Redwarmin This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

JurviZ I watched this immediately after finishing the book, and all I can say is that I am a bit baffled.There were quite a lot of changes made in this version, compared to the book. Now, while this is a pretty normal thing, most adaptations require changes, I must say that all the changes made here were for the worse.All the ways this movie/mini-series differs from the original book are bad. I cannot understand why the makers of this film made the changes they made. It seems to me they cut out the very depth of the story.Most of the characters, for example, were more shallow, more over-the-top, like caricatures of the originals. This ruins the mood and the atmosphere of the story. Granted, the at times ridiculous language in the book does a bit of the same in the original, but not nearly as badly as the style of this adaptation.I feel that the whole core of the book Moby Dick is the character of Ahab, and his dual nature. He is hell bent on killing the whale, but also, deep down, a good man. Now, for some reason, the latter aspect of the character was much down-played in this version. The beauty of the original story is Ahab's own struggle with his obsession, and all the rest of the events in the story are just reflections of this internal struggle. This version does itself a disservice by not following the original on this.The book has it's problems, it's long and tedious, but the story within is a far better one than the one told by this adaptation.

ShadowTwo Any one who has read the book or seen the 1956 version are if for a terrible disappointment. Obviously made for TV with all the required commercial breaks to keep the viewer glued to the set; this production not only reinvents the original plot, but also adds in it's own "dark philosophy" of Ahab. Queequeg jabbers like a magpie, Starbuck is a lilly-livered character, and the crew is a mishmash of Africans, crazies, American Indian (?) and what have you. In essence, a waste of time.The 1956 version, though there are some deviations from the book, still gives the depth that Melville intended to portray. True, Moby Dick may be snazzier in the recent version, but he is PURE white, and looks very plastic. The 1956 whale at least had some age about him, especially since Ahab remarked "when you smell land, and there be no land." The pure white whale would be scentless as opposed to the white/greenish/brownish one in the earlier version.

Neal Scroggs I must reiterate the remarks made by Mr. Vaugh Birbeck. This made-for-TV version of Moby Dick misses the mark by a mile and then some. All of Birbeck's points are valid, but I'll add a few of my own.Moby Dick is about a lot of things – obsession, revenge, objective evil, the nature of existence – the novel is so pregnant with meaning both within and below the text that it has become a byword for significant literature. It is the perennial head-scratcher which has introduced generations of students to the richness of the English language as an artist's palette of tones and colors. Captain Ahab is Socrates run amok. He has seen beneath the façade of mere things to glimpse a sublime Truth, which isn't simply a benevolent deity, but a horror show of forces vast, inscrutable and infinitely hostile.But Moby Dick is also about whaling. On top of everything else it's a story of mariners and ships and the trade of whaling as it was experienced by Melville himself. Director Franc Roddam doesn't seem to realize this. Evidently he has so little regard for the source that he doesn't feel the need to make the Pequod a real ship from a real place on a real whaling voyage with real whalers aboard. Instead we get a rather unconvincing studio prop for a ship, miscast actors with slipshod direction for a crew, and the classically trained Patrick Stewart struggling with a wretched screenplay that preserves little of Melville's language. Watch the 1956 John Ford production with Gregory Peck in the role of Ahab instead. Even though it is only 116 minutes long Ford's direction of a masterful screenplay by the brilliant Ray Bradbury really gets under the skin of the novel.

edalweber When I finally saw this on TV recently, I wasn't expecting much, but it was even worse than I thought it would be.No redeeming features whatsoever.Even the special effects were bad.In the 1956 movie the whale had a genuine air of menace.Here it was just a big white lump moving through the ocean.One of the idiot features of the movie was that everyone addressed the narrator as "Ishmael".Both the book and the 1956 movie made that plain that that was a symbolic name, not his real one.Queequeeg in Huston's version is an impressive, dignified man.Here he is just a wild eyed lunatic.The novel is a morality play, and John Huston kept that flavor in his version.Nothing of that in this version. The actor who plays Starbuck is not even remotely as good as the one in the 1956 version(but that is generally true of the whole cast),and totally fails to convey the true motivation of the character.In the book, and in the 1956 movie, Starbuck says"Our mission in life is to provide oil for the lamps of the world.And as long as we perform that task to the best of our abilities,we are performing a service for mankind,and that is pleasing to God." And then he says that forsaking that to assist the Captain in personal vengeance is a perversion of that.But in this version Starbuck seems only concerned that they are losing money.There is a sort of driving spirit in the book, that is conveyed in the 1956 movie,that is totally absent in this,nothing but a bizarre hodgepodge.