A Wrinkle in Time!
Mar. 10th, 2018 06:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
laleiaHaha, the first post I make in an eon, and it's about A Wrinkle in Time. This and Ocean's 8 were/are my most-anticipated movies of 2018! Probably my most-anticipated movies of last year as well! While I was definitely going to see both Wonder Woman and Black Panther in theaters, and both movies blew me away, and while I did look forward to other movies (like Star Wars and Pitch Perfect 3) and otherwise enjoy other movies in theaters (Thor Ragnarok), I repeat-watched the Wrinkle In Time & Ocean's 8 trailers so many times because those two movies in particular were ones I have been hyped about at every stage.
And A Wrinkle in Time was SO GOOD!!!!!
I got my MoviePass in the mail last week but didn't have a chance to use it until last night, for the first time, since I got off work early and my friends were busy and I figured I'd test out my MoviePass for the first time at the movie theater I pass by on the bus from work to home, and it was an A+ decision!
I know that critics have given the movies mixed reviews, and people have generally had mixed opinions about it. I don't even care, I just thought it was SO GOOD. It helps that (1) I used to be OBSESSED with the book, (2) I haven't read the book in over a decade so it had blurred a little in my memory so I wasn't going to be a stickler about sticking with book canon and (3) in general I have softened a lot on movie adaptations with the understanding that making something more cinematic and compressing something to a two-hour movie timeframe are both key drivers of book-to-movie plot changes.
If I want to be objective about it, I guess I can see how maybe kids might find some of the blurry artsy camera shots of the Gugu Mbatha-Raw/Chris Pine backstory romance less appealing, and adults might find the fact that the climactic scene is one kid fiercely loving at the other a bit ridiculous, but I DON'T CARE I LOVED BOTH THOSE SCENES THEY PLEASED THE INNER CHILD AND THE OUTER ADULT IN ME.
God, it's so hard to be objective about this movie for me because they did everything so well.
First things first - Meg/Calvin was my OTP before I knew what OTPs were. They were the second OTP I had ever had in my life (the first was Anne Shirley & Gilbert Blythe). And god, the kid actor who plays Calvin really fucking sold it. He was FANTASTIC at the hearteyes face. Every time he looked at Meg, he did so with SO MUCH ADORATION. He was BESOTTED. It was fucking ADORABLE. Their scenes together was just so cute! And very age-appropriately awkwardly shippy. The Meg/Calvin was so satisfying and now I want fic! (As of my last check of AO3, there is only ONE Wrinkle in Time movie fic!)
Second - Meg's actress was phenomenal. I think the way they constructed Meg's insecurities was a bit heavyhanded at times given how often they mentioned it, but I do think that's faithful to the book. She was just really good at making me ~feel~ things. I mean - that reunion scene with her father made me so emotional, the weird montage sequences at the beginning culminating with the scene with Principal Jenkins (Jenkins! You're going to grow a heart when you're stuck in a mitochondria or something in the sequel they'll never make!) also really struck me. She really carried the movie as its main character, and I loved the actress in it.
The kid who played Charles Wallace, on the other hand ... was not as good as he could have been. It's tough. There are a lot of lines and a lot of big words for a kid, and the kid wasn't good enough at articulating his lines to really sell it to me. (It's kind of like how the younger kid actors in Modern Family - Lily and Joe - also aren't great at articulating their lines and it affects how convincing I find their acting.) Charles Wallace is a tough role to cast and to act in because he has to be really smart, to successfully sound really smart, and also to check off every box for the creepy kid in the horror movie but yet be too charming to be creepy. They would have needed a gold mine of a kid actor to pull it off, and instead they just got an ... adequate kid actor.
Third - I really appreciate how they chose to adapt the book. They scrapped a lot of scenes and ideas that I liked, which is a shame. Apparently, even though it's been 10-15 years since I last read the book, I still remember that Meg totally has older brothers (who maybe even get a book of their own that I didn't read?), that there was one tessering scene where they accidentally get sent to a two-dimensional world and their bodies aren't able to handle it, that in the creepy suburban scene there's supposed to be one kid who bounces his ball off-beat, and ends up sent to reeducation (and tortured, I think?), that Meg leaves Charles Wallace behind and ends up on some moon where the people are blind werewolves (?) who heal her trauma enough for her to go back for Charles Wallace. (I may not be remembering any of these scenes correctly.)
I'm sad to miss some of those scenes (I really wanted to see how the "stuck in two dimensions" throwaway scene would work out!), but the story does end up tighter the way they've constructed it. I really liked how they went with visuals that really conveyed a sense of whimsy and weirdness, and I accept that they cut out a lot of the sidetrips/sideplots. For example, I really like the scene where Meg climbed invisible steps even though I don't think it makes any sense, and I don't think the fact that she knew the word "fractals" makes her as smart as Calvin thinks she is. None of that mattered to me, though, because the movie made me feel in the moment that it was cool and she was kicking butt! TBH, I think a lot of the Camazotz scenes would have been stronger if Charles Wallace were creepier when possessed by The It, but I think the storytelling still worked for me in the end. If a movie is good enough, it can make me totally buy the emotional climax that might sounds a little dorky on paper.
The adult actors were fantastic as well, of course, but did anyone really think Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Chis Pine, Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling were going to be any less than fantastic? (It does crack me up that the three Mrs. totally cast my how much star power they had. I mean, also there was probably an audition process, and lots of thought and everything but Mindy Kaling was probably the least famous actor so she got the one with the fewest lines and Oprah Winfrey was obviously most famous so she was the most important one who is twice everyone's size for half the movie.) I liked how colorful everything was, and the Mrs.'s costumes, even though Mindy's costume was a bit ridiculous every time she had a scene where she was meant to be running.
I just ... loved this movie so much. And now that I have MoviePass, I can rewatch it as many times as I want!
And A Wrinkle in Time was SO GOOD!!!!!
I got my MoviePass in the mail last week but didn't have a chance to use it until last night, for the first time, since I got off work early and my friends were busy and I figured I'd test out my MoviePass for the first time at the movie theater I pass by on the bus from work to home, and it was an A+ decision!
I know that critics have given the movies mixed reviews, and people have generally had mixed opinions about it. I don't even care, I just thought it was SO GOOD. It helps that (1) I used to be OBSESSED with the book, (2) I haven't read the book in over a decade so it had blurred a little in my memory so I wasn't going to be a stickler about sticking with book canon and (3) in general I have softened a lot on movie adaptations with the understanding that making something more cinematic and compressing something to a two-hour movie timeframe are both key drivers of book-to-movie plot changes.
If I want to be objective about it, I guess I can see how maybe kids might find some of the blurry artsy camera shots of the Gugu Mbatha-Raw/Chris Pine backstory romance less appealing, and adults might find the fact that the climactic scene is one kid fiercely loving at the other a bit ridiculous, but I DON'T CARE I LOVED BOTH THOSE SCENES THEY PLEASED THE INNER CHILD AND THE OUTER ADULT IN ME.
God, it's so hard to be objective about this movie for me because they did everything so well.
First things first - Meg/Calvin was my OTP before I knew what OTPs were. They were the second OTP I had ever had in my life (the first was Anne Shirley & Gilbert Blythe). And god, the kid actor who plays Calvin really fucking sold it. He was FANTASTIC at the hearteyes face. Every time he looked at Meg, he did so with SO MUCH ADORATION. He was BESOTTED. It was fucking ADORABLE. Their scenes together was just so cute! And very age-appropriately awkwardly shippy. The Meg/Calvin was so satisfying and now I want fic! (As of my last check of AO3, there is only ONE Wrinkle in Time movie fic!)
Second - Meg's actress was phenomenal. I think the way they constructed Meg's insecurities was a bit heavyhanded at times given how often they mentioned it, but I do think that's faithful to the book. She was just really good at making me ~feel~ things. I mean - that reunion scene with her father made me so emotional, the weird montage sequences at the beginning culminating with the scene with Principal Jenkins (Jenkins! You're going to grow a heart when you're stuck in a mitochondria or something in the sequel they'll never make!) also really struck me. She really carried the movie as its main character, and I loved the actress in it.
The kid who played Charles Wallace, on the other hand ... was not as good as he could have been. It's tough. There are a lot of lines and a lot of big words for a kid, and the kid wasn't good enough at articulating his lines to really sell it to me. (It's kind of like how the younger kid actors in Modern Family - Lily and Joe - also aren't great at articulating their lines and it affects how convincing I find their acting.) Charles Wallace is a tough role to cast and to act in because he has to be really smart, to successfully sound really smart, and also to check off every box for the creepy kid in the horror movie but yet be too charming to be creepy. They would have needed a gold mine of a kid actor to pull it off, and instead they just got an ... adequate kid actor.
Third - I really appreciate how they chose to adapt the book. They scrapped a lot of scenes and ideas that I liked, which is a shame. Apparently, even though it's been 10-15 years since I last read the book, I still remember that Meg totally has older brothers (who maybe even get a book of their own that I didn't read?), that there was one tessering scene where they accidentally get sent to a two-dimensional world and their bodies aren't able to handle it, that in the creepy suburban scene there's supposed to be one kid who bounces his ball off-beat, and ends up sent to reeducation (and tortured, I think?), that Meg leaves Charles Wallace behind and ends up on some moon where the people are blind werewolves (?) who heal her trauma enough for her to go back for Charles Wallace. (I may not be remembering any of these scenes correctly.)
I'm sad to miss some of those scenes (I really wanted to see how the "stuck in two dimensions" throwaway scene would work out!), but the story does end up tighter the way they've constructed it. I really liked how they went with visuals that really conveyed a sense of whimsy and weirdness, and I accept that they cut out a lot of the sidetrips/sideplots. For example, I really like the scene where Meg climbed invisible steps even though I don't think it makes any sense, and I don't think the fact that she knew the word "fractals" makes her as smart as Calvin thinks she is. None of that mattered to me, though, because the movie made me feel in the moment that it was cool and she was kicking butt! TBH, I think a lot of the Camazotz scenes would have been stronger if Charles Wallace were creepier when possessed by The It, but I think the storytelling still worked for me in the end. If a movie is good enough, it can make me totally buy the emotional climax that might sounds a little dorky on paper.
The adult actors were fantastic as well, of course, but did anyone really think Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Chis Pine, Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling were going to be any less than fantastic? (It does crack me up that the three Mrs. totally cast my how much star power they had. I mean, also there was probably an audition process, and lots of thought and everything but Mindy Kaling was probably the least famous actor so she got the one with the fewest lines and Oprah Winfrey was obviously most famous so she was the most important one who is twice everyone's size for half the movie.) I liked how colorful everything was, and the Mrs.'s costumes, even though Mindy's costume was a bit ridiculous every time she had a scene where she was meant to be running.
I just ... loved this movie so much. And now that I have MoviePass, I can rewatch it as many times as I want!
