I'm sorry I support a two-state solution that includes a state of Palestine and does not include Hamas, while dolling out blame to the Israelis for their immoral and illogical settlement of the West Bank, Jamiet.
So, in short, I'm sorry, I'm in favor of a complex, nuanced view of the crisis, rather than a black-and-white, Rebels vs. Empire, overly-simplistic view of what is one of the most complex situations on the planet...I sure wish I could join the rest of you on that self-righteous, overly-simplified bandwagon...ah well...maybe next time!
As for the Whedon Much Ado, Draug:
I've seen parts...I was going to see it when it came out, actually, but the person I wanted to see it with was busy, and I really didn't feel like going to see it myself when I own the Branagh version and can enjoy him, Emma Thompson, Michael Keaton, Robert Sean Leonard, Kate Beckinsale and Denzel Washington at home. (Keanu Reeves is in that version too, but I don't "enjoy" him...except to look on incredulously at The One--that is, the Expressionless "Whoa" Machine One--and laugh...thankfully, his part is small and nearly as one-note as he is anyway.)
The reviews didn't help--if it'd been getting great reviews I'd have gone, but with a 50-something or so on Rotten Tomatoes, and almost an even split in positive and negative reviews...eh...
Having seen parts of it now, I can say--from what I've seen, that 50-something seems fair, as there are good parts and bad parts alike in this adaptation. Apparently it's up to an 84% now, so maybe it'll age well.
The choice to shoot on black and white I thought was really ancillary and didn't add much. One reason for doing it, apparently, was to keep costs down, since they were filming this as almost a side project at his home and all, so there is method in that madness, as it were. I think the Branagh film looks far better--not just a color vs. black and white thing, there are B&W films that look better than color ones, but rather just how lush and fleshed our and really romantically Italian an pastoral Branagh makes that setting, which is perfect for that kind of play--but on looks alone, the Whedon version isn't bad.
No contest for Benedick--Branagh wins that for me hands down, Denisof seems bland by comparison...admittedly, I'm biased, as Branagh for me "is" Shakespeare on film and a lot of ways, he's "my" Hamlet and "my" Henry V alike (I'd take him over Olivier in both outings) but the man, like Olivier, is a knighted actor for a reason.
I likewise really love Emma Thompson, but Amy Acker does a lot better in her role of Beatrice than does her counterpart. Her lines have the crispness and "knife's point" that role requires, while Denisof feels more dulled, if not exactly dull. As a result, I think Branagh and Thompson are hands-down the better duo, but in fairness, if Acker had a Branagh-esque actor to work off of, I think she could've potentially given Thompson a run for her money.
Hero/Claudio aren't the reasons anyone comes to see "Much Ado"...that being said...while I think Robert Sean Leonard and Kate Beckinsale are more memorable in those roles (mostly just because they're RSL and Beckinsale), Whedon's version does definitely give more focus to Claudio's misogyny and the problems inherent in that than does Branagh's version which, like most versions, essentially paints the couple as being young fools in love that are thus easily led and easily fooled. Whedon therefore does potentially give more focus and thus more meat to those roles, even leaving in a racist line--comparing someone unfavorably to "an Ethiope" with a black person standing RIGHT THERE--to really underscore that, for Whedon, this is less a misled youth and more a douche that needs some correcting.
And that's actually a view I'd like to see more adaptations take...the BBC ReTold version of this play likewise took that stance that "Claude" was, instead of just being a nice guy that's misled, a real misogynist who Hero SHOULDN'T immediately go back to (which in my view is the weakest part of that play, and is really only there because it's a comedy, and dual weddings were thus kind of the style...it's a weakness in a lot of Shakespeare, Austen, and even later romantically-charged comedies.) So, point Whedon there.
(Side note--if you haven't seen them, look up the 4 Shakespeare ReTold stories, Draug...they used to be on YouTube, but they may be taken down...in any event, the DVD should be cheap. The 4 stories retold in a contemporary setting and with contemporary language are Much Ado, The Taming of the Shrew--complete with Moaning Myrtle!--Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The first three are pretty good...Much Ado might even be the best of them, as it has Hero not immediately go back to Claudio, which in many ways is arguably an improvement from the feminist perspective. The only one I haven't seen is Midsummer's...and that's because A. It wasn't online, and B. Of the four, it got the worst reviews and sounds silly to boot...instead of the Athenian countryside, all these wacky things happen...at an amusement park? O.o)
The other big role that usually stands out in this play is Dogberry, and I like both approaches--Michael Keaton's eccentricity is impeccable, and honestly makes that character even more entertaining than he might be just on paper, but I kind of like Nathan Fillion's trying to be a bit of a tough guy and goofing up, as Dogberry is wont to do.
From what I've seen of it, Whedon's version seems like one that meshes well with the modern era, and is definitely a Joss Whedon Shakespeare film, whereas I think Branagh's is more timeless but less time-specific. It's the difference between the 1968 Zeffirelli "Romeo and Juliet" and the 1996 Baz Luhrmann "Romeo + Juliet" --
The former is less time or culture-savvy, but has a more timeless feel to it, like I could show that film 20 years from now to a class and it might have, more or less, the same kind of impact, because it isn't dated by styles, fashions, technology, lingo or trends, but is instead essentially as close to a realization of the words and romanticism in that play as you're ever going to get, complete with a beautiful score from Nino Rota that's as fresh and fitting today as it was then. The latter was completely a product of its time, a Shakespeare film that could only have been made in the 90s, has the feel of the 90s all over it, from the styles to the designs to the fact it stares Claire Danes and 90s icon Leonardo DiCaprio in his youthful 90s years to the way in which it has a pacing and feel that's more in line with the 90s--it's fast-paced bordering on manic, it feels the need to grab attention for itself every second, it's a constant spectacle and, yes, does feel "extreme" stylistically.
The key difference here, of course, is that love Zeffirelli's gem, as it kicks Luhrmann's pandering schlock in the ass, and I HATE "Romeo + Juliet. Though, in fairness, the 2013 version found a way to be even worse...because the only thing than putting style over substance with acting that's passable to bad to "You KNOW you're speaking English, right, Shakespeare isn't a foreign language here" bad? Absolutely no style whatsoever and acting that's as dull, fumbling and STILL treats Shakespeare like it's a foreign language...YouTube the 2013 version for the Balcony scene. That's as lifeless, dull, clunky, uncertain, unemotional and bad a version of that scene as I've ever seen, including that much-loathed 1996 version...heck, I bet a local school or community theatre's production of that scene could have actors doing it better. That's like doing "Hamlet" and failing the "To be or not to be" speech (so, basically, it's like the Mel Gibson and Ethan Hawke Hamlets.)
Still, when you consider the OTHER Shakespeare films that came out in 1996, Helena Bonham Carter in "Twelfth Night" and the magnum opus that was Branagh's 4-hour, uncut, five-star cast, shooting-in-a-real-palace "Hamlet"...that Luhrmann version is terrible, and now comes across as not just terrible but, just as bad, extremely dated, too. My generation tends to love or hate that film...I'm really not sure if future generations of Shakespeare fans or even film fans will like it or even care that it exists...while the 1968 Zeffirelli film, while potentially having smaller audience nowadays compared to the 1996 version, is likewise a film that will ALWAYS have that audience and, indeed, always have an audience, it will endure.
By contrast to all of THAT, I didn't hate the parts I saw of Whedon's "Much Ado," and its relative score on Rotten Tomatoes--91% for Branagh vs. 84% for Whedon--seems fair. Branagh's version is, in my opinion, the better and more enduring version, in part because of its timeless setting, and in part because, even with Keanu Reeves, it has an absurdly-A-list cast, so if you were going to pick a version to watch knowing nothing about the play but instead picked on star power alone, it's Branagh and Co. vs. Whedon. That's why I use the above analogy--Whedon might win that battle for a lot of people today because he's popular now, with Buffy and The Avengers and other pop culture works. How well he or those works age is still to be seen...but even if both age well, in 20 years, would his name alone beat out the great roster of Branagh's film? Maybe, but even then, I think future audiences would still side with Branagh's on the whole...it'd be close, as it is now on Rotten Tomatoes, but I think Branagh will still win, for one key reason.
Some Shakespeare plays are character-centric, some are ensemble, and some seem like one of those two but, on closer inspection, is actually the latter. If you do "Hamlet," your cast may be great, but if your Hamlet sucks, so will your film. I'd argue the perfect example of that is the 1991 Zeffirelli "Hamlet"--Glenn Close as Gertrude is brilliant and Helena Bonham Carter, with all her craziness, is a natural choice as Ophelia, but even forgetting his Antisemitism, Mel Gibson's a terrible Hamlet, because he's Mel Gibson--you don't BUY this is a guy that would struggle for 3 hours and 5 acts over whether to kill someone or not...he always looks angry, even when brooding, and always looks violent (or maybe that's just him looking like Mel Gibson.) Even the poster for that movie got it wrong--Hamlet posing while holding a sword is like Superman posing while holding Kryptonite--that character just doesn't work that way; if Gibson were playing Macbeth that might work, but not Hamlet, and so while the rest of that film works, Gibson doesn't, and thus the film really fails...you can't do "Hamlet" with a dud Hamlet.
The same is true for "Much Ado"--even though it appears to be an ensemble, and that's how Whedon treats it, it's really not...it's really Benedick and Beatrice's play, at heart if not in text. They're what draw us in and what's kept drawing people back for 400 years. You can have a good Hero, good Claudio, good Don Juan, even a good Dogberry--if your Beatrice and Benedick are off, your adaptation will be off.
With Branagh's version, you have a perfect match--Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, and they were actually married when doing this role, so that just adds to their chemistry. They're great apart, but in these roles, opposite each other, they're a 10 out of 10--maybe an 11.
The same can't be said for Whedon's film...or maybe it can, but it's not my take. Again, Acker does a good job--it's just a shame her doubles partner here can barely get it over the net at times while she, by contrast, looks like she could very well master the backhand and overhand smash and dominate the game with another partner. It isn't even that Denisof's bad--as I said, the worst I can say about him is that he's dull sometimes. But they just don't pop the way Branagh/Thomson do, and of all the many reasons there can be for that, some of which I've already said, I think one key factor is the way they seem to approach their lines.
With Denisof, I get the impression that yes, unlike, say, DiCaprio in "Romeo + Juliet," he DOES know what he's saying, and what his character is and what the other characters are and so on. But with him, it seems to stop there--if he says a line, I know what he means, and I know he knows what he means, but I don't get the impression he's taking advantage of the LANGUAGE, word for word, beat for beat, and sometimes syllable for syllable and inflection for inflection. That might in part be down to Whedon himself, actually, as Whedon works on projects that operate at the macro level. The Avengers is a perfect example--it's a huge world with a huge cast of extraordinary heroes, and so a lot of the focus is thus on concepts and world building and interacting with that world. Chances are, when The Hulk smashes someone, there may not be that same attention to what every word or beat or syllable or inflection means or can do--which is fine, the focus isn't on that, it's on the Hulk smashing and the who, what, how and why of the Hulk smashing someone.
By contrast, what makes Shakespeare better than No Fear Shakespeare IS the language half the time--we bash "Romeo and Juliet"-style plots today because it was already cliche plot when Shakespeare did it, but we remember his play and keep coming back to it because his language makes that play something more, and thus more lasting. Strip it of that, and it becomes just another schlock romance movie, the same way "Pride and Prejudice"-style movies stripped of their lines so often become just another bad romantic comedy.
I never get the impression from Denisof that he's making the most of those words, beats and syllables. He knows what he's saying, but HOW he says it, and WHAT the words are rather than just what they translate to, are muted. This "Much Ado" feels more contemporary in tone, which is part of why I wonder how well it will age--
On the one hand, that makes it more accessible now, but on the other hand, a more contemporary delivery, in Denisof's case, at least, mutes the actual language and resonance of each word, beat and syllable, meaning that instead of lines flowing or special emphasis being given to special words that can have multiple meanings, it sounds very naturalistic, almost like something you'd hear on TV. That makes it accessible, but by the same token, that makes it contemporary and accessible to "now"--20, 30 years from now? Maybe, but the novelty might also be lost, and without the crispness or full richness of his lines, part of his performance might be lost, too.
Acker fares better, and again, I think it's because she does seem to dig more into those individual words and syllables, rather than go over them with a broad brush. Where Denisof focuses mostly on what his character's saying and his motivation, Acker does that and likewise focuses on how Beatrice is saying things, what specific words she uses, when she uses them, how they impact the iambic flow, if a syllable is left hanging at the end of a line or if two stresses or somewhat-stressed syllables follow concurrently, and so on. That gives her delivery and thus her performance and thus her character that extra level of depth that Branagh and Thompson were able to tap into, and which is lacking from Denisof.
As a result, with this play needing a solid Beatrice and Benedick to work, this adaptation likewise works, because both ARE solid...but where Branagh and Thompson were both great, Denisof is merely average and Acker good, with the potential for greatness there if she'd been paired with another actor (or acting approach) that could've helped add oomph to those exchanges. On the other hand, both Denisof and Acker, for as variously as they realize their lines' potential, both melt into the roles, whereas David Tennant and Catherine Tate, when they did this play, seemed to really realize the language and play with it, but you're still mostly just seeing Tennant and Tate reading Shakespeare characters rather than them "being" those characters themselves. In fairness to Tennant, he had a better outing as "Hamlet," but I digress.
All in all, then, I think it's a decent adaptation, and I'll be interested to see how it ages...I don't think it matches Branagh's, mostly because of the leading duos involved, but at the same time, it does do new things and flesh out a couple more parts in comparison to Branagh's, so it's a worthy, if not world-beating, film.
"The Rest is Silence." :)