Tomorrow, When The War Began: A Pre-Review Editorial Aug 23 '10 (Updated Sep 21 '10)    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Books Rick Bragg - Somebody Told Me: The Newspaper Stories of Rick Bragg From $6 260 Drum Machine Patterns From $8 The Bottom Line I'd rather publish this in Movie Background Information, so if Epinions can de-bug that link I'd be much appreciative. NB - There will be several mentions throughout this editorial of this movie being made by "Hollywood". This is not actually the case, as this is an Australian movie.  However, "Hollywood" is a generic term I personally use for anyone who makes a large budget movie or blockbuster.  Please note then when I use the term "Hollywood" here, I am speaking metaphorically, not literally. I’ve been anticipating a film version of John Marsden’s Tomorrow, When The War Began series since I read the books in high school, and now the time is nearly here, there are a few issues I want to address before I even watch the movie. Firstly, Hollywood should not kid themselves that they are going to make this movie a success.  That much was written in stone before they came along.  This series of books has been translated into several different languages and published all over the world.  Fans worldwide are going to go to this movie, regardless of any advertising it will get.  I honestly can’t see it needing any advertising.  What this means is that a sequel is inevitable (which will be based on the second book in the series, The Dead Of The Night.)  However, if Hollywood screws up Tomorrow, When The War Began, who’s going to go and see The Dead Of The Night? I won’t be, and I imagine a lot of other fans will feel the same way.  That will leave Hollywood with a sequel that tanks, and another five books yet to be filmed. If that’s the case (I sincerely hope it’s not, but if it is), what will happen to those other five books?  As far as I can see, there’s only a couple of possibilities.  One is that they will simply be abandoned, the other is that they will be made into direct-to-DVD movies. Personally, I think I would prefer the former.  At the moment, we have something of an unknown cast in this movie - from what I can find, most of them are known for Australian television work.  But if they get a taste for stardom, are they going to want to come back and make five movies that won’t even go to theatres? Would you? That just really leaves the option of recasting the final five, and I can’t see that happening either. So although Tomorrow, When The War Began is bound to be a financial success, a lot hangs on actually making it a good movie.  To that end, I have to admit to a couple of concerns.  The first one is that of the Ellie character.  Ellie is our narrator and main heroine of the series.  Her background is that of a farm girl - she’s seen how harsh life and the land can be from a young age, and as a result, she’s pretty damn tough and headstrong herself.  If that isn’t translated to the big screen correctly, then it’s game over then and there.  Softening Ellie in any way, shape or form kills this movie.  Of all the characters, we get to know her the best and if we cannot connect with her, what have we got left? Nothing, that’s what. Thankfully, from what I’ve heard so far, actress Caitlin Stasey has done a pretty good job, but I’ll have to wait and see for myself. Early reports also say Ellie’s relationship with Lee and the character of Homer have been done very well - this is fantastic to hear, as these are central characters and storylines.  Without giving too much away, we’re introduced to eight teens at the start of the book, and these three are, in many ways, more important than the others.  Ellie discovers so much about herself through her relationship with Lee that to make a mess of his character would make things that much harder on Ellie. As for Homer, he has quite the transformation to make.  We don’t see a lot of these kids lives before the war breaks out, and a crucial part of what we do see is through the introduction Ellie gives us - it outlines the other characters as she knows them, and having grown up with Homer, she knows him the best (except maybe for Corrie). She draws us a picture of a delinquent who acts up simply to amuse himself, and generally wouldn’t be trusted with any kind of responsibility whatsoever.  He goes from that to the brains of the group, almost overnight.  He’s the one you can see actually being a military leader.  We need to see the troublesome side of Homer, if only briefly, because this switch is such a huge part of who he is. Ask anyone who’s even been to a movie that’s a book adaptation, and who has actually read the book first, and I can pretty much guarantee they’ll tell you about what was left out of the movie.  In this case, I can see this film being easily two hours long, even if some stuff is cut.  I can see two places where cutting would be done, and one of them sits well with me.  The other one doesn’t, but we’ll deal with the former first.  In short, while our teens are on the camping trip that sets up the rest of the story, there’s quite a few references to the “Hermit From Hell”.  As the book unfolds, we eventually learn the Hermit’s full story, but I could understand this being cut.  It was great to see it fleshed out in the book, but as it doesn’t really add anything vital to the story, I can understand it being cut.   However, if the scriptwriters cut down that initial camping trip too far, we’re going to lose too much opportunity for character development.  The book goes through six chapters before there’s any real mention of a war, and if too much of that is cut out, we won’t see enough of the characters to understand their actions and motivations.  We can’t watch the characters develop if we don’t know what they were like to start with.  It’d be like watching a commercial for some revolutionary new weight-loss product, and only seeing the "after" photo.   A quick look at the IMDB page for this movie shows that while the makers have actually read enough of the books to know what the character’s surnames are, I hope they don’t necessarily make a big deal out of these in the movie.  The characters surnames are only ever mentioned in passing, Ellie’s isn’t even revealed until the seventh book.  In fact, throughout the entire series, Lee’s last name isn’t mentioned once.  Somehow, he’s been given one here, Takkam, which does actually sound like it could be Thai or Vietnamese (his mother is Thai, his father Vietnamese, and I’m sure someone will correct me if I’ve transposed those).  I don’t see this was really necessary, but it will probably have little to no effect. Something else I've seen on the IMDB page is the poster for this movie, and I'm greatly concerned on two counts.  Firstly, why are our teens shown to look so... uniform?  Yes, in the books they mention wearing dark, camouflage clothing for obvious reasons, but this particular photo couldn't have them looking more like a military group, like a professional guerilla squad or something.  This is completely against the tone of the book.  These aren't soldiers, they're teenagers - that's the whole point! Secondly, what the hell are Ellie and Homer doing with shotguns?  Yes, on occasion the group armed themselves, they'd be stupid not to.  But on the whole, they did not carry weapons because if they were caught, they'd be killed instantly if they were armed.  Without weapons, they could try and bluff their way out of serious danger by saying they were just kids who were camping out when the invasion happened and got back to the bush pretty damn quick when they realised what was going on.  They deemed it far too risky to carry weapons, and for the poster to show Ellie and Homer with shotguns flies directly in the face of this. I just want to mention the scenery briefly, because I have no doubts this really won’t be an issue.  What is described in the books sounds absolutely stunning, and by all counts, this isn’t exactly rare Australian scenery.  As long as all the filming was done in Australia, which I believe to have been the case, then we should be prepared to see some truly spectacular stuff. And yes, I probably should have mentioned this before now, but this is an Australian series, by an Australian author, about Australian teenagers.  As such, you’re likely (by all rights) to hear some Australian slang.  There is one example in a later book where Ellie says she’d bet her sweet bippy on something.  What her sweet bippy is doesn’t actually get explained, we’re just expected to take it at face value and move on.  Trying to translate such phrases should not happen. It’s fair to say I’m going into this movie with a lot of expectations, and a lot of those hang on the storytelling and acting.  If they’re up to standard, we have the potential for an absolutely amazing movie here - but if it fails on either of those two, we’re going to lose a lot of the heart and spirit of the book, and I for one will not be seeing The Dead Of The Night.  I want to like this movie, I really and truly do.  But given that this is a book series that took up a lot of my teenage years and was so wildly popular, I don’t think I’m being unreasonable having these expectations.  I own the entire series of books, and plan on passing them down to my own children one day - if I have an equally brilliant series of movies to pass on at the same time, so much the better.  But these are books that can be read over and over without getting boring, whereas the movies only have one shot - this one - to capture that magic.  I can only pray that Hollywood has got it right.  -------------------------- Time for a quick addendum, having now seen the movie.  Simply put, it is fantastic.  There's a couple of things I didn't like, and one character has been screwed up beyond belief, but overall, I have not seen a more thrilling, more exciting, well executed movie in a long time.  Not even The Dark Knight comes close.  This was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the best experience I've had in a movie theatre since I don't know when. There will be a full review coming - I already have parts of it written in my head - but not until I've seen the movie again.  There's a couple of things I'm not too sure about, and having been on forums such as IMDB, it appears there's a key scene I need to watch a little more closely.  A repeat viewing is most certainly in order before I can justify to myself writing and publishing a review, however, that repeat viewing will not be until the movie hits DVD. Until then, I'd give this a tentative five star rating, but that may get cut down to four.  As much as I loved it, (and I truly did love it), I can also see it's flaws.  The only question remaining in my mind is in regards to how bad those flaws are and whether or not they took too much away from the overall movie experience - a question I'll have to wait a few months to answer. But to put it frankly, Hollywood got it right.  For once.

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