The official trailer for Julie Taymor‘s Shakespeare adaptation of The Tempest just dropped, and it looks, well, interesting, I guess.
For those who don’t know, Taymor has shaped her career with over-the-top interpretations of things that were already famous. She took a stab at (pun intended) Shakespeare’s first (and probably most gruesome) play Titus Andronicus with her own atrocious Titus and somehow managed to take some of the best music ever written and ruin it with Across the Universe. On the Broadway stage, she brought together the sensory-overload that is The Lion King and is doing the upcoming Bono-scored Spider Man musical, which I’m sure will be a treat. Ugh.
So now that brings us to Taymor’s version of The Tempest, a.k.a. a loud, obnoxious, and modified version of Shakespeare’s final play. Her film stars Helen Mirror as “Prospera” (a female version of the original male character Prospero) — a sorceress who rules over a magical island and its shipwrecked captives, comprised of an eclectic cast including Russell Brand, Chris Cooper, Alan Cumming, Djimon Honsou, Felicity Jones, Alfred Molina, David Strathairn and Ben Whishaw. In Taymor’s defense, she does know how to gather a cast of stars.
But alas! Shakespeare’s play is a heartbreaking romantic tale that manages to be both dark and lovely. This film will no doubt be none of those things. Get ready for a CGI mess that students will now watch rather than read. Blah. I bite my thumb at you, Taymor!
Source: Coming Soon
