I’m sure many of you have seen the trailer for the upcoming new adaptation of Annie.
I can’t help but cringe when I see it. I love the show. I think that the 1982 version wasn’t perfect (but had its good points) and that the 1999 version was much better (remedying the earlier version’s mistake of taking out good songs and putting in lame ones). I wouldn’t have minded another big-screen adaptation if it had been more faithful to the source material. (Or if it had been a non-musical adaptation of the comic strip. I wouldn’t have minded an update of that since the comic strip took place in, well, Comic Book Time.)
But it just baffles me that they felt the need to do a complete overhaul of this, up to changing the time period. (And can someone please tell me what the makers of this had against the name “Oliver Warbucks”?!)
But then again…am I being a hypocrite? There are other setting-updated works that I’ve enjoyed. Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, for example, or Ian McKellen’s Richard III, or last year’s Much Ado About Nothing. All of these worked beautifully updated to other times and places. Then there’s the occasional big-screen adaptation of a TV series. I liked the new versions of The Fugitive and Get Smart and thought they worked well in a modern setting.
Maybe it’s just that I enjoy updates (such as the Shakespeare ones) that are made with an eye to illuminating the original’s themes in a new way. Luhrmann’s R & J, in my opinion, worked because it made the feud look as ugly and violent as it must have looked to Elizabethan eyes, which made R & J’s love all the more beautiful–and doomed–in such a flawed and violent world.
But I dislike setting updates (including Shakespeare ones) that are made for shallow or ill-thought-out reasons–for example, a director saying “We’ll make this ‘hip’ and ‘trendy’.” (Often, the only thing that accomplishes is dating the movie.) Or a Shakespeare director who focuses not on the play, but on his own cleverness.
Furthermore, I’m not crazy about the assumption that modern kids can’t relate to a story unless it’s set in the modern era. Plenty of kids in the library where I work take out historical-themed kids’ fiction (like the Magic Tree House or American Girl books).
So what do you guys think? What makes a setting update work, and what makes it fail?