Shaun Seaman

Ray Bradbury is on record as saying that if he were able to go back in time, he would have taken out the final scene in which the country is nuked. But the thing about books is, once the author lets them into the world they no longer belong to them. America fell in love with the book as it was written, not with what Bradbury wished he'd written. My sense is the film makers heard this interview, and took it as license to make changes where they saw fit. I think it makes sense to adapt certain aspects to ensure the movie has the same impact on our time that the book had on its, but they didn't achieve that effect. The story was picked apart and the characters altered so significantly that the end result is a film which might be interesting if it existed in a universe in which the book had never been written, but has a different soul entirely from the the source material. Having said all that, if you're a fan of the book, the movie is worth checking out for curiosity's sake, just don't expect to walk away feeling the same way you felt when you read the book.

Sorkin has noted that when scripting The West Wing, he never referenced any recent President (I think before Ford, but it could have been further back). The sound logic was that once the point of reference was too close, the viewer subconsciously made a mental calculation of where the fictitious cabinet fell on time, and it felt less grounded as a result. With Being the Ricardos, I think there’s a parallel. Anyone who actively watched I Love Lucy has such a firm representation of the cast in their minds, that our brains are effortlessly picking apart anything that doesn’t conform to those expectations, and it unfortunately makes it difficult to stay in the moment when watching this film. Let me be clear; the acting was fantastic. The script was fantastic, and the directing was fantastic. If this had been a play and I was anywhere behind the 6th row, or if I’d only casually seen clips of Lucy’s show/life throughout the years, I’m confident things would have been just blurry enough that may mind wouldn’t be doing mental gymnastics to reconcile the movie with reality, but it was hard to do that in high definition, watching the movie in the comfort of the same home I watched the show it was based on in. All that said, if you can divorce your mind from the need to reconcile the actors’ physicality and cadence from those of the actual Ricardo’s, then you’ll enjoy an exceptionally well written, acted, and directed story.

Several reviews have made note of how improved the series is over the source material, and they aren’t wrong; the character motivations, developments, and arcs are much more well flushed out. Ironically, the meticulous attention to detail and drive for perfection only proves Huxley’s thoughts on man streamlining his world until he’s perfected away his own humanity. It sounds like a bad thing, but after seeing how much I preferred the series to the book, I’m not so sure.

In the infinite continuum of multiverses, there exists some version of Benedict Cumberbatch that is tearing up at the standing ovation he’s receiving as he accepts an Academy Award for Best Actor for his Portrayal of Dr. Steven Strange. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s a version of him that just made. $11.45 for wiggling his toes on OnlyFans under the alias “Mr. Strange”. If you’re reading this from the same Universe that had to shut down for two years because someone in China ate a bat, I think you can guess which end of that spectrum you fall in. Great effort though.