Well. This is unexpected. I don’t know if I can jump straight to optimism and excitement, but I’m interested in seeing how this goes.
Ohhhhh, I loved that movie!
Me too! So I’m nervous.
It was a great movie, but so much of its greatness was Saoirse Ronan. Can they duplicate that with another young actress?
It’s a bit like hearing about a Winter’s Bone sequel without Jennifer Lawrence.
Oh, I’ll add Winter’s Bone to my watch list.
Only if Tom Hollander wears the short shorts.
I saw that last night during the playoff American Football games. I was so shocked, since I had missed this thread. I was thinking “wow, that really looks like it’s based on the movie”.
I was just listening to the soundtrack in my car last month and thinking how lucky I was to have seen a Chemical Brothers album in the movie theater, with an accompanying movie, even though I never heard about the movie again (except for the occasional mention by @tomchick on the Qt3 games podcast and movie podcasts).
Well barely anything to that trailer, so I guess that’s the silver lining to the fact that what’s there looks bland and uninteresting.
The first episode is available for 24 hours only, today.
I just realized this show is essentially a reunion of The Killing.
OMG I didn’t even realize that!!
Soulful wisp: “Linden!”
Been watching this since the full season dropped and I’m enjoying it so far (on ep 5).
I liked it.
I gave up after the first episode. Did Hanna really need a dopey YA romance up front, while she was still in the woods? In which the boy feeds her chocolate? Because ladies love chocolate! Just ask Battle Angel Alita! Is the significance of a house in the woods as a staple of fairy tales irrelevant enough to have this re-imagined Hanna and her father live in a cave? A cave? Really? Do Hanna and her father have to say out loud how they feel instead of letting the actors imply it and the audience infer it? Is the thrilling roar of a plane flying low just over the treetops unnecessary? Is the idea of a magic switch that flips as a metaphor for adulthood too subtle? Is a blandly pretty and mostly expressionless young actress a suitable casting choice to replace Saoirse Ronan’s pale luminousness?
Apparently, the guy who wrote the movie’s script and also this series thinks the answer to all those questions is “yes”.
That first episode felt to me like the writer was just cramming back in all the stuff that had been cut from earlier drafts in order to make Hanna a good movie. Do the later episodes feel any different?
-Tom
@tomchick, the series is very different than the movie.
The movie is a fairytale-structured visual delight. It works mostly through visuals, while the script provides a very solid framework to drive the movie, but it’s ultimately about metaphors, as you say. There’s an emptuness to it that is fantastic, but the characters themselves do seldom really come to life beyond their fairy tale origin (there are glimpses). Which is ok. It’s an stylistic choice, and one that I liked. I love the movie.
This is different. Much more of a character study in many places. And it is beautifully acted and shot, I think. A lot of the subtlety you are looking for is there, and while the filmmaking style is the opposite of the one in the movie, towards the end you get haunting imaginery, but on a more low-key register.
But the first episode is not good. I watched it and I thought it was serviceable but a travestry to the movie. But I kept watching, mostly because my wife and I had nothing at the time we could agree on, and thankfully the series becomes something else.
Second episode is much better, but still threading on the heels of the movie too much, not in a good way. But episodes 3, 4 and 5 (that’s where we are at) are fantastic. It is a textured piece. I think perhaps more than the movie. It’s also more uneven, but I think it’s a worthy companion to it.
I don’t know you’ll love it, but I know you’ll find a lot of stuff to love. Specially Hanna’s performance. It grows and shifts, and I think the expressionless in the first episodes might actually be intentional. I say give it another go.
If you don’t like it, I’ll own you a beer, I guess?
Episode six down. Still good, but you can see they are setting up the second season. A small disappointment after 3-5.
Also good thing the GoT haters don’t watch this. The playing with time and travel is crazy here.
Not just chocolate, a Snickers bar! Clearly shown and mentioned multiple times by name! Product placement.
I enjoyed the first episode. I just watched it last night. I have so many series I want to watch on Amazon Prime, but I chose this one first because I recently re-watched the movie last month, so it’s really fresh in my mind.
First a bit of confusion ensued though, because I thought I had started watching the first episode of Man in the High Castle. So when he breaks into the facility and steals the baby, I thought it was an elaborate action sequence to introduce us to how Nazis work in 2003. Only after the initial action sequence was over did they flash the name “Hanna” on the screen, and I hit my forehead “d’oh”.
Some interesting choices in this series. Unlike the TV show the father is not really preparing her for assassination. In the movie they don’t get found, he has this elaborate setup for “getting found”. But in the TV series he just basically is teaching her to survive and to fight if needed.
And he even shows her a picture of the woman! So remember how in the movie the real nemesis sends in a different redhead and Hanna has no way to know that’s not the right lady except to check using questions? Well, that’s not really possible in this one since she knows exactly what she looks like.
I’m digging all these small differences. I’m looking forward to seeing where they’re taking this series.
Also I wonder if they’ll have a character equivalent of Sophie, played by Jessica Barden in the movie, who is so unique. I just can’t picture any other actress playing that particular character.
Episode 2 made some interesting choices. Sophie and her family are Indian immigrants in this one. Hanna still does the execution of the fake Marissa just like in the movie. They do stay pretty close to the movie in terms of overall plot. Obviously they don’t have actors who can pull off martial arts moves and stuff, so they cut it so that we see Hanna reach for someone, they cut to Sophie for a reaction shot and we hear her flip them over, and we cut back to the bad guy on the floor. Pretty well done, I think, considering actor limitations.