Inspired by the recent release of The Raven, James comes up with a few alternate history movie ideas of his own. A reanimated Queen Victoria, anyone…?
As a fan of Edgar Allan Poe, I enjoyed James McTeigue’s The Raven. A film in the vein of Guy Richie’s Sherlock Holmes with Baltimore horror substituting bromantic Cockney capering, the overall style, aesthetic and allusions to Poe’s tales appealed to me.
Others disagree, however, and so far the film has been received negative reviews and a fair amount of flak. My only issue really is the decision to name it The Raven and not give it a fanciful-yet-specific title like The Curious Detective Investigation Conducted by Edgar Allan Poe and Confounded Colleagues Concerning a Series of Sinister Copycat Murders in the Baltimore Fog on the Eve of the Aforementioned Esteemed Author’s Strange and Tragic Demise.
It would be a bit of squeeze for theatre marquees, but it looks beautiful on paper when written in fountain pen. It would also distinguish the new movie from other films bearing the same title (the 1935 Universal horror and the Roger Corman’s 1963 triple-whammy of Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff) and not mislead anyone into thinking it’s a rigid adaptation of Poe’s original poem. If you’re excited about seeing John Cusack talking to a black bird in his study for 90 minutes, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.
As I said, I wasn’t disappointed, but other spectators are and, inevitably for a period piece based on true events and figures, much dissatisfaction relates to the mangling of history. How dare a bunch of philistine Hollywood hotshots drag Poe’s legend through the dust and bastardise him for a blockbuster thriller? How dare they misrepresent the author’s life and death and fabricate a spurious fiction around it to extract box office income? How dare they craft this cack handed, inaccurate piece of slight ‘entertainment’? (Not my views but pretty much a summary of the sort of critique The Raven’s received.)
They dare because they can, and because the past is there to be rewritten and sacred cows are mooing to be milked. The history student in me definitely has a problem with deliberate, politically-motivated historical revisionism, but in general I’m okay with the idea of playing fast and loose with he past. On screen, such activity can make for an extremely enjoyable, exhilarating experience if done with style and wit.
Inglourious Basterds - Quentin Tarantino’s inspired iconoclastic World War II yarn that has Jewish vigilantes scalping Nazis and seeks to explosively assassinate Hitler in a Paris cinema - is a prime example. I also have high hopes for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and am probably more excited about it than Spielberg’s upcoming Lincoln project with Daniel Day-Lewis in the presidential title role.
The two worst films I’ve seen so far this year have been the biopics J. Edgar and The Iron Lady, which were dull waxworks that would have benefitted from some surreal flourishes of alternate history (Maggie gets eaten by her ghost husband and Hoover forms a doo-wop group?). The presence of The Raven and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter on the slate suggests that Hollywood is keen on such fictitious invention, and if that’s the case, I’ve a few ideas for entertaining period flicks that tap that spirit and radically revive history’s heroes...
Mary Shelley: Modern Prometheus of Her Majesty’s Empire
It’s 1843 and Queen Victoria (Emily Blunt) has died. Keeping this catastrophe a secret from the public, the monarch’s closest courtiers kidnap Frankenstein author Mary Shelley (Tilda Swinton) and compel her to reanimate Victoria’s corpse so that the British Empire will live long and prosper. When Shelley has finished operating on Her Highness and blasted her with lightning bolts, she returns to the throne looking remarkably like Judi Dench, charged with enough electricity to win the Crimean War, quell the Indian mutiny and make it to her Diamond Jubilee. Shelley sadly dies in 1851, throttled by her grotesque regal creation.
Les voyage extraordinaire et grand ruse de Jules Verne
Blackmailed by a dastardly villain, French science fiction writer Jules Verne (Jean Dujardin in a bushy white beard) has been ordered to complete all the journeys described in his novels Around The World In Eighty Days, Journey To The Centre Of The Earth and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea in a mere fortnight.
If he fails to meet the challenge, his elusive foe will distribute badly translated prints of his works that will ruin his reputation as a fantastical visionary and have him go down in history as a smut peddler who produced tawdry pulp erotica. Luckily, Verne’s salvation comes in the surprise form of HG Wells (Edward Norton) whose time machine crashes into the French author’s paddle steamer and enables him to beat the deadline by 13 days.
The Inventions of Isaac Newton, Androgynous Demonslayer
England’s leading demonslayer (Gary Oldman in a marvellous wig) is overwhelmed by the armies of Satan that are spreading a contagion of vice and Devil worship across 17th century London. In hopeless desperation he calls upon the extremely peculiar, oddly attractive young academic Isaac Newton (Ellen Page) in order to overcome the malicious Hellspawn.
He (she?) invents gravity so that the flying demons plummet to the ground and discovers the refraction of light so that the happy power of rainbows can be harnessed and fired at hateful dark forces. Newton’s final masterstroke comes in the formulation of a range of mathematical principles that blow everyone’s mind, literally in the case of the demon breed, whose heads explode. Newton then bakes an apple pie for Oldman’s demonslayer and they elope into the sunset until the sequel calls for the eccentric genius to return and invent the Laws of Motion.
Marie Curie: Cancer Killer and Radioactive Kaiju Monster Wrestler
A Japanese kaiju monster comes crashing into an era of great scientific advancement in Europe and the new nuclear nightmare threatens to destroy modern civilisation. It’s up to pre-eminent radioactivity expert Marie Curie (Cate Blanchett) to advise the League of Nations’ Monsterbusting Division (Liam Neeson, Nathan Fillion, Ken Watanabe and other available international actors) and eliminate the invading danger.
It’s a journey of self-sacrifice for the graceful Curie who, as a result of her close investigations and epic wrestling matches with the atomic opponent in her Paris lab, dies of exposure. Overcome by guilt at its role in such a tragedy, the nuclear menace surrenders to the Monsterbusters and allows itself to be melted down so its radioactivity can be used to kill millions of cancer cells that are taking the lives of millions across the globe.
Nice. The past just got so much more cinematic and satisfying.
James’ previous column can be found here.
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