![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redfiona99From ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
joanne_c's suggestion. Some minor spoilers for the first two seasons herein, and some spoilers for the Count of Monte Cristo.
I first started watching Revenge because the idea of a modernised version of The Count of Monte Cristo intrigued me. Because a lot of modernisations fail because there's things that happened then that can't happen now. This is particularly true of anything that has duels in, duelling having fallen out of fashion.
I was also intrigued by the idea of Edmond being a girl in it, because it's unusual that a female character gets to be all "vengeance yay!". This had the interesting corollary of giving one of the male characters the "have you maybe considered not venging and being happy instead" role which normally goes to a female character (although not in the original book. Bertuccio/Nolan does that too.)
The first episode starts with a wonderful conceit, throwing you straight into the action before going "6 months previously". And the "opening" being at an engagement party was a nice easter egg for the Monte Cristo crowd.
Obviously it's not a direct retelling, nor does it stick to the characters*, but it's still an ambitious and clever way of doing it. Also, anyone that has waded through the parts of the book where it's obvious that Dumas was being paid by the line and had debts to pay off will have no problems with the endless financial subplot in season 2.
*closer, I suspect, than the new Three Musketeers that the BBC has promised me.
joanne_c's suggestion. Some minor spoilers for the first two seasons herein, and some spoilers for the Count of Monte Cristo.I first started watching Revenge because the idea of a modernised version of The Count of Monte Cristo intrigued me. Because a lot of modernisations fail because there's things that happened then that can't happen now. This is particularly true of anything that has duels in, duelling having fallen out of fashion.
I was also intrigued by the idea of Edmond being a girl in it, because it's unusual that a female character gets to be all "vengeance yay!". This had the interesting corollary of giving one of the male characters the "have you maybe considered not venging and being happy instead" role which normally goes to a female character (although not in the original book. Bertuccio/Nolan does that too.)
The first episode starts with a wonderful conceit, throwing you straight into the action before going "6 months previously". And the "opening" being at an engagement party was a nice easter egg for the Monte Cristo crowd.
Obviously it's not a direct retelling, nor does it stick to the characters*, but it's still an ambitious and clever way of doing it. Also, anyone that has waded through the parts of the book where it's obvious that Dumas was being paid by the line and had debts to pay off will have no problems with the endless financial subplot in season 2.
*closer, I suspect, than the new Three Musketeers that the BBC has promised me.
