Thread: Dark Shadows

Originally Posted by GobbyGruesome

Trailer is out today. Neve seen the original, but I doubt this is what folks were expecting...
http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/wb/darkshadows/

Hmmm...very curious. I will still go see it, but it is not at all what I thought it would be. I have watched the original.

Wow, a comedy? I saw only part of the trailer and was extremely dissapointed from what I saw. He was confused by a tv? Wow, great script! NOT! In today's age, I am sorry, but having someone confused by tv and thinking people are in it, is not funny. Maybe if you are watching "I love Lucy, or the Flinstones", but in 2012, having an actor (even the great Jhonny Depp) being baffled by an everyday electronic device, in any movie, even a cartoon, is not funny. Very Weak.

I love Burton, adrore him, actually, so, seeing this was very sad for me, and what could have been a great horror, turned into a farce. Also, who he is trying to appeal to? For sure, many fans of the original show will be turned off by this, I think. Teens? Kids? I don't know.. I love the Alice he did 2 years ago, but this one... look zero appeal to me, and I am surprised, to be honest.

This is my opinion from what I saw quickly, and pics (sadly, can't see the rest of the trailer at work). Maybe with time, I will change my opinion, but I doudt it.


PS: seem I am not the only one with the WTF reaction, check out FARK reaction to it
http://www.fark.com/comments/6997354...good-way?cpp=1

I was just about to post the trailer, then I saw that someone beat me to it Not sure what I think of the new direction of 'Dark Shadows', but the film does look hilarious.

Originally Posted by Garthgoyle

I was just about to post the trailer, then I saw that someone beat me to it Not sure what I think of the new direction of 'Dark Shadows', but the film does look hilarious.

It does. I doubt it will please true fans that love the original, but it is what it is. I was looking forward to a spooky movie when I heard about his, tho.

Originally Posted by hollow

I was looking forward to a spooky movie when I heard about his, tho.

Same thought that I had originally, but I enjoy horror comedies, too, so it's all good

Oh dear. I don't anything about Dark Shadows, and that trailer makes me not want to know. I'm not crazy about Tim Burton's movies lately. Alice in Wonderland made me want to take a bat to the TV. I do hope that fans of the show enjoy the film, though from what I'm reading on other sites, they aren't so pleased with the tone of the film.

I am a fan of the original Dark Shadows TV show, it was made on a low budget but took itself seriously and presented a "supernatural soap opera"--an idea so crazy that it was never really imitated. It was not joking around in the least, and concerned itself with the ancestral mansion of a twitchy weird family, romance, a vampire (later several), a werewolf, a really psycho witch, zombies, ghosts, and way more. It had its share of cheesy moments but the main appeal was that it kept a straight face. It ran five days a week and racked up 1,225 episodes over a four-year run.

To remake it this way, as a comedy (as is apparent in the trailers), is creating a huge fan backlash. Very few fans of the original show are happy with this approach. Some are curious anyway and will go see the film (I will, for example).

Since the show aired from 1968-1971, it is generally felt that the show's original fans are old at this point and fewer in number than the younger demographic that is likely to see the new film.

I love dark shadows, Tim Burton, and Johnny (faints for a minute) Depp. I fear however you would have to be either a Depp or Burton fan AND either not know anything about Dark shadows or really have an open mind about the movie to enjoy it. It seems to stray FAR from the old Barnabus Collins we all love. That being said, if Burton had made the movie and it merley hinted at the old TV series and wasnt named after it, I see the die hard fans even falling for it. either way, I'm in!!

I'm conflicted about this. As a fan of DS/Depp/Burton, I want to like this. The comedy angle has me uneasy- I was hoping they'd do it "straight." As much as I love DS, and it was presented seriously, there was often an element of high camp, and segments of the fanbase exist because of that. I would have been comfortable with some tongue and cheek comedy knocking that in a straight version, but I fear this is too much in the other direction...

I don't know anything about the TV series but I've done enough research on it to think that, yes, this definitely feels like someone wrote the movie and then looked for some pre-existing nostalgia media to link it to in order to draw in crowds. What annoys me the most is that Depp is a self-proclaimed huge fan of the TV show and that it's what inspired him to be an actor, because he always waned to play Barnabas. I do wonder how much of this was thought up by Burton and Depp and how much is studio pressure to make it marketable to the masses. But I wouldn't have thought Burton would be easily pressured by studios to rewrite these days.