeating a sort of self-amnesia, literal or no, the original was about slowly and inexorably acquiring that same loss of self. They could well be telling the same story from two different directions, here.)
Anyway, it's all sort of a moot point, because it's a reimagining, and I for one am extremely interested to find out how much different our Village is now, 42 years later.
