Lost in Adaptation: A Series of Unfortunate Events

The Dom compares the 2004 fantasy comedy film Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events with the first three novels in the Series of Unfortunate Events book series -- The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room (both 1999), and The Wide Window (2000) -- that served as its basis.

Intro
(shows The Dom reading The Bad Beginning)

The Dom (V.O. as Lemony Snicket): (narrating from the book) Dear Reader, I am sorry to say the book you are holding in your hands is *extremely* unpleasant. It tells an unhappy tale about three *very* unlucky children. It is *my* sad duty to write down these unpleasant tales; but there's nothing stopping *you* from putting the book down at once and going and doing something more fun, if you prefer that sort of thing. With all due respect, Lemony Snicket.

(The Dom thinks for a moment)

The Dom: Sounds fair. (tosses the book through a window and walks off whistling)

(text appears reading "Some Time Later")

(shows the three punks from Terminator Genisys)

Punk 1: Hey, hey, hey, what's wrong with *this* picture?

(they see the naked T-800 walking toward them)

Punk 2: Nice night for a walk, eh?

T-800: Your clothes. Give them to me, now.

The Dom (V.O.): (echoing dramatically) *You're* not gonna *need* clothes.

(the T-800 turns to see The Dom walking toward it, analyzing him with its robotic vision)

The Dom: You know what? Now that I say that out loud, that sounds super gay; but still (pulls down the hood on his jacket), I've been *waiting* for you. Ah- (looks down at the "weapon" in his hand) Oh. Uhhhhh... (looks back at the T-800) Rather than bring a gun, like I originally intended, apparently, I've brought a baguette. Ummm...could we reschedule?

(the T-800 rushes at The Dom, who puts his hands up and screams like a girl)

(text appears reading "Some More Time Later")

(shows The Dom playing a ukulele on the Doof Wagon in Mad Max: Fury Road)

The Dom: WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO- (the ukulele starts shooting out fire) AaaaAAAAAaaaaaaaahh!!! *Mine's* not supposed to do that!!! (looks to his left) Hey, Immortal Joe, *notice* me- I mean, *witness* me!

(he is shocked to see The Bad Beginning in the Gigahorse)

The Dom: More speed, guitar guy! ONWAAAAAAAAAAAAAARDS!!!

(text appears reading "Yet More Time Later")

Rhomann Dey: They call themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Denarian Saal: What a bunch of a-holes.

(shows The Dom standing among the Guardians of the Galaxy and dancing as "Hooked on a Feeling" plays)

(text appears reading "Later. Yeah.")

(shows The Dom in a desert, playing Pokémon on a Game Boy, when Finn from The Force Awakens pops up)

The Dom: D'AAAH! You scared the *shit* out of me, black stormtrooper! Go do some stormtrooper stuff -- fire at something and miss for a bit. (looks to his left) D'AHHHH!! NO!

(shows The Bad Beginning in the sand)

The Dom (V.O.): NO! You said it was OKAY not to read you!

The Dom: I'm NOT doing it!

(the book floats up into the air and pursues The Dom through the desert, the ocean, a freeway, the sky, and space as he starts panting with fear)

The Dom: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Fine, I will *do* the fucking episode! *You* lied to me, Snicket!

Poll
People Asked: 30

Saw the Film: 24

Read the Book: 15

The Dom: A Series of Unfortunate Events is a long-running series of *kid's* books written by a guy named David Handler (text appears reading "DANIEL Handler. But ca'man, were you really expecting me to get it right at this point?"); however, they sport the name "Lemony Snicket" on the front. Snicket's actually an in-universe character who narrates the story; it's kind of another Princess Bride situation without the same level of tongue-in-cheek commitment to the lie. While Handler's *openly* declared he approves of the film's changes, he also admitted he was a *bit* disappointed the script *he* wrote for the film wasn't used in the end, as he put a lot of work into it.

Further research revealed that this is one of those films where all the major job roles changed hands at least once; I probably don't need to tell you that this is usually a *very* bad sign. The final screenplay was written by a guy called Robert Gordon, who was involved in Men in Black and Galaxy Quest; and the film's directed by Brad Silberling, who directed Casper the Friendly Ghost and Land of the Lost -- a somewhat-less confidence-inspiring résumé.

Anyways, I've prepared a little presentation *I* like to call "Paramount's Guide to Book Adaptations".

The Dom (V.O.): So, you want to combine the first three books into one movie -- makes sense in principle, seeing as all the books are quite short, consisting of only 13 chapters. But the *problem* that you're faced with now is that each book has a very clear beginning, middle, and end; so that won't *flow* very well in the film. The solution is to surgically remove the endings from all three books, throw away the second and third ones, and move the *first* ending to the end of the film. However, you now need a new semi-ending for the first arc, or the story can't progress; so you just *make up* a new one and jam it on in there. Now, you also want to completely *destroy* the books' slow buildup of mystery; so you need to take some slow plot points that weren't supposed to crop up until *much later* in the series and force them into *this* story with all the subtlety of a monkey using a crowbar. AT LAST, you have your adaptation.

(lightning strikes the visual representation of this described adaptation, and eyes and a mouth appear on it)

The Dom (V.O. as Adaptation Monster): BLEEEEEEEEAAAAAAGH!!! KIIIII-IIIILL MEEEEEE-EE-EEEEEE-EE-EEEEEEEEE!!!

What They Didn't Change
The Dom (V.O.): They held true to the core setup of the books, i.e. that you're not really *reading* a story about the Baudelaire orphans; more you're reading the results of Snicket's *meticulous* investigations into the events of their lives -- I'm not entirely sure how he derived what they were thinking about at the time, but there you are. In the book, the Snicket-based stuff *mostly* takes the form of him giving you his opinion on the events of the story; but there's also these little attachments at the end, where he writes to his *editor* and tells him how the investigation's going and where the next secret location he's going to be leaving the book is -- this is translated into the film by occasionally cutting to Snicket narrating/writing the story while hiding out in a clock tower.

One of the things that makes the reordering of the story so frustrating is that if you consider each scene *individually*, they're actually pretty close to how they were described in the book. A fire claiming the lives of three children's loving parents; a moronic banker being put in charge of their futures and dropping them off with a raving lunatic who tries to steal their inheritance, fails, and spends the next couple of stories following them around in different disguises and killing off their subsequent guardians is...pretty much what went down in the book, yeah. That the Baudelaires were on a dank-ass beach when they got the news that Olaf had a bunch of mean-spirited circus freaks serving as his acting troupe/henchmen; the unending chores he demanded of them, along with his out-of-the-blue roast beef fixation; Montgomery Montgomery's kind attitude, but regretful gullibility; Aunt Josephine's irrational fear of everything, especially realtors; and the *surprisingly* terrifying man-eating leeches are *also* pretty damn close to the original novel.

Despite my general exasperation with this film, I have to concede that they didn't do a bad job with the Baudelaire orphans either. Klaus looked like a bit more of a hipster than a nerd than I would have liked; but other than that, they kinda nailed it -- although now that I think about it, that was probably fairly easy to do, seeing as all three kids were written as having one major character trait that pretty much defined them: Violet was an aspiring engineer and inventor, Klaus was a dedicated bookworm, and Sunny was a weirdly intelligent baby with a biting obsession. In the book, Sunny would say some gibberish; then Snicket would translate what she meant -- also, for some reason, the other kids understood her. Subtitling her in the film was probably the best available progression of this, so it gets my approval. They also paid tribute to Snicket's...unique habit of explaining what certain words mean -- as an adult reading the book, I wasn't quite sure if he was trying to be educational or annoying.

Aside from the absence of the cough that was supposed to occur before, after, and *during* everything he said, Mr. Poe was fairly accurate. I'm guessing Jim Carrey must have recently read the books because his line about Mr. Poe being the *real* monster of the tale for repeatedly dropping the kids off with inappropriate guardians and not believing them about Olaf, no matter *how* many times they were right in the past, is something I'm *sure* every reader has wanted to *tell* him at some point -- fucking dickhead. In fact, the recurring theme of the truth being *so* obvious to the children, but so *constantly* not seen by the adults; and the infusion of their *frustration* at their opinions constantly being *dismissed* simply because they were *inconvenient*, combined with the constant feeling of impotent helplessness that comes from not being allowed to have a say in one's own future, were very important staples of the book -- the successful integration of these things into the film was by *far* its greatest triumph.

The Dom: Soooo...it *is* just a shame about...

What They Changed
The Dom: The elf thing is a film-only addition; I'm assuming their reasoning was something along the lines of, "Hey, we need something upbeat to juxtaposition the cartoonishly dark theme we're going with; then, I don't know, we can make a bunch of callbacks to it *later* and junk." Oh, and while I *kind* of like the way they updated Snicket's disclaimer at the start to reflect moviegoing instead of reading, I was kinda put off that he encouraged you to *stay* if you were into dark tales; Book Snicket was always *consistent* in his *insistence* that avoiding the story *altogether* was the only logical choice for people -- see, movie? Right from the start, you're annoying me.

(more to come)