Come, Chauncy, we must. . .bustle

[rolanni]

Hey, there's going to be a(nother) remake of The Three Musketeers. With a sword-fighting Queen leaping from the balcony of Versailles in court dress in order to take part in a melee. Oh! And an airship. Um, what?

All in Glorious Three-Dee so you're right there in the middle, though without a sword, because, presumably, the audience of this film will have no honor to defend.

Does that seem mean-spirited? Here, judge for yourself

This will make the fourth remake of The Three Musketeers since I started paying attention to them. For me, the definitive version is of course the York-Reed-Finley-Chamberlain 1973 extravaganza. Yeah, I know. What can I say? I was 21 and in love.

Then we had the Truly Awful 1993 edition with all the Hot Young Studs of The Moment -- Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, &c, which not only Made No Sense, completely subverted the text when it did, and also had lousy swordfights.

Then in 2001 there was The Musketeer, which made the 1993 edition look like a work of art.

You'd think they'd stop trying, since the editions keep getting worse, but I guess the lure of a free! story! from a dead author is too great to resist.

Comments

[pgranzeau.livejournal.com]

My first Musketeer movie was the 1948 version, and had virtually every big name in Hollywood in it:

Lana Turner ... Lady de Winter
Gene Kelly ... D'Artagnan
June Allyson ... Constance
Van Heflin ... Athos
Angela Lansbury ... Queen Anne
Frank Morgan ... King Louis XIII
Vincent Price ... Richelieu
Keenan Wynn ... Planchet
John Sutton ... The Duke of Buckingham
Gig Young ... Porthos
Robert Coote ... Aramis

Kelly was a very athletic D'Artagnan, as I remembere.

[barsukthom.livejournal.com]

Oh, my god... All it needs is Basil Rathbone to be beyond perfect!
(He probably was playing for a competing studio, le Sigh)

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

OK, that one goes in the Netflix list. Mmm Vincent Price as Richelieu