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…Not to Be

So there’s this script floating around by John “How the fuck did I get nominated for an Oscar twice?” Logan that adapts Shakespeare’s Coriolanus into modern action-movie context. Except for one little detail… It keeps the language. Here’s what the script reminded me of:

Now, I’m not terribly familiar with Coriolanus, but I think it’s safe to blame the scripts flaws more on the adaptation than the source. Shakespeare scholars can feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I have the strong suspicion that Logan cut massive reams of dialogue in favor of long sequences of modern street warfare. If you’ve ever seen Death Wish 3, you’ve seen these action sequences. Except Death Wish 3 has guys getting stabbed in the head with a knife duct-taped to a loose floorboard, which puts it a little ahead of Coriolanus.

Because of the focus on action, and the strong desire to keep the story in a two-hour feature timeframe, dialogue has to get cut. Only problem: all Shakespeare had to work with was dialogue, so in cutting scenes, story and character development fly out the window. The entire second act is a clusterfuck of bizarre, rushed plot twists and double-crosses that, I assume, are properly set up and fairly dramatic in the play.

To me, the problem hinges on the choice to keep Shakespeare’s dialogue. Who do they want to come see this movie? Shakespeare fans, who will hate the poor adaptation even if they dig the action (which they probably won’t)? It honestly seems like they want this movie to be seen by teen boys who like watchin’ shit get blowed up.

As a former teenage boy, I can think of two problems with this decision:

1. The Shakespeare dialogue. I spent all of junior high and high school trying to avoid reading Shakespeare and watching Shakespeare adaptations, before developing a vague appreciation of him in my senior year and flat-out loving him the first time I read King Lear in college.

   Now, in my youth, I was this movie’s theoretical audience. I saw every horrible action movie that came out, and more importantly, I got HBO, which meant I got to watch stuff like Point Break roughly 480 times a week. If somebody had come out with an action-movie version of a Shakespeare play, I don’t care how balls to the wall it is, I don’t care if it starred Bruce Willis and Patrick Swayze, if I heard them talking in imabic pentameter, I’d skip it. The end.

2. The title. You’re making a raucous action movie geared toward teens and maybe college students, and you think a title with “anus” in it is a good idea? Especially a title that easily converts to, let’s say, “cornhole anus”? Look, I’m not an idiot: it’s adapted from a play, it’s the title of the play, and the title is named after the main character. I get it, but it’s still a horrible idea.

Now, in 1996, a little movie called Romeo + Juliet came out. A terrible yet wildly successful modernization of the play’s setting that still retains the Shakespeare text. A precedent! If you ignore the fact that other updates like the Ethan Hawke-starring Hamlet bombed like hell, a slick writer/producer could convince someone to back it. Except they’re appealing to the wrong audience. Teenage girls, who have more patience with the dialogue and are more attuned to the emotion (and they’d have to be, considering how horrible Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes are in that piece of shit), made Romeo + Juliet a success. At best, teenage boys accompanied their girlfriends on a date in the vain hope that they’d get some action.

Anyone involved in the greenlighting of this project is high if they think they could somehow convince 13-to-25-year-old males to sit still during this movie. Whenever people aren’t getting shot, they’re talking in Shakespeare! The horror! Maybe they think it’d serve as a date movie: guys would come for the action, girls would stay for the delectable rhythm of the text. Does anyone think that has any chance of working? This isn’t even the type of story where a Shakespeare-loving girl would drag her disinterested boyfriend, who would find himself surprised by the spectacle of the action. It’s just a movie with no audience.

So why not just do what screenwriters have done for decades: rip off the plot of what’s arguably a lesser known Shakespeare play for an action movie that’s entirely modern? What does retaining the language add, other than pretension? Especially in relation to what it takes away — plot coherence, character depth — because Logan can’t replace the soliloquies with terse, rapid-fire banter. Just call it Corey and have it star a taciturn ex-Green Beret named “Corey Storm” and call it a day.

I’ll point and laugh when this fails on both a creative and commercial level. Otherwise, you all can feel free to point and laugh when my prediction is wrong and it makes $5 billion and wins every Oscar (including Best Animated Feature and Best Documentary).

Edit: I was a little punchy when I wrote this, so I must clarify. Yes, it takes place in the modern world, but it takes place in what I can only describe as a moronic parallel universe where the Roman Empire still reigns supreme. This is essential because Logan retains Shakespeare’s dialogue (which is all “Rome this” and “Rome that”), and honestly, it’s yet another reason why it should be changed and updated.

Tags: Coriolanus, Hamlet, John Logan, Last Action Hero, Shakespeare

Posted by Stan on May 9, 2009 12:32 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | How Not to Write a Screenplay | Digg It