Thoughts on This Film

So I finally broke down and watched The Giver, which was on my list with the latest A Wrinkle in Time of movies probably never to watch based just on seeing brief images from them. With The Giver it took just one picture for me to go, "I don't think so." I had my expectations set very low for this movie so I wasn't too profoundly disappointed. It wasn't as bad as I expected based on the obvious changes from the book and the fact that my sister hated it when she saw it. Some things the film got right. They followed the plot of the book, at least more or less in places. A lot of effort went into giving it a futuristic look which worked well. The use of color or lack thereof was good, a concept understandable to those who have read the book or seen the film. So A Wrinkle in Time had too much Oprah and The Giver had too much Meryl Streep. I didn't remember her character of Chief Elder from the book at all. If this character was in the book it was pretty minor...she might have been at the ceremony at the beginning. The kids were too old. This wasn't done just to avoid working with younger kids but to add romance and other mushy drama. I read somewhere that Jonas, Fiona, and Asher were supposed to be 16 in the movie, not 12 as in the book. The film doesn't give an exact age, just refers to them as "graduates," presumably around high school graduation age. The actors were a few years older than teenagers. Fiona's and Asher's roles were expanded and changed for the sake of the plot, and Fiona's job was changed from working with the elderly to working with infants. The one particularly upsetting scene, the reason I wouldn't let my mom read the book and probably one of the reasons it gets banned, was much less dramatic in the movie. In the book when Jonas realized what really happened to infants who didn't fit the community plan and his father's role in it, he screamed and cried and basically had a breakdown. He didn't just sort of look stunned. As far as violence in the film, there is a war flashback enough to give PTSD to any veterans in the audience, an elephant hunting scene, and of course the infamous infant incident. I read all four books in the series and I don't believe any of them went into detail about what happened to the community after Jonas crossed the boundary. This film ventures into that. This film was a nice try I guess. It would be nice to feel a little less meh about it but it wasn't horrible and I didn't hate it a lot. It might have a lot of impact on younger viewers, the way the original Fahrenheit 451 did on me, but I can't be sure how younger viewers would react to it or how I'd react to Fahrenheit 451 if I watched it now. I'm quite sure I'm capable of being enthusiastic about a film, just for whatever reasons not this one. I just kept wondering if it would have been better to have followed the book more closely or if this was the best they could manage. I don't regret seeing it, at least not too much.