#i just want to really delve into themes of grief with the rewrite
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I wrote a very small snippet for my voltron rewrite!!!
Allura stood outside of the door that she knew so well, overwhelmed.
It has been 10,000 decapheobes for the universe, but for her, it had been less than a phoeb.
Another explosion shook the castle, and she picked up her pace, running faster. She could hear the footsteps of Coran behind her, and it reassured her to know that she wasn’t alone in this moment.
When she finally reached the doors to the med bay, she could hear the voice of her brother arguing with someone, but it stopped the moment she and Coran stepped through.
She wrung her hands together, looking at the door. She doesn’t know why it’s so hard to take that final step to enter, but she’s frozen in place.
Melchor turns to look at her, and he hides any signs of distress on his face. Allura knows he does this to reassure her, but she can’t fathom why he would try to hide it at a time like this.
“Allura-“ Melchor starts, but Allura cuts him off.
“Melchor, why did you tell me to come here? Is anyone injured?” She asked when she noticed two empty cryo-pods sticking out of the ground.
Her brother didn’t answer, hesitating and looking behind her to Coran.
Melchor rarely hesitated when speaking.
Something was wrong.
Melchor took a breath, and moved his eyes back to hers. “Allura, there seems to be an issue with some of the cryo-pods. They need to be fully operational for anyone who needs them. You and Coran know the pods much better than I do, so I called you here to take care of them.”
That’s…a rather odd thing to for him to summon her and Coran for so urgently. She looks back to Coran, who seems to be none the wiser to the strangeness of the situation.
It should be so simple to step through the door. But she can’t. She feels pathetic.
Allura inspects one of the pods, Coran doing the same to the one beside her. She tries to find any sign of anything wrong when a hand falls on her shoulder. She looks behind her to Melchor, who has an oddly determined on his face.
“Melchor, what- oh.” Allura is cut off when her brother brings her into a sudden hug. He holds her tightly, only making the strange feeling she’s had since she’s entered the med-bay stronger. She brings her arms up to return the embrace, and looks towards Coran who is watching them with a pained expression on his face.
She’s a princess, and a part of Voltron. A room shouldn’t be causing her so much distress, and yet here she is.
Before Allura can even ask Coran what’s wrong, another distant explosion sends a shockwave through the castle. Melchor breaks the embrace, hands on her shoulders and a determined look on his face, his eyes that are exactly like her own holding a deep pain.
“Allura, I hope that one day, you can forgive me for what I’m about to do.” She feels her heart drop, and she’s suddenly shoved backwards into the cryo-pod.
“Melchor, what are you doing?!” She goes to step out, but the glass of the pod comes up, effectively trapping her in.
She sees Melchor start pressing some buttons outside of the pod, and her eyes move towards Coran, who doesn’t seemed surprised at all.
It finally clicks.
She looks back to Melchor, and hits her hand against the glass. “Melchor! You can’t do this!”
Melchor looks at her, and she can feel the pod getting colder. She hits her fist against the pod.
“Please! Don’t do this!” Allura continues to hit the glass, trying desperately to break the glass even though she knows that it won’t break. She has to try.
Allura knows that he isn’t here anymore. Her and Coran are the last Alteans left, but somehow, it feels that if she doesn’t walk through the door, she can still pretend.
She feels her movements getting more sluggish as she watches Melchor guide Coran inside the other pod.
“Melchor!” She doesn’t want him to do this.
Melchor steps back once he’s done configuring Coran’s pod, and he looks at her again.
She can feel herself growing more and more sluggish, her vision fading, the cold bearing down on her now.
“Please, forgive me.”
Then, everything went black.
Allura steels herself, and walks through the door.
It’s just like it was 10,000 decaphoebs ago. All of Melchor’s things are left exactly as they were, his bed still unmade, his desk chair left at an odd angle. It looked as if he had simply gone out that morning, if you ignored the layers of dust that had built up in the room.
She walks towards Melchor’s desk, and she sees his small projector still on the desk. She picks it up, carefully blowing off the dust from it before activating it.
A picture of her and Melchor shows, and she immediately turns it off, closing her eyes and gripping the projector in her hands. She can’t bring herself to see it.
“How can it be that it’s been ten thousand decaphoebs since you’ve last walked the halls of this castle, yet for me it has barely been a phoeb since I last saw you?” Allura sits on Melchor’s unmade bed, looking at his room.
Allura looks down to where the projector is gripped in her hands, and feels a few tears rolling down her face.
“It’s so hard not having you here. You’ve always been a constant in my life, someone I could turn to. It feels so odd to walk the halls and not hear you joking with one of the guards, or to hear your footsteps when you would try to sneak up on me.” Allura huffs out a laugh, tears still rolling down her face.
“You never managed to sneak up on me, and every time you swore that you would get me next time.” She wipes some of the tears on her face, and continues.
“You would’ve loved the new paladins. They’re so brave, and there’s so much good within them. You would’ve gotten on very well with Lance. I can see so much of you in him. I can just imagine now the banter between the two of you. It would’ve been never ending.
“It’s almost painful for me to look at him at times, because I can hear your laugh echoing in his. I…I could’ve never thought that there would be a day where I would be without you, brother. You’ve always been in my life and now…” Allura closes her eyes and tries not to choke on the sob that’s trapped in her throat.
“Now I have to walk these halls alone, without you guiding me. I can’t even bury you. All I have to serve as your grave is your room, and dust serving as the flowers placed on it instead of juniberries.” She looks at the projector, and turns it on.
The smiling face of her brother as he poses beside her looks back at her, and the sob that had been trapped in her throat escapes.
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aalt-ctrl-del · 6 years ago
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ive watched a few other film reviews and comparisons with the 1989 film of Pet Sematary. Spoilers yknow
maybe they rewrote the script a few times, but films usually have cohesion despite multiple changes during filming and rewrites. The pacing felt rushed in the third act, and the Burial Grounds in the Little God Swamp essential became a fast pass for quick-resurrections r’us. I much preferred the suspense of the original film (omit the bad acting because it was made up for with creepy ambiance)
I don’t really get where people go “oh, it’s hard to make a toddler act in a horror film”. Miko Hughes did a great portrayal of Gage, and the Lavoie twins in the 2019 remake did good in the few scenes they caught - I wished they did more with the creepy Gage supernatural psychic child.
But where do people get the “oh, a toddler isn’t that creepy. You just overpower them, and that’s no big deal” Did these asswipes not read the book? Gage post-reanimation wasn’t a legitimate threat to people he encountered, or whoever knew he could’ve been dangerous. He was dangerous because he gave everybody fucked hallucinations and had Churchill to help take out the main threat - Judd. He disarmed his mother with more fuck all ptsd about Zelda, then when grief stricken Rachel goes to hug her baby - she doesn’t really fathom if he’s real or not - she’s RachelStoppedWorking.exe
Yeah, toddlers you can overpower. But how ‘bout we stick a fucked Wendigo monster in this babus body and he’s gonna fry your brain with grief beyond comprehension. By the end of the book and the 1989 movie, after Louis has dealt with all this supernatural bs, he’s a crispy dish of fucked noodles.  AND HE WAS A MAN OF SCIENCE AND MEDICINE WITH NO FUCKS FOR OTHER WORDILY NONSENSE. I’d like to see how a brave bro-dude, who can’t handle an open closet, deals with sin-toddler. The entity from the burial grounds has vision into your darkest secrets, and it’s all over that juicy gossip.
But that’s why Gage was a frightening presence in the original film, for one, this beautiful sweet cinnamon bun to pure for this world died, and then comes back to fuck up your day and murder. And there’s an ambiguous edge to that concept, we as the spectator don’t grasp what has possessed those that return from the burial grounds. It’s the Wendigo, whatever, but why did it curse the land, what was it’s initial motive? The burial grounds weren’t initially evil, and they were used to bring back benign if not ultra passive creatures - still eerie and fucked up, but typically harmless until later years as the grounds were - as I call - abused. But the grounds were cursed, and the more creatures (or people) buried there, the more toxic and sour the resurrected become - that was a take I grasped, since people were using the burial site up until Jud and... Spot.
In the new 2019 version, the deceased child is Ellie and her capture of this entity isn’t as potent as the original film. A few, like I, took it as Ellie was pissed and vengeful that she was reanimated against her wishes, and that was the reason for her evil streak. Also, much rage over that Louis saved Gage over her, btw ⁿᵒᵇᵒᵈʸ ᶜᵃʳᵉˢ ʸᵒᵘ ᵈᵘᵐᵇ ᵇᶦᵗᶜʰ. True, that could just be a misdirection on Ellie’s part, but it didn’t have the ambiguous edge like zombie Gage offered. Ellie’s character was a very explain reasons of her nefarious plot, and I go, “yeah, sure. Don’t really care if you have alternative motives for being an evil bean. Kill these people, I’m done.” I couldn’t really be bothered to grasp IF there was an alternative motive to her evil, aside from recruiting her whole fam into the undead cult.
Another point of the original film and the book, Louis loses his damn marbles. And events surrounding his mission to take Gage to the burial site are more blessed through his journey, rather than he having direct influence. The 2019 film, Louis was very involved, he had to do everything himself, and there was very limited presence from the spirit Wendigo - aside from a hello neighbor cameo out yonder. 
In the original, by the Act III, we think - all right. Louis has got his shit together, he’s headed over to Judd’s and he’s gonna end this madness. He’ll fix this. Only for Louis to haul Rachel out to the burial grounds to “third times the charm” this jinx. But in the remake, Louis isn’t ever under the true influence of the Wendigo, and he snaps back to sanity - or stays sane - throughout his confrontation with Ellie. So we don’t really get a fulfilling character ark - he’s dies, anticlimactically. And you expect that to happen, because what else could possibly happen? Louis learned his lesson; what else would there be? Have a riveting action packed adventure of trying to locate and end his own, murder wife, out in the fog filled swamp? That would’ve been exciting and suspenseful, I guess. It would’ve fit the theme of jump scares prevalent in new age horror.
Boo. Loud noise. Scary. 
I would’ve been really impressed if, given the changes and build in the initial lead, if more was done with Rachel’s character. Given, that she was a direct influence for Zelda’s death, and how she perceived herself; how death and Zelda’s demise haunted her all these years. There could’ve been great evolution for Rachel, having to be the one to kill her own daughter; after years blaming herself for Zelda. It could’ve been great, the film could’ve had a hay day with that direction. But it didn’t.
That’s why I say the script must’ve been re-written a few times during production. By the build, it seemed they had an idea for a direction and motifs to explore, had a powerful concept to delve through with those original ideals for grief and acceptance due to a quaking loss. But the dissolving climax had this cop out for something so boring and cliche, and I didn’t get the sense of haunting tragedy the original film masterfully conveyed.
The 1989 films acting was trash, but it had impacting moments. And it left me wanting to rewatch the original, with a hope that perhaps this time, the ending will be different. 
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