Premiering Saturday at D23 was the first trailer for Disney’s adaptation of Madeline L’Engle’s classic novel A Wrinkle in Time. I was intrigued by the trailer to begin with..but then it starts to look very VERY Tim Burton Wonderland VERY quickly, which is not A Wrinkle in Time. The frightening word in the official release below from Coming Soon is that it’s called a “reimagining”. A Wrinkle in Time is busting with imagination. It doesn’t need to be re’d (now a word). This is Disney’s big March release for 2018, but this first look doesn’t fill me with a whole lot of anticipation.
The cast for A Wrinkle in Time includes Oprah Winfrey (Selma, The Butler) as Mrs. Which, Reese Witherspoon (Wild, Walk the Line) as Mrs. Whatsit, Mindy Kaling (The Mindy Project, Inside Out) as Mrs. Who, Chris Pine (Star Trek Beyond, Hell or High Water, Into the Woods”) as Mr. Murry, Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Beauty and The Beast, Belle) as Mrs. Murry, Zach Galifianakis (Birdman, The Hangover) as The Happy Medium, Michael Peña (Ant-Man, The Martian) as Red, André Holland (Moonlight, Selma) as Principal Jenkins, Levi Miller (Pan) as Calvin, Deric McCabe as Charles Wallace, and introducing Storm Reid as the iconic literary character Meg Murry.
Bellamy Young, Rowan Blanchard and Will McCormack round out the highly-acclaimed cast.
The film is a reimagining of Madeleine L’Engle’s classic novel that takes Meg Murry, her brilliant brother Charles Wallace and their friend Calvin on an unexpected journey into alternate dimensions on a mission to bring home their father. First published in 1962, L’Engle’s novel has sold more than 23 million copies worldwide, receiving a recent surge following Chelsea Clinton’s mention during the Democratic National Convention. Winner of the Newbery Prize in 1963, “A Wrinkle in Time” has been translated into 35 languages.
Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time movie is directed by Ava DuVernay (Selma) and produced by Jim Whitaker and Catherine Hand. Jennifer Lee (Frozen) wrote the screenplay. A Wrinkle in Time is set to debut in theaters on March 9, 2018.
I think the reason this looks so wrong is that once it leaves the reality we know, everything looks stylized and art directed, instead of like a universe that might be bizarre, but is an actual extension of our world.
I’ve watched this trailer five time now, because the book was one of my most cherished novels as a kid, and I wanted to give this a chance. My first reaction was that disappointment was only a word, and it did not begin to hold what I was feeling.
On repeated viewings, once I knew what to expect, it wasn’t as bad. But the CGI looks everpresent and artificial. The costumes and makeup look exactly like Alice in Wonderland, except that someone without Tim Burton’s visual sense OK’d them, and they clash with each other. The cast is fascinatingly eclectic, but completely wrong for A Wrinkle in Time. The visuals are rainbow-hued, like the film takes place in Oz. I did like the glimpse of the conformist suburban neighborhood on the other planet. Looked creepy.
I won’t hold it against the movie that a horribly inappropriate Eurythmics song was used, because that is the fault of marketers, not the people who made the film. But I had been hoping for this movie for most of my life, and while this is only a glimpse, I’ve never glimpsed an adaptation that felt less like the source material than this.
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Damn, you should have written this article because that is EXACTLY how I reacted. We need to get a movie show where we’re a combo of Siskel and Ebert and Statler and Waldorf.
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Do you know what I like best about this movie? I haven’t seen it yet!
WA HA HA HA HA!
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Lolol we need our own show
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