Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

[Steve Mollmann]

The problem with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies isn't that it defaces a classic work of literature (which is a perfectly acceptable mode of responding to literature), but that it takes a joke with a life of however long it takes someone to say, "hey did you know there's a book called Pride and Prejudice and ZOMBIES!?" and stretches out to the length of, well, Pride and Prejudice. It's a twelve-second gag, and suffers as a 320-page one.

[Shatnertage]

Steve Mollmann wrote:

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The problem with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies isn't that it defaces a classic work of literature (which is a perfectly acceptable mode of responding to literature), but that it takes a joke with a life of however long it takes someone to say, "hey did you know there's a book called Pride and Prejudice and ZOMBIES!?" and stretches out to the length of, well, Pride and Prejudice. It's a twelve-second gag, and suffers as a 320-page one.

That's exactly how I felt about Android Karenina at page 30, but by page 100 I couldn't get enough of it.

[Trent Roman]

Gaith wrote:

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But if, as you imply, parodies and juvenile tripe are mutually exclusive, I suppose Vampires Suck isn't juvenile tripe because it's a parody?

Obviously--just like at any of the ___ Movie series. P&P&Z, however, is clever parody that sends up the manifold faults of the original. (I'm not familiar with the other book you cite so can't comment)

Trent Roman wrote:

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You might be a tad less snarky if your entire future hinged on what kind of man you could get to propose to you before the age of twenty-five. Austen's characters are damned realistic in that regard.

The mating habits of petty bourgeois, suffocatingly provincial landed gentry is a subject of resounding irrelevance. If you're going to feel sorry for anybody in this scenario, feel sorry for the servants and tenants who had to wait hand and foot on these nattering girl-women and dissolute boy-men, and whose futures rested on the whims on those selfsame idle, infantile, sorry excuses for human beings.

This is just one point where P&P&Z improves on the original: it doesn't shy away from showcasing the callousness of this contemptible cadre towards their servants (treated as disposable zombie-fodder), and the zombies themselves often function as a motif of the repressed underclass (I love that the author has the characters call them 'Unmentionables', hitting both the nigh-invisibility of servants in the original text in additional to the sexual implications therein).

Yeah, willingness to publicly murder guys who they overhear speaking negatively of that is a "totally logical exaggeration" of those sorts of personality games.

Why not? In the original, Darcy is apparently the least assholish of this cast of undesirables because he tolerates and perhaps even admires Elizabeth's supposed willfulness. In this rewriting, fighting abilities are grafted onto willfulness as something proper ladies should lack, even as they are necessary for survival (in a world overrun with zombies); here, Darcy is the least assholish character because he eventually comes to admire Elizabeth's lethality.

TheBoo wrote:

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I agree. Frankly, I thought Attack of the Clones had better written and more realistic characters than Ms. Austen's work; and that movie had a jumping frog with a lightsaber!

No kidding. I always do a double-take whenever I hear someone cite Austen for realistic characters. The hero and heroine are the only characters who exhibit any dimensionality (and even then, not much). Most everybody else can be defined by a single term, an adjective attached to a name--'bookish', 'flighty', 'air-headed', 'pedantic'--and who never stray in thought, speech or behaviour from the one feature that, one realizes, defines the totality of their being. Her books are populated not by characters, but caricatures.

Steve Mollmann wrote:

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it takes a joke with a life of however long it takes someone to say, "hey did you know there's a book called Pride and Prejudice and ZOMBIES!?" and stretches out to the length of, well, Pride and Prejudice.

I figure that's why it introduces ninjas halfway through.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

[Gaith]

Trent Roman wrote:

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Why not? In the original, Darcy is apparently the least assholish of this cast of undesirables because he tolerates and perhaps even admires Elizabeth's supposed willfulness. In this rewriting, fighting abilities are grafted onto willfulness as something proper ladies should lack, even as they are necessary for survival (in a world overrun with zombies); here, Darcy is the least assholish character because he eventually comes to admire Elizabeth's lethality.

Which in no way explains how PPZ Elizabeth's intent to murder a living human being over a mere overheard remark in any way parodies the...

Ah, screw it. Keep drinking the Flanneled One-flavored Kool-Aid if it makes you happy...

[Trent Roman]

Gaith wrote:

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Which in no way explains how PPZ Elizabeth's intent to murder a living human being over a mere overheard remark in any way parodies the...

Elizabeth massively overreacts in all cases; the revised version changes the stakes involved to highlight the absurdity of the overreaction. What's not to understand?

Ah, screw it. Keep drinking the Flanneled One-flavored Kool-Aid if it makes you happy...

Flanneled One-flavored?

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

[Gaith]

The Flanneled One = common George Lucas nickname, who you agreed was a better writer than Aust -

oh man, I just threw up all over my keyboard.

[Trent Roman]

Right, I recall seeing that before. Well, I'll caveat that by pointing out that I, as is obvious from these posts, think Mz. Austen sets the bar of quality pretty dang low, so stating that I think someone is better than Austen isn't to necessarily imply that I think they're any good overall, merely in comparison.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

[Gaith]

Keep digging, hombre... you'll reach the surface any post now...

[Gaith]

.... Aaaaand, director #2 woke up one recent morning, with one hell of a headache but sober nonetheless, and realized that actually making this movie would be only slightly less artistically vapid and personally degrading than doing an interpretive dance performance of Thomas Kincade's A Christmas Cottage while wearing a tutu made entirely of duct tape... as a fundraiser for a Scientology charity initiative to bring E-meters to rural pockets of Tasmania.

Seriously, fuck this project.

[Gov Kodos]

Steve Mollmann wrote:

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The problem with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies isn't that it defaces a classic work of literature (which is a perfectly acceptable mode of responding to literature), but that it takes a joke with a life of however long it takes someone to say, "hey did you know there's a book called Pride and Prejudice and ZOMBIES!?" and stretches out to the length of, well, Pride and Prejudice. It's a twelve-second gag, and suffers as a 320-page one.

That sums up the series of books well. It was impossible to get through more than five pages. I did find it better than the Kiera Knightly version of P&P though.

[TheBrew]

Gaith wrote:

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Yeah, I know. Don't mind me; I'm just the moron who likes and appreciates the original, classic novel.

@ TheBoo: I hope you're being parodic... if not... all I can say is, I'm so sorry.

Sorry, I don't know what came over me.

I meant to say Battlefield Earth.

[Chemahkuu]

Gaith wrote:

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.... Aaaaand, director #2 woke up one recent morning, with one hell of a headache but sober nonetheless, and realized that actually making this movie would be only slightly less artistically vapid and personally degrading than doing an interpretive dance performance of Thomas Kincade's A Christmas Cottage while wearing a tutu made entirely of duct tape... as a fundraiser for a Scientology charity initiative to bring E-meters to rural pockets of Tasmania.

Seriously, fuck this project.

You don't like it, WE GET IT for fuck sake.

[Gaith]

Hey, man, I'm just dispassionately reporting the facts. Don't shoot the messenger.

[Capt_Pickirk]

Why not??? Gerald Butler did it in that spartan movie.

ohwait,hekickedtheguydownawell,nevermind

[Kestrel]

Edgar Wright should take a shot at this, anybody know what he's doing?