If you ever have any intention of reading the book The Count of Monte Cristo (which I highly recommend) or seeing the movie (which I don’t recommend at all) you probably shouldn’t read this.
I just finished the book a couple of days ago. Truly amazing story. 1200 pages, but never a dull moment. There’s betrayal, intrigue and a million characters to follow. When it was originally published, The Count of Monte Cristo was serialized, and I could definitely see readers craving each installment. It’s kind of like how some people follow soap operas today, except a million times more intelligent and way less smutty.
I finished the book and was fortunate enough to have never seen any movie adaptation. Silly me decided to watch the newer one with Guy Pearce in it. I was just curious to see how they tackled it. Dumb idea.
I know that in adapting a 1200 page piece of literature to a two hour film there are going to be changes. Side stories are going to disappear. Some events are just going to have to take less time. Less characters are going to be involved. I get it. It’s not like I had high expectations.
Apart from the opening few acts and a few character names (which weren’t all the same anyway), the movie was a completely different story. Okay, so, the guy gets screwed over by three guys who have various motives, he’s named a traitor and is thrown in prison, he meets a priest who tells him where to find a hidden fortune, priest teaches him everything under the sun, priest dies, guy escapes…after that it just went steadily downhill. For a while I could see a shadow of Dumas’ story, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that I was pretty much watching something completely off track. It’s like they just gave up trying to stick to the story. I mean, seriously, Albert is really Edmond’s son!? That’s a pretty big plot twist to just throw in there.
However, I did like that movie Monte Cristo actually got a new start with his former fiancee instead of with his Greek slave/daughter-figure like book Monte Cristo did.
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April 7, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Laura
I’ve only read the children’s abridged version, but the movie still kinda bothered me. I actually didn’t like the ending, because the whole point of the book was that his desire for vengeance totally pushes away his fiancee. I mean, I like the idea of a happy ending as much as the next girl, but…this wasn’t the right book for it. Then again, the abridged version left out the daughter-figure, so maybe that’s the preferred choice.