Melody's movie
Oct. 25th, 2016 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyDo I want to venture into Kohl's today or do I want to not... I've only been once or twice and I didn't really enjoy it because it's set up like a department store in the mall that is both sort of abandoned and also where they watch you like a damn hawk. It's a weird mix but that was also years ago so... enh.
It probably doesn't help that last night I bleached the ends of my hair so that I could dye it purple later this week, so it probably looks really weird right now. I keep forgetting that I like the color it winds up when bleached but there's no way in hell I'd bleach all my hair because my scalp and I aren't going to war, dammit.
But Halloween. But no money. You see the dilemma. Annnnnd it's decided we will wait till after payday.
Onward to other things, I guess. Did I properly vent about the Melody movie? No? Well, grab some popcorn and let's rip into this.
As part of their relationship with Amazon, AG released Melody's movie "Love Has To Win" on October 21st, and if you've got Prime, you can watch it now. Or, if you're saving your Prime trial for later in the season, you can hold out for Maryellen's movie which comes out in November.
The movie's less than an hour long, I believe, so I gave it a whirl. Also, the actress playing Melody is adorable but...
*deep breath* If you've read and enjoyed Melody's books, you're going to get whiplash watching the movie. The trailer gives you a hint of how different things are going to be (for starters, there are a lot more white people in the trailer than in Melody's books) but it's really just a hint.
So I'll get the good with right at the start. Marsai Martin (Melody) is adorable and perfectly cast, really. I think she'd have made an amazing book!Melody and she's easily the best thing about the movie because she makes Melody so lovable. Seriously, the best thing and not in a "but that's not saying much" kind of way.
Idara Victor as Melody's mother is also pretty awesome. The relationship between mother and daughter is probably the second best thing about the movie, if I'm honest. They seem to honestly enjoy one another and Melody's mother seems to really like her kid, not just love her. (There's a difference.)
If you're going to watch the movie and want the best chance to enjoy it, a) leave now and come back to this spoiler zone once you've watched it and b) don't read the books first. Don't do it. On it's own, it's not a bad movie.
Okay. I assume if you're reading this far, you want to know what the hell. Sigh. Nope, Love Has To Win isn't a bad movie. It just has nothing to do with the previously established character of Melody Ellison. It's not even like you could pretend that these are events that happen after Melody's books because the Birmingham Bombing happens in the movie as well, so this takes place at the same time as Melody's first book.
Book Melody doesn't wear glasses for starters and doesn't, to my recollection, have a big interest in sewing or drawing or drafting costumes. (You know who kinda does, though? Maryellen.) She doesn't have a big countdown to getting a TV or dream about it (you know who can't go two paragraphs without mentioning TV? Maryellen.) but this is a quibble.
She does, however, have a rich family life. Her mother and father are both very present in the books. She has an older brother who longs to make it in Motown and risks everything to pursue this dream. She has an older sister who wants to make the world a better place, so she actively participates in the Civil Rights Movement, even when it's most decidedly not safe for her. She has another older sister who is exceptionally bright but a little overshadowed by the rest of her siblings.
Melody sings. It's a part of who she is so much so that it's probably the first thing you'd mention if you were describing her. It's part of why she loses her voice in the books after the bombing. She gardens and worries that she's not making a big enough impact in the world like her oldest sister. She's funny and sweet and has a best friend and a best cousin friend and even a sort of frenemy. She's active in her church (see the singing) and we haven't even begun to discuss her grandparents who probably play a bigger role in her stories than her parents do.
If you're a BSC fan, it's sort of like getting to see Jessi's world back in NJ where she wasn't the only black character for miles.
Movie!Melody? Is a lovable chatterbox who sews and isn't afraid to go out in public in a homemade astronaut suit to walk her mother home from the bus stop. (So the Ellison's car is gone too, eh?) She's an only child, the daughter of a factory worker (her mother) and a deceased pilot (dad), with an exceptionally cynical grandfather who usually shows up to say something about how he'd hate for Melody to see a dead body on TV or point out that Frances Ellison (Melody's mom) is an exceptional pianist but she's also black so the best gig she can get is at church and basically he's the Eeyore of the family. No grandmother, no siblings, no being relatively well off. Nope.
And so her mother has her sent to a better school which means she's one of only two black kids in the entire school and the other girl tires of being the Becca to Melody's Jessi and she transfers back to the neighborhood school where there aren't enough books but there aren't white kids named Donald being dicks to her.
Sooooooo... wildly different stories, man. Book Melody is pretty sheltered as far as the Civil Rights Movement goes. She and her brother encounter a racist white dude at a department store and there's a protest, but mostly there aren't white people in Melody's stories because they aren't just about white versus black. They're about Melody's life in other ways, and from a lot of reviews people have given, it's one of the better things about book!Melody.
The movie erases all that and it's frustrating to watch if you're familiar with even just Melody's first book. I wasn't expecting the first two Harry Potter movies kind of adaptation where it's pretty much the books on screen with very little changes. But I also wasn't expecting a "keep the kid's name and uh, have her sing. Once. At a church. Sure." kind of thing either. Seriously, why. WHY.
I could maybe understand if this had been a NOLA situation where they realized ohshit, we fucked up and now what do we do? But Melody just came out and they were obviously working on both at the same time and it's MH continuity things all over again.
I can't imagine that they expect a lot of people to read the books at this point because if they did... this would not be a thing. Seriously, if you watch the movie and then read the books expecting more of the movie's world, you're going to get so confused so fast. It's weird because Melody is one of the characters Amazon sells bundles for but they also didn't have any outfits that look even a little similar to Melody's outfits aside from her Meet outfit at the end.
Words fail me.
It probably doesn't help that last night I bleached the ends of my hair so that I could dye it purple later this week, so it probably looks really weird right now. I keep forgetting that I like the color it winds up when bleached but there's no way in hell I'd bleach all my hair because my scalp and I aren't going to war, dammit.
But Halloween. But no money. You see the dilemma. Annnnnd it's decided we will wait till after payday.
Onward to other things, I guess. Did I properly vent about the Melody movie? No? Well, grab some popcorn and let's rip into this.
As part of their relationship with Amazon, AG released Melody's movie "Love Has To Win" on October 21st, and if you've got Prime, you can watch it now. Or, if you're saving your Prime trial for later in the season, you can hold out for Maryellen's movie which comes out in November.
The movie's less than an hour long, I believe, so I gave it a whirl. Also, the actress playing Melody is adorable but...
*deep breath* If you've read and enjoyed Melody's books, you're going to get whiplash watching the movie. The trailer gives you a hint of how different things are going to be (for starters, there are a lot more white people in the trailer than in Melody's books) but it's really just a hint.
So I'll get the good with right at the start. Marsai Martin (Melody) is adorable and perfectly cast, really. I think she'd have made an amazing book!Melody and she's easily the best thing about the movie because she makes Melody so lovable. Seriously, the best thing and not in a "but that's not saying much" kind of way.
Idara Victor as Melody's mother is also pretty awesome. The relationship between mother and daughter is probably the second best thing about the movie, if I'm honest. They seem to honestly enjoy one another and Melody's mother seems to really like her kid, not just love her. (There's a difference.)
If you're going to watch the movie and want the best chance to enjoy it, a) leave now and come back to this spoiler zone once you've watched it and b) don't read the books first. Don't do it. On it's own, it's not a bad movie.
Okay. I assume if you're reading this far, you want to know what the hell. Sigh. Nope, Love Has To Win isn't a bad movie. It just has nothing to do with the previously established character of Melody Ellison. It's not even like you could pretend that these are events that happen after Melody's books because the Birmingham Bombing happens in the movie as well, so this takes place at the same time as Melody's first book.
Book Melody doesn't wear glasses for starters and doesn't, to my recollection, have a big interest in sewing or drawing or drafting costumes. (You know who kinda does, though? Maryellen.) She doesn't have a big countdown to getting a TV or dream about it (you know who can't go two paragraphs without mentioning TV? Maryellen.) but this is a quibble.
She does, however, have a rich family life. Her mother and father are both very present in the books. She has an older brother who longs to make it in Motown and risks everything to pursue this dream. She has an older sister who wants to make the world a better place, so she actively participates in the Civil Rights Movement, even when it's most decidedly not safe for her. She has another older sister who is exceptionally bright but a little overshadowed by the rest of her siblings.
Melody sings. It's a part of who she is so much so that it's probably the first thing you'd mention if you were describing her. It's part of why she loses her voice in the books after the bombing. She gardens and worries that she's not making a big enough impact in the world like her oldest sister. She's funny and sweet and has a best friend and a best cousin friend and even a sort of frenemy. She's active in her church (see the singing) and we haven't even begun to discuss her grandparents who probably play a bigger role in her stories than her parents do.
If you're a BSC fan, it's sort of like getting to see Jessi's world back in NJ where she wasn't the only black character for miles.
Movie!Melody? Is a lovable chatterbox who sews and isn't afraid to go out in public in a homemade astronaut suit to walk her mother home from the bus stop. (So the Ellison's car is gone too, eh?) She's an only child, the daughter of a factory worker (her mother) and a deceased pilot (dad), with an exceptionally cynical grandfather who usually shows up to say something about how he'd hate for Melody to see a dead body on TV or point out that Frances Ellison (Melody's mom) is an exceptional pianist but she's also black so the best gig she can get is at church and basically he's the Eeyore of the family. No grandmother, no siblings, no being relatively well off. Nope.
And so her mother has her sent to a better school which means she's one of only two black kids in the entire school and the other girl tires of being the Becca to Melody's Jessi and she transfers back to the neighborhood school where there aren't enough books but there aren't white kids named Donald being dicks to her.
Sooooooo... wildly different stories, man. Book Melody is pretty sheltered as far as the Civil Rights Movement goes. She and her brother encounter a racist white dude at a department store and there's a protest, but mostly there aren't white people in Melody's stories because they aren't just about white versus black. They're about Melody's life in other ways, and from a lot of reviews people have given, it's one of the better things about book!Melody.
The movie erases all that and it's frustrating to watch if you're familiar with even just Melody's first book. I wasn't expecting the first two Harry Potter movies kind of adaptation where it's pretty much the books on screen with very little changes. But I also wasn't expecting a "keep the kid's name and uh, have her sing. Once. At a church. Sure." kind of thing either. Seriously, why. WHY.
I could maybe understand if this had been a NOLA situation where they realized ohshit, we fucked up and now what do we do? But Melody just came out and they were obviously working on both at the same time and it's MH continuity things all over again.
I can't imagine that they expect a lot of people to read the books at this point because if they did... this would not be a thing. Seriously, if you watch the movie and then read the books expecting more of the movie's world, you're going to get so confused so fast. It's weird because Melody is one of the characters Amazon sells bundles for but they also didn't have any outfits that look even a little similar to Melody's outfits aside from her Meet outfit at the end.
Words fail me.
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Date: 2016-10-26 05:46 am (UTC)I wish I knew why they changed so much when they didn't have to. Sure, don't have Melody lose her voice and hell, it's easy to write the two oldest siblings out (college for the both of them if they wanted, and it wouldn't be wrong exactly) but random dead dad? Really? Whose idea was this? AG's or the people they hired to helm things? Was it the story they originally wanted and the books are the oddities? So many questions, AG, so little continuity.