The Monster Mash-Up Literary Fad

I want to weigh in today on a slightly-off-topic-but-increasingly-on-topic subject: monster mash-up classics.  Mostly these still reside in the realm of literature, but Hollywood is always looking for a good idea to cop, which is why we're all looking forward to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which is slated for theaters next summer.

I have already expressed my enthusiasm for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, even while commenting on the dubious nature of casting (I have recently learned that Mary Elizabeth Winstead is playing Abe's wife Mary Todd, to which I say: I'm glad she's working again and I hope she can bring the crazy).  In addition, the rumor mill has been turning around Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (by the same author as AL: VH, Seth Grahame-Smith) for ages; first it was attached to Natalie Portman, then it wasn't, it had a director, then it didn't, then it did again, and now it's in that wonderful little blank space that projects occupy after they get a director but before they get actors.  I have no doubt that we'll be hearing more from it, and soon (that last article regarding director Craig Gillespie is dated April 19, 2011) but until then, Abe Lincoln is filming and the literary world is buzzing around these unconventional retreads of classic literature.

When P&P&Z was released in May of 2009, it garnered a whole lot of attention and spawned a mess of "sequels" (Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, Jane Slayre, Android Karenina, etc.).  Some of them are really good and some of them...not so much.  I read P&P&Z and enjoyed it immensely - I could not even finish S&S&S.  I'm embroiled right now in Alice in Zombieland, which, once again, I'm enjoying immensely.  And I adored Abe Lincoln.  In my personal view, I found P&P&Z to be so much fun because it was deliciously subversive: about 85% of it is Jane Austen's original prose, with key words and phrases interjected at the right time to transform the English countryside into a zombie apocalypse.  S&S&S, on the other hand, is almost entirely fabricated monster-story, and it didn't retain enough of the original text for me to find it clever or entertaining.  Alice in Zombieland is composed mostly of wording changes (instead of a White Rabbit, Alice follows a Black Rat down an empty grave), but I'm finding it retains Carroll's tone of the original work.  I think these stories work best when they stick harder to the original source material, which makes the horror-film changes that much more entertaining.  It's not all that witty or original to read about sea monsters assailing an island; zombies in an otherwise pleasant English countryside, on the other hand?  While everyone is speaking in charming Austenian dialect?  Fabulous.

But that's just my take - why have these taken off so well in the populace at large?  I may have read many of the canon works these monster manuals are based off of, but many people haven't (this is not a comment on the literacy of the US, by the way.  This isn't meant to be a chastisement.).  So why have people been devouring them off the shelves of bookstores and libraries alike?  My theory is two parts: the current mad popularity of anything supernatural, and the desire for people to cheat.

The spat of supernatural in the media can't really be denied, because it's everywhere.  My second point takes a little explaining: I think that many people read these books because they're easier to digest then the classics they're based off of.  This is my hypothesis and it's largely unfounded in statistical fact, but c'mon, how many people have read Anna Karenina?  I wouldn't go near it with a 20 foot pole.  Android Karenina, frankly, sounds both far easier to chew on and much more interesting (please don't kill me if you're a Russian lit fan). 

So anyway, that's my weigh-in.  In regards to the impending Lincoln movie: the first set pic has been released, and it's a suitably boring one of Walker in costume giving some sort of presidential speech.  (NOTE: I JUST learned that Rufus Sewell is in this movie, and he is NOT playing John Wilkes Booth.  WTF BEKMAMBETOV)  What I appreciate about this photo is what I appreciated about the book: in as many ways as possible, Grahame-Smith kept it historically accurate.  I mean, yeah, there are vampires, but the skeleton the story is hung on is historical fact that we know about Lincoln's life.  I think the movie will be more effective if it keeps that accurate feel, and from this (single, I know) photo, it looks like the filmmakers are trying to do just that.

Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

I know, I promised you guys more Trailer Talk, and I fully intend to deliver. The problem is that I have a day job and night school, and neither are very conducive to watching trailers. So! Movie news that I can report to you whilst in my downtime at the office.

(In a perfect world, I would get paid scads of money to do nothing except watch trailers and gab about them. Alas, that doesn't currently come with health care, and I don't even have dental as it is.)

I read Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter on the recommendation of a friend, because I had so thoroughly enjoyed Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. (Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters, not so much.) Seth Grahame-Smith did what I didn't think was possible: he made this seemingly ludicrous and hilarious concept a serious, emotionally impacting story. I loved the way it was set up through a mix of historical facts and the fabricated diaries of Lincoln; it was satirical in subject matter but not in tone.

When I heard that it was getting made into a movie, I was excited - I'm usually excited when books I like get made into films (weird, right?) because I love visuals, and honestly, this story was made to be a film (or maybe a mini-series). As one does, I gossiped with the friend that had lent me the book originally about who we wanted to see in the two starring roles: Abe and his vampire mentor, Henry.

I'm convinced that Adrien Brody has spent his film career preparing for this role. We've seen him tackle roles with gravitas successfully, such as in The Pianist, not to mention this and this as well, so we know he'd be able to bring all the weightiness and stature that Lincoln would need to be convincing and effective. But, as anyone who paid good money to see Predators knows, dude can BRING it in the physical arena.

But for me the roles that most convinced me Brody would be perfect here are his turns in The Brothers Bloom and Darjeeling Limited. Both movies are kind of silly, but Brody dead-pans his way through in total seriousness, making them poignant as well as weirdly funny. I don't think Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter can succeed if it doesn't give us a LITTLE tongue-in-cheek, and I think Brody could have balanced that with deadly believability.

In the roll of Henry, the vampire that takes over Abe's education and mentors him through slayer-dom, well, who better than Johnny Depp? However tiresome I may find his current cash cow, the way he handles even his sillier roles, like in Benny & Joon and Sleepy Hollow, with deftness and sympathy that would have made Henry believable as a sympathetic monster-type. And his flamboyancy in said cash cow just demonstrates that Depp's Henry would still retain that vampire nobility and libertine attitude that many ascribe to them.

As movie news has revealed, both my choices were denied. Instead of Brody and Depp we're getting this guy and this guy, who do not exactly fill me with joy. You know what does, though? The fact that Timur Bekmambetov is directing.

No, I don't care how you felt about Wanted, or its infamous in-production sequel. This dude directed Night Watch, one of the best gritty supernatural noir pieces to be made in the last ten years. There are vampires, and great fight scenes, and the whole thing is darkly, eerily, beautiful. If you watch it (AND YOU SHOULD), please please PLEASE watch the subtitled version; Bekmambetov plays with the actual subtitles to reflect how a certain person talks is incorporated into the world. It's inspired.