The Television event of the year?
I think not. Highly anticipated – certainly. Highly good? Not.
I managed to get through several of the “mini-sodes” that the re-do of the Prisoner (AMC TV) was chopped up into last nite and eventually fell asleep, waking up as the first episode was being broadcast again.
Patrick McGoohan would not have approved of this version.
My first and primary criticism is this: the original Prisoner show took the viewer along for the ride of discovery and psychological turmoil that Number 6 was put through. The re-make let’s you watch what happens to some confused guy.
The original had the viewer experiencing events as if they were the main character. The do-over turns the audience into a passive…audience.
The other major flaw is this: in the original, the “secret” was not about how to “get out” of the Village, it was about how to get IN to who you are, what you are, what YOU stand for, where your identity comes from.
In the do-over, this has apparently morphed into some kind of bizarre scavenger hunt as we watch a confused Caviezel search for the “secret exit” from the Village.
Love interest? Where the fuck did that come from? Two living like a King and giving out autographs? Where the fuck did that come from?
I think what bothers me the most is that is is my generation that is probably responsible for all of these bad re-interpretations of the things we really enjoyed and got off on during our impressionable years. What the fuck is wrong with us?
And what annoys me about it all is that I can’t figure out whether we all did too many drugs, or not enough of them….
we all got out numbered by lazy stupid people who just don’t like to think.
Yep. Looked bad. Skipped it. Read Harlan Ellison instead.
This “re-imagining” has definitely abandoned the original’s sense of existential absurdity in favor of a gloomy pall of dread. But at least these remakes are giving acknowledgment to their source material rather than just shamelessly ripping it off the way Hollywood does most sf.
we want information. I was a little young to really remember it, but it still made a huge impression on me and visiting the folly where it was all filmed was almost as surreal as the show itself.
You may be “crotchtey,” but you are exactly correct about the original Prisoner being so much better! The reason there are so very many LOUSY remakes isn’t drugs, it’s EGO. The powers that be in Hollywood and cableland believe that they are smarter and more talented. Unfortunately, they aren’t. And, I couldn’t stay awake either! Thanks for the great review!
To be fair, it’s also boring.
I certainly won’t try to defend The Prisoner remake, but most of the criticism I’m hearing is that it’s not like the original. What could be? Trying to imitate what Patrick McGoohan did would be impossible. You’d have to be a genius. I didn’t much like the first installment at all. It was totally disorienting, if you came to it expecting an update of the same story idea. But part two became more interesting with some audacious liberties brought into the story line. One of these was the fact that No. 2 not only has a wife, who he keeps sedated, but a son, who turns out to be gay. We find out by part three that the Village exists in some surreal level of the Unconcious mind, and was totally No. 2’s creation. As head of Summacorp he engineered the Village into existence so that he could have a son, which he and his wife were incapable of in the plane of reality. He also wante dto help people damaged by life in the real world. When he finds out his son has murdered his gay lover and committed suicide, it destroys No. 2 and he in turn kills himself, after first handing the village over to No. 6. This version of the Prisoner puts its focus on No. 2 and No. 6 is more of a lost, floundering character, totally bewildered by everything. Until the end, when he assumes No. 2’s chair in the control/board room at Summacorp.
Some critics have pointed out that the remake was heavily influenced by the Lost TV series, which is quite possible. The idea of a group of people not knowing where they are fits this idea. And the elliptical storytelling style was a real struggle to sit through. Many scenes had dialog that starts out with an intriguing question, but the questions are never fully answered, with No. 2’s response usually trailing off into unfinished sentences. But there was a payoff in the end with an explanation of what the Village was.
If I were to take a guess, I would say this probably originated as a two hour script that somehow got stretched into six, with a lot of unnecessary padding out without the necessary work by the writer to make the story more coherent. I thought the miniseries was defeated by the style and its length, but I give the writer some credit for trying to do something more original than a mere carbon copy remake. He made it No. 2’s story, instead of No. 6.