o brave new world that has such audacity in it!
written: 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 29, 2004

This is the version I'm talking about.

Truthfully, as a stand-alone movie without the excess baggage of remaining faithful to Huxley's novel, the movie still stank. It was horrible. The actors looked as though they were sleep walking through every single scene and whoever did the editing seriously should consider going back to film school. There was a grave lack of continuity, such that the transition from one scene to another was choppy at best, and as a result, the whole thing felt awfully disjointed and disconnected. It really looked as though the movie was a bad copy-and-paste job of various scenes from the novel, most of them distorted beyond recognition.

I'm rather ambivalent towards the manner in which they portrayed the hypnopaedic messages. The MTV, in-your-face, techno-trance-house-non-music style was... different. I don't know, it was okay in some parts but in others, it felt corny as hell and it kind of undermined the impact of the story.

And I have to say this: IT WAS SO BLOODY TAME THAT I COULD PUKE. Where was the sex? I didn't even know that they wrote in the feelies until the credits came on and I saw the word somewhere on the screen. What the hell? Where in the world was the bearskin rug?

And the most unforgivable "correction" the stupid script-writers made was to make Lenina Crowne an Alpha.

AN ALPHA! Are you kidding me? She's a bloody Beta and a stupid bimbo to boot! Oh my god, I could've smashed my television screen when she panted to John, "Tell me! I want to understand! I want to understand how passion and love feel like!"

Bringing your own flavour and interpretation to a film adaptation of a novel is one thing. Completely distorting the original so that your film (movie in this case) becomes a mere cheap rip-off of a great piece of work is another altogether. The very second I heard a voice-over narration in a female's voice, I knew the movie was going to suck.

Seriously, voice-over narrations are one of the worst devices a film-maker could ever employ in his film. It's so unoriginal and uncreative. It's exactly like an inept writer who tells his story by telling the reader every single bleeding detail, right down to how his character feels about his stupid lunch.

But I digress. I was completely mortified when it was revealed that Lenina is an Alpha in the movie, and even more so when she's "had" Bernard Marx for six months (or whatever). In the novel it was Henry Foster, who, of course, was completely absent in the movie. And that stupid assassination plot was just... bloody stupid. It would've been less so if were done with a little more class, but no. It was dumb. Some Delta dude knocked on Bernard Marx's door, Benard opened the door, the guy disappeared, Bernard closed the door, the guy opened the door, the guy barged in, the guy started to kill Bernard with some gun-like thing, they struggle, the guy pinned Bernard against the wall, the guy points the gun-like thing to Bernard's neck or something, Bernard squeaks, "Please don't kill me!", and suddenly the guy started shooting his thing everywhere else but at Bernard.

I mean, what in the bloody hell? It was supposed to be suspenseful -- any attempt to kill off a central character is supposed to be suspenseful by default. But it wasn't. At all. The whole non-fiasco lasted for about ten seconds.

Okay, I'm seriously exaggerating here but the point is clear, I'm sure. It was just really lame and laughable.

And the worst crime committed by the stupid people behind the piece of shit is that it totally lacked the satirical nature of Huxley's novel. The novel was funny, albeit darkly so, and Huxley's passion and conviction for his subject matter shone through in his writing. The movie? It was flat, stupid and absolutely boring, not to mention ineffectual. Where was the intellectual subversion? And since when was John the Savage a John "Cooper"? For crying out loud, where in the world was the self-flagellation scenes and mass orgy bit at the end that led to his suicide?

Do you want to know in what preposterous manner John died in the film? He was ambushed by a bunch of reporters after he left Brave New World, and he was so worked up that he fell over some cliff, to his death, when some helicopter flew up for some purpose or other.

How stupid is that? The suicide was an end in itself for Huxley to drive home his message against totalitarianism and the dangers of an unethical, immoral progess of science that would inevitably lead to the loss of self and the loss of humanity. John's suicide is, in fact, a demonstration, an obvious demonstration, of how a society like Brave New World will definitely, undoubtedly, kill an individual spirit. By making John's death accidental, the stupid so-called film-makers totally undermined the impact of Huxley's message, and the message they were supposedly trying to get across.

And guess how the dumb-as-shit movie ended? Lenina had sex with Bernard after John died and she didn't take birth control. Hence, she was pregnant with Bernard's baby. Bernard sent her away and after a while he decided to join her, thus leaving Brave New World.

WHAT THE HELL?????????????????????? What is the point? Obviously the people behind this trash decided to give in to commercialism, which completely contradicts the point of Literature.

My intellect feels insulted just by watching the stupid thing. This is Hollywood at its classic finest: taking a brilliant novel, completely maiming it and calling it an 'adaptation'. Yeah bloody right. Go to hell.

And if you'd bother to read some of the comments posted on the site, you'd either completely laugh or completely die. This is exactly why Literature should always be enjoyed by an exclusive intellectual elite who'd have the brains to get it, and not to be pandered to the guileless, stupid masses by means of an 'adaptation' that purportedly serves the same purpose but really corrupts the subtext instead. People are like, "Oh, we watched this 'film' in school because we didn't have time to read the book."

Even if I were absolutely desperate, in the sense that my Paper 4 exam is tomorrow and I have no idea what the novel is about, I would rather kill myself academically in a classier, more sophisticated manner than to do my reading through an unreliable film adaptation.

How dumb can people possibly get? Huxley would totally turn in his grave if it ever got to him that there exist such imbecilic idiots.

Okay, I'm done trashing the movie. It sucked majorly. Yeah.

Oh, and one more thing. The non-existent hypnopaedic message that the people who helmed the sinking ship thought up, "Promiscuity is your duty to society", was just appalling in its un-nuanced standard. In this light, the difference between 'genius' and 'faux pas' becomes awfully apparent. The one I just quoted? So totally obvious. It really lacks the bite and pinch and punch of the hypnopaedic messages in Huxley's nove.

Poor Huxley. No one deserves to be treated this way.

Anyway.

School was uneventful.

That's it.

before sunrise // before sunset

Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010