The Stardust Movie Is Not The Stardust Book, But Fear Not

Update! As of today (three minutes remaining of December 12) I'm going to start adding updates in the bit below the jump. These updates will be in red. These will be done at random, whenever someone who is not Me says something I think should be included. If you say something but I don't include it in an update, take no offense. -- BGF

So, last week I went to a screening of the rough cut of Stardust. Short version: it was GREAT! Go see it when it comes out.

Other people elsewhere will deal with movie as a movie, such as this suspiciously literate person here. I have already started designing my “suspiciously literate” T-shirt, soon to be available on CafePress.*  There are other reviews on AICN, and there's another rave I found on the internet(s) earlier this week, but I appear to have lost the link. I'll come back and update if I find it again.  No one is exaggerating on how well the film went over with this test audience. Once we got to the paperwork stage I sat there and listened as row after row told the clipboard people that they rated the movie a 6 or a 5, the two highest ratings.** We loved this movie even though they weren’t done with it. People were reacting only to the story & actors.  Before the screening started the Hollywood People went around interrogating us. There was a tallish guy with brown hair who asked people at random why are you here besides the fact that it’s free, and he wouldn’t let people answer vague. He wanted specifics.  I only wish my friends and I had been allowed to stay for the small focus group, but we were too old and they kicked us out.***

However, the movie is not the book, and because This Is The Way I Enjoy It, ****  today I’m going to go into massive geek obsessive detail on just how much the movie is not the book. A lot of the changes for the film are surface and don’t matter. Here I'm talking about the ones that do matter (to me, anyway).

Keep in mind that no matter the level of nitpick below, I am not saying the movie is bad. The movie is well and truly fabulous.

What else? If you read this, the assumption is you already know who the players in the book. If you don’t, what’s below might be a bit confusing.

I am actually going to capitulate to those who have been bitching about my liberal use of spoilers throughout the life of BGF Central and put this under the jump. So! HERE BE MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK AND FILM VERSION OF STARDUST. IF YOU CLICK THROUGH TO THE JUMP, YOU HAVE AGREED TO EXPOSE YOURSELF TO MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF SPOILERS AND I DO NOT  WANT ANY LIP ABOUT IT LATER ON.*****

* The CaféPress bit is not true. The other part is.

** Why they start ambushing you before you’re finished with the paperwork I have no idea, but this has happened at every screening like this. You get the paperwork, they wait three minutes, then they march around with the clipboards asking how you answered the first question.

*** This also happens at these screenings, and if it’s not a Disney movie personally I’m fine with it. The Hollywood People want feedback from a specific demographic when they’re doing these market research things, and don’t have time to waste on people who fall on the other side of whatever they’re after. For this one they pulled a lot of teens/early 20s and female for the focus group, keeping just a few who were older. Before the movie started the tallish guy asked my friends and I to stay for the focus group. Once we finished the paperwork and went down to the focus group area, another clipboard guy came by and told a whole bunch of us to remove ourselves. So it goes. All of us were older than 25.

**** I stole that line from somebody during an argument/discussion out in the vast wasteland of the internet(s). I wish I could remember who it was.

***** After I managed to track down the Prime Directive script, some buddies wanted to know, in detail, what was in it. I offered to send it to them so we could talk about it, but actually reading it was too much work for them. So I provided an obsessive geek detail of this is the story, this is what works, this is what doesn’t …and do you know what those ungrateful bastards did? They bitched! They were all upset because of the spoilers! Setting aside the obvious question of how you respond to a specific request for details of what’s in the Transformers movie without spoilers, it took me a weekend to put that report together, time which they are very much aware I do not have. And still they bitched! These people are lucky I like them enough not to bitch slap them all and take away their plates of chicken.

A New Character
I must start with the character of Capt. Shakespeare, played by Robert De Niro. He turned out to be one of my three favorite characters in the movie even though he is also the most problematic. This character does not exist in the book. The stuff that happens on the ship in the movie does not exist in the book.

There’s a section in the book where Tristan and Yvaine end up stranded in the sky and are rescued by a ship of lightning catchers. It’s not a long section in the book, just a few pages, but the Hollywood People took that and greatly expanded it. Instead of the fairly laid-back captain and mixed-gender crew, they give us Captain Shakespeare and his crew of pirate-type manly men.  Shakes and his manly men do things like shout arrggh and throw Rosie the Riveter fist salutes at each other. They were a hoot.

Capt. Shakespeare is a closeted gay. The type of gay the Hollywood People portray him as comes straight out of The Book Of Reductionist. In the privacy of his stateroom (which is huge for a ship that size, now that I think about it) he wears dresses, he’s prone to draping a fluffy pink boa around his neck, and he dances around in front of a mirror with a feather fan to what is probably going to be some sort of show tune. He does Tristan’s hair. He gives Yvaine a new outfit from his vast, secret collection of fabulous ball gowns. (When she’s reluctant to take one out of politeness, his line is “Honey, you’re wearing a bathrobe. Pick a dress.” It’s hilarious how De Niro delivers that line, truly.)

Capt. Shakespeare’s role in the film is to let Tristan know that Yvaine is possibly his true love; to serve as example of why it’s foolish to hide what you truly are just to go along with the crowd (they’re not subtle at all with this point); to  teach Tristan to fight (which is important later on); and to warn Yvaine to control her emotions so she doesn’t give herself away (more on this bit, and why it doesn’t work if you’re paying attention…even if you haven’t read the book…down below).

Shakespeare, descended from a long line of manly lightning ship captains, is in the closet because he’s afraid that if the truth got out his reputation will be destroyed. He says this more than once. When Septimus discovers him prancing in front of a mirror to a show tune while in girly underwear and wearing feather boa and waving a feathered fan, the captain is very upset. He is also unable to fight off the prince, ‘cause, you know, gay people can’t fight, even if they are De Niro and even if we just saw the gay guy train up a kid with zero sword skills into a decent swordsman. After the crew has saved their captain from Septimus, they assure him that they’ve always known he was gay (I can’t remember the actual term they used, but it was funny) and it doesn’t matter to them. They tell him he will always be their captain, then serve him a nice cup of tea in a dainty china cup, complete with saucer.

… Yeah. And even as I recognized this was a very sweet and a happy ending for the captain’s story, part of my head was also going What. The. Fuck.

We’re in fairy land at this point in the film. Why do the prejudices of the human world apply in this place?

On top of that, I’m familiar with many of the reasons people who don’t like Gaiman’s work cite as justification. I think these people are wrong, but that’s a fight for elsewhere. It comes down to even those haters would acknowledge that Gaiman tends not to fall back on the type of quick and easy shorthand in his work that the Hollywood People use for this character. To insert such a blatant stereotype in a movie derived from his book bothers me a lot. It took a couple of days after the screening for me to realize just how much it bothered me, but once I did, working out why came quickly.

If The Hollywood People wanted to show the difficulties faced by a person engaging in covering (mp3 of author speaking here), they could have come up with ANYTHING. They could have made him an English major who longs to have his poetry published and his reputation made in the literary world. They could have made him an obsessive stamp collector. They could have made him a closet scientist dreaming of the halls of academia. They could have made him a gay man who is closeted because his boyfriend is a soon-to-be-married respectable member of English/human world society, so he’s hiding out to protect him due to the very real biases in his lover’s world.

But nope. The Hollywood People instead went for the easy Gay = Man In A Dress  And Must Be Hidden, even in fairy land, where the fundamental rules of the universe are not the same. In fairy land we have magic and witches and unicorns and candles that turn you into an asteroid without killing you, but for some reason we can’t have uncloseted gays who are not, at the core, a one-note joke.

Just as a lot of us darkies are so sick of being portrayed as thugs, whores and magical negroes -- let alone simply being omitted from the landscape of the world --  a lot of gay people are weary of the mincing, overly-dramatic gay male caricature Hollywood likes to throw up on the screen in mainstream movies as reflection for the straight lead.

It doesn’t matter that in real life there are gay people huddling in the closet, or that in real life there are gay people who happily drape themselves in feather boas and dresses and prance around to show tunes in the privacy of their own homes (or, if they’re entertainers, on stage for good money.) The point is that too often when Hollywood People reach for one of the Other, the version of life they consistently put up on the screen is easy shorthand. The amount of money these people are paid, the scads of education many of them have, the exposure to people not like themselves they must have due to their creative industry jobs, and this is the best they can do? Over and again, they can’t come up with an approach other than the mincing gay boy? As much as I enjoyed Di Nero’s performance as Capt. Shakespeare, the second he went into lisping, falsetto gay stereotype a red flag unfurled in my head and never stopped fluttering when he was on screen. Even when I howled with laughter at the end of the movie during the coronation scene, where he and another male character have a seconds-long moment that implies Shakes is still in the closet. It’s that moment that made me think that they could have come up with another reason for him to be in the closet than the one they chose.

And yet.

De Niro pulled it off, and wonderfully. Part of that is because he’s De Niro, one of the best who ever was. But part of it is because he’s playing against the audience expectations that come with being “De Niro”. Any actor of his iconic macho guy status – Eastwood, Nickelson, Stallone (if you think that what Stallone did in Cop Land was easy, you’re an idiot) – could have done it and gotten away with it.

There’s somebody else who could have pulled off the manly pirate/closeted drag queen really well, but I wonder if he would have passed on it if asked. Why? Because Eddie Izzard said during the q/a a few months ago at the Coronet that he has scaled back performing in drag because he’s trying to get more work in Hollywood. It turns out (according to him, and for a bunch of reasons I believe him) that the people who can hire him won’t consider him for certain roles if they associate him with A Guy In A Dress. This is because in real life he’s a transvestite, and the Hollywood People, who should understand the whole concept of ACTING, are skittish about hiring him for “straight” roles. Izzard might be miss more than hit so far the choices he’s made for his film career are concerned, but the man is massively talented. He feels he must cover a portion of himself in order to get work in this town. But it’s perfectly “safe” to put De Niro in girly underwear and a feather boa, because there’s no question as to where he really as far as manly man goes. Wink wink and all that.

Would the character of Capt. Shakespeare worked if it was played by someone who lacked De Niro’s Macho creds, or would that character have come across as offensive and pathetic? What if they had cast a gay actor? Imdb tells me that Rupert Everett was in the Stardust film, which was news to me. After I read  that I realized which character he was, but didn’t pick up on it while watching. Besides the fact that I didn’t recognize him at all under that makeup, he’s, you know an ACTOR. His job description is to make you believe he is whatever he needs to make you believe he is. He did that. What if Everett had been cast as Capt. Shakespeare? Would they have taken that “risk”? Would they have thought his skills strong enough to pull off the manly pirate bits sufficient to “excuse” the scenes where a gay man is seen dancing around in girly underwear and a feather boa?

I dunno. Shakes entertained me, but his character bothered me on a big picture level. Maybe it won’t bother anyone else, particularly the demographic that I think (if I’m reading the cues correctly) the production team is worried about luring. But as much as I loved the character, he bothered me enough to feel the need to tell people that that Capt. Shakespeare, great as he is, is not in the book.

Okay. Moving on.

There have been several responses to this bit. But since they're all from people I know, and they're all saying EXACTLY what I knew they were going to say, I'm not including a summary of their responses here. We'll just continue having that cage match in the inboxes.

Update! 1/18:  Of the first set of five confirmed attendees to the screening I attended, everybody loved De Niro.  (For the record, I said he was great.) Three said I am completely overreacting. One noticed the problematic bits and felt guilty for liking his character anyway. One said the issues I rambled about never came to mind, but now this person is thinking about it. Will add more to this later if needed.

The Scope of the World
The movie draws a much firmer line between the realm of fairy and the world of humans. Instead of the barrier opening up every nine years, the wall of Wall is firm. Nobody gets in, nobody gets out (presenting a minor problematic quibble at the end of the movie). I’m going to do a course correction from what I said the first time out because now I think this is actually a substantive alteration. By stripping away the relationship between the two populations, the film has excised the sense of shared community between human and fairy, avoiding the sense of loss on both sides brought about by the changing engine of the world. In the book, the world (the world of the cultural West) is changing from folk and roots memory and the ephemeral, to the more concrete certainty brought about by science and reasoned minds. As the world shifts ever more toward the mundane, the old magics are left behind. (Continuing with the liberal use of parenthetical, I am of the opinion that this edging away from roots to reason is driven more by humans than by fairy. There’s enough in the book hinting so, mainly in all those sections dealing with the fair. This has nothing to do with the point of post, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.)

In the book, the humans are very much aware that magic exists on the other side of the wall. Magic comes to them on the breeze, affecting their moods, actions and even the fires in their hearths. The people of Wall can occasionally see not-one-of-us creatures hulking and twinkling in the forest. Magic draws crazy people to the gap, whom the guards allow through when it’s clear these people have been grabbed by fairy and there’s nothing to be done. And of course the arrival of the fairy market is a huge event greatly anticipated. Humans come from all over the world for it, try to get in early; fairy land creatures hang out at the bar in town, drink, eat and rent rooms from the locals. In preparation for the fair humans share codes of warning and behavior with the young in particular, advice passed down through the generations. In the book it is noted by both sides how the fair had changed over the eons, from being held every midsummer to being held every few years. At least one fairy resident notes that one day the fair will not happen in Wall anymore, and it will have to move to one of the few remaining places in the world where the veil can still be crossed. (Memory is sketchy on this part, but I think only the fairy residents made note of the end of their time at Wall coming up, and their bummer feeling about that tended to be based more on the economic loss. None of the humans of Wall brought that up.)

In essence, by breaking the book’s connection between human and fairy, the type of story that can be told for the movie changes.

There are more worldscape changes once the movie gets into fairy land itself, this time in the general reduced sense of The Magical as compared to the book. There is magic stuff. Lots of people use runes, all the witches cast spells, there is a unicorn  -- but in the movie, magic comes across more as a tool as opposed to something that infuses the very air. All of that wonderful fable stuff he had in the book as toss-aways that really helped anchor the story is gone. For example, there was something about a woman who had been turned into an owl who couldn’t turn back until she had eaten a mouse who had eaten a special thing. The owl is recounting this as she swallows a mouse which, unknown to her, is a person also under enchantment. The witch queen in the book talks about how she can’t be killed because she knows that the bed which will hold the hero who will slay her has not been made because the tree it will come from has not yet grown. (Or something like that. I can’t remember the details, but I’ve never forgotten the gist of it because it was cool.) The point is there’s stuff like that everywhere in the book, and none of it shows up on the screen. Magic is pretty much limited to things in the movie, a candle, a necklace, a ship that sails the storms. Fairy land doesn't have much of a sense of fairy about it.

On top of that, outside of the unicorn and the witches, there are no magical creatures in the film. There is no little man with the sack of locked things and advice, no chastising rabbit, no murderous or cute trees, no goblin gangs, no secret society of humans intimated to be at war with the Seelie court, no complicated rules to keep in mind when communicating with another person in fairy. No elves. Lady Una, for example, is human in the movie, not an elf. (To me, the terms fairy/elf are interchangeable. People have tried to explain to me why they’re not, but I don’t get it and so continue to ignore the Not Interchangeable rule.)  In fact, everyone seems to be a human on the other side. In the book you got the sense some of the people on the other side might be straight up human, but the vast majority of the population is not. It’s as if fairy land is not too different from the human world, just with magic trinkets, the occasional witch and wandering unicorns. Even the fable-rules spell that binds Lady Una to Ditchwater, and how it is ultimately broken in the book, is turned into something far more mundane in the film. It works the way they run it, but if you’ve read the book, the absence of all of the magical world building things is kinda weird.

In place of the fair, we get the fairy land market. It’s like a swap meet filled with people from all over the world selling odd things. We see a jar of eyes that look back at you, for example, and there’s a cute, teeny tiny two-headed elephant. (There’s also a cutie black guy with dreadlocks wearing a red shirt in the background of some of those scenes. Just sayin’.) The market appeared to be a permanent fixture in a town of some kind that is within running/riding/walking distance of Wall. Also located oddly close to Wall is the Grand Canyon-ish pit where the witch headquarters is located, because it doesn’t take Tristan very long to get there on horseback from the gap. I never did get the distances straight while watching the movie. I got the sense that Stormhold was far away from everything, but nothing else seemed to be far from anything else despite all those bits with guys running around on horses. In the book, distance matters and we get some cool stuff because of this. In the movie, it doesn’t.

Remember, this isn’t necessarily bad. It’s just very, very different.

Our Hero, Tristan
I think the adjustments to the scope of the world and the basic storyline can be traced to how Tristan was altered for this film. His change from the book also determined why all of the other key characters and several storyline incidents were tweaked to fit the New Him.

The story in the movie is more overtly a quest. As is common in this type of story (book or movie), the hero has to be a lone wolf. He has to have nothing really tying him to where he came from so that he can freely go off questing. That’s what they do to Tristan for the film. Unlike the book, the movie Tristan doesn’t have a place of people that he’s coming from, so when he leaves the human world for the fairy one there’s no sense that he knows he’s giving something up. He’s leaving his family, he’s leaving a community he was part of where people loved and respected him. In the book Tristan is leaving an entire world, and knows this. He shows no recognition of this in the movie. To me, that made his choice less profound.

They kept Dunstan for the film (and I liked what they did with him, not just because the actor’s look and vibe in the part was attractive in a fatherly/manly sort of way) but Daisy, Louisa, Daisy’s family, Victoria’s friends, Tristan’s friends, the gypsy winemaker, all of the pot girls and pretty much everybody forming the community network in Wall is gone. Because they also got rid of all of Dunstan’s backstory, and Dunstan’s backstory sets the stage for Tristan in so far as Tristan slots into his father’s role in the community continuum -- which as children, we all do to one extent or another -- that’s a loss. Much of the book’s emotional sophistication stems from the relationship webs within Wall; how Tristan behaves once he gets into fairy land cues from how people treat each other at home; there is much acknowledgement of the levels of grey people have within them, both in Wall and in fairy land. I liked <itals> that in the book, very much. With it all gone for the film, the story is more simplistic, as are the characters. There’s a little less use of ‘human’ in the movie story, a little more use of ‘types’.

Personally, I loved the way the book Tristan was not a conventional hero. There are those who believe one can't write a story where a nice person wins, because "nice" is boring. This is yet another book that shows actually, you can. Tristan uses headwork to win some critical encounters, such as the battle between the unicorn and the lion. He’s compassionate throughout the book, or at least recognizes the difficulties others are dealing with. (He even has something very close to a Finn on the river moment while dragging Yvaine around.) He demonstrates growth from boy to man not through his appearance, as the movie has it, but through his actions, particularly in how he cuts loose Victoria. Throughout the novel Tristan is having trouble reconciling what the stories in his penny books told him an adventure was like with the hunger, pain, irritation, and distressed damsel failing to behave properly he was experiencing in his real life quest. He’s smart enough in the book that the unicorn does not have to point a hoof at the poisoned wine eating through the hay for him to clue in, and when he knows to shut up and let the little man take care of things for him. He shows overt signs of loving these outside of his box things that are  happening to him throughout his adventure in the book, accepting them and growing into what he is going to become. All of these things make him appealing and unusual hero. 

There are also small things about Tristan absent from the movie, such as the manifestation of his fairy heritage. The movie kept the part where he’s descended from Stormhold royalty and, as the last surviving male, eligible to become king. But his locator ability was removed, probably because it’s not needed due to Tristan being fully human for the movie.

Meanwhile, my only response to buddies who sent emails slamming me for calling Lady Una slut while letting Dustan off the hook for his behavior…Technically, you’re correct. It does take two to tango. All I can say in my defense is when you see the movie, provided they don’t change that part, it’s crystal clear that she started it. Swear to god, that woman is the sluttiest princess I’ve ever seen in my life. It was as if she was doing the stroll down Sunset and fishing for customers among passer-by. This is the single element in the movie that I completely hated. Because I don’t think they’ll be able to change that sequence even if they wanted to, you’re gonna see what I’m talking about next summer when the movie opens, then we can have a cage match over it in our inboxes.

Our Heroine, Yvaine
(Secret Decoder Ring Message: You are still wrong. Yvaine is not the McGuffin. Victoria is the McGuffin, and her version in the movie is more overtly McGuffin. Nyah, nyah, nyah. Then again, You Know Who might be correct in his belief that the Stormhold necklace is the true McGuffin.)

As with Tristan, Yvaine is simplified for the movie. In general she has more of a girlfriend-vibe than she does in the book. Her personality is pushier in how she expresses her discontent at being used as a trinket, and she’s more overt in signaling that she’s falling for Tristan. Though movie Yvaine complains about being knocked from the stars and used as a trophy, there is no sense at all of the deep longing she has for the community she was torn from when she was thrown from the sky. In the book, she knows that she can never go back to be with her sisters and she knows that if she crosses the gap, she turns into a rock and dies. The former doesn’t apply in the movie (more on that later), the latter we don’t see her being made aware of. Tristan learns this, but she doesn’t seem to.

This could just be me, but the book Yvaine always struck me as being a tragic character. She has a pall of loneliness about her that never truly lifts, even after she falls in love. She doesn’t have a lot of choice in her circumstance. She can’t go back to the sky. Leaving fairy land is instant death. Staying in fairy land means spending the rest of her life being hunted by random witches or anybody else who figures out what she is. By joining Tristan and becoming queen of Stormhold she protects herself from that, at least. But when he eventually dies, the implication is she spent the rest of her unnaturally long life standing at the top of that tower alone under the night sky. Hundreds of years, of that? Thousands? It’s heartbreaking. We don't get tragic Yvaine in the movie. We get girl who was inconvenienced for a while, then gets her man and gets to be queen and gets to take her man back home to the stars.

Yvaine’s habit of twinkling is one of the many small tweaks from the book, and I have to say I’m not really sure why the movie bothered. The movie sets up twinkling as important, but then it’s not played out. In the book it’s stated several times that Yvaine is at risk of giving herself away mainly because she doesn’t eat food. That’s why in the book one of the functions of the lightning ship captain is to impress upon Tristan the need to get Yvaine to fake eating in order to help maintain her cover. In the film, Yvaine eats like a regular person. The danger sign they use as replacement is that she twinkles when she’s content. The problem is  they don’t have her twinkle when it matters. In the film Yvaine twinkles when she’s with the witch queen, who already knows her identity so there’s no big surprise reveal for the queen there, and she twinkles again when on the ship, where she knows she’s safe. Then the whole ‘twinkle and give yourself away’ aspect is completely dropped. It doesn’t come back until the very end, when Yvaine cranks up her twinkling ability to become a weapon of select mass destruction. (Which is a really cool scene, actually.)

Because there is no man in the tall hat passing down the gift of “heart’s desire” to three generations of Dunstan’s line, the question that was never answered in the book remains never answered in the movie. If you’ve got a magical boon waiting to be activated by the children, what happens to that boon when there are no children? 

Victoria, How We Miss Thee
A simplified Tristan needs a simplified Victoria. In the book she knows she’s the queen bee. She’s haughty, she’s vain, she’s a little self-obsessed. But she’s not a bitch, and she’s willing to do the right thing. The movie Victoria is a stuck-up bitch. There’s no other way to say it. Victoria’s role in the film is to be the unattainable and unworthy one, thus she is portrayed as obviously unpleasant so that when Tristan makes the right choice to go with Yvaine, everybody can see he made the right choice.

Take the shop scene in the book, where Victoria tolerates Tristan trying to chat her up when she comes in with the grocery list. In the movie that scene runs more along the lines of what the girlfriend did in The Krays. Victoria walks in front of everyone else in line, hands her list over to Tristan, demands that he take care of her right now, and then by making him deliver it all immediately, gets him fired. She doesn’t care that she gets him fired; she makes fun of him about it later.

Or take the kickoff moment, when they see the star fall and Tristan offers to go get it for her in exchange for whatever he wants. In the film, Victoria pretty much demands he go get the star, claiming that if he gets back before her wedding she’ll marry him. She willingly sends him into a dangerous place, not caring about what that means. When he returns, the second thing out of her mouth is give me my star. She’s very selfish in the movie.

In the book, Victoria doesn’t realize just how serious Tristan is about fetching the star; when he offers she sends him off with a laugh. When he returns she has had plenty of time to understand that the boy meant it, and it’s clear that she’s been torn up over the guilt of sending him off into the dangerous realm of fairy.

How does the movie Tristan dump the movie Victoria? Like a frat boy bent on revenge. He takes her into his arms, does a tango dip as if for a kiss, then tells her to grow up and drops her on the ground. Her bully boyfriend shows up, but backs down when Tristan shows that it’s not going to be so easy to beat him up this time.

This scene was a lot more sophisticated in the book. When Tristan returns, an upset Victoria apologies for letting him go off into fairy. She never would have done it if she thought he was serious. Most importantly, she agrees to go through with her original promise of marriage even though she’s preparing to marry the man she loves. She agrees to hold to the promise even after Tristan reminds her that the promise wasn’t “marry me” -- the promise was “give me whatever I want”. (He totally wanted to get into her skirts, if that’s not clear.) That act, to me, demonstrates Victoria’s maturity. How Tristan responds is another example of why he’s such an appealing hero, once again winning by putting somebody else’s needs ahead of his own. He could have done anything to her, he could have made her feel more like shit than she already did. Instead, he tells her his desire is for her to marry this guy and be happy. It’s an act of grace and compassion, and one of the biggest signals that he has evolved from the boy he was at the story’s start.

Oh, Victoria’s fiancée is completely altered for the movie. But since that character doesn’t matter much in either format, we can ignore him.

Deus Ex Unicorn
On the one hand, it’s probably a good thing that little girls won’t see on screen what REALLY happened to the unicorn. On the other, I kinda wish I could be a fly on the wall when those little girls who leave the movie motivated enough to read the book get to the parts with the unicorn. I would turn on my video recorder to capture every moment as they fling themselves into their Mommy’s arms wailing why mommy why how could the bad man do that to a unicorn whhhhyyyyyy???! I would record these reactions and assemble them into a video art project titled Neil Gaiman Is An Awful Awful Very Bad Man.

On the third hand, I didn’t realize just how much I was looking forward to seeing the unicorn v. witch queen throwdown in the movie until it didn’t happen. It would have been AWESOME to see the unicorn impale the witch with his horn and the witch retaliate by driving her dagger through its eye and into its brain, killing it! And then later we could see the witch sawing off the unicorn’s head, spitting in its mouth, using its blood to cast a spell and turning its body into a UNICORN ZOMBIE! I really wanted to see that on the big screen. I am shamed of myself.

Yeah, that’s what REALLY happens to the unicorn in the book. Neil Gaiman Is An Awful Awful Very Bad Man for what he did to that poor unicorn. What kind of perv would do something like that to a UNICORN? It’s a UNICORN for Christ sake! Aren’t there rules?!! It’s one of the best So Very Wrong sequences ever in the history of all bookdom.

Anywho, why the unicorn doesn’t work in the movie is because the adaptation removes the reason the unicorn was there.

In the book, the unicorn is there because Tristan, at Yvaine’s urging, saved the beast from being killed by a lion “purring like an earthquake” (one of the many lines from the book that are fabulously tingly, by the way). I think bulleting this out is best: 

1. Saved from death, the unicorn follows them, in part out of gratitude and in part because it’s worried about the star.
2. At Tristan’s request, the unicorn carries Yvaine, who has a broken leg.
3. When Tristan is dumb enough to remove the magic chain tying her to him so he can go find food, she escapes with the unicorn. He’s stupid, but she’s not.
4. Unfortunately, the unicorn takes her to the fake inn created by the witch queen.
5. Once at the inn, the unicorn is locked in the stable. Yvaine is taken inside and pampered, completely unaware that she’s this close to being murdered.
6. When Tristan and Primus show up a little while later, the prince goes inside while Tristan stables the horses.
7. The unicorn is right there when the poisoned wine is sent out to Tristan. It stops him from drinking the stuff. Tristan clues in real fast, and the two of them charge into the inn to warn Primus and save Yvaine. (The unicorn is going after Yvaine. At this point, Tristan doesn’t know she’s at the inn.)
8. They burst into the inn, battle ensues, Primus and unicorn die, Tristan and Yvaine get away.

Here’s how they roll this sequence in the movie.

1. Tristan needs to go find food, so he uses the magic chain to tie Yvaine to a tree.
2. She sits there moping. Time passes from what looks to be late afternoon light to moonlight.
3. When it gets dark, a unicorn shows up out of nowhere. It’s a good thing it’s a unicorn, because as soon as she hears something moving in the forest Yvaine starts making as much noise as possible, bringing attention to herself. A more sensible approach would have been to say nothing and look afraid.
4. Unicorn uses his  horn to break the magic chain and set her free. Yvaine climbs aboard and they’re off.
5. Unfortunately, the unicorn takes her to the witch inn.
6. Once at the inn, Yvaine goes inside. Who knows where the unicorn goes.
7. When Tristan and Primus show up a little while later, the prince goes inside while Tristan stables the horses. There is no unicorn in the stable.
8. However, when the poisoned wine is delivered to Tristan, the unicorn appears out of nowhere to kick down the doors of the barn and dramatically save Tristan from the poisoned wine.
9. Unicorn then goes away once more, who knows where or why. Tristan runs inside the inn.
10. Primus is killed, battle between the witch, Tristan and Yvaine begins. The witch is winning.
11. Unicorn returns from its stroll just in time to dramatically knock down the doors of the inn, kill the poor goat, and block the witch’s magic attack just enough for Tristan and Yvaine to get away.
12. The unicorn vanishes, never to be seen or mentioned again. The poor thing doesn’t even get invited to the coronation! Victoria and Humphrey get an invite, but the unicorn who saved their asses doesn’t? There’s gratitude for you.

Unlike in the book, the whole unicorn thing in the movie is just dumb.

A woman who gave the correct answer to the first test question proving she was at the screening, which meant I didn't have to ask the second, is quite sure she saw a unicorn carcass on the ground in the post-battle scene. I didn't see a carcass. The Wife of Jedipino thinks maybe she did, but she's not entirely sure. Jedipino, to date (now it's Dec. 13) has not answered. Since this overly-long movie/book report is based on one viewing, it's possible I missed it. I don't think I did, but I'm gonna start a poll.

(Dec. 17) Another person who passed the test question, proving she was there. She also thinks she saw a dead unicorn, so up her vote goes.

(Jan. 18. New votes from five attendees added in blue.)

The unicorn died off-screen. The filmmakers discreetly displayed its Remains in the follow-up shot when Septimus arrived the next day, and BGF just didn't notice: Votes - 2

The unicorn's Remains might have been onscreen, but I'm not sure: Votes - 1  1

No unicorn Remains were in evidence on screen. It probably wandered off to wherever the hell it came from to begin with and they thought we wouldn't notice: Votes - 1  4

This poll will be updated as needed.

The Princes of Stormhold
They’re a rather morose lot in the book. They’re a riot in the movie.

(Jan. 19 update): Two of the five attendees did not like the princes! This must be an anomoly. The other three didn't mention the princes.

The End
Because the movie story is a quest, it needs a conventional celebratory quest ending. This is part of the reason everything that happens in the book after Tristan & Yvaine leave Wall for good is gone from the movie. There is no final, nuanced encounter between Yvaine and the witch queen, none of all that traveling around, no quiet, lonely ending. In it’s place, adventure! Everyone gets their cake and eats it to! Happily ever after!

The witch queen captures Yvaine & Lady Una at the gap and takes them to her sisters at their headquarters. Their plan is to enslave Una and kill Yvaine. Both Septimus and Tristan show up. There is a big huge awesome fight with magic, with swords & magic, and with animals. Two of the sisters die, leaving the witch queen the last baddie standing. She pulls off this manipulative act that is so cool even I fell for it. There is one more fight with lots of stuff being blow up! But at the last second Yvaine taps into her star essence and goes supernova, incinerating the witch. Tristan doesn’t die during the supernova because Yvaine is hugging him and it’s magic and all. I think. I don’t actually know because it’s not explained. But it’s really cool, so who cares?

Then we have the coronation. After the coronation, the voiceover tells us that the pair lived a long and happy time, saw their children and grandchildren grow into adults, and then one day used a magic candle to go up into the sky and become stars. Okay, I know it sounds stupid, but it’s really very sweet. They pull it off. You leave happy!

Where the ending doesn’t work is through its violation of the rules set at the start. If crossing the gap is such a huge taboo that nobody EVER goes through the gap, then why are so many township characters at the coronation? On the one hand, this is a minor quibble. But on the other, they make a big deal of the taboo. Dustan, Victoria, Humphrey, Tristan’s boss, the guardian of the gap and a couple of other township folks are at the coronation. When you throw in the wink between Capt. Shakespeare & Humphrey, it’s even more off. Was passage allowed just for the coronation, or do the old rules no longer apply now that Tristan is on the throne? Does that mean he’s king of all fairy land now? In the book I got the sense that Stormhold was a kingdom within fairy land. But is Stormhold all of fairy land in the movie?  For the sake of argument, let's assume that for the movie Stormhold and fairy land are one and the same. Even if a citizen of Wall is placed on the throne, why would the town allow the taboo to drop now that they know for ABSOLUTELY sure that there are deadly witches on the other side of the gap? Sure there's a human on the throne now, one of their own, but obviously the guy went native. I could see them letting Dunstan through for the coronation, but there’s no real reason for the rest of them to go.

Perhaps I should say the coronation scene doesn't work if you're the obsessive geek type who enjoys sitting around thinking about these sorts of things. If you're just a regular person who went to see a fun movie, you're not gonna notice that last bit. You're gonna go ! yaaay ! and leave happy.

(Jan. 19 update): All five had something to say about the ending. Short version: they all liked it.

What does all this rambling come down to? The Stardust movie is not the book in ways significant and not. That’s okay, though, because the movie is a hell of a lot of fun!

(And if you think this is long, you should see my treatise exploring how Nightmare Before Christmas is a training manual for mid-career middle managers.)

No updates around here for a couple of days. There is editing to do, and baking, and parties, and driving around to oooo over the decorations. See you sometime in the middle of next week!