New adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four in 2016

Iunno. I always hesitate to see reproductions of great works. I didn't like the Moore version of The Scarlet Letter, but I heard the DiCaprio Gatsby was excellent. 1984 was a very influential novel for me. I don't know if I would pay to see the new interpretation, because if it is anything like the movie made from Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder, I will run away screaming.

Who would you choose for Winston?

What about Daniel Craig? He looks like him, but I don't know his background in theater. I had to look up Marsen on imdb.

Radford's version is excellent, but I'll be interested to see this one.

I'll throw a hat in the ring for Viggo Mortensen. I always do.

It's not going to be a musical, right??

Magdalen said:

It's not going to be a musical, right??

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Oh yeah. I went to the previews. A highlight for me was I'LL BE STAMPING ON A HUMAN FACE FOREVER (O'Brien/the Inner Party Singers), a classic Broadway chorus-line number, but OLDTHINKERS UNBELLYFEEL INGSOC (Syme/Emannuel Goldstein's Ghost), done in the unconventional style of a rap battle, will be a breakout hit.

What?! A new musical by Mel Brooks!? "Springtime for busy-bodies at the NSA!"

So, this will be the first new adaptation since DHS adapted the work for their operations manual? Should be good.

Magdalen said:

It's not going to be a musical, right??

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That's what I was guessing, and it'll start out with Winston already in love with Big Brother. Lust from afar, actually. The Party will be led by benevolent angels who only have the good of the populace in mind, and Winston's job will be correcting history to show the real truth, even when it runs counter to the political narrative.

A well-respected mathematician will prove that 2+2 actually does add up to 5 when the math is performed on a multiverse-tunnelling replicator, ushering in the post-scarcity economy of caviar, champagne and diamonds for everybody. The Thought Police will patrol the streets, carrying magic wands that instantly "Turn That Frown Upside Down" and giving away a free unicorn with every attitude adjustment.

Julia, of course, will be a hot lil' vixen, luring Winston to multi-hour recreational orgies, where he learns the new party slogans, "Sharing is Caring", "The More The Merrier" and "Two's Company, Three's a Party, Four or More is Hale and Hearty." Big Brother is ambi-sexual, and appears on the Big Screen during these orgies with his BFF, Emmanuel Goldstein, in the Two Minute Screws.

C.bronco said:

Who would you choose for Winston?

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David Spade.

If they turned Titanic into a musical, they can do it to 1984.

I can easily envision the Two Minute Hate stomp dance.

Some sort of dreamlike ballet number early on can illustrate Winston's fear of rats, foreshadowing a more menacing version in the crucial scene at the end.*

Surely the proles deserve some kind of lighthearted Mary Poppinesque number.** Maybe two, just to break up the heaviness. That obese woman hanging laundry deserves at least one number to herself, as I think of it. Perhaps, for a touch of irony, the film can go back and forth between her singing trite state-manufactured love ditties while hanging up dingy underwear and Julia and Winston in the little room above the shop doing a touching duet about love and rebellion.

And I'd like to see Winston's mother get a short but poignant number in a flashback, as she clutches her dying daughter to her bosom. She can represent the death of the world we know, the one Winston can barely remember but knows instinctively must have existed.

Oh. Wait. You all weren't serious?


ETA:

*the former to be entitled "Rats," and the latter "Room 101"

** entitled, of course, "If There Is Hope It Lies in the Proles"

Oh, and you could do a perfectly marvelous number at the beginning, where Julia is trying to work up the courage to slip Winston a love note while he's thinking she's a member of the Thought Police and envisioning smashing her head in with a cobblestone.*

Again, a duet, going back and forth, with grinding machinery and a menacing parade of faceless automatons in the background.

ETA:

And of course Winston must do a wistful ballad about the Golden Country.

ETA:

* entitled "Corrupt to the Bones" -- a phrase that will also feature in a shared repeated refrain throughout the duet.

ETA:

Why, yes, I am mentally writing the musical, to the detriment of my work. Why do you ask?


ETA:

Nick Cave and Tom Waits need to collaborate on the music.

People, this could be a thing. Really.

Magdalen said:

It's not going to be a musical, right??

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CassandraW said:

If they turned Titanic into a musical, they can do it to 1984.

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Hell, they did it to Metropolis.

Ok. I'm assigning the Corrupt to the Bones duet to Cave. The mix of love and twisted violence and corruption is right up his alley. Ditto on the number that goes back and forth between the laundress and Julia and Winston in their little room. Also, I think he gets the poignant flashback to Winston's mother. We want to mix it up with the dark foreshadowing of the coming dystopian world and Winston's childhood selfishness in running off with the chocolate, and Cave will get that just right.

The Golden Country ballad goes to Waits, I think -- in the style of his sweet ballads full of imagery. He also gets the Two Minute Hate stomp -- he'll give it just the right touch of wild discord it needs. I'm thinking he gets the Mary Poppinesque prole bit as well -- done in the spirit one of his fun loony-tune type things like Filipino Box Spring Hog.

Don't mind me, folks. Just move along and leave me to babble.