I (and many others, I’m sure) only read Dan Brown’s novel Angels and Demons because it was by the author of The Da Vinci Code. It’s generally meh – worth reading only for what it teaches about Vatican City (especially the Vatican Library) and the monuments and historical sites of Rome. (Did you think the Swiss Guards were purely ceremonial spear-carriers in silly costumes? Apparently they’re a highly professional elite law-enforcement outfit.) Like TDVC it involves the Catholic Church, puzzle-solution and hidden conspiracies, but the plot is even dumber.
This week I found out they’re making a movie. (I was listening to an “All Things Considered” account of Bush’s visit to Rome, which mentioned there was so much street protest and police response to same that the A&D crew had to suspend filming.) Tom Hanks is in it.
So, what can we expect? Will it be any good? At least the plot (of the book) does have lots of action, danger and racing-the-clock suspense in it.
I liked Angels and Demons better than The Davinci Code, so I’m kinda looking forward to this. But just “kinda”, as I was disappointed in the other movie.
A shiver of horror ran down my spine as I read this. Please – as you value your credibility – double check any information you think you may have learned from any Dan Brown book. Although there are superficial similariites, the world of Dan Brown’s characters (and I suspect Dan Brown himself) is not our own, and is at odds with observable reality.
Indeed. Angels and Demons is worth reading for the same reasons The Da Vinci Code is (i.e. however you feel about one, you’ll probably feel the same about the other), but not for “what it teaches.”
As mindless idiotic bollocks go Angels and Demons IMO will make a much better movie than The Da Vinci Code.
Ron Howard makes well crafted good looking movies. He can be OTT and takes things to seriously but that should contrast nicely with the silliness of the story.
Huh. I was sort of under the impression that the first movie flopped, but apparently it earned almost 800 mil. I guess that explains the making of a sequel.
Was the first film any good? I thought Da Vinci Code the book was decent airplane reading, but that A&D was over the top even by that standard. That’s the one where:
The guy jumps out of a plane and uses a seat cushion as a make-shift parachute and lives?
Oh, pseudohistory’s fine – pseudohistory can be fun. Dan Brown’s is dull and unconvincing, but that’s not his biggest problem.
It was
that I was reacting to – it may *appear * well-researched, but it isn’t. I’m sure many of the things he presents as fact are accurate (Rome is in Italy, I know that much) but seriously – he gets so much wrong that you simply can’t trust anything he writes.
Try looking here for some of his errors. For example:
Not rabid hate, just a preference for books that aren’t stupid and badly-written, combined with an annoyance at stupid, badly-written books becoming huge best-sellers.
Part of the hate is that Dan Brown himself claimed that they were much more than just fiction mysteries. The preface to The Da Vinci Code specifically said,
FACT
All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.
Therein lies the problem–Dan Brown was wrong on ALL counts. His descriptions of artwork were NOT accurate; for example, the figure seated to the right of Jesus in The Last Supper was John, not Mary Magdalene. He was also repeatedly wrong in his descriptions of architecture, documetns, secret rituals, and other historical facts. Heck, he couldn’t even get the great Renaissance master’s name right! (His name was Leonardo, not “Da Vinci.” The latter was no surname; rather, it was merely an Italian phrase that designated his home town.)
Even the non-religious should find plenty to gripe about when Dan Brown claims that his work was meticulously researched and accurate.
