The new Persuasion movie - thoughts? I have just watched the trailer for the new Netflix adaptation of Persuasion and I'm so disappointed! Persuasion is one of my favourite novels, a book I have read countless times, so I was incredibly excited when a new adaptation was announced. The fact that Anne was to be played by an American actress didn't thrill me but if Gwyneth Paltrow could be a credible Emma, I was prepared to give Dakota Johnson the benefit of the doubt. I had not counted on Anne's whole personality being changed. In the trailer, she comes off as a mix between Elizabeth Bennet and Emma, too witty and flirtatious, with maybe a touch of Jo March in there with her flair for theatrics. She banters and laughs like she didn't have a care in the world. Where is her broken heart? Where is her gentleness, her quiet strength, her level-headedness in times of need? Where is all the pining? Anne is a ìdifficult heroine to bring to the screen. Persuasion is a very introspective novel that doesn't lend itself to easy screenwriting, the same way Emma or P&P do. It takes talent, both in the writing and in the acting, to represent in a movie the compelling emotions of the book. I hoped this production could have met this challenge and at least tried to make a faithful adaptation to the spirit of the novel, if not to its actual plot. Making Anne so out of character was unexpected. I understand that Elizabeth Bennet or Emma are way more popular and easier for the audience to understand and cheer for. A woman who lets her lover go and pines for him for almost a decade looks pathetic in comparison. And yet, both the previous Persuasion movies have been incredibly riveting, which is evidence that Persuasion can be adapted well without twisting Anne's personality. I'm still hoping that I somehow misunderstood the trailer, and I am going to watch the movie with the best of intentions. Let's hope my disappointment is temporary and Persuasion will actually live up to some of my expectations. What do you think of the trailer and the movie?https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130482#msg-130482Wed, 29 Apr 2026 10:03:00 +0100 Phorum 5.2.22 https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130624#msg-130624 Re: slang questionhttps://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130624#msg-130624
There was no actual upper or lower limit for us, but for a normal distribution being three standard deviations above the mean occurs just 3 times in 1000, so a 0 or 10 just didn't happen in practice, although I can recall a really bad movie being given a -10. And since not everything is normally distributed, there were occasionally technical disagreements about a score.]]> Harvey Tea RoomSun, 24 Jul 2022 21:35:11 +0100 https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130602#msg-130602 where is Frederick?https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130602#msg-130602 Gloria L. Tea RoomMon, 18 Jul 2022 15:47:50 +0100 https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130601#msg-130601 Re: slang questionhttps://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130601#msg-130601
Then again, I can't and I don't claim to be an expert in pop culture! If you're familiar with this way of saying, it's clear it wasn't born as recently as I thought. Maybe it had a decline, then made a come-back in the last few years? Or maybe my school mates and group of friends from 15 years ago were just consuming media that didn't use it, and nobody among us ever thought to rank people with numbers. It might have been widespread in other circles :)

To go back to the movie, this overall cringe modernisation was the general impression I got, both for the language and the situations. It felt like reading bad Regency JAFF where the author had forgotten the historical setting. Definitely give this movie a miss if you're still on the fence. If it gets a lot of views, this will only allow Netflix to green-light adaptations of P&P and S&S that Ron Bass, the screenwriter of Persuasion, is apparently working on. After shutting down the Snook&Fry Persuasion movie, Netflix looks like it wants the monopoly on JA and any Regency-adjacent adaptations, which doesn't sound promising, if this latest product is any indication.

Sorry, I've gotten totally off-track :) Thank you for sharing your experience with the wonders of language!]]> Lily Tea RoomMon, 18 Jul 2022 11:11:23 +0100 https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130600#msg-130600 slang questionhttps://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130600#msg-130600 Harvey Tea RoomSun, 17 Jul 2022 13:31:46 +0100 https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130599#msg-130599 ETA Trigger warning for the moviehttps://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130599#msg-130599 Lily Tea RoomSat, 16 Jul 2022 22:06:40 +0100 https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130598#msg-130598 I watched it! Spoilers ahead :)https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130598#msg-130598
I said I would watch it, so I did. It was an ExperienceTM that ranged from cringy to awkward to hilarious to just screaming "NO WAY!" at my tv. Well, on the bright side, I can ridicule the whole film to my heart's content now!

So, first thing: it was hinted at in the trailer, but it was overdone in the movie. What was? You might ask. Breaking the fourth wall. Constantly. If you thought Mansfield Park (1999) was bad enough, watch this and see how far this wall can go down. Or maybe the writers forgot about it altogether, because there was no actual breaking. The fourth wall never existed in the first place. From scene one, Anne is talking to the audience, telling us this and that about her life, her family, her past, present, future... After a while, all this staring directly into the camera gets creepy.

Second thing: go fanfiction! Now, I have loved JAFF ever since I found out it was a thing. Give me all the missing moments you ever imagined, I will read them and love them. But if I'm watching a movie adaptation of a novel, the extra scenes had better be few and far between, carefully placed and attentively drafted. No, I do NOT need a completely invented, out-of-character conversation when Anne and Frederick discuss their relationship! And Frederick tells Anne he wants her to be in his life! As his friend! What is this, a contemporary rom-com? Never mind that. To stress the point, we'll just have Mr. Elliot invite Frederick to Anne and Elliot's wedding because she would be devastated if her friend Captain Wentworth wasn't there.

These "missing moments" take up too much of the film. Anne and Louisa are besties (yes, the word is chosen deliberately. We're in Clueless world, bear with me), she wants to matchmake for Anne and Frederick, then gets a crush on the Captain and asks Anne for permission to "set her cap at him" (in a very roundabout way, but still - not a rom-com!). Oh, and Anne has a pic-nic in the woods with Lady Russell! During which said lady has no qualms confessing (to an unmarried young lady!) that she travels to Europe to have affairs.

And we come to the third thing: the modern language! Not surprising, because the trailer said "we're worse than exes". Still. I was in high school about 15 years ago and this movie has slang I didn't even use back then because it wasn't popular or widespread. American slang. American language, too. "Who's a 5 in London is a 10 in Bath"? To be a [insert number from 1 to 10] is very specific and recent slang. Maybe the average Netflix viewer, aged 15-19, would have been unable to understand it otherwise? Then again, Mary's letter summoning Anne to Uppercross reads like a text message, with a sad emoji to - again - stress the point. Because it was not obvious enough, apparently. Lady Russell saying she travels to Europe is also terribly American. The British (and correct me if I'm wrong) would call it "the continent", or specify the individual countries, because Britain is in Europe.

I will spare you the details of every single character being either out-of-character or having certain traits stressed to the point of caricature. I will say, though, that Anne's and Frederick's renditions disappointed me the most. Anne because, like I was afraid of, was pictured like a mixture of Elizabeth Bennet and Emma - not even the canon characters, but their movie versions from modern adaptations like Bridget Jones and Clueless. And Frederick! He snapped at Mary after the accident in Lyme. Snapped at her! And nobody said a word. Because snapping at annoying people might be the norm in the current times, but it certainly was not in the Regency era, especially from a gentleman to a married lady totally unrelated to him. Mr. Darcy wrote a long letter to apologise for his un-gentlemanly conduct to Elizabeth! This Wentworth is just unapologetically impolite (to Mary and Mr. Elliot, at least), an oversharer, a talker... Silent resentment? Where are you?

This got too long, but tl:dr watch it like you would a parody, prepare to laugh, don't drink or eat during (choking or snorting alert) and if you really feel hurt afterwards because your OTP was destroyed beyond recognition, go rewatch your favourite Persuasion movie adaptation or - better yet - go reread your favourite parts of the novel itself. Time will heal the wounds :)]]> Lily Tea RoomSat, 16 Jul 2022 21:30:41 +0100 https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130597#msg-130597 Re: The new Persuasion movie - thoughts?https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130597#msg-130597 Gloria L. Tea RoomSat, 16 Jul 2022 17:57:41 +0100 https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130492#msg-130492 Re: The new Persuasion movie - thoughts?https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130492#msg-130492
Quote
Nobuko wrote:
do they rewrite a classic to what will sell or appeal to the unknowing masses?

That's exactly what bothers me about recent adaptations. We've had "Pride, Prejudice and Zombies" and "Death Comes to Permberley", but no new P&P movie/tv series after 2005. Same with other JA novels except for Emma. Then came the Bridgertons and I think that is now the new standard: write a modern-ish screenplay, or at least a story the audience can understand and identify with, put everyone in a (somewhat believable) Regency costume, and call it a day.

My issue is not even with this renewed passion for period drama. Let there be more! Just, when someone decides to make a movie based on a novel, they should at least keep the characters in character. Otherwise it's fanfiction, or adaptation of a Harlequin romance, or their own original screenplay - and they shouldn't call it something else.

I feel cheated.]]> Lily Tea RoomMon, 20 Jun 2022 10:08:27 +0100 https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130491#msg-130491 Re: The new Persuasion movie - thoughts?https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130491#msg-130491 Harvey Tea RoomSun, 19 Jun 2022 16:19:51 +0100 https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130490#msg-130490 Re: The new Persuasion movie - thoughts?https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130490#msg-130490The casting - don't want to even go there! I love the 1995 version over the 2007 - Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds are a perfect match for Anne and the Captain in my head.]]> Nobuko Tea RoomSun, 19 Jun 2022 14:18:05 +0100 https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130486#msg-130486 Re: The new Persuasion movie - thoughts?https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130486#msg-130486It looks so bad - not even worth hating it.

" Where is her broken heart? Where is her gentleness, her quiet strength, her level-headedness in times of need? Where is all the pining?" - you are so right here.

I shall go back to the 1995 Persuasion, with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds.]]> Maria Sousa Tea RoomSat, 18 Jun 2022 15:26:00 +0100 https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130482#msg-130482 The new Persuasion movie - thoughts?https://www.dwiggie.com/phorum/read.php?4,130482,130482#msg-130482
Persuasion is one of my favourite novels, a book I have read countless times, so I was incredibly excited when a new adaptation was announced. The fact that Anne was to be played by an American actress didn't thrill me but if Gwyneth Paltrow could be a credible Emma, I was prepared to give Dakota Johnson the benefit of the doubt.

I had not counted on Anne's whole personality being changed. In the trailer, she comes off as a mix between Elizabeth Bennet and Emma, too witty and flirtatious, with maybe a touch of Jo March in there with her flair for theatrics. She banters and laughs like she didn't have a care in the world. Where is her broken heart? Where is her gentleness, her quiet strength, her level-headedness in times of need? Where is all the pining?

Anne is a ìdifficult heroine to bring to the screen. Persuasion is a very introspective novel that doesn't lend itself to easy screenwriting, the same way Emma or P&P do. It takes talent, both in the writing and in the acting, to represent in a movie the compelling emotions of the book. I hoped this production could have met this challenge and at least tried to make a faithful adaptation to the spirit of the novel, if not to its actual plot. Making Anne so out of character was unexpected.

I understand that Elizabeth Bennet or Emma are way more popular and easier for the audience to understand and cheer for. A woman who lets her lover go and pines for him for almost a decade looks pathetic in comparison. And yet, both the previous Persuasion movies have been incredibly riveting, which is evidence that Persuasion can be adapted well without twisting Anne's personality.

I'm still hoping that I somehow misunderstood the trailer, and I am going to watch the movie with the best of intentions. Let's hope my disappointment is temporary and Persuasion will actually live up to some of my expectations.

What do you think of the trailer and the movie?]]> Lily Tea RoomFri, 17 Jun 2022 10:22:16 +0100