Maybe it’s because of the special attachment I have to The Tempest, but … *damn*. This sort of thing is like my Star Wars. Shakespeare with magic and special effects? I can’t wait!
http://io9.com/5656797/the-gender+swapping-hyper+stylized-trailer-for-shakespeares-the-tempest
The only question in my mind is whether I’ll take the kids to see it. And, honestly, if nobody dies a particularly gory death and nobody gets naked, I think I just might!
Re: the trailer itself, I quite like it, except for the “STUPIDITY” tag they stick n there it’s really out of place. Fine, you want to say “It’s got funny bits”, but sticking STUPIDITY among more epic words like TREACHERY and REVENGE just doesn’t work.
I don’t know what to do with SHAKESPEARE’S FINAL MASTERPIECE. That’s maybe kinda sorta not so accurate? But if it helps to put the butts in the seats, let ’em go with it.
I wish they’d made Caliban a bit more monstrous. Ariel appears to get the lion’s share of the special effects attention, all Djimon Honsou (sp?) has to work with is a loincloth and some eye makeup.
Update: It’s rated PG-13 for “some nudity and suggestive content”. Not exactly sure what that means, and will likely have to screen before letting my kids (who, you remember, are as young as 4) see this one.
Eh. I wouldn't call Henry VIII or The Two Noble Kinsmen masterpieces. So until someone discovers Cardenio and it turns out to be earth-shatteringly good, I'm pretty comfortable labeling The Tempest as "Shakespeare's final masterpiece", so long as it's understood that this doesn't mean it was his final play.
I'm quite happy to have the special effects kept to a minimum. I know, I know, John Barton says you should either do it spare and ritualised or big with lots of effects and magic, and if you're going to make a movie, then why the hell NOT go with the big with lots of effects and magic route. But – and I can't quite believe I'm going to say this, as it's usually the preserve of grumpy old ladies who favour verse-speaking over clarity of language and are APPALLED that someone might want to build a bit of extra staging – why can't they just trust the text? Ben Whishaw would be a freakin' fantastic Ariel even if he just wore jeans and a t-shirt, so it's a bit irksome that you can scarcely even see him through the special effects in the trailer. :/
And I like them sticking STUPIDITY in among TREACHERY and REVENGE. It's a romance, not a tragedy. And according to people who've already seen it, there's quite a lot of Trinculo and Stephano. By simply removing the word "STUPIDITY", even with the bits we see of those two, the trailer would come across a LOT darker, and then people would be baffled and maybe annoyed when they saw the final film.
Still! I'll certainly go to see it. There are some things I really don't like about the trailer, while there are other things I really do like about it, so I'll be interested to see how I feel about the movie as a whole. 🙂
This looks like it will be a big deal. Maybe this generation's definitive film adaptation of the Tempest. And Duane, Caliban has more than eye makeup. His skin seems to have scale-like ridges all over it ("half a fish") and he has other white blotches besides the circular patch on his face. I think the idea for that came from the times he's called"mooncalf."
"Final Masterpiece." It's a bit of a double-talk-y way to say "Shakespeare's last play" without actually saying that because it would be, you know, untrue. I haven't read Henry VIII, but Two Noble Kinsmen is, while surprisingly good for such an obscure play, certainly no competition with the Tempest. So their description, while misleading, is probably accurate.