As is the case with any adaptation of a book series, there are going to be some significant changes from the page to the screen. Netflix’s adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s first book, Shadow and Bone, however, is an especially fascinating case. Eric Heisserer had the bright idea to fold in the highly popular characters from Bardugo’s popular Six of Crows duology. Though set in the same universe, Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows takes place in very different time periods. So, essentially, Heisserer, with Bardugo’s full approval, snuck a wholly invented Six of Crows prequel story into the cracks of Shadow and Bone and somehow, incredibly, pulled it off.
But folding two stories together like this means there had to be plenty of changes along the way and Bardugo, for one, seemed perfectly willing to murder her own darlings. Shadow and Bone, written in 2012, was, after all, Bardugo’s very first novel. Even the most die-hard Bardugo fan will tell you that her depth of character and intricacy of plot have improved greatly over the years. Heisserer and Bardugo hopped on the phone with Vanity Fair to discuss some of the bigger changes they made to bring these characters to life on the screen. Spoilers abound so only read after you’ve watched all the episodes!
The Darkling’s Origin Story: Kirigan’s beginnings are never quite explained in the main books but Bardugo wrote one for him in the short story titled The Demon in the Wood. Heisserer and Bardugo originally planned to film that story, which follows Kirigan as a lonely young boy named Eryk. As if I wasn’t already thinking of him as a Magneto analogue! But Heisserer said the realities of production “reared its ugly head.” There wasn’t time to shoot the whole Demon in the Wood arc let alone put underage children in freezing water where one of them gets their head bashed in.
Netflix was eager to use Ben Barnes for the flashback instead and so this more tragically romantic (though still very Magneto) Darkling origin was filmed. The Darkling breaks bad because the soldiers kill his lover, a Grisha healer. The intent was to underline the dangers of the merzost (the power of creation, of life over death). Kirigan wishes for an army 10,000 strong but “they don’t tell you the price.” Heisserer describes it as a “monkey’s paw” wish. Kirigan got his army, but they’re monsters.
Bardugo and Heisserer were thrilled to use Zoe Wanamaker as Kirigan’s mother, Baghra, again. “I’ve been at Thanksgiving dinners that were nearly as raw as that,” Heisserer joked of their tense encounter.
Are Alina’s Powers Somewhat Different on the Page? In the book, when Alina finally gains some control over her own power, she has a realization that there was a part of her actively suppressing that power so she wouldn’t have to leave Mal behind. It’s an interesting study in the ways in which women sometimes make some of the most powerful parts of themselves smaller in order to keep someone they love—even if that sacrifice is something Mal would never ask of her.
“We had explored a lot of that and ultimately we felt it works best if Alina possibly subconsciously knew there was something different about her, but it really never lived in the front of her mind,” Heisserer says. “So when she essentially rigs that test so she can stay with Mal, it is more a case of ‘I don’t want to go to some place where I am unprotected by the one who stuck by me this whole time.’”
Alina’s isolation and need for Mal is intensified in the show by the decision to make her a half-Shu woman living in a world where the Shu Han are the enemy. It’s something both the creators and actor Jessie Mei Li herself have talked about at length. The Mal and Alina connection, Bardugo argues, and the cost of what Alina is giving up by embracing her powers is made that much stronger by the fact that the show gives us Mal’s side of the story alongside Alina’s.
Fixing Mal: The character of Mal on the page is…fine. He’s a bit bland in the Hunger Games mold of Peeta and Gale. That’s largely because, especially in the first book, the readers are very much in Alina’s head and they need to be as uncertain as she is about Mal’s affection for her. I tell Bardugo that while I liked Mal on the page, I loved him as portrayed by Archie Renaux. “I would say the same,” she laughs. Bardugo points out that in the paperback edition of Shadow and Bone she included a bonus feature of sorts that was a letter Mal wrote to Alina. “I didn’t expect Eric and his writers to develop the story so beautifully,” she says.
The show, in particular, gives Mal’s grief over the loss of his friends in pursuit of Alina’s stag real time to breath. “If you had told me that I was going to become a huge fan of Mikhael and Dubrov,” Bardugo says, “I would have laughed in your face. Now I’m fairly heartbroken over their loss.” Heisserer says: “We knew we wanted to make sure he had a real emotional impact, not just with Alina, but with the audience. He is her main squeeze for so much of this. It was a big issue for us.”
A large part of that was acting. Bardugo says that Renaux entered the mix after they had seen a parade of “square-jawed, heartthrob types.” None of them were right for Mal who is a “scrapper” and someone who, in her view, “you could believe would throw himself into the fray for the person and people he loves.”
If the Dimensions of Mal Were So Important, Why Cut His Angry Confrontation With Alina? In the book, when Mal discovers Alina draped in all her finery at the Little Palace after he’s lost his friends trying to find her, he’s angry. Perhaps a bit too angry on the page, but with the show building up his devastation, it was a surprise to find that scene cut entirely. Alina and Mal miss each other entirely at the Palace only to find each other in the woods after she escapes. Heisserer says they had written drafts of the Mal and Alina fight but then Heisserer was approached by “an astute” member of the crew who pointed out that Archie Renaux and Ben Barnes didn't have a scene together.
“She just incepted it in me and I couldn’t let go of it,” Heisserer says. The Little Palace fight with Alina was replaced by the Darkling playing a game of cat and mouse with Mal. “I realized how we might be doing both characters a far greater service. We delay that reunion and showcase Mal as a tracker. In fact, there was another missing scene where he arrives at the location where Alina broke free of the Crows and sees sun damage on leaves in a certain arc and knows that she used her powers here.” Bardugo, for her part, is a huge fan of the Darkling-Mal scene. Especially the part where Kirigan asks Mal about Alina’s favorite flower. The duo get another juicy encounter right before Kirigan takes Alina back into the Shadow Fold.
Where Is the Backstory for the Crows? As I mentioned up top, Inej, Kaz, Jesper, Nina, and Matthias are all ported in from another book, Six of Crows. Over the course of that book, while the crew is executing a heist or seven, Bardugo carefully unspools their backstories. The flashbacks from that book of how Nina and Matthias met serve as the substance of their story in Netflix’s Shadow and Bone but what about the rest? Why does Mal wear his gloves and what about his cane? How did Inej find herself indebted to him or “belonging to” Tante Heleen in the first place? What about Jesper?
A lot of that, of course, is being reserved for potential future seasons. Initially there was a question of whether they could execute the story of Six of Crows simultaneously with that of Shadow and Bone. “We couldn’t put the plot of these two together,” Bardugo explains, “it created too many questions if you put all of these players and all of these antagonists into the same space.” So this prequel material was crafted to both intersect tidily with Alina’s journey and “to keep some things intact for the future…. We felt that the characters, their competence, and their interaction spoke for themselves. I hope we’ll get another season. I hope we’ll get a chance to touch on some of the things that are excavated in Six of Crows. But we had to write the season to work as an intact story.”
Alina’s Agency and Kirigan’s Seduction: Obviously the ending of the book and how Alina’s confrontation with the Darkling plays out in the Shadow Fold is complicated in a major way by the inclusion of the Crows. But Heisserer was also very keen to keep Alina’s agency intact throughout, even when the Crows directly impacted her story. In her romantic interactions with the Darkling, for example, it is Alina and not Kirigan doing the initiating.
“Anytime Alina has agency in the show,” Heisserer says, “it’s better for everybody. It certainly empowers Jessie and lets her know that she is not in the passenger seat of this.” One prime example of Heisserer keeping Alina’s agency intact is the escape from the Little Palace: “When you bring the Crows whose sole job is to kidnap her, we, as the writers, didn’t want to take away Alina’s choice to flee.” The result is the comedic moment when Alina, while sneaking out, just happens to choose the Crow carriage that was waiting for her.
Bardugo adds that Alina and Kirigan’s first kiss in the book always felt like a calculated move on his part: “He kisses her when she’s asking about the stag and he wants to distract her. He was forced to move more quickly than he intended to. He is a master manipulator and also somebody who is so busy gaming other people that he sometimes games himself. So I think it’s powerful for Alina to do that.” Bardugo adds that there’s something very different in reading the Kirigan-Alina relationship on the page and seeing it on the screen where the age difference and “power discrepancy” is designed to make viewers “not completely comfortable” with their interaction.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a problem with people feeling empathy for the Darkling,” Bardugo says with a nod toward the book fans deeply invested in the “Darklina” relations. “Give someone a strong jawline and a serious agenda and suddenly people are deeply invested.” But, she said, Kirigan’s seductive qualities are very much part of the point. “My goal has always been to create a deep gulf between the things he says and the things he does. That is the challenge that I’m presenting to the reader,” she says. “I made him beautiful and seductive for a reason. The dangerous people in our lives don’t enter with the word evil stamped on their forehead or twirling their mustache, they are often beautiful and wounded. And that doesn’t mean that they can’t still do damage.”
Heisserer’s inspiration for the character came closer to home. “There’s a serial-killer documentary and my wife just gobbled it up,” he says. “I was like, why are you interested in this? She always said, ‘Well, he’s organized, he has a plan.’ So, obviously, we understand there’s going to be an attraction there to a villain.”
Dark Alina: But the biggest change that Jessie Mei Li herself responded to was working in some of Alina’s darkness very early on. “There’s little glimmers of her having a slightly darker side and maybe being a bit vain and being seduced by power and, obviously, by Kirigan,” Li says. “There’s little seeds of that. Especially going forward, in terms of the books, Alina has a complicated relationship with her powers and her responsibilities.”
If Shadow and Bone gets a second season, there will be much more to say on that front.
— Cover Story: Anya Taylor-Joy on Life Before and After The Queen’s Gambit
— Zack Snyder Explains His Long-Awaited Justice League Ending
— Tina Turner Is Still Haunted by Her Abusive Marriage
— Emilio Estevez’s True Hollywood Stories
— Armie Hammer Accused of Rape and Assault
— Why Black Panther Is Key to Understanding The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
— 13 Oscar-Nominated Movies You Can Stream Right Now
— From the Archive: Meet the Real-Life Teen Burglars Who Inspired The Bling Ring
— Serena Williams, Michael B. Jordan, Gal Gadot, and more are coming to your favorite screen April 13–15. Get your tickets to Vanity Fair’s Cocktail Hour, Live! here.
"book" - Google News
April 29, 2021 at 09:00PM
https://ift.tt/2QJ6x6H
‘Shadow and Bone’ Creators Break Down Those Big Book Changes - Vanity Fair
"book" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2Yv0xQn
https://ift.tt/2zJxCxA
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "‘Shadow and Bone’ Creators Break Down Those Big Book Changes - Vanity Fair"
Post a Comment