I think he did a great job. It’s a good movie, he skipped some bits, maybe tweaked some of the emotions for a different world. But over all it’s a good movie, and has enough of the story to adequately tell it, and in somebody likes it and has never read some version, there’s enough differences to still enjoy the book.
As for the hate, I think it’s 2 things:
1 - the anti-woke movement is much more belligerent and pervasive than woke ever got. I noticed that with the Spielberg remake of West Side Story. People actually being mad he cast brown people to play brown characters, like that’s the worst thing imaginable.
2 - there’s a big tendency, and this actually crosses political spectrums, that old stories should be treated like sacred urtexts and any modification in any way is wrong wrong wrong. I find these particularly laughable because, as I think you know, these stories have changed constantly. Whether it’s a “separate entity” like this movie, or “continuous entity” like it’s part of the chain to the original. It’s never really the original. We can pretend that if you find a version of The Odyssey that’s in ancient Greek and really old it’s the really original as told by Homer story. But it isn’t. I guarantee somewhere between the first time Homer (or someone from the Homeric school) told this story and the oldest known written version the story changed. Stories always change, especially when they go back to oral tradition. 30 years later, 100 years later, 200 years later somebody’s gonna look at some story beat and go “eh, I don’t like that” and tweak it. That constant change is as much a part of Western cultural history as these stories. But people get this attachment, usually to the first version of the story they read which probably isn’t the true first version, and demand it never change again.
Plus of course a lot of people just like hating Nolan. He makes weird movies that make a lot of money. And the fact that he has total freedom with getting big budgets from big studios and does basically whatever he wants really seems to annoy people.
I Agree with your assessment
“ Plus of course a lot of people just like hating Nolan. He makes weird movies that make a lot of money. And the fact that he has total freedom with getting big budgets from big studios and does basically whatever he wants really seems to annoy people.”
Do they forget capitalism and the American way here on FR?
The enjoyment of hate for the sake of hate I’ve seen in the past week is more offensive than anything Nolan has done
I also wondered if people hated this movie seeing themselves as suitors- do nothings with no training That’s got to be disturbing