So I Finally Watched It, Here Are My Thoughts

Okay, so I watched the 2018 A Wrinkle in Time. It was an okay film if you tried not to think too much about the book. It was better than so many films which barely resemble the book, but there were a lot of changes. I wasn't clear on whether Meg Murry was supposed to be adopted. She resembled her mother enough to be her biological child, I guess. Charles Wallace was definitely adopted. He appeared Hispanic while Meg and her mother appeared African-American and the father was white. In the book, everyone was biologically related and white, and there were two middle children, twins Sandy and Dennys, who did appear in the 2003 adaptation. There were a lot of quotes by Mrs. Which but all quotes from and references to the Bible were removed, again unlike the 2003 film. In both films the Happy Medium was a man, kind of ambiguous in the 2003 but definite in the 2018. Calvin O'Keefe was the closest to the book description but still didn't have red hair in either version. The acting in the 2018 was overall good. Charles Wallace was particularly impressive. I wasn't completely happy with Oprah Winfrey as Mrs. Who. It was too distracting and I wish a lesser known actress had been cast instead of constantly thinking, "There's Oprah." Recently I only saw clips from the 2003 version in a YouTube video comparing the two--I haven't seen the movie since it ran on TV in 2004--but I'd say the special effects in a modern theatrical movie were better than a twenty-year-old TV movie. This just makes me sad, that modern movies can do so many things so well, yet they can't make a good adaptation of a good book. Like in Five Children and It, they could include an impressive dinosaur which wasn't even in the book for crying out loud, yet they couldn't make the Psammead look right, all of the children were miscast except Robert, and the film deviated wildly from the book. As far as things in A Wrinkle in Time being done well, the ball bouncing scene on Camazotz was particularly well-done--I always wanted to see that on film--but then they ruined it by not having the part with the child who didn't come in on time, and by having the houses fold up and disappear. Camazotz was supposed to be a real planet, not just an illusion. The movie is well-acted and moves swiftly though it isn't helped by all the emo songs. Okay, it wasn't the worst movie I ever saw by a long shot but could have been so much better by simply following the book.