Alright! Today I am doing a complete complete review of A Wrinkle In Time - the five books and the two movies.
#1: A Wrinkle In Time
The original book by Madeleine L'Engle is still the best in the franchise. The book is fantastic - An epic battle with metaphorical messages (Heavily metaphorical. The most relating to Christ since Narnia). The characters are well written. The story, plot, and fantasy elements are all genius. Unfortunately, the franchise only gets worse from here.
#2: A Wind In The Door
A Wind In The Door is sad. It is boring, confusing, and just a letdown. In fact, they don't even reference the first book. There's no reference to it at all. And the entire thing takes place in a mitochondria -- it's like someone took my 7th-grade textbook and tried to make it interesting. Emphasis on tried.
#3: A Swiftly Tilting Planet
A Swiftly Tilting Planet was okay. It wasn't my favorite, it wasn't my most hated, it was just there. I don't like it when people do that whole "Astral Projection" thing. Most media can't pull it off (This, the Last Jedi). I can only think of one thing that pulled it off: Doctor Strange. When it's not essential to the plot and just there, I think it works better. This book made sense until about the last time Charles Wallace "Kythes," because then it gets confusing with the Matthew dude and whatnot. I do like the principle on which the book is based, though, the "Butterfly Effect" that we see so often yet rarely see executed well.
#4: Many Waters
I liked Many Waters. I thought the idea of going back in time and meeting Noah was pretty cool. This one definitely had the most religious undertone, with translation and devils being a thing. I thought it held on themes of temptation and faith. It's kind of a coming of age story, like the Perks of Being A Wallflower, but without all the language, sex, and rock 'n' roll.
#5: An Acceptable Time
This was an okay book. It wasn't exactly my favorite, but it also wasn't exactly the worst one ever. It was nice to see Meg and Calvin together again, but they were minor characters, as the story took place in the Grandparent's house. I also thought it was long.
The 2003 A Wrinkle In Time
The 2003 attempt at A Wrinkle In Time was a mixed bag; I felt like it portrayed several of the scenes and book correctly, but it also got some of the characters wrong. Calvin should be a redhead. In fact, most of the characters are pretty awful. It's closeness to the settings of the book is all it's got going for it, and even that was pretty bad. It needed a bigger budget and more of the religious under-text that the novel had, the one that made the novel popular.
The 2018 A Wrinkle In Time
Okay. Here is where we get to it -- the utter flop that was the 2018 A Wrinkle In Time. It was flawed in every way - Except for the visual effects and cast. The cast was good for the most part (Not Charles Wallace. We'll get to that later). The visual effects were pretty nice. It feels like Ava DuVernay got a bit trigger happy with the effects, to the point she forgot about things like plot, characters, and making a good movie.
The characters were all wrong - Mrs. Which is not 100 feet tall, speaks in hushed tones, and has trouble with the letter "S." Mrs. Whatsit does not doubt Meg and Mrs. Who was really only there to have the occasional "Who/What/When/Where" joke thrown in there.
Meg and Calvin were okay. As was the father and mother.
Charles Wallace was nothing like the book - He was adopted (Why? It had literally no impact on the story), was loud, obnoxious, didn't act smart, and didn't explain things.
I feel like the worst part was that they had Michael Peña in there and they did NOTHING with him. He was there for 5 minutes, and they were the best 5 minutes of the movie.
Now, it seemed like it got the story right, until about halfway through - Then they get to IT. They changed everything so that way it has one of those syrupy, imagination-is-wonderful, I was a loser but now I have acceptance endings. The acclaimed book, known for its thoughtfulness, was reduced to having the ending of a dumb kid's show. And A Wrinkle In Time is more than a dumb kid's show. I've seen episodes of Dora the Explorer with more complexity than this.
I hated this film. Hated it.
They once again shafted Ms. Beast, who is nothing more than a cameo that they showed in the trailer and my one reason for watching the movie (That and Michael Peña). I can't believe it.
Then they also changed some important themes from the book - specifically, Meg has a mental block against Tessering (For reasons somewhat along the lines of, "Because she's a loser who can't use her imagination."), the entire last half of the movie is rubbish, they didn't even explain what was going on most of the time, or why the three Mrs.' were on Earth and had trouble speaking, and, most importantly, the entire religious subtheme of the book was dropped.
Take Narnia, for instance. People loved the Narnia movies. People loved the Narnia books. They were both linked by religious subtones, and the movies weren't box office flops - quite the opposite, really. Critically acclaimed, box office champs, and fan favorites.
Then take a look at A Wrinkle In Time. The book is an outstanding classic of children's literature. The movie was a box office flop that nobody liked. If you take away what people liked about the book - eg, the complexity, the maturity, the thoughtfulness, and the religious subtheme, and the dropped all of them.
In fact, they went as far to exclude all traces of religion from the movie - going as far as to include the conversation about Jesus but not include the Jesus part.
And I feel like that really wraps up a lot of the film.
All in all, the Time Quintet franchise really should've stopped after the first book.
#1: A Wrinkle In Time
The original book by Madeleine L'Engle is still the best in the franchise. The book is fantastic - An epic battle with metaphorical messages (Heavily metaphorical. The most relating to Christ since Narnia). The characters are well written. The story, plot, and fantasy elements are all genius. Unfortunately, the franchise only gets worse from here.
#2: A Wind In The Door
A Wind In The Door is sad. It is boring, confusing, and just a letdown. In fact, they don't even reference the first book. There's no reference to it at all. And the entire thing takes place in a mitochondria -- it's like someone took my 7th-grade textbook and tried to make it interesting. Emphasis on tried.
#3: A Swiftly Tilting Planet
A Swiftly Tilting Planet was okay. It wasn't my favorite, it wasn't my most hated, it was just there. I don't like it when people do that whole "Astral Projection" thing. Most media can't pull it off (This, the Last Jedi). I can only think of one thing that pulled it off: Doctor Strange. When it's not essential to the plot and just there, I think it works better. This book made sense until about the last time Charles Wallace "Kythes," because then it gets confusing with the Matthew dude and whatnot. I do like the principle on which the book is based, though, the "Butterfly Effect" that we see so often yet rarely see executed well.#4: Many Waters
I liked Many Waters. I thought the idea of going back in time and meeting Noah was pretty cool. This one definitely had the most religious undertone, with translation and devils being a thing. I thought it held on themes of temptation and faith. It's kind of a coming of age story, like the Perks of Being A Wallflower, but without all the language, sex, and rock 'n' roll.
#5: An Acceptable Time
This was an okay book. It wasn't exactly my favorite, but it also wasn't exactly the worst one ever. It was nice to see Meg and Calvin together again, but they were minor characters, as the story took place in the Grandparent's house. I also thought it was long.
The 2003 A Wrinkle In Time
The 2003 attempt at A Wrinkle In Time was a mixed bag; I felt like it portrayed several of the scenes and book correctly, but it also got some of the characters wrong. Calvin should be a redhead. In fact, most of the characters are pretty awful. It's closeness to the settings of the book is all it's got going for it, and even that was pretty bad. It needed a bigger budget and more of the religious under-text that the novel had, the one that made the novel popular.
The 2018 A Wrinkle In Time
Okay. Here is where we get to it -- the utter flop that was the 2018 A Wrinkle In Time. It was flawed in every way - Except for the visual effects and cast. The cast was good for the most part (Not Charles Wallace. We'll get to that later). The visual effects were pretty nice. It feels like Ava DuVernay got a bit trigger happy with the effects, to the point she forgot about things like plot, characters, and making a good movie.
The characters were all wrong - Mrs. Which is not 100 feet tall, speaks in hushed tones, and has trouble with the letter "S." Mrs. Whatsit does not doubt Meg and Mrs. Who was really only there to have the occasional "Who/What/When/Where" joke thrown in there.
Meg and Calvin were okay. As was the father and mother.
Charles Wallace was nothing like the book - He was adopted (Why? It had literally no impact on the story), was loud, obnoxious, didn't act smart, and didn't explain things.I feel like the worst part was that they had Michael Peña in there and they did NOTHING with him. He was there for 5 minutes, and they were the best 5 minutes of the movie.
Now, it seemed like it got the story right, until about halfway through - Then they get to IT. They changed everything so that way it has one of those syrupy, imagination-is-wonderful, I was a loser but now I have acceptance endings. The acclaimed book, known for its thoughtfulness, was reduced to having the ending of a dumb kid's show. And A Wrinkle In Time is more than a dumb kid's show. I've seen episodes of Dora the Explorer with more complexity than this.
I hated this film. Hated it.
They once again shafted Ms. Beast, who is nothing more than a cameo that they showed in the trailer and my one reason for watching the movie (That and Michael Peña). I can't believe it.
Then they also changed some important themes from the book - specifically, Meg has a mental block against Tessering (For reasons somewhat along the lines of, "Because she's a loser who can't use her imagination."), the entire last half of the movie is rubbish, they didn't even explain what was going on most of the time, or why the three Mrs.' were on Earth and had trouble speaking, and, most importantly, the entire religious subtheme of the book was dropped.
Take Narnia, for instance. People loved the Narnia movies. People loved the Narnia books. They were both linked by religious subtones, and the movies weren't box office flops - quite the opposite, really. Critically acclaimed, box office champs, and fan favorites.
Then take a look at A Wrinkle In Time. The book is an outstanding classic of children's literature. The movie was a box office flop that nobody liked. If you take away what people liked about the book - eg, the complexity, the maturity, the thoughtfulness, and the religious subtheme, and the dropped all of them.
In fact, they went as far to exclude all traces of religion from the movie - going as far as to include the conversation about Jesus but not include the Jesus part.
And I feel like that really wraps up a lot of the film.
All in all, the Time Quintet franchise really should've stopped after the first book.
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