#the count of monte cristo spoilers

[leelarots]

real footage of me reading chapter 72 bread and salt

[korrolrezni]

This is so cruel. Why...he was so close!

[glacierruler]

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

Is,, is old Dantes gonna die before he ever sees his son again ;-;

[yasmeensh]

Count of Monte Cristo #1

I started reading the Count of Monte Cristo last Tuesday and I'm already 200+ pages in. IT'S SO GOOD WHY DID I NOT READ IT EARLIER!???? I was intimidated by the fact that it's 1,200+ pages long but I am now dreading the day that I would be done reading it. I'm obsessed with this book.

I kept thinking about that one sentence telling us that Edmond was secretly happy about the abbe's failure because it meant he could talk to someone now after years of loneliness. I imagine he'd have a smug expression :P spoilers? Perhaps. I'll tag.

[lamuradex]

Okay. Here are the things about The Count of Monte Cristo I adore, but I am certain adaptations will get wrong without having watched any adaptations.

Edmond's father being a major motivator for his revenge. Films, for brevity, mainly seem to focus on Mercedes and his ruined marriage. Thanks Hollywood.

Villefort having no connection to the other people who betrayed Edmond. One of the most tragic elements is that Villefort is actually about to save Dantes, right before he sacrifices him to save himself. I'm aware of at least one musical that has Villefort conspire together with Danglars and Fernand. I love the songs but that bothers me.

Caderousse. I can imagine some versions cut him out as superfluous. The musical seems to replace him with Villefort. But he's the fourth conspirator! And the first to fall.

A whole bunch of the subplots. Do the films need all the stuff with Monsieur Noirtier? Maybe not. Is Monsieur Noirtier the best character in the book? I think so. He's the most magnificent bastard in the plot.

The Morrels. Again, is it strictly necessary? I don't know. But, again, is there the scene where they reveal Monsieur Morrel's last words were to remember Edmond Dantes, making it my favourite scene in the book? You bet your ass!

Seriously, so many subplots I can see them cutting, but each one pays off in some way. Vampa, Franz, Eugenie Danglars, the Abbey Fariah's book

That scene at the end where The Count goes back to the Château d'If is beautiful

Adaptations will try to give it a happy ending, getting him back with Mercedes or something. But that isn't the point of the book.

Only a handful of characters get out of the book happy. And most of them have gone through hell first.

Also, The Count never actually fights anyone with a sword. He could, he's apparently lethal, but he never does. He's about to once, but then Fernand fucking panics when The Count puts on a sailor suit.

He literally leaves the room, gets changed, and then comes back in a sailor's uniform. It's so extra and I love it. And Fernand loses his shit! Understandably.

The whole revenge plan is so extra, so complex, so convoluted, there is no way you could adapt it all into a film.

And all because Edmond knows the Abbey Fariah wouldn't want him just killing them. Because that would be against God.

So instead he unleashes hell on them!

It's classic "No, I didn't kill them. They're just trapped in never ending misery for the rest of their days. So it's fine."

Bleed them dry of money, out them as a criminal, introduce poisons to his wife and introduce his illegitimate bastard to society.

I can see why you could never truly adapt this book.

Doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.

[theceaselessidiot]

If Cressida comes back to society in season 4 I want her to be completely confident and just call out everyone in the ton to their fucking face. I want her to be completely calm about it, not angry anymore, but still completely ruthless and cutting with her words, but only speaking the truth

[warblingandwriting]

No one does revenge like The Count of Monte Cristo. It's all physical violence and murder these days, what ever happened to completely psychologically destroying your former tormentors and ruining their lives?

[fayevalcntine]

Anyway I've been kind of following the press releases for The Count of Monte Cristo (2024) (French) movie and some potential spoilers that I kind of want to air out:

The film seems to be marketed as "much darker" in terms of focusing on the revenge aspect, which I don't mind, but some other stuff give me pause as to how they're gonna handle The Count as a character because the way the actors talk about him, he almost sounds weirdly irredeemable, or rather just completely incapable of still loving and caring about people? Which is the exact opposite of how he behaves in the book..... he wants to be cold and completely detached but fails each time because he a) forms close connections with people like Haydée and Maximilien, even comes to deeply respect Albert despite trying to talk himself into not caring about the boy and b) is meant to question his own revenge plot because it inadvertently causes the death of an innocent child

Apparently Haydée is 'torn between her loyalty for the Count and the love of her life' with said love of her life being.....guess who? Albert de Morcerf. There's no mention of a court scene so far where she accuses Fernand of being a traitorous officer and murdering her father, instead Edmond apparently gets her to seduce Albert but then Haydée falls in love with him for real? I once wrote a post complaining about this type of idea I've seen others mention as a "potential fix" for the plot but taking aside my issue with Albert/Haydée as a pairing in any sense, in this context it's almost doubly bizarre and I feel like the writers took so many different elements from the book, namely Albert's blind trust and admiration towards the Count and the forbidden love story between Maximilien and Valentine, and decided to go for a much more digestible change for the story, I guess? The actress who plays Haydée also mentions that she wants to "break free from the Count's psychological grip", which..... you can say a lot of stuff about Edmond/Haydée as an overall dynamic, particularly in him inserting her in his plan for revenge, but the big thing noted in the book is that Haydée makes the decision herself to testify against Fernand, and even thinks that the Count will disapprove of her for this. He also does genuinely care for her and wanted her to inherit everything he owns should he die.... the whole point of him taking her in is that he wanted her to have the life she was entitled to before Fernand's actions stripped it away from her.

The film also seems to have merged several different characters related to Villefort into one, namely Benedetto/Andrea and Bertuccio, since Andrea (in the film) is also under the Count's wing and seems to accompany him as a possible servant in some scenes. This isn't a bad idea in theory, though I'm pretty sure that he ends up dying when he goes after Villefort at the court house, so I presume he's also supposed to represent Edouard's death? My main question is when this scene even happens in the film because apparently, there's a final sword fight (likely the one between Fernand and Edmond), so the death that makes Edmond question his entire plot isn't even at the end of his plan?

This brings me to my next point which is why are Fernand and Edmond even doing a sword duel in the first place.... apparently the film has Fernand come from a rich family already, and he's known and been friends with Edmond prior to his imprisonment, so w/e, classic trope of CoMC adaptations at this point. But the duel and Haydée's 'seduction' plot just makes me think that for all the apparent attempts at centering her as a character more, these writers took out a significant scene related to her character that means a lot FOR her, namely the court scene, and instead centered Edmond's feelings of betrayal towards Fernand. I know that this is likely to also focus a lot on Edmond's lost life with Mercedes, but Fernand isn't even such a significant focus of Edmond's ire in the book as much as the other two men are.

The movie doesn't seem to end with Mercedes and Edmond getting back together, which I at least appreciate if this Edmond is "much darker" than even in the book, but if he isn't with her or isn't dead by the end, what exactly is the point of him going off alone? I presume this is the ending if Haydée/Albert are supposed to represent Maximilien/Valentine and the Count "gives them support" for being together, but Edmond was pretty much contemplating suicide until Haydée stopped him in the book. The point is that his focus on avenging the past was his only assumed reason for living, but there's a chance for him to simply live on with those who genuinely care about him as he is now. Without him trying to make amends through Maximilien and Valentine and Haydée indicating she will only live if he lives, I can't really see the film making a good argument for why Edmond wouldn't contemplate suicide instead of living on.

Apparently Villefort has a Bonapartist sister (I presume this character is meant to replace his father in the film) whom I also think Edmond saves from a shipwreck that has been shown in the trailers. I've zero clue how this movie is going to fit a new character in this while doing all of this to the other more significant characters, but that seems to be a general trend with this scriptwriter duo.

Only minor positive thing so far is that Eugenie IS included for once, and they didn't omit her being a lesbian.

[whalehouse1]

Finally finished The Count of Monte Cristo and I have some thoughts. Mercedes being a target of his vengeance because she was unfaithful to him by marrying Fernand just screams a mixture of purity culture and paints Dumas and Dantes as "nice guys", at least to me. Albert having to join the army in Dantes's eyes just sits wrong with me, but I'm also very anti-military, so I may just be biased here, but also it was to conquer Algeria and I'm not going to celebrate any genocide in any capacity. Then the narrative tries to make you see Mme Danglers and Debray as bad people, but, Mme Danglers's only really problems were she was unfaithful to her husband, which their marriage is very much only in a legal sense, she plays the stock market and wants to marry off her daughter so she can have her freedom back. Debray, although always called cold, really only as that against him. The Danglers's dog likes him and he does help both of them and the only gross thing he really does, is play with the idea of marrying Eugiene, which yeah that's a category on PornHub, but honestly it's not a reason to see him as a villain. I'm still wondering what happened to Benedetto, cause out of all the deaths, besides one, him shanking Caderousse, seems like an appropriate response since he was being extorted and threatened. But also because, despite the novel trying to slutshame Mme Danglers, she deserves to know her kid. She was innocent in that and don't dare say she shouldn't have had the affair with Villefort so she's just as equal to blame. I understand it was a different time, but thinking a woman who wanted to have a child, was told it was a stillbirth and wept over the child while bleeding copious amounts, doesn't deserve to know her child is a disgusting thought. Also Dantes knew those two were half-siblings, stop promoting inbreeding dude. I could go on again about Mercedes and Albert cause good lord that part makes me very irate, but we have Mme Villefort, who, hats off to a girlboss queen, has a body count, but her last victim causing Dantes to say he caused this, is just wrong. Heleoise would have still killed everyone that she did even if he didn't show up. Her goal was Valentine's money, so that would have played out the way it did anyways. But then you have Caderousse, who Dantes forgives, but because of his greed, which wasn't present at the beginning of the story (at least to the extent it became), he becomes the most villainous of the four (I guess 5 because does the end of the book want to make Mercedes into one of the traitors), not even in terms of culture at the time, but his actions are the most abhorrent of them all. Morcef's are also terrible, but they are all off-screen, so to speak, so they don't really have the impact of Caderousse's, at least to me. Also Morcef's were all cowardly as opposed to the sheer violence from the former neighbor. Then we get Dantes being Woody Allen to Haydee at the end of the book and yeah, not a fan of either of those. I will admit, I was hoping Albert and Haydee became a thing, but those pale guys (I don't know how or why Mercedes, Albert or Haydee were described so white at the end of the book, even with Mercedes spending so much time inside, she'd have a different skin tone. This just bothers me so much as Dumas was mixed, he knew that the tone wouldn't be pale, and this is coming from someone whose skin tone along with his siblings are all different because we are mutts.) just don't because Haydee has stockholm syndrome and Albert has to pay for his father's crimes, which as one who despises the addage, "The son must pay for the sins of the father," I don't care for. That said I enjoyed most of the book, but the end got very judgy and condemny of certain characters in ways I do not agree with and even knowing the culture was different, find disagreeable, but who knows if I were born in those times if those would be the thoughts I still would have. But all things said and done, Nortier's the MVP of this book and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.

[persephone-nymph]

Dumas said smoke weed and get horny and I think that’s fantastic

[is-adequate]

Madame de Villefort immediately asking what the dying Barrois ate while he's writhing on the floor and then casually peacing out has to be the funniest thing to happen in the Count of Monte Cristo. Excuse me could you be any more obvious?

[glacierruler]

Just finished reading the Examination chapter in The Count of Monte Cristo,,,

I think Villefort's gonna take the letter he destroyed and say that Dantes destroyed it or something. And with Dantes lying about the letter on Villefort's command...

[pulusional]

Anyone obsessed with the new french movie of this wanna infodump about what all these changes and stuff represented??

Why was he Lord Halifax and not Wilmore?

Why did he wear a mask as the Count??

Why did they have the swordfight and why did Edmond struggle so hard?

It was funny cuz Danglars was explicitly dealing in slave trade to hammer in how evil he was xD

I understand a lot of it was to save time and a lot was also cut due to it:(

Also they didn't really explain that bandit thing.

[t1r3dr3pt1l3z]

FLASH AND SPOILER WARNING

This song is so good y’all, shout out to Ink Potts for getting me into the Count of Monte Cristo

[bagheerita]

Recentering the story on Albert really changes the whole thing on a fundamental level I don't think I understood the first time I watched Gankutsuou. Because it's not about Edmond and Edmond's vengeance anymore. It's about the Count doing to Albert what was done to him.

I hated the duel the first time I watched it, because it's one of my favorite scenes in the book and they change everything and make it worse. But it's because the story is about Albert, so the character that dies to change the trajectory of the story can't be Édouard anymore, it has to be someone Albert cares about. And changing the duel is one of the easiest ways to get this to happen.

It still tears down everything I loved about the original, but I get it.