The book was better

I had an argument a few days ago about a film that came out last year, of Dumas’ classic book The Three Musketeers. If you haven’t seen it… Don’t. It’s absolutely awful, and I don’t think anyone would argue much with that. It's not only not worth the price (any price), it's not worth the time taken to watch it. The argument was more over why it was terrible – specifically, over the ahistorical aspects of the film. Like airships. I was actually defending this part – I always get a little annoyed about the idea of someone defending the purity of literature and not allowing anything to get in its way. The concept of adding supernatural elements to a previously mundane story is one that goes back to Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Well, actually, it goes back a lot further than Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but the point is that Shakespeare did it in Hamlet. The number one rule of English Literature is ‘If Shakespeare did it, it’s OK’*.  And some of the most beloved tales of the English Language have come from the steady addition of fantastic elements to stories. By which I mean the King Arthur Mythos, even if he was originally a Welsh story.

Hell, whilst I’m going on with this, Dumas himself wasn’t exactly married to historical accuracy. I’m not going to try to give you a shopping list, but if memory serves, D’Artigan didn’t actually join the Musketeers until about ten years after the novel takes pace. The purpose of the storyteller, regardless of medium, is to entertain the audience. If I want to read The Three Musketeers, I have a copy. Even if I didn’t, there’s one in the library, and if it has been lent out, lost, or eaten by a tribe of hungry pigmies, the book also appears on Project Gutenberg. So I can read the original story, thank you very much. Now, that’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with the adaptation of books to film. Doing so can expose stories to a wider audience, and themes can become clearer and more comprehensible to the audience than they were in the original book – but that means that what makes it worthwhile is that it is to some extent changed from the original novel.

True, there is something to be said for sticking as close as possible to the original – if you’re adapting to film a brilliant and beloved novel which is universally agreed to be a work of true genius, then there’s a good chance that whatever changes you make are going to be for the worse**. But when something’s been adapted to film as often as The Three Musketeers has, you’re going to have to come up with something better than improved graphics and new actors to make the thing interesting. That’s why you have things like Muppet Treasure Island, The Wiz and Snow White Blood Red. It’s why the last time I went to see Macbeth, Patrick Stewart was carrying automatic weaponry. So frankly, some flashy new visual effects – which have significantly less actual effect on the plot than the fact that d’Artigan didn’t actually join the musketeers for about ten years after the beginning of the novel, don’t really do much except add some much needed perceived innovation to a film which would otherwhise have been about as interesting and well attended as last time I threw a party. Plus, it let us show off the one thing that’s inarguably gotten better since the last time someone made a Musketeer film, the graphics. There is nothing sacred about the works of previous authors. They made stuff up, and you can make stuff up that you think will improve their work*****. It’s admirably like natural selection – the good stuff survives, and the bad stuff dies out (oh hey, look, I made a biologist cry).

The only other thing I could mention is the conversion from ‘fiction’ to ‘fantasy’. A lot of people who wouldn’t demand slavish devotion to the books, will complain when said book changes genre. I understand that one. I probably wouldn’t go to see a Sherlock Holmes Rom-Com. Actually, I might, but I’d be seriously iffy about the quality of the thing. I don’t think that this applies to fantasy, because fantasy doesn’t actually dictate anything about the plot. The requirement of fiction is that it is that which is not. The requirement of fantasy is that it is that which could not be. There are far more ‘fantasy’ possibilities than non-fantasy ones, and you can write literally anything under the umbrella of the fantasy genre – there are whole genres that are possible in fantasy which can’t possibly be done outside of it. Which means that fantasy is kinda stupid as a genre in the first place. Plus, unless you’re omniscient, you actually can’t tell the difference between ‘fantasy’ and ‘not-fantasy’ anyway.

I must remind myself at some point to spend much too long ranting about Tolkein’s influence on the entire fantasy genre. But I’m pretty sure that I’ve made my point on this particular line. Bye bye.

*Actually, that’s untrue. There are certain things that Shakespeare did that you can’t do today, either because it’s a product of his time, like the sexism of Taming of the Shrew, the racism of The Merchant of Venice, and the constant writing in Iambic pentameter, or because he’s Shakespeare, and has the literary talent to pull off things that would make anyone else look like a complete idiot. The addition of fantasy elements to existing tales is not in either category.

**Let us take, for example, the 2011 edition of The Three Musketeers. Ignoring the fantastic elements, it was actually pretty close to Dumas’ original novel. Which is good thing, because most of the changes they did make were for the worse – the heroes were boring in pretty much every way, the fights were uninteresting and tension-free***, the level of inter-heroic conflict made my social skills look… extant, anyway.  Seriously, you had to make Athos give the whole ‘love is awesome’ speech. Bloody Athos? I know I said that I don’t mind changes to the source, but you’re throwing away a source of conflict, removing depth and complexity from a character, and not improving the film in any way above if Aramis had said it – which would have given the guy some much needed development. And the presumably conventionally attractive female turns out not to be too bad right at the end. Give me a break. In the atmosphere of Dumas’ novel, that might’ve helped create an interesting and somewhat morally ambiguous character****. In an atmosphere so black and white it makes a zebra look uniform, it’s just a stupid out of place ‘beauty equals goodness’. Plus, it was so predictable I spontaneously developed clairvoyance. I could go on, but you get the point.

***Which can be fine, or even good. Just not in a film where the entire focus is on the fight scenes. It means that everything is basically visuals. Again, not necessarily bad. I will willingly defend Avatar purely as a kind of three-hour long moving painting. The visuals, unfortunately were not those of Avatar.

****Actually, I might be wrong, but if memory serves, Milady is actually probably one of the least morally ambiguous of the characters in the entire series – beaten out only by d’Artagnan himself.

***** No, I’m not missing the word fictional up there.