The Great Gatsby's Horrific Trailer
Ed Driscoll worries that he's being a curmudgeon compared to Emily's positive take on the new trailer. As for me, I think it is a tinsel-strewn cinematic abortion.
The Luhrmann pop-lit aesthetic had its moment. Romeo+Juliet hit right smack in the middle of the teenage years for a generation of Millennials, and it’s enjoyable and certainly unique (though I’ve never liked that play). Now, coming off a critical failure in his last movie, Luhrmann’s trying to recapture that old mid-Nineties DiCaprio magic. Gatsby has always been difficult to film – there have been six adaptations, and while I have not seen them all, none of them have been heralded as "good". But I’m willing to bet none of them are this obviously horrible.
I’ve never seen a trailer in which you can tell so many people are so clearly miscast within ten second increments. Carey Mulligan may be a decent actress, but her clumsy attempt at a Southern accent speaks to ruination of one of the true feminine characters in the entirety of American literature. Luhrmann’s rumored fave for the role, Blake Lively, couldn’t be worse, and that’s saying something. There is not a single actor in the thing who looks comfortable in the role, and the glitz and glam shrieks of this being an Occupy Wall Street take on American capitalism, which Gatsby never was. The CGI New York looks more like Tron. I can’t tell if I prefer the terribleness of Tobey Maguire’s non-acting to that bearded fellow’s overacting. And DiCaprio, poor DiCaprio, simmers with the confused emotion of a man who has just tasted plain yogurt when he thought it was vanilla. Here, toss some shirts.
Katherine Miller writes: “I really do think there's something to the cultural divide. As showcased in the trailer and the general aesthetic of the film, which of course is Luhrmann's usual aesthetic, it's like the gaudiest American thing possible. Which is showcased in parts of that book, but that's not what the actual story is about. It's like what a foreigner would note about an American.” She’s right. Perhaps this is the problem with getting an exaggerated music video director from Australia, once the toast of Hollywood hip (that scene with Radiohead!) but now fresh off a Nicole Kidman disaster and closing in on fifty, to handle a story that’s full of American apotheoses.
I’m not even a Fitzgerald fan, but Gatsby is as quintessentially American as you get: the architectural structure of a story, within which the reader is left to his or her own devices to take ideas. Instead Luhrmann is asking for your money to vomit sparkly things in your face and call it art.
I am sure when you first read it, you thought: "This Gatsby thing is pretty great, but what it really needs is dubstep and 3D." Am I right?
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Apr '11
Re: The Great Gatsby's Horrific Trailer
Gotta admit, that one is intriguing. But the rest do sound appropriately horrific. Let's just be happy we were spared the nightmare of Tim Burton's Great Gatsby with Johnny Depp in the title role.
Your list does raise a question that I've long puzzled over. Why in God's name has Fredrick Douglas never received an appropriate Hollywood treatment? Is there a more inspiring - and frankly bad-a$$ - American biography? Why have no influential African-American directors/actors been on this? Sure, the obvious assumption is politics, but even a film just on the Autobiography would be amazing.
Apr '11
Re: The Great Gatsby's Horrific Trailer
From the annals of contemporary cinema....something to view while waiting with baited breath for our Christmas present - the anti-capitalist hip-hop Gatsby.
"Holy Motors", a Palm d'Or favorite, directed by Leos Carax
"with Eva Mendes, two bonobo chimps playing house in suburban Paris, an extended scene of cybermonster sex and some talking limousines.
Mendes is kidnapped from a Parisian cemetery by the sewer-dwelling Monsieur Merde who licks her armpit, eats her hair and fashions her designer gown into a home-made burqa. Mendes’s character is unperturbed by all of this and ends up singing a lullaby to Monsieur Merde, who by this time has stripped naked and is in a state of some excitement."
Or "The Paperboy" with Nicole Kidman directed by Lee Daniels
"Nicole Kidman saves Zac Efron from the effects of a jellyfish sting.
Spotting Efron lying on the beach on the edge of consciousness, Kidman strolls over, squats over his swollen face, adjusts her bathing suit, and liberally administers the antidote. The scene is played for laughs – how could it not be? – but it’s safe to say the gales of mirth it generated were not of the type intended."
Re: The Great Gatsby's Horrific Trailer
As you all know, I'm a fan of the trailer. And the way I see it, ya'll should just be grateful that it's not Gatsby: The Musical. Just sayin' ; )
May '12
Re: The Great Gatsby's Horrific Trailer
I think it looks amazing and agree that the novel is an all-time snoozer and one of the most overrated pieces of literature in our culture. I for one welcome Luhrman exploiting the full potential of the visual medium to liven up the story and do justice to the spirit of the era that the novel is set in. All the haters need to take a deep breath.
Re: The Great Gatsby's Horrific Trailer
In general, I don't think it's fair to judge a movie simply by how faithful it is to a book. A good movie needs to stand alone, and often that means departing from the book on which it's based. If you want the book exactly as the author intended it, best to read it in the form that the author originally wrote it.
Aug '10
Re: The Great Gatsby's Horrific Trailer
Sisyphus
Edited 14 hours ago Tarantino does the Sun Also Rises. Or David Lynch does Huckleberry Finn. And who would ever forget Sam Raimi's the Crucible. Ridley Scott does Catcher in the Rye. Kevin Smith's the Autobiography of Frederick Douglas. · 14 hours ago
Someone ought to force Spike Lee to do Gatsby. And make Oliver Stone do Little Women . Tim Burton directs a new Clockwork Orange .
James Cameron has the shark win in Jaws .
this has potential for a good game post
Jul '10
Re: The Great Gatsby's Horrific Trailer
Now you've done it. Now they'll splice in some dance numbers from the archives in post-production and we'll finally have Judy Garland and Fred Astaire in Gatsby: The Musical.
Jul '10
Re: The Great Gatsby's Horrific Trailer
Some adaptation is obviously required to move between the media, but set Spartacus in a San Francisco bathhouse and you can no longer pretend to be in meaningful touch with the essence of the Roman slave revolts. I enjoyed Luhrmann's Romeo+Juliet in part because I have two excellent straight versions of the play on my shelf.
Gatsby should be done well and has never been done well. I think the earlier comment that Hollywood seems incapable is spot on, it is a path between the Scylla of farce and the Charybdis of overreaching tragedy. Gatsby is medieval in structure, Chaucer could have outlined it. The narrator is the naive Chaucer of the Canterbury Tales watching astonied as Gatsby rides Fortunas wheel up, up, up, and then down.
Jul '10
Re: The Great Gatsby's Horrific Trailer
Cutlass
Gotta admit,thatoneis intriguing. But the rest do sound appropriately horrific. ...
Your list does raise a question that I've long puzzled over. Why in God's name has Fredrick Douglas never received an appropriate Hollywood treatment? ...
"The owls are not what they seem," with dancing dwarves on the river and Baron Harkonnen accidentally loosing the stopper and bouncing off the evergreens. I was thinking horrific.
On the Frederick Douglas thing, frankly, I'm thankful nobody has touched him lately. John Adams was a mixed bag. Rome went with the gratuitous pornography thing. Elizabeth was very good for the most part but had to show Norfolk performing his husbandly duties as his fortunes turned. Historical drama is seriously hit or miss, with an ungenerous tendency to explore unfortunate and unentertaining modes of intercourse.
Aug '10
Re: The Great Gatsby's Horrific Trailer
Me, too. DiCaprio looks appropriately degenerate in the role -- and appropriately boring.
Jul '10
Re: The Great Gatsby's Horrific Trailer
KC Mulville: ...
So, was Gatsby just an interloper into a real elite, or is the whole elite class a fraud in itself?
...
Hollywood's multitudinous incompetencies aside, most entrepreneurs go through outrageous boom and bust cycles. How many times has Trump been bankrupt? How many have folded up under the Regime? How many will pop up again when America is restored? And how does that fit within Fitzgerald's old money/new money meme?