Friday, December 25, 2009

I finished reading THE STRAIN. What a disappointment. Where is the Guillermo del Toro of PAN'S LABYRINTH? You would think a novel would be more personal, more distinctive, than his movies. After all, it costs nothing to write a book, and it costs millions to make a movie. A novel can be anything you want. A movie has to answer to the studio fronting the money; the music is the composer's, the acting is the star's. Aside from the scary vampires with their six foot tongues, where's del Toro? (And it's not like we haven't seen six foot tongues before, e.g. Doc from Season 5 of Buffy.) It's as if he sat down with Chuck Hogan for a few days, gave him some ideas, and then walked away, leaving the bestseller writer to do his thing.

It's not even top quality bestseller writing. At the end of the four day period of the novel, the hero is bravely uploading footage of a vamp to the Internet, to prove they exist. This, after vampires have been rampaging around all over Manhattan for days. Surely there would be hundreds of videos up on YouTube by this point? The Iranians managed it, and they had to smuggle cell phones out of the country.

Well, I hope del Toro will take his loot and go and make a personal movie. I'm going to go get some batteries for Jesse's presents.

Labels: books, reading

11:46 AM

2 Comments:

"Where is the Guillermo del Toro of PAN'S LABYRINTH?"

Hey, big fan of the blog.

Just curious. Did you read The Strain in Spanish? The copy of Pan's Labyrinth I read was in Spanish.

Are you comparing this script you read to Pan's Labyrinth the movie or the screenplay -- because the way you have it written implies the screenplay?

I'm just curious. Language barriers always seem to add an extra layer of difficulty to a read imo. I found Pan's Labyrinth to be a little simplistic and overly descriptive as a screenplay, but onscreen it was amazing.

Curious on your thoughts -- Is it a language barrier? Or is The Strain just straight up disappointing?

By  James, at 3:57 PM  

I read THE STRAIN in English. I saw PAN'S LABYRINTH in Spanish with English subtitles. (No hablà español.)

It wasn't a question of nuances. It was a question of a silly, illogical thriller plot and underdeveloped characters.

By  Alex Epstein, at 5:12 PM  

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