If someone isnt interestd in art only cause its old, he or she has no understanding of art anyway. Should we paint the Mona Lisa twice per century, cause ... noone will find the f*cking Louvre without Google Maps on his smartphone anymore anyway ;) ?
Or is it better, to show them some badly photgraphed Polaroid of the Mona Lisa, cause .... way worse is always better then nothing :) . And the Louvre is so far away :) .
Agatha Christies novels are outdated since the 1940s. And have we watched the Orient Express from 1974 with excitement at the 1980s on our TV sets? Yes, we did cause we were interested into her stories. Beside that her stories happened even longer ago then Flemings boring mixture of WWII and cold war stories labelled Bond (without the Bond movies of the 70s and 80s, which clearly killed everything left of the boring Fleming inherit there would be no Bond anymore anyway).
So either you are interested in crime stories playing in the 1920/1930s/1940s or you are not. And there are 2 ways to do a movie about such a story: Either do a good or a bad movie. And the age of the movie doesnt decide sh*t at all (even if its a bw silent movie. As if Metropolis isnt more valid and recent today, then it was during the last decades).
So if there is really someone one whom thinks "I would be so interested in Agatha Christie movies, but man, are thos old!!!", then he is in the clear miority. The reality instead is, that his or her major problem would be, .... that there are way too less good Agatha Christia filmed novels. There is Murder on Orient Epress, Death on the Nile, Evil under the sun and perhaps Mirror cracked. And thats it. So if "saving Christie into the 21st century" would have been a motivation, then some of her other amazing stories would have been chosen.
So its just milking once again the dead cow. Something which is the best movie studios could do at the 21st century.
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PrimeMinisterX (8331)
6 years ago
Well, I have to be sympathetic and understanding of their aims for the reason I already mentioned above: There was a time when I was exactly the person they're talking about. Like I said, until I was about 30 years old, I had no interest at all in going back and watching movies that were made before the 1980s. It's not that I didn't like movies. It's that there was just something about the nature of older films that was a turn off for me.
There are certainly a lot of younger people today who feel the same way, and those are the people that the Christie estate wants to reach via modern films that employ modern filmmaking techniques. I won't begrudge them that.
You said, "So if 'saving Christie into the 21st century' would have been a motivation, then some of her other amazing stories would have been chosen. So its just milking once again the dead cow." But that's just the thing: Maybe you consider the cow dead, to you, because the definitive version of the story has already been filmed. But for all of those younger people that they're trying to reach who don't know anything about the story, the cow is very much alive.
However, to your point about choosing other stories, you should know that we're in the middle of something of a Christie renaissance right now.
The BBC in particular has partnered with the Christie estate to bring several stories to the screen. Some of them are well-known and some are not. In 2015 they re-adapted And Then There Were None and in 2016 they released their adaptation of Witness for the Prosecution. And just this month they released their version of Ordeal by Innocence. In the pipeline are six more adaptations: Death Comes as the End, The ABC Murders and four others that have not yet been named.
Last year a big-screen adaptation of Crooked House was released to theaters and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
And of course, due to the success of MOTOE, Branagh's Death on the Nile has been greenlit.
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Quint (935)
6 years ago
So cause movies used a different, and mainly better language and style a few decades ago there are really people which dont want to see that movies? So they arent interested in movies at all, cause it doesnt matter at all if a good movie is made in the 1920 or in 2010. Its a good movie. And thats it. And if some person is really narrowminded enough to think "Hey, that movie could be good, but no .... its 40 years old. Im not gonna watch it" then perhaps the best solution is not to watch movies at all. Cause there wouldnt be any understanding about good stories at all.
During the 1960s and 1980s mankind made the largest advances by far (not thos few adjustments and optimizations today are presented as a breakthrough :) ). And even we didnt thought for a second "This stupid Metropolis. Lets hate it. Its black and white and didnt even offer sound. That must be the most horrible movie on that planet!".
So sorry, but if this is your access to movies then probably movies isnt your thing at all.
And BTW Todays BBC is a bunch of complete idiots which are mainly politics and not story driven. So stating that BBC will rape Christies amazing stories is something we should be sorry about.
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PrimeMinisterX (8331)
6 years ago
It's interesting that you call others narrow-minded because frankly you are one who is coming off narrow-minded here. It seems that you feel like your way of looking at movies is the only right way.
Yes, there are lot of young people who don't like watching older movies. I think that's normal. Usually 18-year-olds aren't interested in watching The Jazz Singer. Just the way it is.
One thing to keep in mind is that movies of every time period have their own aesthetic feel to them. Movies from the 60s and 70s, for instance, often have a very grungy, uncomfortable look and feel. If that's a turn off for someone, I won't begrudge them that.
Acting has changed a lot over the years. Earlier films usually incorporated a very theatrical acting style which later gave way to newer styles that emphasized naturalism more. If people prefer a more natural style over the more "stagey" style of acting found in a film like Gone with the Wind, I think that's fair enough.
Obviously effects are much better today as well, which just goes without saying. So if someone would rather watch Independence Day over The Day The Earth Stood Still, again, I'm not going to tell them they're wrong.
Maybe consider just letting people have their own relationship to films, even if that relationship is different from your own.
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Quint (935)
6 years ago
18 years are either interested in good stories or not. The age of the movie never ever mattered at all. Thats narrowminded. "Hey, good story, but .... its from the 1970s! Never going to watch it". Thats an horrible midnset. Especially (!) when you life in the dark ages of moviemaking. If people in the 1960s or 1980s would be so arrogante .... they would have had any reason. Cause at the decades there were so many classics made that they easily could ignore other decades. But no .... none of them did. At the 80s a tons of teenagers watched Star Trek! From the 1960s. Or heard music from the 1960s. Sometimes even more then then recent music :) . Beside that this were 2 really, really complete different styles :) .
But today .... with huge desaster like Batman vs Superman or Last Jedi, etc. you dont even have much any chance other then watching movies from earlier decades anyway. And indeed not all recent movies are trash. That would be nostalgic nonsense. There are some awesome movies still released like Shin Gozilla (IMHO the second best Godzilla after the original one .... a perfect movie you would never be able to watch, cause .... it was made in the 1950s ;) ). But most recent movies are trash cause global thinking bookkeepers dictate how movies are made today. So you got laughable quota characters like the chinese in Last Jedi or the new Indepedence Day (where in both cases it was as obvious as possible, that they were built into the story for no toehr reason then getting more money from the growing chinese market). That is far more important today then building up likeable characters or even such a impossible thing like a good story. So yes, there are still some amazing movies made today. But there was almost never a time (not even during the 1950s) when movies were as completely commercialized as today. And now you are going to tell me, that within this dark age you think you got the luxury to distinct movies mainly cause of their age ;) ?
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Quint (935)
6 years ago
There is no natural acting. Its just the inability to play any role at all, cause thos "actors" plays all the time the same thing over and over again (simply their personality). BTW Thats something that started at appr. the 1970s. Robert De Niro is a fine exmaple for that. So 1970s are perfectly fitted for you :) .
And no, effects arent better. They are just different. All of todays digital effects are easily detecable. Thos effects didnt bridged the uncanny valley yet and I presume it would take at least another 1 or 2 decades before they became believable. And now watch 2001. This are most times effects where you dont think about "How did they made this" but instead you never leave the bubble of the movies story. Thats when effects really work. And BTW Digital effects arent used, cause they are better. But simply because they are way cheapier too make. And BTW Sometimes even todays cheap digital effects are made almost as good as expensive practical effects. I, for example, like the amazing world of Avatar. But again .... they never should have zoomed into the faces of the Navii. All the illuusion is gone within a second. Digital effects work best when you dont have something to compare in real life. Like .... Jurassic Park. We were all impressed by them, cause ..... most of them were practical effects :) . But also, cause we dont have any real life dinosaurs to compare. Thats why they were so incredible. There were even some practical effects in 1930s King Kong which you dont understand fully til today. So digital effects arent in any way automatically better then practical. They are mainly just different and cheaper to make.
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