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Post by omega on Oct 29, 2017 1:08:07 GMT
In 2012, Tim Burton's re-imagining of Dark Shadows, starring Johnny Depp, was released in movie theatres. However it got at best a lukewarm reception. Why? I think I have a few ideas.
1) The tone. It's inconsistent, but largely played for comedy, with a big helping of sending up the soap opera format. The problem is that with parodies a knowledge of the source material often helps a huge deal. This film is based on a cult classic that only received wide-spread availability that year, and at a pretty big price tag (still fantastic value for money considering how much content there is). If you're making a film that draws inspiration from a cult classic, you should at least try to capture the spirit (pun unintended) of the original, since that's going to be the target audience.
2) The plot. There are just too many threads that get mentioned by never followed up on or resolved, or that developed. You could drop the Maggie Evans bit from Vicki's character and it wouldn't change a thing. Vicki's past and interactions with Josette's ghost would have been interesting, but beyond the flashback sequence and the two time Josette leads Vicki to watch her fall from the chandelier it never becomes relevant.
I think a better approach should have been spending the first half hour with how Barnabas became a vampire etc (including him never having feelings for Angelique, thus making him a more sympathetic character), then following him into the present. Cut out Roger, since he did nothing for the movie. Vicki has been there a few days already and has taken on the Victoria Winters alias because Julia Hoffman was one of her doctors at Windcliff. Throughout the film we see characters walk in on David seemingly talking to himself, him thinking he's talking to his mother (which foreshadows Laura's ghost appearing at the end). Angelique's spirit has reincarnated in Elizabeth, who has secretly been undermining the company.
3) The characters. No one actually develops as a character, nor are they compellingly written. The Barnabas/Vicki relationship is incredibly unconvincing, they meet at breakfast, spend a montage or two on the beach and suddenly they're both enamoured with each other. Probably the most sympathetic Carolyn gets is that she has two times of the month. Roger? He buggers off halfway through, leaving no impact on the plot whatsoever. I've mentioned Victoria Winters already. Angelique's main strategy is the Power of Boobs.
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Oct 29, 2017 2:08:31 GMT
Everything went wrong.
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Post by agentten on Nov 1, 2017 3:42:54 GMT
I think you've summed it up well. My principle issue is that the film takes a great story and great characters and reduces them to a series of fish out of water jokes, pratfalls, and Johnny Depp playing his usual oddball character. There's nothing about Depp that suggests Barnabas Collins to me. What it does suggest is Johnny Depp went as Barnabas for Halloween that year and this is a film about his costume. I'd have suggested that Burton and Depp, who have a great Dark Shadows movie in them if they would discipline themselves and not resort to the well worn stick that they've both been relying on in the more recent years of their careers as artists, should have made a tighter, more intimate, more sparse film for a quarter of the budget that was ultimately spent. Throw out the tone breaking humor, restrain the performances, tighten the script, and film it for less money so that the studio lets them make a film that has some emotional depth with spots of real gothic horror. As it is, the film just feels like playtime for bored filmmakers who don't have anything substantial to offer.
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Post by omega on Nov 1, 2017 3:55:04 GMT
Another approach I'd have taken is playing up David's mysticism, him seeing Laura is like Victoria and Josette. It ties two threads of the story together and could have been a satisfactory resolution for Barnabas as well as foreshadowing what wound up being a deus ex Laura's ghost-ia.
And this Julia is a joke. Even the Barbara Steele Julia is better. Julia is not Helena Bonham Carter channeling her usual Tim Burton characters. She knows hypnotism, she could have been Angelique's agent.
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Post by Trace on Nov 1, 2017 4:46:16 GMT
Here’s my opinion: if there was ANY belief or misguided hope that a Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version was going to be ANYTHING other than what we got, then people were really kidding themselves. From the very first announcement, they were wrong for the task at hand, and I was frankly shocked at how excited people were! I’m not trying to negate their talent or filmmaking, but it just wasn’t a good fit and the danger of comic parody was a given. However, they were what we got, and that being said, all of your points are exactly right. It’s just that they should have come as no surprise.
So...going on the basis that it shouldn’t have happened in the first place, the movie had, surprisingly, many things going for it! The PROS: 1) the pre-credits opening flashback sequence was stunning and had the perfect tone. Too bad it didn’t last much beyond that. 2) the credits themselves—gorgeous!! How many films have opening credits at all anymore? With The Moody Blues Nights in White Satin, the train, the beautiful cinematography...it was PERFECTION, and so retro 1972! 3) the cast, the costumes, Collinwood, Collinsport—all beautiful. 4) the soundtrack! I’m not sure that DS should really HAVE a soundtrack of well-known pop/rock songs, but man! If it should, then these were the BEST! 4) Some great dialogue—when not falling too far into comedy. 5) Great to see four of the original cast in cameos, although they should have been treated with a bit more of the respect they deserved.
Two CONS that you didn’t mention that were just all wrong: 1) Alice Cooper—talk about “fish out of water”! He just didn’t belong here, although I must admit I laughed when Barnabas said, “Ugliest woman I have ever seen.” I had to agree with him! and 2) The CGI-laden mess of an ending. As you mentioned, way too many plot points with holes in them throughout the movie, and instead of tying them up, they relied on 10 minutes of cheap special effects and out-of-left-field visual gags at the end.
With all this in mind, I hope the reader takes away from this post that I actually LIKED the movie. Not “loved” because it just had too much wrong with it. But definitely “liked”. I knew what it was going to be from the moment Burton/Depp were first announced. It was no more, no less, then their usual fare, and the pros I mentioned were enough for me to outweigh the cons. No, it wasn’t ‘my’ DS, but with the Burton-Depp team, it didn’t have a chance. Low expectations lead to a relatively favorable outcome. It’s just another version of DS in a very long line of other versions, and certainly not a great one. But I could watch those opening credits over and over and over......
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Post by Trace on Nov 3, 2017 1:09:23 GMT
You should move this thread to the DS page, as I suspect it will get more traffic there! I know the film inspires strong reactions from many DS fans, but perhaps not the general public!
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Post by omega on Nov 3, 2017 1:16:17 GMT
You should move this thread to the DS page, as I suspect it will get more traffic there! I know the film inspires strong reactions from many DS fans, but perhaps not the general public! Mods? Can you please help?
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Post by jasonward on Nov 3, 2017 1:36:31 GMT
To make sure you get the mods attention, you should report a post not everything gets read by the mods, there are a lot of posts here.
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Post by barnabaslives on Nov 3, 2017 11:06:36 GMT
I really don't think it was a good move to go farcical with the production. At the time I read a lot in reviews and so forth about lots of humor being appropriate because of Dark Shadows being a "campy" show - but it wasn't trying to be funny. Hilarious stuff of all sorts might happen (unedited bloopers, wobbly sets, or the sheer absurdity of certain things) and fans may endlessly delight in making light of it, but the series itself and the stories did take everything very seriously.
I thought the movie did some things right, they gave us a stunning Barnabas and Julia in my opinion but just them showing up in opposite order from the OS ended up giving Julia not much of a decent reason for even being there and I think in the long run she ended up a bad parody because of that, to focus on how just one of the characters was handled.
I dunno, it's kind of like they respectfully wanted to do something true to form (particularly considering how it starts), but really had no idea how to achieve within the runtime something that actually was, probably didn't want to rehash Dan Curtis' attempted reboot (wherein trying to include all the classic bits seemingly takes a mini-series at minimum, even I thought Curtis did do a remarkable job of the probably impossible task of squeezing the vital highlights from Barnabas' story into his first movie), and so by fifteen minutes into the Burton/Depp version they seem to have just said to hell with it, let's just have a great big hoot.
I think if they were going to just throw it to the wind they'd have been better to just walk us into the middle of a new story and maybe give us one or more characters prone to flashbacks, for the minumum necessary vignettes to know who's who soon enough.
Otherwise, there just doesn't seem to have been time to establish circumstances or presences or relationships between characters in the present tense that were easy to connect with. All of the romance I can recall in the film seems to have been of the whirlwind sort out of necessity, and while a lot of the humor in it might have gone over remarkably well at Dark Shadows conventions, I don't think much of it seemed to go over that well in the theater, although you could spot people who knew the series fairly well because there were a few things we couldn't help but share a giggle about.
Other things that come to mind are that I was left sort of wishing that Angelique had seemed more of a supernatural threat now than an economic one, that was probably something that fans of longer standing might associate with more a mere mortal like Burke Devlin than with Angelique. It kind of feels like plenty of witchcraft and scares must have been going to waste there somehow - and I don't think I'm half as bugged by Alice Cooper showing up (although that might at least border on actual camp, IMO) as I am just by having to get my head around there being a party in the first place... and the original cast cameos seemed to truly be tragically brief.
I do think it's worthwhile watching on occasion and I'm glad they tried - any Dark Shadows movie is a good thing (as is even one millisecond of Frid in Dark Shadows) and I'm sure it must have given some kind of welcome boost to the franchise - but I still can't quite reconcile it with everything else Dark Shadows, even when in one of the Big Finish audios (The Flip Side), author Cody Schell very kindly gave us an option to have it be canon by considering it to be Dark Shadows in an alternate reality, alternate realities already being a part of Dark Shadows.
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Post by muckypup on Nov 3, 2017 13:50:48 GMT
humour.......dark shadows is not funny....burton made you laugh at the family with silly jokes and knowing looks, turning it into a live action cartoon strip rather than a homage.
probably film execs wanting to appeal to a broader demographic but like fantasy genre they seem to think that jokes and poking fun will make the film a success......when the opposite is true.
play it dead straight with the odd tension breaker yields a much more successful film.
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Post by omega on Nov 4, 2017 20:36:19 GMT
I've come up another reason. The original series avoided pop culture references and stuff like TV generally (until Bloodlust the only person in Collinsport to own one was Buffie in Parallel Time), which helps to not date it too badly. The Tim Burton movie proudly states it's in the 70's, with the slang, lava lamps and Alice Cooper ("the ugliest woman I have ever seen").
The film playing up Barnabas being old-timely, contrasting with the modern Collinses. The Frid Barnabas was formal, but not this formal. Depp Barnabas makes no effort to slot himself into the new family quietly while Frid made an effort and kept to himself.
The role of Willie could have been removed entirely and not affected the story one iota. Even the classic moment of Willie opening the coffin to be strangled is replaced by a digger hitting where the coffin was buried. Which raises a head scratcher. If Angelique knew where Barnabas was buried, then why did she okay the decision to develop there? And if she really wanted him why not recover the coffin and prevent him from reaching Collinwood? At least we got the genuinely funny moment with the McDonalds sign.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2017 20:41:00 GMT
I don't think you need look too deep and have essays pondering it - it simply was not funny enough for a comedy, not scary enough for a horror. Burton made Beetlejuice so you can why he should be nailing DS if - as the studio did - you think a comic horror is the way to go. Sadly the Burton of 2012 (and really since the late 90s) has been derivative and uninspired. I don't hate it like I do his Wonderland and Wonka travesties but the Burton of Ed Wood woulda nailed DS. Likewise Depp, nuanced and electric in the 90s, just did another variation of his Jack Sparrow - exactly as he did with Wonka, Mad Hatter and Sweeney Todd. The Depp who gave us Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Gilbert Grape and Ichabod Crane? He'd have been a hell of a Barnabas. But not the cartoony Depp of the 2000s. Edit: We had a thread on this before. Here's what I said then: "If Depp and Burton made it 20 years earlier, before they both became lazy parodies of themselves? Mighta had something. As it came out in 2012 it just was another in a long line of "Tim Burtons Reimagining Of..." films that were really just tonal messes starring the same hammy Depp and Bonham-Carter "kooky performances" in the lead over and over with scant regard for whether it suited the property in question.
I, unlike Trace, don't care about some of the changes. I don't care about Carolyn the Werewolf or vomiting Angelique...it's a new version. Be new with your ideas and that's fine - but if you're selling it as a broad comedy horror...then you better make it funny and scary. But if the jokes don't work and it's about as scary as CGI vomit sounds? Not so fine. Looking at the film not as a "Dark Shadows" adaptation but just as a film in its own right, it's quite inept.
Compare with the 2 Jump Street films. They're silly, comedy versions of the show. Nothing like it really...but they work as comedies in their own right so audiences bought it. This film didn't need to work as a version of Dark Shadows - Just as a comedy horror. And it didn't make me laugh much and the only thing that scared me was how Depp goes from being just stunning in Edward Scissorhands, Gilbert Grape and Fear & Loathing to this, the Mad Hatter and that awful Willy Wonka performance. Truly terrifying."I don't think my opinion has changed much! Though I have seen the legendary 2004 pilot in the interim and I suppose between that, the '91 series and the Burton film....there really might be an essay or two in where they've all gone wrong. Interestingly they share some of the same mistakes.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2017 21:17:20 GMT
And, from a business POV, the budget went wrong. The film cost $150mill. That's more than Thor, Iron Man and Captain America cost, incredibly. So once the below the line costs were factored in, it had to become a BIG hit - comporable to a Marvel - to justify it's outlay. It "only" grossed $245mill which, I think, is a hell of a lot of money for a DS movie but when it cost so much to make - not so much.
It actually, and slightly unbelievably given we all refer to it as a terrible flop - grossed more than films like John Wick 2, Blade Runner 2049 or Alien Covenant have this year - BIG movies - so plenty of people paid to see it...just not enough.
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Post by mark687 on Nov 4, 2017 21:22:16 GMT
And, from a business POV, the budget went wrong. The film cost $150mill. That's more than Thor, Iron Man and Captain America cost, incredibly. So once the below the line costs were factored in, it had to become a BIG hit - comporable to a Marvel - to justify it's outlay. It "only" grossed $245mill which, I think, is a hell of a lot of money for a DS movie but when it cost so much to make - not so much. It actually, and slightly unbelievably given we all refer to it as a terrible flop - grossed more than films like John Wick 2, Blade Runner 2049 or Alien Covenant have this year - BIG movies - so plenty of people paid to see it...just not enough. Really that much !
Regards
mark687
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2017 21:36:28 GMT
And, from a business POV, the budget went wrong. The film cost $150mill. That's more than Thor, Iron Man and Captain America cost, incredibly. So once the below the line costs were factored in, it had to become a BIG hit - comporable to a Marvel - to justify it's outlay. It "only" grossed $245mill which, I think, is a hell of a lot of money for a DS movie but when it cost so much to make - not so much. It actually, and slightly unbelievably given we all refer to it as a terrible flop - grossed more than films like John Wick 2, Blade Runner 2049 or Alien Covenant have this year - BIG movies - so plenty of people paid to see it...just not enough. Really that much !
Regards
mark687
Yes. Burton and Depp were coming off of Wonderland which, despite being all kinds of pish, was one of the biggest grossing films ever made at the time (5th highest ever with over a billion dollars) so Warners clearly thought they had a blockbuster on their hands instead of a project that with a solid budget could give a solid return - a nice respectable earner. That budget doomed it right off. As did the opposition - released that same week? The Avengers. Not the smartest move, WB.
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Post by mark687 on Nov 4, 2017 21:43:16 GMT
Really that much !
Regards
mark687
Yes. Burton and Depp were coming off of Wonderland which, despite being all kinds of pish, was one of the biggest grossing films ever made at the time (5th highest ever with over a billion dollars) so Warners clearly thought they had a blockbuster on their hands instead of a project that with a solid budget could give a solid return - a nice respectable earner. That budget doomed it right off. As did the opposition - released that same week? The Avengers. Not the smartest move, WB. Obviously not but the Budget clearly doesn't show on screen IMO, unlike the Marvel's
Regards
mark687
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Post by omega on Nov 4, 2017 22:09:57 GMT
Yes. Burton and Depp were coming off of Wonderland which, despite being all kinds of pish, was one of the biggest grossing films ever made at the time (5th highest ever with over a billion dollars) so Warners clearly thought they had a blockbuster on their hands instead of a project that with a solid budget could give a solid return - a nice respectable earner. That budget doomed it right off. As did the opposition - released that same week? The Avengers. Not the smartest move, WB. Obviously not but the Budget clearly doesn't show on screen IMO, unlike the Marvel's
Regards
mark687
Maybe it went on Alice Cooper and flying Jonathan Frid, Lara Parker, David Selby and KLS in.
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Post by omega on Nov 4, 2017 22:17:19 GMT
And the finest soap opera parody is All My Circuits from Futurama. It skewers nearly every soap trope there is. If you're going to parody long length media, it has to be long length itself. Otherwise you get an overfull plot that only has time to develop a couple of threads introduced.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2017 22:27:01 GMT
Well, that would account for a million or so for Alice and a few thousand for some plane tickets I think it's clear the film's budget went on a pretty high class cast, stunning sets, licencing and plenty of CGI. The film is pretty sumptuous in places - that opening is wonderful and Collinwood is gorgeous - but it just didn't need to cost so much. The visuals are the least of the problem. It boggles the mind it cost 3 times as much as Deadpool but hey - Warners, like I said, thought they had another Alice In Wonderland with Depp and Burton. Coming so soon after Green Lantern it's clear their film division had zero idea about budgets. Even if it HAD taken more dough, though...it wouldn't make the film better so the post I made was more an interesting sidebar. I suspect many, like Mark, won't have realised just how much the film cost and that Warners really thought it was going to be HUGE. To double down on what was essentially a Depp vanity project of a property that had failed more than once is quite baffling. I mean, we love the show, love the audios but we're a subset of a niche. This had to hit the widet possible audience and it did...a bit...$245m ain't nothing - but most people go to the movies once in a while. Opposite The Avengers this was never, ever gonna make the money WB needed.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2017 22:34:38 GMT
And the finest soap opera parody is All My Circuits from Futurama. It skewers nearly every soap trope there is. If you're going to parody long length media, it has to be long length itself. Otherwise you get an overfull plot that only has time to develop a couple of threads introduced. I don't think this was a soap opera parody at all. It didn't play with any of the tropes of soap, really, so I'm not sure that's what they were trying to do and it's not there in the film. It was a comic version of the show, sure, but more of the show's concept than soap as a genre. It's almost more a take on the House Of Dark Shadows movie than the show I'd say since it hits the same beats as that. And besides the best soap parody is "Soap" itself. One of the shows bobod loves the most, I think.
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