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This movie came out the year I was born, but I didn’t see it until yesterday. It’s one of the big disaster movies which were popular in the 70s, and I’m now realizing that I don’t think I’ve seen any of the others either, though I did see the Airplane! parodies. Now I'm tempted to look some of them up. The Towering Inferno was the other really big one, right? It's about a flaming skyscraper?
I said all I wanted from the movie was Belle Rosen being awesome and lots of upside down-ness. It really delivered on Belle Rosen, but only somewhat delivered on the upside down aspects.
There was plenty of suspenseful, harrowing travel through difficult areas, but it didn’t hit on the upside down aspect as much as I’d hoped. I did really enjoy the flipping over sequence, and the bit afterward where Susan is trapped on an upside down table bolted to the ceiling. But I was really looking forward to seeing the grand sweeping staircase Gallico describes being upside down, but it’s not in the movie at all. I also was hoping we’d get a really good sense of what areas looked like right side up before we saw them upside down, but, again, the spatial elements were a bit lacking.
Some of the really spectacular action set-pieces in the book were very toned-down for the movie, in particular the staircase-climbing sequences and one where they climb a sort of tower of engine parts, girders, etc. I’m not sure if this was because they would have been practically difficult, too expensive, or just seemed too out-there.
Belle Rosen was great. Shelley Winters played her as a type of Jewish grandma we all know – sweet, funny, a bit up in your business — who at first seems like the comic relief, but turns out to be heroic and saves the day. That was very satisfying. Her dialogue was also 100% better.
I enjoyed the movie a lot. It’s definitely of its time, but I like accidental period pieces. I could have done with less bombastic yelling, especially when the two biggest bombastic yelling culprits, sexy young Gene Hackman (the Reverend and leader) and Ernest Borgnine (the argumentative cop) bombastically yell at each other. But the story was engaging and a lot of the action sequences were really tense.
The movie was more humane than the book, with far more likable characters. The book has two cheating husbands, a rape, domestic violence, the Reverend lying to a woman that he was going to marry her to get up her skirt, and a woman who’s madly in love with an alcoholic guy who leads her on when the only thing he enjoys about her is that she can hold a lot of booze. None of this is in the movie. While the cop’s wife is still a former prostitute, we know this from the get-go rather than it being a shock twist at the end. She’s also pretty likable in a brassy/bitchy way, rather than a vicious, racist, anti-Semitic harridan who’s mean to everyone. In the movie, her husband loves her and supports her. In the book, he beats her up. I see all these movie changes as huge improvements.
There was also a bit which was very sensibly cut from the book, which was that in the book pretty much everyone on the ship believes that the intense asshole cop must have gone on the cruise in order to investigate someone onboard, because it's totally impossible for a cop to go on vacation or have a personal life.
In the movie, nobody has sex while climbing for their lives against a ticking clock. In the book, this happens three times if you count the rape. This means that the movie did not have the extraordinary scene in which two characters foraging for food discover a gigantic pile of pastries and packaged cookies, push enough of them aside to make a space where they can lie down, and pluck pastries from the teetering mounds surrounding them before having sex there. I kind of wish that had been immortalized in Technicolor because it would have been a contender for the campiest scene ever filmed.
There were some other interesting differences which I’ll cut as they’re very spoilery for both movie and book, in case anyone has not yet been spoiled/still cares.
The Reverend in the book is cold and unfeeling, and abandons a bunch of people to their deaths. By the end of the book you realize that while he did shepherd his party to safety, he was a very shady character, possibly a lunatic or criminal, and they might have been better off staying where they were. He dies by screaming at God, offering himself as a sacrifice, and deliberately leaping to his death. This may or may not cause the ship to briefly stop sinking.
The Reverend in the movie is a good guy who’s just an iconoclast. He does lead them to safety, and tries hard to get others to join them. While he does make the same maniacal sacrifice speech, he does it while turning a valve to cut off some steam so the rest can pass, and falls to his death because doing that put him in a position where he couldn’t get back to safety rather than literally hurling himself to his death as a human sacrifice.
The ending of the movie managed to have way fewer survivors and still feel more upbeat than the book’s.
Robin, the know-it-all young boy, survives the movie. In the book he’s lost and we never find out what happened to him other than that he wasn’t among the survivors. The movie ends with the survivors getting on a helicopter in a last scene of togetherness. The book ends with the survivors separated and realizing that every single relationship that was forged on their journey is not going to work out.
In the book, the people from the main party are not the only survivors. A number of others also make it out, including people who our party had left to what they assumed was a certain death. As a result, they realize that their entire harrowing journey might have been totally unnecessary and cost the lives of those who died on it, as some people got rescued by staying put in the exact places they left. This casts an even darker light on the Reverend’s belief that God wants you to make the utmost effort by yourself, as they made that effort but it’s very unclear that God rewarded or wanted it.
In the movie, the five people who make it to the hull are the only survivors. This proves that they were right to do what they did, and their suffering and sacrifices were meaningful. So having only six people survive vs. fifty or so actually comes across as a happier ending.
Which is a little unsettling if you think about it. We care so much more about the people whose stories we know that we'd rather have their efforts matter than have their efforts be meaningless but many more people survive. All the same, I still prefer the movie ending.
The Poseidon Adventure
on instant video.
I said all I wanted from the movie was Belle Rosen being awesome and lots of upside down-ness. It really delivered on Belle Rosen, but only somewhat delivered on the upside down aspects.
There was plenty of suspenseful, harrowing travel through difficult areas, but it didn’t hit on the upside down aspect as much as I’d hoped. I did really enjoy the flipping over sequence, and the bit afterward where Susan is trapped on an upside down table bolted to the ceiling. But I was really looking forward to seeing the grand sweeping staircase Gallico describes being upside down, but it’s not in the movie at all. I also was hoping we’d get a really good sense of what areas looked like right side up before we saw them upside down, but, again, the spatial elements were a bit lacking.
Some of the really spectacular action set-pieces in the book were very toned-down for the movie, in particular the staircase-climbing sequences and one where they climb a sort of tower of engine parts, girders, etc. I’m not sure if this was because they would have been practically difficult, too expensive, or just seemed too out-there.
Belle Rosen was great. Shelley Winters played her as a type of Jewish grandma we all know – sweet, funny, a bit up in your business — who at first seems like the comic relief, but turns out to be heroic and saves the day. That was very satisfying. Her dialogue was also 100% better.
I enjoyed the movie a lot. It’s definitely of its time, but I like accidental period pieces. I could have done with less bombastic yelling, especially when the two biggest bombastic yelling culprits, sexy young Gene Hackman (the Reverend and leader) and Ernest Borgnine (the argumentative cop) bombastically yell at each other. But the story was engaging and a lot of the action sequences were really tense.
The movie was more humane than the book, with far more likable characters. The book has two cheating husbands, a rape, domestic violence, the Reverend lying to a woman that he was going to marry her to get up her skirt, and a woman who’s madly in love with an alcoholic guy who leads her on when the only thing he enjoys about her is that she can hold a lot of booze. None of this is in the movie. While the cop’s wife is still a former prostitute, we know this from the get-go rather than it being a shock twist at the end. She’s also pretty likable in a brassy/bitchy way, rather than a vicious, racist, anti-Semitic harridan who’s mean to everyone. In the movie, her husband loves her and supports her. In the book, he beats her up. I see all these movie changes as huge improvements.
There was also a bit which was very sensibly cut from the book, which was that in the book pretty much everyone on the ship believes that the intense asshole cop must have gone on the cruise in order to investigate someone onboard, because it's totally impossible for a cop to go on vacation or have a personal life.
In the movie, nobody has sex while climbing for their lives against a ticking clock. In the book, this happens three times if you count the rape. This means that the movie did not have the extraordinary scene in which two characters foraging for food discover a gigantic pile of pastries and packaged cookies, push enough of them aside to make a space where they can lie down, and pluck pastries from the teetering mounds surrounding them before having sex there. I kind of wish that had been immortalized in Technicolor because it would have been a contender for the campiest scene ever filmed.
There were some other interesting differences which I’ll cut as they’re very spoilery for both movie and book, in case anyone has not yet been spoiled/still cares.
The Reverend in the book is cold and unfeeling, and abandons a bunch of people to their deaths. By the end of the book you realize that while he did shepherd his party to safety, he was a very shady character, possibly a lunatic or criminal, and they might have been better off staying where they were. He dies by screaming at God, offering himself as a sacrifice, and deliberately leaping to his death. This may or may not cause the ship to briefly stop sinking.
The Reverend in the movie is a good guy who’s just an iconoclast. He does lead them to safety, and tries hard to get others to join them. While he does make the same maniacal sacrifice speech, he does it while turning a valve to cut off some steam so the rest can pass, and falls to his death because doing that put him in a position where he couldn’t get back to safety rather than literally hurling himself to his death as a human sacrifice.
The ending of the movie managed to have way fewer survivors and still feel more upbeat than the book’s.
Robin, the know-it-all young boy, survives the movie. In the book he’s lost and we never find out what happened to him other than that he wasn’t among the survivors. The movie ends with the survivors getting on a helicopter in a last scene of togetherness. The book ends with the survivors separated and realizing that every single relationship that was forged on their journey is not going to work out.
In the book, the people from the main party are not the only survivors. A number of others also make it out, including people who our party had left to what they assumed was a certain death. As a result, they realize that their entire harrowing journey might have been totally unnecessary and cost the lives of those who died on it, as some people got rescued by staying put in the exact places they left. This casts an even darker light on the Reverend’s belief that God wants you to make the utmost effort by yourself, as they made that effort but it’s very unclear that God rewarded or wanted it.
In the movie, the five people who make it to the hull are the only survivors. This proves that they were right to do what they did, and their suffering and sacrifices were meaningful. So having only six people survive vs. fifty or so actually comes across as a happier ending.
Which is a little unsettling if you think about it. We care so much more about the people whose stories we know that we'd rather have their efforts matter than have their efforts be meaningless but many more people survive. All the same, I still prefer the movie ending.
The Poseidon Adventure
on instant video.
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