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All the Light We Cannot See

smwhorn

By smwhorn
in Movies and TV

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smwhorn

smwhorn 482

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trailer.

https://www.google.com/search?q=all+the+light+we+cannot+see+trailer&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS884US885&oq=all+the+light+we+cannot+see+t&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i131i433i512j0i3l2j0i512j69i61l3.14109j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:6459359e,vid:TMmZ4bTfVjU

Netflix.

As good a book as I have read in a long, long time.  I hope they stay true to the book.  The ending shook/surprised me a bit and I had to go back and re read to sort of digest/process it.  I still hope they stay true to it.

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wild_turkey

wild_turkey 3159

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Loved the book. Probably a top 3 book for me. Been meaning to read it again so maybe this gives me a reason.

Trailer looks good but I’m a tiny bit skeptical because Netflix has been underwhelming lately and because Shawn Levy’s filmography is pretty weak. Hopefully they prove me wrong.

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RomaVicta

RomaVicta 29902

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I know nothing about the book. Thanks for bringing my attention to it.

The trailer was off-putting to me. The overwhelming (and over-used) music and the golden look of the film make me think it may be over the top when watching.  I like a little room to respond emotionally instead of being over-cued by the filmmaker. It looks to be a little too much in love with itself. 

Hope I'm wrong. It happens.

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South Austin

South Austin 52456

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4 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

I know nothing about the book. Thanks for bringing my attention to it.

The trailer was off-putting to me. The overwhelming (and over-used) music and the golden look of the film make me think it may be over the top when watching.  I like a little room to respond emotionally instead of being over-cued by the filmmaker. It looks to be a little too much in love with itself. 

Hope I'm wrong. It happens.

I have no idea how good this will be, but you should read the book before you watch it. 

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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29189

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everything netflix touches turns to shit.

i remember back in january, they did a full billboard blitz on the sunset strip.  basically they had a movie coming out every month with big movie stars in them, and they advertised all 10-15 at once.  movies we had never heard of, and we were looking them up, etc.  that was their play in 2023 - big movies with big stars. 

not sure any of them have been worth seeing.  the latest one with emily blunt and chris evans is chilling in the low 20's on rt.  i know fuck the critics and rt and blah blah, but i don't know one quality piece of content below 35-40% on there.  crowdsourcing works.

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wild_turkey

wild_turkey 3159

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Terribly disappointing but fairly predictable from Netflix. I don’t know how they can do certain things like The Crown so damn well, but then fuck up almost everything else. This story has incredible source material. What a waste.

Like I said above, I love the book and I’m about to start a reread, but I’m wondering if I’ll even watch the series. If reviews stay this shitty, I’ll probably pass and pretend they never did it.

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89630

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10 hours ago, smwhorn said:

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/all-the-light-we-cannot-see-movie-review-2023

If Ebert doesn't like it...well, he didn't like the 1989 Batman, Gladiator, Caligula, Raising Arizona, The Usual Suspects, Fast Times at Ridgemont High....so...fuck his judgement.

1 hour ago, wild_turkey said:

Terribly disappointing but fairly predictable from Netflix. I don’t know how they can do certain things like The Crown so damn well, but then fuck up almost everything else. This story has incredible source material. What a waste.

If you take a shotgun filled with buckshot and fire it enough times, you'll get a hit.  Well, that's a shitty analogy.

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Michael Knight

Michael Knight 12977

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2 hours ago, wild_turkey said:

Terribly disappointing but fairly predictable from Netflix. I don’t know how they can do certain things like The Crown so damn well, but then fuck up almost everything else. This story has incredible source material. What a waste.

Like I said above, I love the book and I’m about to start a reread, but I’m wondering if I’ll even watch the series. If reviews stay this shitty, I’ll probably pass and pretend they never did it.

Shawn Levy is a hack and unfortunately hes directing Deadpool 3 so expect that to suck too

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rage-a-holic

rage-a-holic 4382

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1 minute ago, hayden_horn said:

it is exactly like a fucking hallmark movie. i was trying to figure out how to describe it. 

My girlfriend stayed up till 5am binging it. I made it through 2 episodes before I crashed. Definite Hallmark movie vibes. 

Mark Ruffalo attempting some kind of accent was fucking horrible.

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BrazilHorn

BrazilHorn 6586

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On 11/10/2023 at 8:32 PM, McCroskey said:

Unfamiliar with the book but really liked the Netflix series.  Book ordered from Amazon and will read that over the holidays.

Same for me. Liked fact that it was just four episodes. Quick watch over couple of days. 
Not anything I feel urge to watch again but it was a good, enjoyable watch. 

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hayden_horn

hayden_horn 11362

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11 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, two eps down.  It's ok, watchable.  There is something hallmark-y or lifetime-y about it, but it's got more violence and implied violence than any of those I've ever seen (which aint many).

it's the fact that every character is a stale, comforting archetype

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wild_turkey

wild_turkey 3159

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Long post / rant ahead. Like I said upthread, this was one of my favorite books I’ve ever read, and I recently finished reading it a second time, so it’s fresh on my mind.

I watched the series this week and I’m being nice when I say it’s a gigantic fucking piece of shit and possibly the worst film adaptation I’ve ever seen, and yes I read WWZ and loved it, and watched WWZ and reluctantly liked it as something different. So I can tolerate some changes.

Imagine if Thomas Keller sold his recipes to a local restaurant and you got hopeful to try them close to home, but that restaurant ended up being The Cheesecake Factory, and they cut out 70% of the ingredients and added some new ingredients like liquid smoke and Pace picante sauce, and then they mass produced their dishes and froze them and reheated them, and then served these recipes in a new restaurant they named The French Laundry. That’s the equivalent of the Netflix adaptation of All The Light We Cannot See.

They stripped out all the depth and nuance and replaced it with stereotypical characters and hit you over the head with the same ideas and phrases because they apparently think the audience is too dumb to pick up something the first or even third time it’s mentioned. They replaced character building stories with things like gunfights.

If you have read the book but not seen the series, you can safely skip it. You don’t need to see it to convince yourself like I foolishly chose to do.

If you haven’t read the book, do yourself a favor and read it in place of watching this.

Among the many changes I hated, which contains obvious spoilers:

-Marie was age 12 in 1940, age 16 in 1944, and they chose a 29 year old actor to play her. Werner was 14 in 1940, 18 in 1944, and they chose a 26 year old actor to play him. I get that older actors often play younger characters, but these are clearly adults not even attempting to pass as children/teenagers.

-Von Rumpel was given a much bigger role in the series as if they felt they needed a bigger bad guy. He appears to be imitating Christopher Waltz from Inglorious Basterds, but he does a very poor job of it and comes across as more of a cheesy Marvel villain. Just terrible and certain scenes were cringeworthy.

-Lots of shootouts and threatening scenes at gunpoint, mostly involving von Rumpel, none of which existed in the book. Completely unnecessary unless you are pandering to a simpleton audience that requires more guns to stay entertained.

-Volkheimer had very little role, essentially an extra. They did not show his training with Werner or their unit’s rampage through Russia and France or even their struggle in the hotel basement.

-Frederick was completely eliminated. He was a critical part of Werner’s character development, but nope, because they needed that screen time for more guns!

-Etienne was made into “The Professor” in the series and was the one broadcasting radio transmissions that both Werner and Marie grew up listening to. In the book, there was no character named the professor, and Etienne was merely playing recordings of his dead brother. Also, Marie never listened to him growing up, nor did Werner ever actually meet him.

-Etienne did not die in the book. He was imprisoned for a time, leaving Marie alone, but they later reunited and moved to Paris. Also, he never rode a motorcycle through the street and had a shootout with a German officer, but of course, more guns!!!

-Marie spent the final act of the book secretly confined to her attic, starving and dying of thirst, broadcasting on her radio, while von Rumpel occupied the house below her. Werner listened to her from the hotel basement, then escaped and went to save her. This was replaced in the series with a shorter direct standoff with von Rumpel in which Marie kills him, using a gun of course.

-Werner very clearly died in the book. Also, the show added an embrace and kiss between Werner and Marie because that’s the Netflix formula. Can’t have a show where the lead female and male don’t get that textbook kiss.

-Marie’s father was imprisoned in the book and never had a face-to-face confrontation with von Rumpel, but I guess the show needed von Rumpel to kill him to make him a bigger villain.

-The true location of the Sea of Flames diamond was much more of a mystery in the book. Even Marie’s father did not know if he truly possessed it. He never told Etienne or Madame Manec or their resistance group about it, nor was it ever visualized by Werner or von Rumpel. The show changed all of this presumably because they felt the audience needed to be absolutely aware of its presence, and because it would be so awesome to have the bad guy die while looking at it.


I knew this would be a disaster when I saw Netflix and Shawn Levy were behind it. It’s too bad we couldn’t get an 8-10 episode adaptation by the Coen Brothers on AppleTV. The attic scenes, the hotel basement scenes, and Werner’s travel could’ve been epic.

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WholesomeChungusSocialist

WholesomeChungusSocialist 3

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Have neither read this book nor seen this show, but Netflix sucks ass; wish they’d stop pretending to make anything ambitious so that things like The Killer would be made/distributed elsewhere and wouldn’t be unknown to wide audiences, but in this era, that’s just the expectation for all but maybe two to three movies (maybe more if you count Marvel/DC, which I unfairly don’t) released per year. Anyway, enough of this show or their business, how would you describe the book, apart from anything I can glean from wikipedia or elsewhere? I’m not sure if you’re familiar with The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell, which is also a WWII historical fiction, but is seemingly (again, would like your perspective) both much darker yet more plainly distant than this one.

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