Dear Brad Pitt,
I think you’re totally dreamy and I loved it when you got all hot and nearly nude and brooding to play Achilles in Troy. Your petulance when that stupid Agamemnon tried to take the captive that was rightfully yours was totally in keeping with what really happened in the epic poem and I trembled at the thought of your manly loins chafing in your leather as you fought your emo demons to get her back.
You’re also doing some pretty crazy-cool things right now, such as starring in David Fincher’s follow-up to Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; finishing up work on The Thin Red Line director Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life (totally standing in line for this next year); and you just started work on Quentin Tarantino’s curiously spelled WW2-flick Inglourious Basterds, which is aiming for a June 2009 release.
However, you had to fuck it all up and do some crazy-ass shit to get Variety to start teasing that you, George Miller (Happy Feet, the upcoming Justice League), and Warner Bros. want to get the band together with your production studio Plan B to adapt Homer’s other poem, The Odyssey. And the detail that sticks out with me the most is this line:
Their intention is to transfer the tale to a futuristic setting in outer space.
Listen, I am all for weird-ass adaptations of stories. But just not this one. It’s nearly perfect as it is. It celebrates humility, piety, wit, and wisdom through severe adversity. It gives us the most beautiful example of feminine fidelity in Penelope’s steadfast refusal to marry again, even though everyone around her is telling her that her husband is probably dead and shouldn’t she move on already?
For some reason, I just can’t wrap my brain around the idea of taking this perfect, classic story and sticking it into outer space.
So please, don’t make it so I have to?
Sincerely,
Trisha Lynn
Alex says:
Dude, The Odyssey is one of the most frequently adapted pieces of literature ever. Heck, even putting it in space has been done a couple of times. This doesn’t mean the Brad Pitt thing might not be awful, but I mean just the fact of adapting The Odyssey doesn’t put any nails in the coffin.
Trisha Lynn says:
@Alex: I get that, I do. But I wish they’d just leave it alone. There are a few things I get really cranky about, and classic mythology is one of them.
MaskedVigilante says:
So how do you feel about a “Clash of the Titans” remake?
BJ says:
O Brother, Where Art Thou was awesome, so the story can obviously adapted to the film medium with a certain amount of rethinking. If there is ANY reason not to do this, I would say it is that the Coens did such a good job shifting the story to a different time and place that repeating the idea would be superfluous and probably pale in comparison.
Gordon McAlpin says:
MaskedVigilante: Me, I don’t think that movie’s a classic by any stretch of the imagination. Classic EFFECTS for the time, of course — but the movie? Not so much.
Until I see a trailer, I won’t really care one way or the other.