bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
bironic ([personal profile] bironic) wrote2018-03-10 08:39 pm

Initial A Wrinkle in Time thoughts

The good:

(+) A+ father/daughter science bonding montage. Was wonderful that they didn't skimp on that relationship, on the love and wonder for the world (universe), or on Meg's intellectual capacity even though her little brother outshines her.

(+) The attic room, stormy night, and kitchen with simmering milk looked a lot like how I imagined them as a kid. <3

(+) Fleshing out of Mrs. Murray and her talents.

(+) Distinct characterization for each of the three Mrs.

(+) Synchronous bouncing balls and housewives of Camazotz. Wish they'd held longer on the eerieness of the seeming suburban normalcy.

(+) Scary stuff when Charles Wallace went under and dragged the family toward IT! Poor kids at the movie theater; I hope they weren't too traumatized.

(+) Interesting and sympathetic addition, showing how IT's darkness can manifest as negative body image/disordered eating and professional jealousy. Then the lighter touch for moviegoers who are listening for references to current global politics.

(+) I admit it: I cried when Meg reunited with Mr. Murray.

(+) Hi, boyfriend from Moonlight. <3

The not so good:

(-) Blah blah blah, we have to use a lot of CG for reasons, here, have too many empty minutes of swarming flowers, a cabbage dragon, a forest getting ripped up.

(-) That would have been forgiven if they hadn't fumbled the last act. First, they skimmed over how Charles Wallace falls to IT so easily because he's overconfident. They'd foreshadowed it with "I'm always right"/"When am I ever wrong"/whatever that line was, but then dropped it. I didn't think it was clear why he was seduced or how that related to his being set free. Second, they really dropped the ball -- ha ha, so to speak -- with Meg when she went back for him. Her being a misfit, her ability to break rhythms, these things that Mrs. Whichever-it-was gifted her as her faults on Earth, were supposed to be her strengths against IT. But they weren't set up well -- in the beginning, at school, she's only explicitly chastized for extended mourning, not for being clumsy or nerdy -- and then these traits are not explained or even really used as a counterforce to those ball bounces, to those hypnotic equations that pull in Charles Wallace, to the beating of IT's heart when they're in its brain. It's fine that they decided not to have Mr. Murray call on Meg to shout random numbers to resist IT's pull, because the story arc is about her own agency and self-actualization. But I don't think they made that arc apparent at all. And the second stage of breaking free, when she notices how much IT and the changed Charles Wallace thrive on hate and negativity and realizes the antidote is her deep well of love -- they did set that one up at the beginning, sort of, with Mr. Murray in the garage saying love is the key to tessering, but it felt confusing when Meg started saying "I love you" over and over to Charles Wallace as she did in the book. Did it make sense to those who hadn't read the book? Or did it make more sense for those who hadn't read it, because the theme of the movie leaned more toward learning to love yourself for who you are and extending that love to those around you? Meaning the stuff about breaking from IT's rhythms fell to secondary importance? Hm. I still would have liked for it to work more elegantly on the IT level. Also, when did Calvin get to do his thing, after being brought along for his diplomacy skills?

(-) Moon-eyed Calvin, ugh. Maybe it's heartthrobby for the pre-teen set but I always liked how in the book Meg and Calvin are just two sort-of neighbors feeling out of place in their own ways, who get to know and accept their own and each other's strengths and weaknesses, and only then begin to feel attraction after they've gone through this adventure together.

(-) Some bizarre casting choices (Zach Galifianakis), wince-y acting (Mindy Kaling when delivering non-quote lines), and music mismatches.

Overall, I'm glad this movie exists in the world. It's a fair adaptation of a wonderful book. There's stuff from the book that I missed in the movie -- Aunt Beast, the aftereffects of tessering through two-dimensional space and the cold darkness -- but that's what the book is for. I think most of the main cast did a good job. (Gugu! even Oprah!) Please continue to take my opening weekend dollars for giving movies to people who aren't white men.

What did you think, if you've seen it?
marginaliana: Buddy the dog carries Bobo the toy (Default)

[personal profile] marginaliana 2018-03-11 02:32 am (UTC)(link)
I agree with your critical comments about omitting a lot of the motivations for Charles Wallace - I would have liked more of that. But I think I can forgive that because this is Meg's movie, and to make it the Meg-and-Charles Wallace movie would have required something radically different. The moment when he was seduced (on the beach) could definitely have been clearer, though.

My opinion on what they were trying to do with the "I love you" scene was Meg recognizing that her father has actually fucked up - not that he was taken away but that he made the choice to go, to leave them in favor of Science because he put that first. And since this is one of the things she's been so afraid of all along, she's stepping up to take that role of parent for Charles Wallace and giving him what she has needed. I think that was foreshadowed by Charles Wallace saying "you mean your father," which was pulling from the adoption thing and from the fact that he wasn't even talking yet when Mr. Murray left. So they barely know each other, really. And I think Meg has a moment of realization about that when Mr. Murray is willing to save her first, so she's primed to go into that moment with Charles Wallace with the thought that maybe he doesn't feel that he's part of the family in the same way as she is. Maybe he doesn't feel that he is loved as fully as the rest of them.
cinco: Spock looking doubtful: "O RLY?" (Default)

[personal profile] cinco 2018-03-11 03:55 am (UTC)(link)
I agree with basically everything you said, especially missing Aunt Beast and Calvin having nothing to do. I was bothered by clunky dialogue and agree with you upthread that CW's motivations weren't very clear.

I did enjoy the film overall and think I would have loved if I had seen it as a kid. I enjoyed a lot of the visuals (especially the costuming). I do think it must have been very difficult material to film! I love the book (my favorites are #3 and #4, which are both probably unfilmable) but it is a weirdo and I'm glad those outsider/oddball qualities do shine through somewhat.
shati: teddy bear version of the queen seondeok group photo (Default)

[personal profile] shati 2018-03-11 09:14 am (UTC)(link)
(+) The attic room, stormy night, and kitchen with simmering milk looked a lot like how I imagined them as a kid. <3

Yes!! Someone I saw it with said the same -- I think it was skygiants? It was perfect.

I went into the theater completely at peace with the idea of the movie conceptualizing IT differently, because I think IT could use updating and I don't feel any particular affection for Madeleine L'Engle's books anyway. But after the bouncing balls section, and how -- I guess movie-generic? -- the actual action/look of the IT climax felt in comparison, I really wished we could have seen Meg fighting the rhythm just because it would have been so vivid and genuinely difficult/uncomfortable for the viewer in a movie.

I did get the impression that the movie was aimed younger than the book, so, uh, that might have been intentionally avoided -- I got less sense of danger and more of fun from it overall.

I'm rereading the book right now, and fwiw Calvin seems pretty instantly into Meg (and Meg almost as quickly vice versa) to me. He teases her more, but I didn't get the sense that they only begin to feel attraction or trust after going through the adventure at all from the books.
gwyn: (veronica takethat _jems_)

[personal profile] gwyn 2018-03-11 07:46 pm (UTC)(link)
I've never read the books (I know! but in my defense I'm ancient and a lot of kids' or YA things that grew to popularity through the '60s and '70s passed me by because we were moving around so much, and I was such an advanced reader, that everyone was shoving stuff at me at each new school that weren't really intended for my age group. I've always meant to go back and read this, along with a few other apparently classics that I missed out on, but I've never got around to it. Still planning to see the movie maybe this week, if I can. I want to support them with dollars, even if reviews have been less than great.
chaila: River Song with the text "tesseract" (river)

[personal profile] chaila 2018-03-12 01:24 am (UTC)(link)
It was really pretty to look at and I had feelings, and I think it was thematically coherent with the love and love yourself themes it ran with. And I love Meg, and I get that the movie chose to focus more on self-acceptance and love (which is definitely part of the book).

But I'm secretly really disappointed at how...defanged it was? Which is not AT ALL a criticism I could have ever expected to have about Ava DuVernay doing this story. I remember resistance being such a foundational theme of the book. Earth specifically is a front in the war against IT and the "dark" because the dark is encroaching there, and that manifests in war and environmental degradation and other ways that are actually politically timely (and not just in kind of interpersonal effects like jealously and self-loathing. Like I can read some politics in there, but...it's me doing all the work). Meg's parents are kind of resistance warriors themselves, or at least known to the resistance, in their quest for knowledge and truth. And Meg's dad isn't just lost, but captured because of this. The Mrs. don't choose Meg primarily because Charles Wallace loves her but because she's stubborn and offbeat and can and will resist.

Instead of getting more with the suburban conformity and the amazing creepiness that should have been and the triumph of Meg actually using her "faults" to fight and resist, we got a lot of kind of random action scenes with a storm about nothing and tree roots beating up Meg? Why de-politicize it completely? That just completely transformed the fundamental meaning of the book for me. All I wanted was to vid the resistance themes, but I don't think one COULD with the movie we got. It makes me sad. :(

And really, I think I could have been on board was almost everything, even if still mourning what was left out, until they hit so hard with the idea that her dad did something wrong because he chose knowledge/ambition over family? What kind of message is that?? It completely undermined the joyful science aspect of the beginning for me, as well as the rest of the movie's theme that love is empowering. I just don't get why they would do that.

Anyway, yes, I'm glad it exists and just as a story that treats the identity and self-esteem crisis of a middle-grade biracial girl, it's fantastic that it exists.
starlady: Raven on a MacBook (Default)

[personal profile] starlady 2018-03-13 02:44 am (UTC)(link)
My roommate, conversely, freaked out at the implication that her dad was willing to leave Charles Wallace with IT even for an instant without explicitly stating that he was planning to come back.
starlady: Raven on a MacBook (Default)

[personal profile] starlady 2018-03-13 02:49 am (UTC)(link)
I liked it! More than I was expecting to, honestly, given the bad reviews--most of which I avoided reading. I suspect many white male critics weren't happy at being told explicitly that black girls matter. I thought it was a pretty good adaptation all around--definitely not the same as the book, and I thought the stuff about the darkness spreading through the universe in particular was a savvy update on the early 60s nuclear paranoia in the actual text. I also loved the Hamilton shout-out. I also didn't find it as affecting as some people did, but the movie also wasn't made for me.

I think I am on the high end in terms of how few quibbles I had, but it did seem that Calvin was left with mostly nothing to do except be disconcertingly pretty and tell Meg her hair is good. And the too much CG was too much, but it seemed clear that would be a thing from the previews.