Even though Christmas is followed by gym memberships and Dry January, there’s one more thing you can be sure of in the new year: there will be loud and strident complaints about which book adaptation will be shown on TV over the holidays. A chance to take phrases out of the tabloids that aren’t found anywhere else: “fury,” “backlash,” and “reboot panned by audiences.”
This year saw the release of Enid Blyton’s sumptuous new production. Famous Five Stories on BBC: It was released on New Year’s Eve and was directed by a leading Hollywood director. It’s very high quality (see review here) and I definitely found it delightful and perfect for family viewing.
But that’s never going to make everyone happy, and luckily there are some newspapers reporting people on X/Twitter who watched the first five minutes and hated it – one character is too long; You used the wrong lens (seriously?); They don’t like music.
For those who want to get into the BBC, it must be difficult: there are a number of criticisms of Enid Blyton as a simplistic, old-fashioned racist. But is it possible to simultaneously complain that the new film is “not faithful to the original” and call for leaving the classic alone? This must be a difficult decision.
Reporting this
All adaptations involve change – in this case, the very talented director Nicolas Winding Refn took a close look at the books and what made them so readable, and expanded on that to make the story even more exciting. Blyton never tried to be realistic or depict the real adventures of children, and the new adventures fit well with the old ones.
Enid Blyton probably wouldn’t have dreamed of depicting racial diversity in her books – we wouldn’t expect anything different today. (And to the person who wrote online that George couldn’t be mixed race because she was a cousin of the other kids: please think again.)
Enid Blyton wrote to bring joy to young people. We can once again quote her statement that she does not care about criticism from people over twelve years of age. I guess she didn’t have an “awakened” bone in her body because biographies suggest she wasn’t a very good person. . But she loved to encourage children to read, she loved to entertain them, and she did so through hundreds of books and over many years.
One would imagine that she would be happy to see a new version of Five Friends with all the necessary changes to make it interesting for a new generation, and that if the film resulted in some children picking up the books, she would be pleased.
Source: I News
I am Mario Pickle and I work in the news website industry as an author. I have been with 24 News Reporters for over 3 years, where I specialize in entertainment-related topics such as books, films, and other media. My background is in film studies and journalism, giving me the knowledge to write engaging pieces that appeal to a wide variety of readers.