Max,
I got dragged along to the "updated" RIII movie against my better judgement which is usually totally fallible - but not in this case.
The dialogue was at odds with the setting and the setting was at odds with the basic premise of the play. It fits into what I call the "Bored with the Bard Production Set".
I don't mind people poking fun at Shakespeare or even at his plays. But I do object to producers/directors changing one of the three main factors which make them what they are and then whining that "people don't understand Shakespeare" because their production gets panned by the critics or ignored by the public or, as I understand the situation to be with this movie, both.
The actors couldn't save it, nothing could.
For the uninitiated it would have been totally incomprehensible. For those with at least an understanding of Richard III the person, it would have made him seem totally evil, which I don't think Shakespeare actually intended. For those who know the play, it's hard to understand why the film was ever made.
And, although I haven't seen it, I understand "Looking for Richard" to be equally or possibly even more diabolical.
Richard Plantagenet got a lot of bad press, mainly because the victors - the Tudors in this case - got to write history
. Yet my reading of Billy the Bard's play shows a reasonably even-handed treatment of events which had occurred only a hundred years or so before he wrote it. This got badly lost in the movie.
Sorry for drivelling on, but it annoyed the *hey* out of me.
