Years ago, on a camping trip, I read Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code in a single day, a rarity since I’m a notoriously slow reader. I got swept away by its ideas. Later, though, I recall thinking, “That book is going to make a terrible movie unless some big changes are made.”
The Da Vinci Code is full of research – mostly of the bogus conspiracy theory nut variety – set into motion by the most mechanical of plots and populated by characters so thinly drawn that they seem to have been worked out on a cocktail napkin – the same napkin for the entire lot. For a movie to work at all, a screenwriter would have to take Brown’s ideas and re-attach them to characters we can care about.
Well, Akiva Goldsman, in my opinion the worst screenwriter working today, failed to place that book’s clothing on new flesh and blood bodies. He didn’t even try, seeming perfectly satisfied with its mannequins. I didn’t even have to check the credits to know he wrote Angels & Demons as well.
My teenage daughter saw Angels & Demons one day before I did and she raved about it being much better than its predecessor. I found her report encouraging. I’ve since heard other similar assessments around the office coffeemaker and I sadly disagree. I’d replace the “much” with “somewhat” and toss out the “better” in favor of “worse.”
After The Da Vinci Code with its speculations on Jesus Christ’s marriage to Mary Magdalene, Angels & Demons ducks into the Vatican to spin a thriller about a deceased pope and ceremonially executed pope wannabes by that old mainstay of conspiracy theorists, the Illuminati. Ultimately, it pokes sticks at the church itself. Brown must have quite the anti-Catholic axe to grind.
Admittedly though, there was a lot of fun to be had in looking at Da Vinci’s paintings and imaging their possible meanings hiding in plain sight for centuries. It was a fun game of art re-interpretation and history re-invention.
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