Call me a curmudgeon (and a purist, and a pedant, among other things), but I'm halfway through the first episode of Anne With An E, the Netflix "reboot" of Anne of Green Gables, and already there's plenty to gripe about. From Marilla's leather belt (chosen, I imagine, to play up her utilitarian preferences, but it looks like it came straight from a renfaire) to Anne's PTSD flashbacks (her previous caretakers' treatment of her was hinted at in the book, but never mentioned after that, yet the series makes it a focal point), the exaggeration of Anne's selfishness and vanity and Marilla's coldness (taking nuanced, three-dimensional characters and rendering them flat and trite), the ham-handed way the writers shoehorned in a new scene to serve as a turning point in Marilla's respect for Anne, the use of an over-decorated sapling prop where a large old cherry tree should be... it's all giving me fits.
I didn't have high hopes for this series ("reboot" culture is an issue in and of itself, but this particular story is especially dear to me), and while it's not nearly as bad as Reign, it doesn't live up to its predecessor. I'll take Colleen Dewhurst and Megan Follows over this any day.
No comments:
Post a Comment