Wednesday, January 20, 2010

"Synonym for Arrival"


Click to enlarge, this whole sequence would be about the opening credits...

Yes, it's a riff on the Prisoner. I don't think I outright hated AMC's recent remake/reimagining/re-do, but not only does it not hold a candle to the sheer...originality of the original; but there were some other flaws, too. I can understand not wanting to do a shot-for-shot, slavish imitation of the original; but sometimes in trying to tell your own story, you can get too far away from what you liked in the source material.

Best example I can think of, especially since a retrospective series was on for them about the same time; would be if some producer or writer or network proudly announced they were going to remake Monty Python's Flying Circus. Now, that alone would be just about impossible: that series was so idiosyncratic and individual and of its time, as well as being virtually idolized in the years since it was on.

Then imagine if that producer said this time, they were going to do Python as it should've been done; not only with more contemporary production values, but also as an allegory for the Holocaust. And not even in the sense that the producer might be hijacking Python for his own purposes, more that our imaginary producer was legitimately excited about both ideas, and thought putting them together would be the best thing ever. Said producer would of course be dead wrong, and that seems to be pretty much how we got AMC's Prisoner.

Anyway, we'll be messing around with this one for a month or so...

4 comments:

Sea-of-Green said...

I don't think it's a coincidence that AMC rushed a remake of The Prisoner into production right on the heels of Patrick McGoohan's death. Shame on them.

SallyP said...

Lovely, lovely. And yes, the original was superb. I remember watching that as a kid...I had a terrible crush on Patrick McGoohan, that I had had since I saw him in Disney's Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. Man, that was a good show.

Er...what were we talking about again?

chiasaur11 said...

How awesome Patrick McGoohan is.

Which he totally is.

(Man, he skipped being Bond on moral principles. That's definitely something.)

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