As a child, my favorite series growing up was "A Series of Unfortunate Events", by Lemony Snicket. I remember that it was in middle school that I read the series. For those who do not know, there are 13 books in the series, beginning with "The Bad Beginning" and ending with "The End", respectively, and literally. I absolutely loved this series, and was more than just a little excited when the first 3 books were put into a movie. Unfortunately they only made one movie, which as stated above, didn't go past the 3rd book, and the series was never continued on film for reasons unknown to myself. From this moment on for the next year I would always get excited to see commercials on TV for upcoming films, hoping that one would be for the continuation of the Series of Unfortunate Events film series. None were. I let it go after that first year, growing up, and never really thinking about it again. Netflix then announced that they were creating A Series of Unfortunate Events mini-series to be released in early 2017. I wasn't as excited about it as I would have been as a child. I am all grown up at this point and it has been 13 years since the release of the first 3 books on film. This being said, I remembered how excited I was when the first film installment came out and thought that maybe if I reread the series again, I would be more enthused. Now, I've grown to not like reading books very much anymore, so I decided that instead of reading, I would listen. I decided to sign up for a free trial on Audible.com, and downloaded the first book last night. The first book was 3 and a half hours long, which I listened to in its entirety last night, while pausing and taking the occasional break. Today, I downloaded the second book, "The Reptile Room". This one is about the same length, so I will be sitting down later today to listen to this one. Although I signed up for a free trial, I for some reason must pay for the rest of the audio books, so I've instead decided to go my library and rent the remaining audio books one by one.
Since I finished the audio book for the first book last night, I decided to watch the first two episodes of A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix. The first two episodes, because each book has been split into two episodes. I do like the film adaptation of the series by Netflix. The series is portrayed better by Netflix that the 2004 installment. Be that as it may, I have decided to be a critic and point out the things that were inaccurate. One hour long episodes on TV are actually about 43 minutes long, with commercials, making the episode an hour long, filling in those additional 17 minutes. This is the same concept that Netflix uses, and in order to span both episodes of the book 43 minutes, they had to add additional scenes that were not included in the book, but did make sense to story.
From this point forward, I will be talking about the first two episodes in detail, so if you intend to watch the series on Netflix without any spoilers, it's best that you close this blog right now and continue your endeavors elsewhere on the internet.
First off, I'm pretty sure that every single one of Lemony Snicket's lines are the exact same as they are in the book. No more, no less. In the episode, it begins with Lemony Snicket doing a narrative introduction, followed by him riding on the city trolley with the 3 Baudelaire children standing in front of him as a firetruck passes by. In the book, there is the introduction by Lemony Snicket, but the scene immediately thereafter is of the children spending time at Briny Beach. While there are many lines in the episodes that aren't included in the book, Netflix did a very good job of including the vast majority of lines from the book in the episodes. Arthur Poe's wife is barely mentioned in the book, but has a slightly bigger role in the episodes. Her profession is not stated in the book, as I recall, but has the job of a newspaper writer in the episodes. While some may think the set was poorly designed, they got it incredibly accurate from the book. When the children first meet Justice Strauss, she clearly implies that she needs the skills of each of the 3 Baudelaire children. This line is not in the book. In the book, the children buy the pasta noodles at the market, however, in the episodes, the children make the pasta noodles homemade using a pasta maker in Count Olaf's kitchen. When the children arrive home from getting the food for the Pasta Puttanesca, Count Olaf is not suppose to be home as he is not home in the book upon the children's arrival home. When Klaus figures out Count Olaf's plan with The Marvelous Marriage after staying up all night to read his book, he goes downstairs to confront Count Olaf. In the book Klaus is up before Olaf and sits at the table waiting for him. In the episodes, Olaf is there first. Although there is no mention of a wedding cake in the book, there is only about 15 seconds of screen time where Olaf examines the wedding cake, and it's never mentioned again throughout the episodes. When it comes to Violet's invention of the grappling hook in an attempt to rescue Sunny, Netflix got the grappling hook device only half right. While it is a grappling hook that Violet made, it wasn't entirely designed the way that Netflix portrayed it. In the book, Violet takes down the curtains and the curtain rod in their room and bends the rods in the shape of a grappling hook, or large spider spider as described in the book. She takes down a picture and uses the hanging wire on the back of that picture to secure the rods together. As in the episodes, she did in fact tie the curtains and bed sheets together to make a rope, and attached it to the grappling hook. In the book she climbed the tower herself and doesn't design something on her back to pull her up. In the episodes, instead of using curtain rods. she just takes a metal hook from Olaf's kitchen. In the book, it says that when the grappling hook finally attached itself to something on the tower, it had attached to the hook of the hook handed man, which Netflix did sort of tie into this scene. In the episodes, the hook grabbed a hold of a beam sticking out of the tower, and once Violet climbed to the top, the hook handed man had his hook wrapped around the rope. Olaf's play, The Marvelous Marriage, is held in his own backyard theater in the book, but is held at a public theater in the episodes. Sunny tricking the hook handed man into releasing her and bringing her to the theater by beating him at poker is not in the book, but since the theater is public in the episodes, they had to write something in to get Sunny to the theater just as the play ended.
The scenes that were nowhere in the book were the scenes where Olaf and this theater troop go to the bank to see Mr. Poe, and pretty much all the scenes with Mr. Poe's assistant, and Gustav. Mr. Poe's assistant may be briefly mentioned in the book, but she has absolutely no scenes. Gustav is also mentioned nowhere in the book. He is a character in the second book, but has appeared far too early. The Baudelaire parent's are mentioned several times, but do not get any scenes, and certainly do not get any scenes or mentions that they are possibly still alive. Dr. Montgomery is mentioned briefly at the end, but that's it.
Overall, this was a very accurate portrayal of the book. Definitely looking forward to watching the rest of the series. I will probably watch the episodes for the next book "The Reptile Room" later today, in which both Dr. Montgomery and Gustav should be introduced.
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