![]() ![]() The quality of his films seems to depend largely on the quality of their scripts, and Goldsman’s script isn’t much more imaginative than the Cliff’s Notes of Brown’s novel. Howard is a veteran filmmaker responsible for many classic movies, but he has had just as many misses. The Da Vinci Code’s misguided execution begins with a dubious choice in its director. Despite some prerelease concerns over whether religious groups would find the film sacrilegious, the real concern should have been whether it would put people to sleep in their chairs. The book’s diminished legacy can arguably be attributed to a number of factors (it has faced intense criticism for its historical inaccuracies and its fast-and-loose representation of Christian theology, among other things), but the shortcomings of The Da Vinci Code can be boiled down to a single criticism: it’s a snoozefest, the absolute worst thing a mystery thriller can be. Moreover, the movie faded into obscurity almost immediately, despite the global success of Brown’s novel. Throwing enough big names into the production and hoping it all came together in the end definitely got them their money’s worth (the movie grossed well over half a billion dollars), but critics weren’t particularly kind to it. The producers of The Da Vinci Code seemingly approached the adaptation under the impression that altering even one word of the dizzyingly popular source novel would jeopardize the film’s box office receipts. But Goldsman’s script slavishly preserves Brown’s source material to the point of crafting a mystery thriller overstuffed with stretches of pseudo-historical exposition that are exciting to read in a beach novel but make for an interminably dull movie. Directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Ron Howard from a screenplay by blockbuster veteran Akiva Goldsman, the movie seemed like a recipe for a surefire hit. Released 15 years ago this month, the 2006 film adaptation of The Da Vinci Code is brimming with talent, including an all-star cast featuring Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Sir Ian McKellen, Paul Bettany, and Alfred Molina. To give you an idea of its pop culture saturation, the only book that outsold it in 2003 was the fifth Harry Potter novel. Selling over 80 million copies translated into dozens of different languages, the book was almost impossible to avoid. It seems buyers are already coming around to the idea: Mercedes has sold more than 1000 Smart ForTwos since May 2003 and sales in the first four months of this year are up 45 per cent compared with the same period last year.The Da Vinci Code, the bestselling treasure-hunting mystery thriller by Dan Brown, was a legitimate phenomenon. Locally, Mercedes-Benz is hoping the movie - expected to be seen by hundreds of thousands of Australians - will help local motorists better understand the Smart concept and why it is so popular in Europe. ![]() The Smart was in the original storyline and I think would want to stay true to the script, as they have done," Doolan says. Would Mercedes-Benz have paid for the car to appear if the moviemakers asked them to? "I don't think so. In Dan Brown's best-selling novel, on which the movie is based, lead character Robert Langdon is whisked away from his pursuers by Sophie Neveu in her Smart ForTwo, taking advantage of its diminutive size in the narrow Paris laneways. "We're just delighted that decided to stay true to the original script." Mercedes-Benz spokeswoman Amelia Doolan says the company did not pay to have the car appear in the movie. The Smart car, which is popular in overcrowded European cities such as Paris and Rome, makes an appearance in the early scenes of the movie as the unlikely getaway car for the two lead characters. In this era of product placement, Mercedes-Benz, the makers of the Smart ForTwo city car, were surprised that the producers of the The Da Vinci Code stayed true to the book, keeping the car in the plot. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |