Doesn't anyone has issues with Sir Thomas?

I have never read the book, but I was personally creeped out by Sir Thomas. He seemed to have this attraction to Fanny that was extremely wrong! I don't know, maybe it's just my modern mind reading too into something?

"George Bailey, I'll love you til the day I die."

It's a looong time since I read Mansfield Park, but my memory of Sir Thomas is not that he was "oppressive" - or at any rate I do not believe that is how Austen wished the reader to see him.

One of the prime duties of a parent in Sir Thomas' position was to ensure that his children were brought up with strong principles. Their education could usually be left to others, but their character and the standard of their behaviour was something that would be formed by parental action or lack of it. This is why, for example, Mr Bennett in Pride and Prejudice realises that Lydia's behaviour is in some measure his fault. He let up grow up without correcting either her sense of decorum (nil) or her morals (ditto).

Sir Thomas is, in the book, an upright but disengaged parent who has allowed his daughters to grow up without him realising that their mother took no interest in them, and their aunt thought they could do no wrong. This is the era of "spare the rod and spoil the child," and those two are clearly spoiled rotten. That is, they have been indulged and become corrupted. A good father, in that period, would have kept a much sterner eye and firmer control over the development of his children - at least once he realised that no one else was doing it.

When Sir Thomas returns from Antigua, he realises how out of control his family, especially his daughters, have become. I think he also realises that Fanny - alone of the women at Mansfield Park - has a strong inner moral compass. She may be too timid to speak out, but she cannot be bullied or cajoled into doing something that she thinks is wrong. Sir Thomas then tries to do what he thinks is best for Fanny - which might not be what either Fanny or the reader wishes for her, but which accords with the values of the period when the book was written.

I know that Mansfield Park is the trickiest of the major Austen works to film, since its values and its heroine are the ones least likely to appeal to a modern audience. Patience, goodness and timidity are difficult to make attractive these days - especially when the heroine also has "a delicate constitution". It would be nice, however, to see a writer/director make a real attempt, rather than simply re-writing the book with a different heroine altogether.

Sir Thomas owns property in Antigua, and that's all we really know; but that would have been enough for Austen's readers to know that he was a slave-owner. All plantations in the Caribbean then were run by slave labor.
But I do agree with you about Sir Thomas--he is the only parent in Austen's novels who learns and grows from his mistakes and is a better individual and better parent by the end. And for this film to ignore that and make him into a lecherous leering uncle and someone who beats and rapes his slaves completely distorts his character.

Come, we must press against the tide of naughtiness. Mind your step.

I wonder if the creepy atmosphere of the fatherly figures is a result of the lesbian director. Perhaps she had daddy issues or something. It was a horrible representation of a basically decent character in the book (and they made Mr Price look like a pervert as well).

the movie was/is just awful.

I just tried to watch this version again and was not interested enough in it to finish it. I am by nature determined to try to like each adaptation of a Jane Austen novel, but this one takes the most effort. I think the actors did a fine job doing what they were directed to do...I just didn't like what they were directed to do. To each his/her own, I guess. I prefer the stagey Sylvestra le Touzel/Nicholas Farrell version better and even enjoy the 03 interpretation occasionally.