*Spoiler*
We just watched the second movie where Bent supposedly died in the arsenal fire. Yet he's back in the 3rd movie? Can someone please tell me how they explain his surviving the explosion that he was clearly in the middle of?
It's been forever since I've seen this, but I believe that in the prologue of this series, when reviewing all the characters and events of the first two, they show Bent riding up in a carriage with Ashton and the narrator says that he is alive through "some kind of miracle" or something extremely cheesy to that effect.
I've never read the books so I don't know how far they strayed, with the exception of Orry's fate, that is, but I thought Bent was quite necessary to this one as he was the main villain and did some of his most dispicable (sp?) things in this series.
The reason is simple. Bent has a big part in the third book. In the second book was never a passage where it looked as if he had died.
shareMy boyfriend wants someone to explain Bent's accent. Where the heck is he supposed to be from? Joe (my boyfriend) cracked me up when he said "Nobody in the south sounds like him!" He stopped watching it whenever Bent came on.
shareDon't forget! In the first part, when Bent meet is true father, the senator, he told to his son that he came from Ohio. He was just raise in Georgia by the Bent family, he didn't born here. So, despite the fact he hide it, he is a true Yankee.
shareIn the books, the senator is not Bent's real father at all. It's been years since I read all 3 books and I don't remember all the particulars. The "book" Bent is obese and pervy, not drop-dead gorgeous like Philip Casnoff. He (book Bent) tries to seduce Charles Main! Ew. Bent's real mother is a creepy old woman. It is she who has supplied the money for him via the senator. She really cares about him, but the circumstances of his birth made it impossible for her to keep or acknowledge him. Turns out he was born as the result of a rape -- by his mother's father!! Their family name is Todd, and it is hinted that they are related to the family of Mary Todd Lincoln.
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Hey, soapstef, tell your boyfriend that Bent is from Hollywood! That's why his accent sounds so phony. I also noticed that in the third movie, the accent wasn't nearly as "southern" as in the first 2.
shareSoapstef, in the book, Bent's from the Midwest. But in the miniseries, he's supposed to be from Georgia (go and watch the episode of Orry's and George's first day at West Point).
shareYour boyfriend is absolutely right. I'm from Dixie too and I've never heard anybody from here, at least in the western part of the South (Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas) who speaks like Bent. Maybe they do in Georgia and the Carolinas, but certainly not in the western part of the old Confederacy. I'd have to say we sound more like the characters of Orry Main or Rafael Beaudeen here.
shareIn the books Bent is knocked through the wall by Orry and into the river where he is presumed drowned. The fact is that the North and South book II departed from the books quite a bit. the challenge of the filmmakers was to turn Jakes third novel into a movie when their changes in the second book made most of what happens in the novels impossible. Hence the very awkward way of opening what is truly a horrible miniseries. (Ashton and Bent were never lovers in the novels)