What makes a good movie? Well, in my opinion, if the movie is based upon a book, faithfulness to the book is crucial. The book is the canon, and where the movie portrays something different, that just isn’t right because it didn’t happen that way.

It is interesting to listen to movie people talk. This evening, the kids were watching some of the extra material on the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings, and in one of the clips Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) explained that a movie could stray from the original source as long as it stayed true to the idea of the book. In the clip, they then talked about how their deviations from the book made the story into a better film. (Overall, they did do a good job with the Lord of the Rings, but there are some major deviations that just aren’t called for. I still find it annoying that they eliminated Glorfindle and instead had Arwen take Frodo on the wild flight to the ford. I’m sorry, but she wasn’t there and didn’t save Frodo from the black riders.)

Last night Mrs. Knilram watched an old Pride and Prejudice from 1940, staring Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet and Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy. In that adaptation, they strayed quite a bit from the source text. I didn’t watch it, but walked through the room a few times while it was on. I was shocked to see at at the end of the movie, Darcy explains to Elizabeth how Lady Catherine’s confrontation with Elizabeth was all contrived by Darcy to find out if Elizabeth loved him or his money. He then tells her how much Lady Catherine likes her because of her spunk. Everyone except Elizabeth treats her with deference and she likes people who stand up to her.

Please. That just isn’t the way it really happened, and it is wrong to pretend otherwise. Lady Catherine doesn’t like Elizabeth, and she is not pleased with her impertinence. You can omit in the movie that she had plans for Darcy to marry her own daughter, but you can’t ignore her feelings toward Elizabeth’s usurpation. From what I saw, I can’t recommend this adaption of the Pride and Prejudice story.

However, my spies report that the new Pride and Prejudice is very well done, and the worst offense is that Darcy proposes to Elizabeth when they are both going for a walk in their pajamas.

At least they decided not to have Darcy go swimming on returning to Pemberley and bump into Elizabeth while he is dressed in his underwear like they did in the A&E Pride and Prejudice.

Really, why aren’t movie people satisfied with recording what actually happened instead of making up things? Stick to the canon!