Who doesn’t love or need a little revenge fantasy to get us through this life? We can’t do much about it when we read on the news some toddler’s been sold for prostitution and shoved in a trunk to die, or a young girl was snatched from a street corner and held prisoner to a man who raped her repeatedly for many years. We just have to read about it after the fact. 2009, though, presents revenge fantasy as raw food. First, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds toys with the possibility of gathering the worst Nazis into a theater and watching them burn, and now Peter Jackson …
If you haven’t read the book this counts as a spoiler.
…says he indulged the agony of one of the main characters in The Lovely Bones after a test audience said they felt dissatisfied in how he met his demise. He also says this about his well-deserved Oscar win for ROTK:
“I do feel I don’t need to prove anything anymore. But winning and even being nominated for an Oscar is still an enormous privilege and big thrill,” he said.
“The great thing about having won is that you do feel, no matter what happens in your career now, you’ve always got that Oscar and it’s a nice thing to wake up to in the morning and go to the office and see them sitting there on the shelf.”
As far as the spoiler goes, I’m guessing this news was floated because there were murmurs of Jackson returning to the editing room – and whenever people hear that (despite how many great films have gone through the same process) they assume the worse. Jackson told the Guardian, “We got a lot of people telling us that they were disappointed with this death scene, as they wanted to see [the character] in agony and suffer a lot more,” said Jackson. “We had to create a whole suffering death scene just to give people the satisfaction they needed.”
36 Responses for "Tinkering with “Bones” – Spoiler"
But-but, that’s not the point of the death. It’s only mentioned offhandedly because the point of the book is to not focus on hate so much, but rather love. Fuck the audience if they don’t have their self-indulgence filled. It’s what suits the story.
Ronan is so emanciated that her skull is deformed which is visible here but especially when she wears her hair pulled back. It`s quite scary, like a really long, angular egg.
SPOILERS
That they will suffer-up Tucci`s death scene is no surprise since Mr Harvey`s death in the book was anti-climactic. And they advertise the movie as the revenge ghost story so you bet his demise won`t be an accident but vendetta.No news, really.
Well it’s a different experience watching a movie and reading a book. Look at the brutal way the killer dies in The Silence of the Lambs — in a movie there has to be payoff. You really can’t fuck too much with convention in certain respects or you are going to lose a lot of money. We have been conditioned…
Bambi, that is such a strange thing to say about her. I totally disagree – I always notice her beautiful eyes when I look at her.
I saw pictures of her with her hair pulled really tight into a ponytail or something and that was the scariest skull ever. No other explanation but extreme emanciation. It just sticks in my mind so I notice it easier. You can`t see it with her hair down but otherwise, trust me, it`s not something to be flaunted. Also, her eyes have beautiful color but evil shape. She just looks mean and unsympathetic. I`m sure she`s the nicest person in the world but she doesn`t have relatable appearance and thus I don`t think she`ll be like Julia or Reece, you know, an audience darling. Critics and directors`s one yes but I can`t imagine masses to fall in love.They love bubbly and she`s kinda undead. I think she`ll be like Winslet or Blanchett, lots of praise, zero opening power.
Bambi’s pathological hatred for everything to do with The Lovely Bones now extends to asinine nit-picking about its wonderful lead actress, who has been amazing in everything she has ever done. Good god, what a vile piece of mean-spirited carping. Now I hope she wins the Oscar. She would be the youngest person ever to win lead actress.
Peter Jackson robbed another Peter – Weir, who should’ve won for MASTER & COMMANDER.
Bambi, that is just nuts. Off the charts nuts.
When I first saw No Country for Old Men, there was such a flap about the off-screen death and the anti-climactic ending. My audience was given a questionnaire: “Were you disappointed by the ending?” I replied, “No, I loved it.” But there were certainly grumblings from some parts of the audience.
I hope Peter doesn’t give in too much to audience expectations. I’d like to see something unconventional.
Yeah, I agree with Sasha. Reading a book and cooking something up in our imagination is quite different from watching a movie and receiving pathos onscreen. In a condensed 2-2.5 hour movie, you NEED more literallness to make-up for the days it could take to read a novel. that immersion. I think it’s a wise idea to reshoot that death. I think it will be more satisfying to the MOVIE-goer, and not straying away from the TONE of the death/moment , at all.
Hunter, your obsessive hate for Precious far exceeds my dislike of LB the book. I`m against the movie only because it`ll help that hack Sebold milk more moolah. As for Ronan, I stand by my oppinion that she looks creepy. I don`t care if she wins Oscar, let her if that`ll help her eat a sandwitch. I also understand that people are sensitive to insults to minors and if I said the same for, lets say, Penelope Cruz or Nicole Kidman, nobody would be appalled. Well, lets just say that Ronan should stop whatever dieting she does for I don`t buy that her skeletial appearance is all natural. In acting world, nothing that considers weight issues is natural. Also, I don`t know on whose payroll you are but you do sound like the studio plant with your Holmes-will-win-BP chant. At least I never claim that I have sources who know what will win or won`t while you go on and on cheering your favorites (it`s always great buzz for movies you support while voters don`t want to see movies that you hate) without giving proof that you actually know what you are talking about. No offense, but trusting one`s word on the Internet won`t do, lets get some evidence.
Well done Peter. Make this another movie where you take the shallow pleasure of watching the bad guy suffering. That’s really artistic… I was expecting him to improve on the novel. Not make destroy it. Disappointed…
It IS an improvement. I`m with the audience and Jackson on this one. Book ending was weak. This change gives a payoff which automaticaly makes adaptation stronger.
Giving the revengeful audience what they need doesn´t sound like the best idea in terms of artistic autonomy.
The masses are asses!
Never read the book, so I don’t really know how the character dies, however, people like to see the evil character die a painful death. I won’t mind.
Also Bambi, lay off Saoirse. She is 15 years old, and a great actress. She still has time to grow in terms of appearance.
TLB and Precious are the top 2 movies I want to see.
OK,ok, she was cute and likable in City of Amber, I must admit.
Has anyone even seen the movie yet? Judge when you have seen it.
The changes they made to Silence of the Lambs did not change the fact it was a great movie.
I do not really understand people hating something before they have even seen it. It is very strange.
However test screenings can be problematic, but I am sure that Jackson, who is a great story teller, would not change something unless he felt it was right.
Mr Harvey`s prologned agony = better Oscar shot for Tucci, no?
This “spoiler” reminds me of the case with “Fatal Attraction.” When the film’s test screenings showed how deeply dissatisfied the audience was with Glenn Close committing suicide, director Adrian Lyne and his actors reshot that entire sequence. We all know how that ended.
Maybe it’s just how I see it, but why do (certain) audiences seem to behave more like Roman Coliseum spectators whenever a situation like this comes up? Talk about bloody catharsis.
“…thus I don`t think she`ll be like Julia or Reece…”
Thank fucking god.
bambi, please don’t be like Afrika was to Penelope. You’re hatred toward this entire project has been crystal clear for months. But when you start attacking the appearance of a beautiful kid, it starts to get icky.
Okay, first of all, Saoirse Ronan is quite a lovely girl and a truly talented young actress. Bambi’s criticism of the way her “skull is shaped” is as bad as criticizing Gabby Sidibe for being “too round.” If you don’t have anything constructive or valid to say, just do us a favor and shut the fuck up.
Now, I have read a good portion of the book, and I hate Mr. Harvey as much as you’re supposed to. He is a monster and the grief he has inflicted upon the family without any remorse makes the reader truly angry that such insensitive monsters exist. However, why do we need to see more agony and pain in a tale about agony and pain? It is about a family moving past a terrible tragedy that has fallen upon them and their attempt to live with their grief and sorrow. The fact of the matter is that, no matter the comeuppance that Mr. Harvey receives, Susy is still dead. Do they retain their love and compassion, or do they let their misery consume them? *That* is the true conflict of the tale, not hunting down their daughter’s killer and making him suffer. Anyway, that’s just me. I still have confidence in Jackson in what he’s doing with the book, so I may be wrong. We’ll just have to wait and see.
I hate that audiences from test screenings change movies, but I’m not Jackson.
If I were Jackson and my intimate fantasy drama cost around 100 million I would try fervently to please the audience, too.
Either way, I’m still looking forward to this.
Also, I find bambi’s comments here more than a little creepy.
What is it about Americans that they have to tie everything up into neat boxes and make sure there are no lose ends. The all-American happy endings. European movies are far superior in this respect. They make you leave the cinema thinking about the movie and wondering rather than simply leaving the cinema knowing all is happy and sacarine sweet in Hollywood! It has to be said that Hollywood are responsible for spoiling too many movies this way!
Glenn, that’s why I think films like “Where the Wild Things Are” will have a generally more positive reception in Europe than in the states. It’s one of the few Hollywood movies as of late that has somehow managed to survive sanitized censorship.
Not sure how I feel about this change. I guess we’ll just have to see how it plays when we actually see this movie, but in general, I’m not a fan of excessive gore. And from that article, it sounds like they “gored it up” in post-production in order to please people.
However, I do understand the need to give audiences more catharsis when watching a 2-hour movie, as opposed to when they read books (which take days). And I do agree that Mr. Harvey’s demise in the book was very anti-climactic. Also, all movies are fantasy – they don’t HAVE to reflect real life exactly. So as we, in life, prefer to have closure and see bad people get their comeuppance (even if we don’t always get that in real life), it’s nice at least to get that in movies. That’s just my two cents.
I knew this would be the problem! The icicle. Not cinematic. You do something else, then you offend the book readers. Catch-22…
Ok, ok, guys, I`m sorry. I was way out of line. She`s pretty and a pretty good actress. So no more Ronan bashing. But you are wrong about this change. It`s an improvement. Now if he could just confirm that dreadful possession sex is removed from the movie and then we can seriously talk about BP contender. With possession sex intact, nope, not a chance. But I don`t see how it can remain since no one is playing Susie as an adult but it`s Ronan from start to finish, no?
Now you know how the other Bambi feels when a gang of Thumpers go for his throat.
Lolz, I now do. But my stakes are higher because slit throat BEFORE seeing New Moon would be Emmerich-like disaster porn.
You know, Sasha, that is an EXCELLENT correlation between cinematic “revenge fantasy” and how hard it is for some of us to come to grips with the kind of horrors we see more & more in the news every day. I was personally baffled anyone had a problem with the gorgeously karmatic BASTERDS ending, because it was the most cathartic pleasure I’d felt in a very very long time watching “movie villains” (in this case putrid evil Nazi scum) get their just desserts! I really was savoring that vibrantly colored massacre like I was watching a gorgeous Italian opera, and I’m not ONE BIT ashamed of it! I think it’s a very righteous, healthy, and natural reaction to the gutting of a regime responsible for the torture and deaths of millions of innocent human beings.
I know the Jaycee Dugard case broke around that same time, and lord knows few crimes in my lifetime shook me as much as that one did. I still get tears and/or blood boiling when I think about the horrifically subhuman facts of the case for too long. I support the death penalty in some cases, and I’m probably one of the few liberals who thinks it should be applied in cases where there’s torture as well as rape (such as this). I personally think if that scumbag who did this to Dugard suffered through every single horrifying torture Eli Roth thought of in BOTH “Hostel” movies, it still wouldn’t be enough punishment!
Personally, the group I’d most like to see fall victim to a real life group of Basterds is anyone involve in ANY capacity whatsoever with the beyond odious child sex trafficking business! Shit, I’m not a violent person, and I’d be just like Eli Roth at the end of IB, re-charging the rifle every 10 seconds and taking out as many of those heartless sadistic animals as I could! Child Sex Traffickers are my generations Nazis, as far as I’m concerned.
“Child Sex Traffickers are my generations Nazis, as far as I’m concerned.”
Without the cool uniforms, though.
I am far from a fan of the book – people have said I don’t have a heart, but to me it just felt like that’s exactly what the book was missing – but to actually show the guy “bouncing” sounds a little comical. Obviously seeing it will be a little different but I believe that seeing him fall and not seeing the impact of his fall would have had more emotional resonance. As anonymous mentioned with the icicle, show that falling and it’d be a lot better.
I grumbled at the fact that you don’t see Llewelyn’s death in No Country For Old Men and yet that seemed to continue along pretty darn well regardless.
The book handled the scene very economically and I felt the writer that just wanted to inform the the readers of the character’s fate, not to satisfy any particular yearning for revenge. Indeed, the man successfully evades capture and dies of a freak accident that has no hint of divine retribution or comeuppance.
Jackson’s problem is that he cannot help but indulge, both himself (King Kong) and the audience (Rings), giving people what he thinks they want, but that’s not always what’s best for the movie on the whole.
@Markku – Oh, I don’t know. Jackson has done some very non-audience friendly things, such as refusing to slap a fake ending onto Fellowship, and eliminating all traces of Tom Bombadil. Much outcry ensued, but it was all for the best.
@ Markku – Well, as wholly unsatisfying as I found Harvey’s death in the book to be, Suzy DID say earlier in the book that her weapon of choice would be an icicle cuz the evidence would melt (or something to that effect), so I certainly disagree that it’s just a freak accident. I think him dying from his rape/murder victim’s weapon of choice is actually a rather big hint of “divine retribution or comeuppance.”
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