2004 brought us the silver screen version of Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events, but the movie missed the mark by a long shot. The film tried too hard to make light of the dark situations of the book and wrongly attempted to squeeze three or four books worth of plot lines into only an hour and forty-eight minutes which left audiences confused and oddly unsatisfied. 13 years later Unfortunate Events is getting a makeover. Since early summer, Netflix has been teasing the reboot of the popular children’s book series as part of its line of original series shows.
One huge difference from the Netflix reboot and the film is the sequence of scenes. In the film the three newly orphaned Baudelaire children are passed around from guardian to guardian and every time each one goes missing or ends up dead, then they are sent back to Count Olaf. At the end of film the children are forced to participate in a play the Count and his very untalented theater troupe are performing, but it is all an elaborate ruse so he can obtain the fortune of the Baudelaire’s. In the Netflix show, the play takes place within the first two episodes as the Count attempts to bind himself legally to the inheritance, but it does not work. After the play takes place is when the children are sent to live other relatives such as their snake loving Uncle Monty and their erratic Aunt Josephine. This plays an important part in the telling of the unfortunate circumstances of the Baudelaire’s as it makes more sense than the movie version. Olaf is jailed after the play and the children live happily ever after, but that does not seem to fit the nature of the story line. In the Netflix show instead the play happened and he is caught for his scheme of gaining access to the children’s inheritance and he starts to chase them down as they bounce from guardian to guardian. This difference in scene order makes more sense to story as it provides a real reason for the Count to chase the children
Relating back to the scenes in the show versus the movie, there are more scenes included in the show than in the movie as there is more time for them to be shown. In the movie, it is obvious the scenes missing from the story and so the movie leaves huge gaps that seem to make the audience figure it out for themselves, which can be difficult to do if you haven’t read the books. In the Netflix show, the scenes missing from the movie are included and you actually get to see the horrible journey of the Baudelaire kids. You also see Justice Strauss a lot more as well as she is a constant, unofficial guardian for the children. She acts as the one shining light in their seeming bleak world as she helps them out to make sense of the mystery surrounding their parent’s death and how Count Olaf came to be their guardian.
Another thing unique to the show you really don’t get in the movie is the humor. Despite Jim Carrey playing the Count in the movie, the humor was not consistent to the theme. In the movie the humor was entertaining funny, actual comedy, but the show does it very differently. In the Netflix series the humor is dark and often centered around how incompetent the adults in the Baudelaire’s lives are and how the children are the only ones who see the world for what it is. The children must suffer through the adults, such as Mr. Poe and Justice Strauss, twisting their words to hear what they want to hear and also them hanging on the word of Count Olaf as to make the children seem unreliable and bratty. Kids, especially our age, can relate to this while also finding the absurd humor to be something funny as we have probably experienced it ourselves at some point in time.
Netflix corrected the mistakes made in the movie and made the terrible tale of the Baudelaire’s an interesting one. The Series of Unfortunate Events is definitely worth investing in.
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