Here's yet another movie review, this time of Twilight Zone The Movie.
https://trendytroodon.blogspot.com/2023/03/adaptation-insanity-one-where-scariest.html

In the review, I say quite a bit about the remake of "It's A Good Life", but the format I use didn't support a real discussion of the story. Here's a few thoughts from a re read between watching the movie and writing the review.

1. Given what's portrayed in the story, I find it clearly implied that the people are doomed. Anthony is even younger than in the TZ episode, and there are already fewer than 50 people left alive in the town under his control.. While no figure is given for the population pre-Anthony, there are enough referenced deaths (including one from apparently natural causes) that it appears likely that at least half of them are already gone. The one point of ambiguity is whether Anthony can simply bring people back to life (referenced once!), which offers the interpretation that the townspeople who think they have been spared have really already been killed and resurrected multiple times.

2. A fair amount has already been said about strong insinuations that Anthony isn't fully human in appearance, which culminate in a brief and grisly recounting of his birth. It's made explicit in the process that he has had his powers from birth. What I found most jarring, especially compared to the show and the movie, is that he only speaks once in the entire story, and then literally 2 words. This actually fits with his age as given in the story, with the surely intended implication that he could actually grow more powerful with time.

3. Something else I haven't seen discussed is that the single human victim in the story dies even more ignominiously. He gets drunk, genuinely acts like a jerk, and doesn't get off enough words to defy Anthony before he's transformed into an undescribed abomination.

4. One more especially striking difference from the TV and movie adaptations is that Anthony is actively sadistic rather than merely disproportionate in retaliation, notably compelling a rat to "eat itself" in the first scene.. What I found odd is that nothing more is made of this in the story as a whole. I suspect this is because cruelty to animals was still regarded as "normal" behavior in the 1950s, which I think can be born out from other works in and outside science fiction. This means, on one hand, that childhood was not being romanticized, but on the other, that society as a whole hadn't been convinced that such behavior needed to be monitored and corrected.

That's about as much as I wanted to put down at the moment. I may work this up into a longer post. Does anyone have their own thoughts on the movie, the story or the original series? For that matter, has anyone here read the story without viewing its adaptations?

David N. Brown
Mesa, Arizona

On Wednesday, March 22, 2023 at 7:34:52 AM UTC+11, David Brown wrote:
> Here's yet another movie review, this time of Twilight Zone The Movie.
> https://trendytroodon.blogspot.com/2023/03/adaptation-insanity-one-where-scariest.html
>
> In the review, I say quite a bit about the remake of "It's A Good Life", but the format I use didn't support a real discussion of the story. Here's a few thoughts from a re read between watching the movie and writing the review.
>
> 1. Given what's portrayed in the story, I find it clearly implied that the people are doomed. Anthony is even younger than in the TZ episode, and there are already fewer than 50 people left alive in the town under his control. While no figure is given for the population pre-Anthony, there are enough referenced deaths (including one from apparently natural causes) that it appears likely that at least half of them are already gone. The one point of ambiguity is whether Anthony can simply bring people back to life (referenced once!), which offers the interpretation that the townspeople who think they have been spared have really already been killed and resurrected multiple times.
>
> 2. A fair amount has already been said about strong insinuations that Anthony isn't fully human in appearance, which culminate in a brief and grisly recounting of his birth. It's made explicit in the process that he has had his powers from birth. What I found most jarring, especially compared to the show and the movie, is that he only speaks once in the entire story, and then literally 2 words. This actually fits with his age as given in the story, with the surely intended implication that he could actually grow more powerful with time.
>
> 3. Something else I haven't seen discussed is that the single human victim in the story dies even more ignominiously. He gets drunk, genuinely acts like a jerk, and doesn't get off enough words to defy Anthony before he's transformed into an undescribed abomination.
>
> 4. One more especially striking difference from the TV and movie adaptations is that Anthony is actively sadistic rather than merely disproportionate in retaliation, notably compelling a rat to "eat itself" in the first scene. What I found odd is that nothing more is made of this in the story as a whole. I suspect this is because cruelty to animals was still regarded as "normal" behavior in the 1950s, which I think can be born out from other works in and outside science fiction. This means, on one hand, that childhood was not being romanticized, but on the other, that society as a whole hadn't been convinced that such behavior needed to be monitored and corrected.
>
> That's about as much as I wanted to put down at the moment. I may work this up into a longer post. Does anyone have their own thoughts on the movie, the story or the original series? For that matter, has anyone here read the story without viewing its adaptations?
>

Tangentially, the TZ movie lead to one funniest lines on the TV show "3rd Rock From the Sun".

Sally Solomon: So how was your trip, sir?

The Big Giant Head: Horrifying, at first. I looked out the window and... I saw something on the wing of the plane.

Dr. Dick Solomon: The same thing happened to me!

It's only funny if you know that William Shatner, who played The Big Giant Head, was the protagonist in the original TZ episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", and that John Lithgow, who was Dick Solomon, played the same role in the remake of that episode for the TZ movie.

If you didn't know both those things, the line is totally meaningless.

-Moriarty