Well, here it is, finally, and it looks pretty good to me. The kids look the part, the Mrs. Who, Whatsit and Which seem to be done right, and the movie looks big.
It DOES look big, and I have high hopes for it.
Can’t agree that the witches are “done right,” though, unless they’re only showing them after they’ve left earth and have put on their party outfits. In this trailer they are very sparkly and fancy.
Why move the earth scenes away from New England? Whuffo?
Also, if Charles Wallace is in that trailer, I missed him.
Well, I’m not seeing any warning signs yet. And it looks like they’re not afraid to include the religious angle. But I’m afraid to get my hopes up too much yet.
EDIT: Uke, he’s in the scene in Suburban Camazotz, but we don’t see much of him.
There was a kid in one scene, quickly.
I’m 100% down for this movie. It’s one of my favorite books and I even liked the movie attempt back in 2005.
Other than I do NOT like the three witches’ costumes (too “Glinda The Good” and not nearly creepy enough), this struck only one wrong note with me*. Otherwise it looks excellent.
Costuming aside, the casting looks great. Meg has the features I want from a Meg–stubborn jaw, thick glasses, and while not gorgeous now, you know she’s gonna grow up to be a knockout. Despite racist/troll comments, her race-change actually works to improve the story–it’s not neutral, it benefits it. If she’s from a mixed-race family in a fairly small town of hicks (and she is–Calvin’s family is poor, but normal there) having her be black makes the snotty lies/comments by townsfolk about how her dad left her mom for another woman all that much more cutting.
Charles Wallace only gets about 2 seconds of screen time. Which is a shame.
Calvin, the only character in the series who’s race DOES matter looks near perfect (in book three of the series, it’s critical that he be…I don’t remember…Irish? Welsh? Celtic? Something from that area–or the whole book falls apart. He has to be descended from them.)
And the famous “Kids bouncing the ball in unison” Camazots bit looks exactly as spooky as it should.
I’m prepared to be disappointed (again) but based on this trailer alone, I’m cautiously optimistic and really hope that they do book two (“A Wind In The Door” as it’s, IMO, somewhat better than Wrinkle)
Anyone else seen the trailer? Opinions
*One of the Witches telling Meg to “Be a warrior”. Which is kind of antithetical to the whole point of the story which is that “Love (and not romantic love) conquers all”.
[Moderating]
Merged threads.
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Fenris, is it even a race change? I can’t remember if the Murrays’ race is ever specified in the books. But I agree with you that it’s a good decision: Her parents met and fell in love because they were both genius scientists; race would have been completely irrelevant to them. And yes, it does serve to isolate them more from the “normals” around them.
Mrs. Murry is described as having flaming red hair, creamy skin and violet eyes. Not much like Gugu Mbatha-raw ;).
But I’m with Fenris on this one - this is actually a change that makes reasonable thematic sense in terms of Meg’s feelings of alienation. And since she still has a gorgeous mother, she can still feel awkward in comparison.
I remember meeting Madeleine L’Engle as a young boy as part of a class field trip - she was the very first author of a book I’d read I’d ever been exposed to. She was actually quite charming with her presentation. Huge fan of the book as a youngster, though I’m not sure how it would work for me these days. Still, I’m hopeful for this production - looks like they’re at least trying to do it right.
Fenris @ 7: I think the Meg looks pretty gorgeous already. And DAMN, I hate having to say that about pubescent girls.
Yeah, the key to mom is that she’s A) A brilliant scientist, B) Hopelessly in love with her long-lost husband and C) gorgeous. As long as she hits those three beats she fulfills her “role” in the story.
That said, I don’t think dad is ever really described. other than looking like Robinson Caruso while held in Camazots (shaggy hair, wild beard, nerd-glasses)
I just reread the first couple books. There’s a sort of Christian theology (think about the vibe that Lewis’s Perelanda trilogy has) that I didn’t notice when I was much younger and the second book is better than the first and the third and fourth are so-so. The last one is just odd. But Wrinkle and Wind still hold up well.
Tamerlane @ 9: Having adored the novel as a kid, I knew it was one I had to read aloud to my kids (along with the Alice books, Charlotte’s Web, and The Phantom Tollbooth.. It stood up fine for me at 35 and 40.
Except I noticed the Jesus shit more. Didn’t bother me as a child. Although the Jesus shit threw me off C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books at the age of ten or so.
Loved the book as a kid. In my early twenties, I reread it and loved it again; then I read books 2 and 3. I didn’t like Wind in the Door at all, but I did like Swiftly Tilting Planet. Never did read book 4.
I will say that I read Wrinkle in Time aloud to my kids when they were old enough, and while there was still much to like, I had a rather more negative reaction that time. Not the Christian stuff–we are a churchgoing family and that was in my opinion perfectly acceptable and actually rather well done. (Some of you may know that the book has actually been attacked for being *insufficiently *Christian–the witches, for one, and there’s a scene where Jesus is listed along with “other great people” like Copernicus and I-forget-who-all-else, which some more fundamentalist types think is a slap in the face to Jesus’s divinity.)
No, it was what I saw as the fetishization of “being smart.” I know the basic message of the book is about love, but L’Engle kept talking about how smart Meg was (and Charles Wallace and Calvin and the elder Murrys), and how *special *smart people are, and how much of a burden it was to be smart, and how no one ever really understood you when you were smart, and how someday (if you were smart) you could just soar over everyone else because of your intelligence…and it really rubbed me the wrong way. Later, I picked up Many Waters, which features the two average Murry kids, Sandy and Dennys, and realized where L’Engle was coming from: she couldn’t make those two boys the slightest bit interesting, couldn’t get where “ordinary” kids were coming from at all. So I guess she came by it honestly…
Anyway, I’ll probably see the movie. I hadn’t known about it; thanks for starting the thread!
Do you mean 2004? I didn’t think anybody liked it.
I was worried with the beginning. That speech sounded like they were changing the story, making the dad far more important than he should be. But the rest looked really good, so I’m hopeful.
I agree that it’s weird that Charles Wallace isn’t more featured. He’s kinda a big deal. Genius kid who gets in over his head due to his pride. And what happens to him always creeped me the fuck out.
I think they’re just using the TED talk as a way to introduce both the character and the concept of tessering. That’s the sort of change that you have to make in the transition from text to screen.
That’s a good point.
I think that part of what is great about that, though, is that for many (most) kids, smart is a social liability; it made us outsiders. Reading a story where the smart kid gets told “hey, eventually this liability will actually be a benefit” is a welcome respite from the every-day low level feeling of never being accepted by your peers.
Strange…
I’ve been an SF fan and a children’s book fan my whole life, but I’d never read Madeleine L’Engle. Inspired by the trailer for this movie, and by all the positive things people have to say about the book, I started reading A Wrinkle in Time, expecting to like it.
I got about as far as the end of chapter 4 before I dropped it. I found it unreadable and irritating, with flat characters I couldn’t identify with (despite being on the autism spectrum myself). It seems something like a third-rate version of C.S. Lewis’ Cosmic Trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, etc. - which I never particularly liked anyway.
I loved Harry Potter, Narnia, Tolkien, and very many fantasy and non-fantasy children’s books over the years, but somehow this just leaves me cold. Maybe it would have been different if I had read it first when I was young.
Now you’ve met one.
I had a similar reaction. I was puzzled as to why Chris Pine is so prominent in the trailer (mostly in the beginning, but still). I think it is just marketing though.