The Prisoner 1969 version
by Doug Collins
on
Nov 16, 2009 at 6:09:31 pm
I just saw the pilot episode a few days ago. I loved the opening of the show, it gave you the entire backstory of the main character on how he came to be in the village, without a single word being said. Ya just don't see stuff like that anymore.
Haven't seen the new version yet, got it on the dvr.
Re: The Prisoner 1969 version by Mark Suszko on Nov 17, 2009 at 5:32:33 pm
Missed part one of the new version, part two was draggy and soap-opera-ish. Hope to see the beginning again as AMC is good about repeats. So far, not impressed.
Re: The Prisoner 1969 version by Mark Suszko on Nov 19, 2009 at 5:39:40 pm
Watched some more of the A&E new one last night, and Ian McKellan is the only thing that impresses me in the show. The revised plot premise is deliberately opaque and frankly, less interesting and more banal than the more direct original series. My wife tried to sit and watch it with me, and her overall impression before giving up and walking off was; "drugs, drugs, drugs, it's all just drugs, when do we get a story?"
I don't know anybody that really liked the last episode of the original version, it's not entirely satisfying one way or the other, McGoohan really liked to mind-frack the audience, and I'm not sure he even knew how to end it or what it all meant when he wrote and directed it... but I'll take it over this new one, for all of that. You felt McGoohan's Number 6 always really had a chance, trapped he might have been, but nevertheless never truly helpless... but that's really not what I felt in the remake. I just wanted it to be over.
Re: The Prisoner 1969 version by Mark Suszko on Nov 24, 2009 at 11:45:52 pm
My wife thought he was the weakest part of the thing. I think he's like Eric Bana; I just hate Bana in everything I've seen him in.
You would think with all the grist for the mill we get from today's headlines, a reboot of The Prisoner could work very well. Instead, I think they kind of got lost exploring down one little narrow alleyway of plot development and I think they took away the things that made Number Six interesting. And they really put him in a situation where he really was impotent, which is not at all how the original show was. In the old show, Six was a trapped man, but his will and imagination were freer than his keepers.
God, I loved that show; it helped me thru adolescence and all the peer pressure of that.
Re: The Prisoner 1969 version by David Roth Weiss on Nov 25, 2009 at 2:31:04 am
[Mark Suszko]"I think he's like Eric Bana; I just hate Bana in everything I've seen him in. "
I can't believe you said that. It's uncanny, for years we never agreed on anything, now it often seems like you're speaking my thoughts.
I thought that Bana was just dreadful in that movie about the Mosad tracking-down the supposed masterminds of Munich. Then he was in some film about poker and again he was dreadful. I won't be hiring him for my next movie.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW's Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
