The Three Musketeers, one of the most adored stories across the globe and the single most adapted story EVER…I guess it’s only inevitable that something will come along to completely destroy the message of author, Alexandre Dumas. But…AIRSHIPS??? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???…
Sorry…I’ll get to that later.
I should begin by saying that the 2011 adaptation of this classic tale should not be called The Three Musketeers. Instead, I suggest it should be called Shit That NEVER Happened. For SEVERAL reasons this movie hurt me to my very core. Not only did this piece of crap completely deviate from the original story, it also completely deviated from fucking reality. From French water ninjas (I’m not kidding) to…FUCKING AIRSHIPS *ahem sorry*, this movie not only disrespects fans of the source material but also anyone even slightly interested in history. Not to mention also fucking around with science and logic…but I digress.
The story begins with Athos (who is introduced to us as a water ninja…no I am not kidding), Porthos and Aramis all in Italy with Milady de Winter trying to steal DaVinci’s plans for flying ships, aka airships aka fucking zeppelins. Milady turns on them, after showing off some impressive spy skills that would have been impossible considering she’s wearing a corset and gives the plans to the Duke of Buckingham who is a villain in this version…and it’s Orlando Bloom (may God ensure he never plays a villain again). Anyway, we meet Dicktagnan…sorry D’Artagnan who is a whiny little shit, (and that’s putting it nicely) who gets shot by Rochefort. I tell ya I could watch that scene over and over. Too bad he survives… Anyway, he provokes the three musketeers, instead of just accidentally pissing them off, and gets them all to fight him, however the Cardinal’s guard shows up and they win and yadda yadda. Constance shows up and D’Artagnan flirts with her cockily to the point that I want him to get shot (again). And let’s just say hijinks ensue.
WAIT! Before I move on: Louis XIII is a prissy fop and a coward, the queen is not having an affair, the plot line about the diamonds turns into a love story which makes it COMPLETELY POINTLESS and the Duke of Buckingham is evil…did I already mention that?
For those of you who know the story, I hope you’re all cringing like I was. I found myself actually yelling at the TV…a lot…I’m glad I didn’t see it in theatres. The only likeable thing about the entire movie is the three musketeers. I will say that the casting job for those three was absolutely perfect. Rochefort was good too, and though I find Christophe Waltz a little bit hammy, it did remind me of the classically hammy acting of Charlton Heston who played the Cardinal in my favourite adaptation of The Three Musketeers, the 1973 version.
That’s where the good things about the movie ends though. Like I said before FUCKING AIRSHIPS. AIRSHIPS DID NOT EXIST. THEY HAVE NO FUCKING POINT IN THE MOVIE EXCEPT TO ADD CGI EFFECTS WHERE YOU OBVIOUSLY DON’T NEED THEM!!!! GAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH.
OH and there’s also the problem with the story becoming a LOVE story between Louis XIII and his wife the queen. THEY ARE MARRIED. NO LOVE STORY IS NEEDED. This brings up another issue…the diamonds. In the original story, for those who don’t know, the problem with the diamonds being stolen is because they were a gift to the queen that she gifted to her lover, the Duke of Buckingham, and the musketeers have to get the diamonds back to save the queen’s reputation and stop the Cardinal from starting a war between France and England. Here? The king gives her the diamonds and asks that she wears them to the ball. They get stolen… and? What’s the point? They try to play it off like “Oh if she doesn’t wear them it means she doesn’t love him”…Ummm people lose things all the time…and if they were stolen, then it’s just a matter of getting them back. Louis XIII can know about them being missing and nothing would be lost, but they keep him in the dark because…it’d break his heart that someone stole them? See? It makes no sense. Nothing is lost by the diamonds getting stolen when you omit the affair between Buckingham and the queen. No drama, no war, NO FUCKING CARING.
And the fact that they turned the complex characters into such shallow, watered down versions of themselves just makes me sad. They write off Buckingham as a villain because it’s his fault in the original story that the diamonds are missing; they write off the complex love/hate relationship between Athos and Milady to an “I love you but I like being bad” story; they makes D’Artagnan a whiny little bitch and an asshole because he’s a teenager (and because he’s Logan “Smarmyface” Lerman). It’s just incredibly disappointing.
AND all of the palace scenes are at the palace of Versailles…Versailles was built by Louis the XIV….LOUIS THE FOURTEENTH, NOT LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH. CAN YOU COUNT YOU BASTARDS? CAN YOU!?!?!?! And you know what bothered me the most about this realization? The 1973 version that I love and that I grew up with suffers the exact same problem. It was also filmed at Versailles….YOU BASTARDS DREW MY ATTENTION TO A FLAW FROM A MOVIE I LIKE TOO!!! YOU JERKS! RRRAAAAAGGGGEEEEE…..sorry…
I will say this, despite the absolute rage I felt watching this movie, and despite the obvious hatred I have for it and the fact that I hope it burns in the deepest levels in Hell, it was fun to watch. Sometimes getting pissed off enough that you have something to rant about is fun, and it was the source of a lot of laughs for me and my friends while we were watching. I gave them endless enjoyment and I was able to get some cathartic release of stress.
SO…after all this, if you’re still reading, I have to say that even though this movie is a pathetic waste of money, it is worth watching at least once if you’re up for some enraging fun. Get some friends together, especially a few who know the original story and know something about history, and settle down for some stupid, braindead fun.
Until next time Internets.
P.S. How the FUCK did they un-impale their airship from the towers of Notre Dame?…
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