"But the book was better!"

[Amy Z]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Trina" <lj2d30 at g...> wrote:

> I so agree!  I refuse to see the 90s version of "A Little Princess" 
> on the grounds that Captain Crewe doesn't die.  It was also changed 
> in the 30s Shirley Temple version, but since it was the Depression, 
I 
> can understand the reasons why.  

This reminds me of one of the most infuriating tack-ons I've ever 
seen, though it actually was a tacked-on =sad= ending.  There was a 
version of _The Secret Garden_, made for TV IIRC, that had a wartime 
epilogue in which Mary and Colin, now romantically involved (with 
Colin in officer's uniform), sadly remember Dickon, who's been killed 
in the War.  I wanted to throw something at the screen, but it was my 
own TV so it seemed a bad idea.  It was one of those deals where the 
filmmakers decided to put in all this sexual tension--near the end of 
the canon bits of the movie, there's a growing sense of rivalry 
between the boys for Mary's affections--and then to resolve it by 
matching her up with one of the now-men and killing the other one.  I 
don't know what bothered me most: their killing Dickon, the 
uncomfortable class aspects of the filmmakers' decision (of =course= 
Mary can't end up with common Dickon, now can she?  Put her with her 
properly aristocratic cousin where she belongs and kill the other one, 
he's superfluous), or their need to put romance into the story to 
begin with.

_The Secret Garden_ is the reason I know the HP movies won't ruin the 
books for me.  I have read _The Secret Garden_ about once a year since 
I was ten years old, usually in the depths of winter when in so many 
ways, it seems spring will never come.  It is one of my absolute 
favorite anythings.  I've seen three film versions now, ranging from 
pretty good to pretty awful, and none has had the slightest impact on 
my visual images of the people and places or heart-conceptions of the 
characters.  I know what Misselthwaite Manor looks like, I know what 
the garden looks like, I know what the characters (even the dead ones) 
look like (they look like Tasha Tudor illustrations! <g>), and I know 
how they all think and feel.  My sense of the book is too solid to be 
rocked by any mere movie.

Amy Z