#stories with inherently fascinating premises that absolutely REFUSE to engage with them are so compelling to me lmao

[mashkaroom]

We watched the first episode of around the world in 80 days, and man. It's boring! It's boring, however, in the exact way that is compelling to me (well, compelling enough to write a post, though not compelling enough to watch more than the first episode, so take this with a grain of salt, bc perhaps they do address some of these things, but based on the plot summary they do not). Here’s what it is about it: as an adaptation, and even a transformative work, it to some degree needs to have a justification for existence The justification doesn’t need to be anything grand or philosophical -- if, for example, they made the adaptation solely for love of the aesthetics of 19th century transit systems, as long as that love shone through, it would be compelling! At least, certainly, to me. However, while it’s certainly not poorly put together or anything, I can’t say I observed much passion. The story performs a desire to retell and reframe: Passepartout is Black (and his family involved in radical French politics, something revealed and glossed over within the first episode) and Mr. Fix is instead a female journalist (and obviously the love interest, but we’ll get to her in a second) -- but neither of these identities are substantively engaged with. The show clearly wants credit for being an innovative and progressive retelling, but it doesn’t have any interest in engaging with it’s status as a retelling, of having any conversation with the original work, modern culture, the culture of the time, or really anything at all! It really shows its hands regarding the now Abigail Fix, whom they made infinitely more boring than the Mr. Fix in Verne (who wants to arrest Phileas Fogg for an alleged bank robbery and because of that alterantively want to keep him on or get him to British sovereign soil, which creates an interesting dynamic where their goals sometimes align and sometimes don’t) and, and i shit you not, she is the DAUGHTER of the head of the newspaper for which she rights. We’re meant to see her as radical and empowering but she is LITERALLY ivanka trump. She gets funding to accompany Phileas from her father. She decides to write under her mothers name in order to not be affiliated with her father, which we’re supposed to see as liberatory, which it is, for obvious reasons, not. It also plays the hero narrative straight. Phileas Fogg, who is able to immediately depart on an 80 day journey around the world, something already so unrelatable, is framed as someone daring to do the impossible, and meanwhile he’s out here, like. Taking trains. At least Elon Musk has the decency to build a self-made man mythos around himself, implying that when he can buy himself a trip to space it’s deserved. Phileas Fogg is literally an aristocrat who inherited his wealth and nothing is done to suggest otherwise. He has an ancient butler that he relies on well past when he should be retired whose story and personality is already more compelling from the 5 minutes he spends on screen than Phileas Fogg, even though Phileas is played by David Tenant who’s an excellent actor. His decision to go on the journey seems like a whim, and, I don’t know -- is it an escapist fantasy? Are we supposed to imagine ourselves in the shoes of someone who can make such staggering financial decisions willy-nilly? I don’t know. But even more so than the fact that the character doesn’t lend itself to be a hero, the story, at least in modern times, doesn’t lend itself to a hero narrative. Even if he was poor or a self-made man -- he’s travelling by existing transit systems. He’s not a pioneer or inventor, he is literally going on tracks laid by other hands. And this tension in itself would have been a WAY more interesting central conceit. Man thinks he’s going on a hero’s journey only to realize the age of heroes is long over and the future is barreling around the globe faster than he can circumvent it. There’s also an easy-picking answer to “why tell this story now” -- Phileas Fogg embarks on a journey in a world on the edge. The transit system that he uses fundamentally changed the world: many of the things we often take as fact now -- rapid globalization, borders, industrialization the very concept of the modern nation-state -- were shaped by 19th century railways. We, as a 21st century audience, are watching this knowing the outcomes that were only speculative in 1873. Watching it now casts the entire story with a tinge of dramatic irony. Additionally, the background of the pandemic makes the story especially compelling: it presents a world in which a character travels freely, not showing his passport or anything (at least in the first episode) while in our world borders are more present than ever before. This could have been such interesting commentary on borders, colonialism, masculinity, “heroism”, class. It could have been an in-depth look at my personal faves the railways. And yet it did none of that! Instead it added a nepotism girl-boss and the world’s most post-racial Black man and wants us to consider that an interesting modern adaptation. Why.