sea_thoughts (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sea_thoughts) wrote2011-11-15 04:46 pm
sea_thoughts) wrote2011-11-15 04:46 pm
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Summary of how I feel about a possible new Doctor Who movie
Okay. Deep breath. I'm going to try and be as objective as possible. *wrestles fangirl back into her straight jacket*
Let's BREAK IT DOWN!
"We're looking at writers now. We're going to spend two to three years to get it right," he said. "It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena."
Uh huh. Okay. This seems fair, as it can be quite frustrating to have films that would have been great as tv episodes but are overstretched to meet the standard feature time. (Although you could just make a SHORT film.) I am a bit leery of the implication that DW doesn't translate well to the big screen in general but okay.
"Doctor Who" follows the adventures across space and time of a super-intelligent alien in human form, who battles a variety of cosmic bad guys aided by plucky human companions.
The Doctor doesn't go looking for a fight (unless you're talking about Ten in his Time Lord Victorious mode). He just won't run away from one. There's a difference.
"The notion of the time-travelling Time Lord is such a strong one, because you can express story and drama in any dimension or time," Yates said.
Yes! I agree! As long as you keep what made the character so beloved in the first place.
"Russell T. Davies and then Steven Moffat have done their own transformations, which were fantastic, but we have to put that aside and start from scratch," he said.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Does this mean you're going to completely ignore what RTD and Moffat have done? I'm going to state the obvious and say that would be a BAD IDEA. Doctor Who has always been a show that's played fast and loose with its own continuity... but that is not the same as completely abandoning it. Unless Yates means something like Gallifrey Academy: First Class. I think I'm not alone in saying I would certainly be willing to give THAT idea some room (especially if you got Fassbender to play the Master and McAvoy to play the Doctor, haha), but I don't see the point of rebooting the TV series while it's STILL ON AIR and it's still doing the business when it comes to ratings/DVD sales/merchandise etc.
They already tried that with the DW movie back in the 90s. And the only good thing to come out of that movie was Paul McGann (and Sexy in her steampunk phase). There are so many things that could go wrong with this movie that I actually feel a bit sick contemplating the prospect.
"We want a British sensibility, but having said that, Steve Kloves wrote the Potter films and captured that British sensibility perfectly, so we are looking at American writers too," he explained.
Honestly, this is the part which really pissed me off. No, Yates, he did NOT capture it 'perfectly'. Making Ron say 'bloody' every other sentence and sticking 'mental' in there a couple of times does NOT mean he captured the British sensibility. You want proof? Harry Potter hugging people in the movies left, right and centre when Harry Potter in the books finds it hard to show any kind of spontaneous physical affection AT ALL! (It's not that he doesn't care about people; he just wasn't hugged after his parents died. AT THE AGE OF ONE. Excuse me while I have a little cry.)
I do like Yates as a director, but I'm worried about who's going to write the script. I think there are some good American writers out there. But they would have to understand and love the show. They would need to understand, in the words of Craig Ferguson, that this show is about the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism. Look at those last four words and then think of Hollywood. Do you think anyone in that town could understand that concept?
Let's BREAK IT DOWN!
"We're looking at writers now. We're going to spend two to three years to get it right," he said. "It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena."
Uh huh. Okay. This seems fair, as it can be quite frustrating to have films that would have been great as tv episodes but are overstretched to meet the standard feature time. (Although you could just make a SHORT film.) I am a bit leery of the implication that DW doesn't translate well to the big screen in general but okay.
"Doctor Who" follows the adventures across space and time of a super-intelligent alien in human form, who battles a variety of cosmic bad guys aided by plucky human companions.
The Doctor doesn't go looking for a fight (unless you're talking about Ten in his Time Lord Victorious mode). He just won't run away from one. There's a difference.
"The notion of the time-travelling Time Lord is such a strong one, because you can express story and drama in any dimension or time," Yates said.
Yes! I agree! As long as you keep what made the character so beloved in the first place.
"Russell T. Davies and then Steven Moffat have done their own transformations, which were fantastic, but we have to put that aside and start from scratch," he said.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Does this mean you're going to completely ignore what RTD and Moffat have done? I'm going to state the obvious and say that would be a BAD IDEA. Doctor Who has always been a show that's played fast and loose with its own continuity... but that is not the same as completely abandoning it. Unless Yates means something like Gallifrey Academy: First Class. I think I'm not alone in saying I would certainly be willing to give THAT idea some room (especially if you got Fassbender to play the Master and McAvoy to play the Doctor, haha), but I don't see the point of rebooting the TV series while it's STILL ON AIR and it's still doing the business when it comes to ratings/DVD sales/merchandise etc.
They already tried that with the DW movie back in the 90s. And the only good thing to come out of that movie was Paul McGann (and Sexy in her steampunk phase). There are so many things that could go wrong with this movie that I actually feel a bit sick contemplating the prospect.
"We want a British sensibility, but having said that, Steve Kloves wrote the Potter films and captured that British sensibility perfectly, so we are looking at American writers too," he explained.
Honestly, this is the part which really pissed me off. No, Yates, he did NOT capture it 'perfectly'. Making Ron say 'bloody' every other sentence and sticking 'mental' in there a couple of times does NOT mean he captured the British sensibility. You want proof? Harry Potter hugging people in the movies left, right and centre when Harry Potter in the books finds it hard to show any kind of spontaneous physical affection AT ALL! (It's not that he doesn't care about people; he just wasn't hugged after his parents died. AT THE AGE OF ONE. Excuse me while I have a little cry.)
I do like Yates as a director, but I'm worried about who's going to write the script. I think there are some good American writers out there. But they would have to understand and love the show. They would need to understand, in the words of Craig Ferguson, that this show is about the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism. Look at those last four words and then think of Hollywood. Do you think anyone in that town could understand that concept?
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I see all the negatives you mention. There is SO MUCH potential for it to go wrong, because let's be honest. Much of the charm of Doctor Who is the fact that it is SO HUGE and yes you can have fun twee episodes of frolicking around with Shakespeare but hidden in the background is all this history. You can't just introduce all of that history in a couple hours. And you can't shove all the dynamic aspects of the Doctor into a couple hours, because what we love about him is sometimes he's funny and sometimes he's powerful and sometimes he's kind but you can't make him be everything at once. You can't have Blink and The Eleventh Hour and The Pandorica Opens all in one storyline.
On the other hand, Doctor Who is so gigantic, so long-running, and has evolved and regenerated in so many ways. It's already spawned movies, radio dramas, and comics that did not fit the canon of the show. I don't see how a movie could harm such a solid, dynamic series, especially because the audience for a Hollywood film would not be the audience of the series. The DW fanbase, as I understand it, is mostly made up of British families and international sci fi geeks. That is not the casual moviegoer.
But then, also. Bringing in American talent to try and capture the British sensibilities? Well obviously that was a fabulous success with Torchwood: Miracle Day. I mean, what a fantastically written piece of work that was. The first episode alone was so clumsy that there is no way a new fan would figure out what's supposed to be happening, yet it barely offered anything for existing fans. The entire thing was so bland and painful and awkward and full of continuity errors, it's like nobody was reading the script as they threw it together.
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Who the hell wrote this game?
That is NOT Amy Pond.
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And Amy is NOT 'small'! *headdesk*
no subject
*LOL* Space vagina, that's all I'll say. SPACE. VAGINA.
It could be good, but there is so much potential for it to go wrong. D: