Next up was The DaVinci Code. I enjoyed this one a lot, but I understand some of the criticisms as well. (And no, that doesn't include the "it's all true/it's all a lie" debate. It's fiction people… it's not meant to be true. At most, it should be an interesting excercise in "what if", and as such, I think both the movie and the book are successes.) Part of the problem for me, and I assume a lot of the people going to see the movie, is that we all know how it ends. The fun in the story is all the twists and turns and betrayals, never knowing which way the story's going to turn next. If you've read the book, you already know all these things, and Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman were nothing if not dutiful in there faithfulness to the story. (They were probably convinced they'd be lynched if they strayed too far from the source.)
The other problem for me were the backstory moments. In the book, somehow, Brown manages to keep the momentum of the story moving while he digresses to fill you in on the Knights Templar or the story of the Grail. While these moments were all well done in the movie, they still had a feeling of the History Channel about them, and they pulled you out of the story while you got this essential backstory. They tended to make things seem longer than they were… a bad thing when your movie clocks in at close to 2½ hours.
But, those quibbles aside, I had fun with the movie and enjoyed the ride all the way to the end. And let's face it, it was cool to finally get to see some of the things talked about in the books, like the Louvre's pyramid, since I'm not making the trip there any time soon.
The other problem for me were the backstory moments. In the book, somehow, Brown manages to keep the momentum of the story moving while he digresses to fill you in on the Knights Templar or the story of the Grail. While these moments were all well done in the movie, they still had a feeling of the History Channel about them, and they pulled you out of the story while you got this essential backstory. They tended to make things seem longer than they were… a bad thing when your movie clocks in at close to 2½ hours.
But, those quibbles aside, I had fun with the movie and enjoyed the ride all the way to the end. And let's face it, it was cool to finally get to see some of the things talked about in the books, like the Louvre's pyramid, since I'm not making the trip there any time soon.
Comments
The problem was exactly what you have described. We knew the end, and the end was the excitement, or getting to it with the twists.
That was the situation in Apollo 13, but it was handled better there. Maybe as we only knew they made it home, as opposed to how they did it, the story was still captivating.
Chris
There's another book/movie/something I read/saw/whatever recently that did the same thing... told a story that you knew, but did it so well that you went along for the ride and it didn't matter that you knew how it turned out. I just can't remember what the hell it was! (and it's bugging me big time.)