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Inside of a dog it's too dark to read

David S. Goyer to Sherlock Holmes-ify Count of Monte Cristo

by Susana Polo | 2:44 pm, March 20th, 2013


This is merely a portion of a diagram of the character relationships in The Count of Monte Cristo that I inexpertly threw together in Microsoft OneNote ages ago for no reason other than that I really kinda like the book a lot.

And the reason why I even read the book is because I saw the shlocky 2002 adaptation that drastically simplified the original plot, and inferred, rightly, that a movie could not contain that many adventure tropes without most of them actually appearing in a very likely much more complicated book. So I’m certainly not against movie adaptations of The Count of Monte Cristo in principle. I’m just not sure if this new one is looking like it’s going to have much more to say than the 2002 version.

David S. Goyer, writer behind the Nolan Batman trilogy and Man of Steel is tapped to make the movie… but not to write it. He’ll be in the directors chair on this one, helming a feature film for the first time 2009. While I can’t argue with his writing chops, his feature directing portfolio includes The Unborn, The Invisible, and Blade: Trinity and not much else. Writing duties went to Michael Robert Johnson, of Sherlock Holmes, that is, the Robert Downey, Jr./Jude Law Sherlock Holmes, and the whole shebang is being produced by Jeremy Bolt, of Death Race and the 2011 The Three Musketeers.

At this point you should have figured what all of these make when you put them together: the ever so vaguely steampunk (but no so much as to freak out a mainstream audience like in Three Musketeers) self-referentiality of Sherlock Holmes is going to be spread lightly over a bombastic version of The Count of Monte Cristo‘s newly-simplified plot, with plenty of granary explosions and sword fights to keep things from “slowing down.”

Which is not to say I won’t go see that just to watch the train stagecoach-wreck in action (and also on the off chance that it manages to be genuinely enjoyable), but as somebody who’s actually devoured The Count more than once, I’d just like to point out that even without Hollywood embellishment, extra explosions, or gritty realism thrown in, the book already includes more than its fair share of epic bombast. To quote from the introduction of my annotated copy, the story features “a female serial poisoner, two cases of infanticide, a stabbing and three suicides; an extended scene of torture and execution; drug-induced sexual fantasies, illegitimacy, transvestism and lesbianism; a display of the author’s classical learning, and his knowledge of modern European history, the customs and diet of the Italians, the effects of hashish, and so on.” Not to mention a kidnapping from the middle of Rome during Carnival by a bandit lord named Luigi Vampa, the aforementioned lesbian elopement, secret murders that ruin family standings years down the line, and a major character who can only communicate by blinking. Additionally, fans of Game of Thrones and Les Miserables will feel right at home with its “KILL/IMPOVERISH EVERYONE” ending, the moral of which is that righteous revenge is still worth it if innocent people suffer, as long as some of the innocent people don’t suffer, an ending that, I might ad, the 2002 adaptation didn’t have the guts to deliver on.

But then, I sometimes make graphical representations of character relationships in The Count of Monte Cristo for fun.

(via The Hollywood Reporter.)

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  • Anonymous

    I can definitely appreciate the sentiment that there’s no need to dumb the story down and add in gratuitous CGI explosions all over the place, I can sort of get their point. Each summer, the wave of movies really try to one-up the previous year’s offerings in terms of the visuals and what not so I can see why they’d want to go this route, especially after the success of the Sherlock Holmes movies.

  • OdinsEye

    I hope it is good, i really do not want to be disappointed again.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003037095323 Jerilyn Nighy

    The Count of Monte Cristo needs breathing room. A cable series is the only proper way to adapt this, or any stories by Dumas for that matter.

  • http://twitter.com/nellydreadful Nelly Dreadful

    My favourite adaptation of the Count story is the anime Gankutsuou, which, um, went a bit further than steampunk as far as taking license with the setting. (Sorta… Maetsknup? A sci-fi story set in the far future with anachronistic elements from the past, rather than a story in the past with futuristic elements? Whatever. Carriages pulled by cybernetic horses and masquerade balls on the moon.)

    But as far as plot, I think it stayed pretty close, with the interesting twist that they changed not the story so much, per se, but the POV character. Gankutsuou focuses pretty solidly on Albert and the other children of the evildoers who wronged the count, kids who had no idea what their parents did for their power and wealth and initially have no understanding of why all this horrible shit is happening to their families or who this weird Count guy is who just mysteriously showed up.

    So that one kinda had it’s cake and ate it too, with the giant-robot-sword-duels AND complex plotlines and philosophical agonizing over the nature of right versus wrong. So spiffy FX and anachronisms don’t necessarily mean suck… though the drastically shorter run time of a movie vs. a series might…

  • Anonymous

    When I was a teenager, I saw a French miniseries adaptation of Monte Cristo starting Gerard Depardieu. When I read the unabridged version many years later, I remember being really impressed by how much from the book actually ended up in the series. But it’s been more than 10 years, so I’m sure that the reality of the miniseries is, like my memory, rather flawed.

    That said, it’s been many years since I last read the unabridged version, and I seriously have no recollection of any lesbianism, but this is just an obvious sign that it’s time for a reread! Yay!

  • http://technicalluddite.com/ Hannele Kormano

    The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favourite guilty pleasure action movies (see also: the Mummy) But then, I’m _really_ bad at reading classic lit (and I was disappointed that the awesome gaoler wasn’t in it).

  • http://twitter.com/diefrankenmaus Kate

    Oh, Mary Sue. It was hideously cruel to bold RDJ’s name in an article on The Count of Monte Cristo. My poor hopes.

  • http://www.facebook.com/amber.d.bushnell Amber Dawn Bushnell

    SHLOCKY?! Seeing the 2002 movie is what made me want to read the book! There is nothing I don’t love about that movie! Granted, I’m only about 50 page into the book so maybe that’s why…

  • http://www.facebook.com/kristina.couch.3 Kristina Couch

    But it cut the lesbianism, so I’m torn.

  • http://twitter.com/Cluisanna Cluisanna

    YOU DID NOT JUST SAY THAT! The Count of Monte Christo is my favorite book ever, and I was shocked and appalled at the Depardieu-version. They got nothing right. Nothing. HE GETS BACK TOGETHER WITH MERCEDES???? SERIOUSLY??? The whole point of the book was that he fucking. Needs. To. Move. On., and not that everything can be as it was before. Ughghghghgh. It doesn’t help that Gerard Depardieu is such an ugly bastard and there is nothing I want to see less than sex scenes including him (ESPECIALLY IF THEY WEREN’T IN THE FREAKING BOOK).
    Sorry for ranting at you, but I REALLY hated that movie series, or in fact any adaptation I have ever seen of the book. Oh well >.>

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