It's hard to believe that Ray Bradbury, of Martian Chronicles and Farenheit 451 fame, wrote the screenplay for this film, since it's so far removed from the sci-fi/horror/fantasy genres for which he's best known. He did a great job of distilling the most memorable scenes and dialogs from the novel into a script for a 2 hr movie, makes me wish that he had tackled more screen adaptations of classic novels during his life.
shareWhat did you think of the film though? I read Bradbury's script and I agree with you in that I thought he did well to capture the novel's essence. But the film itself just felt so damn flat and unimaginative. I felt like every shot was rushed and the lines Bradbury wrote were just spat out with indifference. Watching just seemed like they didn't care exactly what they were putting on the screen, so long as people were in boats and chasing whales. I mean in the novel and the script Starbuck is an excellent character, and yet in the film, minus him telling Ahab to fear himself, I didn't give a damn about Starbuck what so ever. (Don't get me going on how criminally underdone Queequeg was)
Bradbury had to get to the core of the novel when writing the script and like we both said, he got to it, but maybe it's just me, the film felt so horribly deficient.
One scene I wish that did make it into the film was when Tashtego falls into the whale and the whale goes down into the ocean and Queequeg goes down to get him, but sadly that didn't make the cut as that was my favorite part in the novel.
But yeah I don't know, I'd like to see what others think here because I just felt like the film didn't have the pulse that the script had.
What did you think of the film though? I read Bradbury's script and I agree with you in that I thought he did well to capture the novel's essence. But the film itself just felt so damn flat and unimaginative. I felt like every shot was rushed and the lines Bradbury wrote were just spat out with indifference. Watching just seemed like they didn't care exactly what they were putting on the screen, so long as people were in boats and chasing whales. I mean in the novel and the script Starbuck is an excellent character, and yet in the film, minus him telling Ahab to fear himself, I didn't give a damn about Starbuck what so ever. (Don't get me going on how criminally underdone Queequeg was)
Bradbury's adaptation is splendid, but I didn't care for the bar scene; Stubbs seems too arrogant when he declares New Bedford to have exclusive rights to whaling: this was the assertion of the narrator in the novel, in praising the sailors of the American whaling fleet. The novel passes from New Bedford to Nantucket, which was the true epicenter of whaling in this region; were Ishmael accosted by a boisterous whaler to acknowledge New Bedford, he would certainly have to repeat the ordeal in Nantucket.
shareI think Gene Roddenberry would have done better ... Imagine a bunch of hoes in the background in short skirts mmmmm. N ahab groping them as the ship gets banged
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