With some of the success of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters being due to it's wickedly clever creature feature trailer,it only stands to reason that the good folks at Quirk Classics would follow the same sinister recipe for their newest Austen related terror title coming out very soon.
Yes,the official trailer for Pride & Prejudice & Zombies:Dawn of the Dreadfuls has hit the internet with a bloody vengeance and made quite a splash indeed. It has all of the thrills,chills and zombie massacre action that any Gentle Reader and horror movie aficionado could want and then some:
While the new DOD trailer is most exciting,the true challenge here is seeing how those who enjoy the original PP&Z will take to this book which is in a rather tricky category of fiction both of page and screen status,the prequel. Prequels,for those not quite sure of the meaning of the term,are stories that come after a well established book/film but the plot lines are set in a time earlier than the original story.
A good example of that is Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,the first sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark that takes place about a year earlier and gives Dr. Jones a new locale and cast of characters to work with as he stumbles into an adventure in India. Many other film franchises followed suit,since this format allowed them to only recast certain actors and a little more leeway with story lines. Some have come to see Temple of Doom as the one that started that ball rolling,for better or for worse:
Others,however,claim that honor for The Godfather,Part II,which gives us the back story of deceased mafia patriarch Vito Corleone(played by Robert DeNiro)along side the continuing saga of his youngest son Michael,who keeps the family criminal empire alive by hook,crook and dark betrayal upon betrayal.
The prequel portions of the film are really meant to be a point/counterpoint to Michael's struggles to hold together the business and family connections that his father built up,only to find that price for both creating and maintaining such a position of power is a heavy one,regardless of generations. The strength of both sides of this saga coin is that either one would make a fine film on it's own yet together,they make a masterpiece:
Prequels in the hands of Hollywood do not guarantee that even the lead actors are exempt from being recast. Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October film adaptation was followed up by it's literary prequel Patriot Games but the pivotal Jack Ryan character was played here by Harrison Ford,who was a tad older than Alec Baldwin who originated the part in the earlier film.
Ford took over the Jack Ryan series,which turned out well for the most part and his style of acting did suit the character but it's interestingly ironic that in order to keep these films going,Jack Ryan had to become the action thriller version of Benjamin Button:
A long awaited prequel is the live action version of The Hobbit,J.R.R. Tolkien's classic fantasy novel that predates the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was made into an animated feature film back in the mid-seventies by the Rankin-Bass crew and still has quite a bit of cult movie chic to it today.
Guillermo Del Tor is said to be on tap for the director's chair for the new Hobbit instead of Peter Jackson,which I think will work out fine. Del Toro has the same kind of visual wonderment style as Jackson,only with a more pronounced approach to creating awe and amazement on screen which should suit past and future fans of The Hobbit to a T:
Dawn of the Dreadfuls may brook some opposition from a few fans who are a bit more particular about these things,but the lighthearted and the lively amongst us will be able to thoroughly enjoy this giggle worthy gruesome romp with the Bennet girls yet again. For those of you still in doubt,console yourselves with the fact that at least this is a prequel rather than a sequel(which even many of uninitiated into Austen fare know she didn't write),so mellow your harshness,please:
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