Movie Review: The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)

UPDATE

Having gotten over how the movie is not the book, I still think that it is poorly written. There are some good parts, but so many holes in character development. It's fast moving, it tries to be flashy, and doesn't matter if it makes sense or not. I think it's insulting that they call the movie Alexandre Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo, since it is clearly not so. Ok, so I guess I haven't gotten over it.

But after watching the special features, the movie does have good merit in the area of set design, sound design, and stunts.

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This movie was one of the worst adaptations of a book ever . Almost none of the details in the movie actually exist in the book!

Mid-way through, Courtney said she wanted to read the book, so I had to shut up about how everything was wrong about it. But I will say that in the movie, the revenge seems to happen immediately, and in the book it happens over a long period of time, like it is supposed to. So I don't really understand the point of making a movie that is so loosely based on a book, I guess it was just to make some money. But still it would have made more money if it was closer to the book, because it would have been better.

The actors did not look 20 years older from the beginning of the movie to the end, but they actually looked the same. I wondered how the movie would handle that, and it didn't really. The accents were about as I expected....old English of course, but without a British twang. Danglars, of the rivals responsible for Dantes' imprisonment, was left out of the movie almost completely, and had a different profession. The manner of revenge on everyone is completely different.

There was a completely made up thing at the beginning where Dantes talked to Napoleon, and Napoleon gave him a letter to deliver. It was completely bad judgement to add that, because now Dantes actually does have some guilt, of being stupid at the least. And there is an emphasis on sword fighting in the movie, to make it more action-entertaining, but in the book there is not any sword fighting.