Books to Movies: Verne and the Travelogue

A few years ago, I read some Verne books and watched a great many Verne movies. Links to reviews and other commentary are listed below.

This time around, I decided to watch ones I hadn't watched before, including Jackie Chan Around the World in 80 Days and In Search of the Castaways

First, the problem: 

Do main characters in a film need more than a series of adventures?

Many stories fall back on MacGuffins: a pointless or offhand excuse for characters to go and do interesting things. The pointless excuse doesn't need much focus or even a pay-off. It just needs to happen. 

 

Film is a visual medium. It seems like the one medium where MacGuffins would be standard (and they kind of are). After all, does it much matter why the characters are, uh, stealing The Declaration of Independence or trying to escape Germany?

 

However, I would argue that the MacGuffins is more noticeable in films than in books. 

 

Verne wrote travelogues (see the link below about Verne versus Wells). Quite honestly, while reading Verne's books, I don't much care why the characters are stuck on a submarine or going around the world. The travel is what matters. 

 

But in a movie, it rather does matter.

 

Surprisingly enough, Brendan Fraser's Journey to the Center of the Earth comes closest to capturing Verne's vision of an ongoing series of adventures. Though, honestly, my favorite part of that movie is the main characters trying to pronounce Icelandic names.

 

As for Jackie Chan's version:

It is clearly a tribute to Cantinflas. The main character is the stunt-performing "servant"--in this case, the stunt-performing research assistant.

Phineas Fogg, though not exactly the Phineas Fogg of the book, values efficiency and time management and argues with his girlfriend about fantasy versus realism (dogs playing poker without opposable thumbs).

In many ways, the movie is very meta. A scene in a French art gallery involves Jackie Chan performing stunts with buckets of paint and...Vincent Van Gogh! In fact, the movie is one feat of slapstick after another, not my favorite movie genre. But everyone in the movie seems to be having fun, which I'm not always sure of with modern remakes.

As for a narrative arc...actually, there is one! Jackie Chan's character, Lau Xing, is responsible for pressuring Fogg to take the journey so Lau Xing can return an important object to his village. In many ways, arguably, the movie is an excuse for Jackie Chan and a host of his fellow martial artists to have a confrontation in China. 

The movie does end with Fogg et al. back in London. And it is engaging enough not to flag too much after the China scenes. But it does lose its impetuous. 

A classic narrative arc ENDS with the climax--the Death Star blows up; Hans falls from the skyscraper; Dorothy gets home; Wells' character learns what happened to the aliens.

Around the World in 80 Days, the book, has a kind of climax or epiphany--but I'm not sure a movie is the best way to deliver it. It seems a great many scenes to sit through for a character to say, "Oh, now, I get it."

Links to posts about Verne:

• Verne and Wells
• 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea
• Around the World in 80 Days
• Part 1 
• Part II
• Part III