Be Seeing You

[andrewducker]

Nine minutes of footage from the new US version of The Prisoner.

Ian McKellen is, as always, amazing.

Comments

[meico.livejournal.com]

Whoa. That looks decent. It makes me hopeful. :)

[opusfluke.livejournal.com]

This is one of those moments when I am split in two. One part is screaming "SACRILEGE!" while the other watches objectively and ticks off points. On the whole it'll either be the event of the decade bringing new levels of paranoia to the uninitiated or it'll be a great steaming pile of manure. Though having Sir Ian cast as No. 2 is inspired. I once saw him read the back of a bottle of brown sauce on telly once and yes, he could have won an Oscar for the performance.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Ooooh. Niiiice.

-- Steve is also hopelessly trapped on AMC's site for the show, as it's showing full episodes of the McGoohan version through streaming media.

-- Steve loved the original to death, and thinks the new version might come close to doing it justice. Maybe.

[mb2u]

I think the remake is a very good, very bad thing.

It's very good. Ian McKellen is a formidable Number Two, even better than Leo McKern. I'm liking Jim Caviezel as Number Six-but I will always, always consider Patrick McGoohan THE Number Six. There's some nice takes on some classic scenes. The Village has a nice strangeness; moving it to the desert makes sense for a more isolated feel.

It's very bad. I thought that a remake/retcon of The Prisoner would be a perfect way to take the original concepts of control, identity and privacy to a new level. Look at how our government has used extraordinary rendition, extralegal monitoring, torture and imprisonment against those it considered enemies of the state. Number Six was a man of principle, who walked away from his position-and was taken by a suspicious State for interrogation and monitoring.

What we get is a psychological blender. Nobody remembers anything but the Village? Memories are wiped out-to make them more compliant? The original was about not destroying memory, but taking everything from it. Number Two refused to believe Number Six's reason for quitting, and would go to any length to find the "truth." The preview of the new series convinces me it's going to go so far away from the original...

Does this mean I hate it? Not at all. I think it'll be well worth watching. But I don't think it's going to take the kind of risks the original did.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

That looks very cool indeed. I'm eagerly awaiting it.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

This looks like it might be very impressive indeed. A slavish remake would have risked both falling short of the original and cheapening it, so I'm prepared to accept some changes to the premise.

(And I should imagine that every Half-Life fan out there is squeeing "OMG Sir Ian to play the G-Man!" Interestingly, near the very end of that preview, No 6 refers to himself not as a 'free man' but as a 'freeman'...)

[andrewducker]

He'd be a good G-Man. I wonder if a good HL2 movie would be possible.