So now that we have finished the book and the movie, rip into either one. The movie, while definitely changing some of the order of the book, does deal with a great deal of problems in expressing them on screen. It’s not necessarily the director’s fault, but perhaps it is just not a book that can have a similar movie rendition. I know some of you were probably thinking about this anyways, so why not just throw it out there.
if you were going to make a different version of this movie, what would you change? How would you make it more similar to the book? or less similar? What are some of the strengths that the movie had and what were some weaknesses? What would you leave in and what would you take out?
Have atter…
I would make it lighter haha, jk (but not really). I actually started to like it more towards the end, but I still think that if I hadn’t read the book I would have had no idea what was going on until the last five minutes when it all kind of got pieced together. But I did think that they did a decent job of conveying the main points of the book at the end of the movie. I would have just tried to make some points more clear, such as his first encounter with the spaceship light.
I liked it more as it went along, too. Like I said before, I was so confused by the absence of the Tralfamadorians. But evidently they saved them for the last 20 minutes of the movie.
The way they represented the T’s was really cool… as much as I wanted to see a 70’s rendition of the aliens, it was almost funnier to hear them yell at Billy and Montana. “Are you mating yet” cracked me up. Also, the look of the “zoo” was really well done. Looked space-age enough for aliens, but fake enough to be convinced that it was all made up, imagination from Billy.
Also, the scenes of Dresden pre and post bombing were POWERFUL, like seeing them light all of those bodies on fire? Kind of got to me (talk about de-sensitization… i then went right back to reading ESPN on my iphone and forgot all about it).
What if the director took the book apart and put it back together peace by peace in chronological order? Is that even possible? we kind of did it in class today. would that have been a better movie?
Oh, and I also liked Valeria Perrine a lot (the woman who played Montana). That made up for a lot of the garbage seen in the first hour of the flick.
I was thinking the same thing about the zoo looking fake enough to be just part of Billy’s Imagination.
I thought that in the movie the idea that Billy is imagining it was put to the audience more compared to the book. The book seems to ask the readers to believe this as reality while the movie seems to treat billy like an idiot.
In the book the abduction happens after the anniversary party, but in the movie the abduction happens after Billy is home from the plane crash and has found out about his wifes death. Another reason why the movie suggests that the tralfalmadorians are just in Billy’s mind compared to the book.
I’m not sure that if it was in my hands that I would even make the book into a movie. First of all, I just don’t think the idea translates well into film. The time jumps are too disconnected when put on the screen. So much of the book relies on Narrative as many scenes are descriptive, or require some form of explanation. I do agree with Alex that they managed to hit most of the main points by nicely wrapping it up at the end, but I think by waiting till the end to do that, especially the Tralfamadore parts, it took away from a lot of the themes to do with the Tralfamadore philosophy on life, and death.
The book itself says so much more than a movie could really ever convey. I think too much is lost in translation to make a movie that could say nearly as much.
Although I do agree with you Becky,. I’d like to play devil’s advocate and argue for the good aspects about the film, and how perhaps it does some things that the book cannot.
My first point would be on the visual expressivity that the movie has in scenes depicting murder/war. This visual or physical approach allows the viewer to realise the gravity of the situation without too much “in-movie” explaining.
Another way in which the movie does serve a strong purpouse is in it’s distribution of the major messages within the novel. Vonnegut only has so many readers/followers. And when a book, like this one, reaches its peak in popularity, everyone wants to know what the its about. However. not everyone will pick up the book, and read it. So, the movie does allow Vonnegut’s main messages to be spread far and wide, which I think is a good thing (seeing as they are against war!)
Finally, I think the choices of music and artistic editing give the film an emotional branch, which may or not be present in the novel; depending on the reader. Namely, the movie doesn’t allow for much ambiguity regarding the emotional statis of the characters/scenes/moments/etc.
I’m looking forward to presenting on Wednesday! Get ready for my movie! 🙂
Today was great! I really enjoyed listening to everyone’s presentations, and was happy to see you enjoy mine 🙂
Anwyays, I wanted to add to my answer to Becky’s question about free will vs. determinism.
I wanted to say that I am not a religious person, and 90% of me beliefs strongly support he comcept and existence of free will. However that small 10% allows for the pre-destination part to also fit in.
When I was driving home, I realized that we can in fact accept and believe in both. Listen:
We make choices on a daily basis, that fit within a range of possible choices for us to make. I’m assuming that we all HAVE choice and can exercise our FREE WILL but within certain limitations of a greater plan. Take for example, the police, governement, laws, work, school, money, family. All those things, whether we like it or not, do play a role in the limitiations of our choices. Sure, anyone can exercise their free will to randomly shoot someone, but do we? NO. because we have free will but within limits. And we do accept these conditions when our “pre-destinors” are soically accepted. ie: god is not 100% believed to exists across the board in general society so his predestination is debatable, but let’s take family duties as being on ethat 100% of people can agree limit our choices.
Does that makes sense?
Not sure, but I thought it was genius.
see you all Monday!
It’s a little hazed, but it does make sense! I agree with a lot of what you said, and disagree with almost all of it entirely (haha).
I agree that we do make decisions based only on the AVAILABLE CHOICES “given” to us. But taking into consideration that we have no control over the choices that we can choose from, are the choices we make really because of our free will? Or are these choices so limited that whichever choice we make does not matter because they all eventually lead to the same result?
Yes we do have the physical (maybe not mental) ability to go out and shoot someone, and yes we don’t do that. But no because we have free will, but because we socially don’t have the choice to do so in Canada. The consequences of shooting someone is so inconvenient that it is therefore (in most cases) an invalid choice. However, in other places in the world, such as third world countries, this option is not invalid but rather very logical and practical to make. I grew up in Trinidad and Tobago where there is shooting and killing all the time. And the people that decide to make these “choices” do so because they really have no other “choice”. It’s shoot or starve.
So to bring all my rambling together, the point that I’m trying to make is that, like you said, choice is based on current situations such as police, government, laws, work, school, money, family. But to say this means that where and when a person is born undoubtedly relates to his/her choices in life. So therefore, the determination of that person’s choice, essentially their free will, is based on a predetermined aspect of where/when they are being born into this world.
Does that make sense?
I think the book itself is hard to make into a movie. With everything Kurt puts into his books, every sentence is important and its hard to put every sentence into a movie. I think that if I hadnt read the book I would be very confused as to why Billy is crazy. I dont think the movie made a very good connection between everything, If I were going to redo the movie I would put more of the conversations with the Trafalmadorians seeing as how those are some of the most important dialogues. I liked how they focused on the war a lot, but I would also focus on the Trafalmadorians just as much as the war because I think both of those are the key points in the book. I would also, I dont know how, but incorporate ‘so it goes.’ Im not very good at being creative but I just know I didnt like the movie because although the book was all over the place I think the movie tried to project that but in a really bad way. Also, I would somehow put more attention on the other American soldiers that Billy came across in the war because they all had an impact on Billy in one way or another.