The Witches by Roald Dahl | Book vs Movie

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Today I’m talking about a book with not one, but two adaptions, that were made 30 years apart! The Witches is another classic from Roald Dahl, and the 1990 adaptation starring Anjelica Huston is the one I grew up with and love, so how does the 2020 HBO adaptation compare? Watch to find out!
The story is about a boy who is raised by his grandmother, after his parents die in a car accident. His grandmother knows all about witches, and she teaches him how to identify and avoid them. The 1990s adaptation stayed pretty true to the book, but the 2020 version gives us a more modern take and moves the story from Norway and England to the US, so there’s quite a few cultural changes, but the main plot is there.
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Book: amzn.to/3dx1bmn
Movie (1990): amzn.to/3ukIvwZ
Movie (2020): amzn.to/2PXVENp
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2 апр 2021

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Комментарии : 38

@Sandlot1992 Год назад

the 1990 film version is definitely a favorite of mine and despite being Jim Henson's last movie!

@bookingwiththekdb9659 3 года назад

I remember watching the original movie when I was younger. Haven’t gotten around to watching the adaptation yet

@alfred2744 Год назад

How was it? (Guessing you've seen it by now)

@REED1988 8 месяцев назад

Awesome video 🙂 back in 2020 when this came out... my gf (at the time) and her kids (2girls 7+10) saw the tailer for this movie and wanted to see it.. so we all watched it.. they enjoyed it.. they enjoyed the talking mice as kids do... so the next day I recommended we watch the 90s original... so we did.... the kids absolutely loved it.. they we're terrified of witches especially the grand high witch.. they were literally on the edge of their seats lol... and afterwards said that they loved the 90s more than the new one and wanted to watch it again!.. so it just goes to show... new, with questionable cgi doesn't automatically mean its going to be better.... what made the original scary is how grounded and real it felt... not to mention practical effects will always beat cgi... I known they're currently remaking the 90s arachnophobia..amazing movie! But I have a feeling the remake is going to have the same outcome as this...

@Vf46 2 года назад

Omg you nailed this review and comparison! I agree with everything you said. My biggest disappointment with the new adaptation is the fact that they omitted the mask removal scene of the Grand High Witch at the meeting. That is one of the most terrifying aspects of both the book and the untouchable original film version. I also like how in the book and the 1990 film, the Grand High Witch is the only witch who has a grotesque face behind the mask. To me, it represents her level of evil and it also distinguishes her from all of the other witches as their powerful leader. In the 2020 version, all the witches have the mouth slit which expands into the grin filled with sharp teeth. To me, that makes them all uniform and makes the GHW feel less scary than she’s intended to be. There’s one scene in the beginning where Anne Hathaway looks into the mirror and with the flash of lightning, you see her reflection of the face that I assume is the face behind the mask. I don’t know if they just omitted the mask removal scene because it was thought to be too scary for kids, but that by far was the biggest disappointment of this new version. I didn’t hate the new movie but overall it’s an inferior movie to the original. The effects were pretty bad too. It was drowned in CGI and not nearly as effective as the practical effects in the Roeg version. Also, no one can play the GHW better than the fabulous ms. Huston.

@strongrex2615 Год назад

I am so glad you brought up the slit mouth on the witches. I agree with everything you said about that, not only does the Grand High Witch not stand out as much from the other witches but it’s yet another trait that makes it too easy for anyone to spot a witch.

@Vf46 Год назад

@@strongrex2615 you are right! You can clearly see the slits on all their mouths. This is a dead giveaway. This is why it’s better to stick to the source material. This element that they added just weakened the plot.

@strongrex2615 Год назад

@@Vf46 Roald Dahl wrote it in a way that there were no dead giveaways for witches. The grandma character made it clear to her grandson that just one of the traits that the witches had on their own wasn’t enough and that with some of them you could only see it a little bit if you looked very closely (like the blue spit, the pupils, the nostrils, etc). Even the 1990 movie got this wrong with the pupils, making the pupils clearly purple at certain points, thus taking away the subtlety. One of the things that greatly annoy me about filmmakers is that they just don’t think of these things. This is why so many people often have such big problems with film adaptations, because often times the author wrote certain things the way he or she did for a reason and the filmmakers just want to do things their own way just for the sake of it without thinking about on whether it’ll affect or improve the story, or weaken it all together.

@Vf46 Год назад

@@strongrex2615 you made very good points. True, the purple eyes in the original movie was a change from the book as well as other elements. I love the look of Anjelica Huston’s prosthetics in the 1990 film, but that was a major change from the book too. The Grand High Witch has a rotting face behind the mask, but her nose has fallen off from all the rotting, almost like a corpse, but in the film she has a long oversized nose. As you mentioned, film versions of books often miss important aspects of their source or even change important parts around and it can be disappointing. I love the book and the 1990 Roeg movie equally, but there are some notable changes in that version as well. I still think it’s a much better imagining of the book than the 2020 version.

@strongrex2615 Год назад

@@Vf46 oh, no question it’s a much better imagining of the novel than the 2020 version. Anjelica Huston’s make-up as the Grand High Witch may have been slightly different from the way it was described in the book, but at least it was still the stuff of childhood nightmares. Anne Hathaway’s completely normal face aside from her being able to open her mouth really wide and show some shark teeth? Not even close. In fact, it was really enough to ruin the whole movie for me even though there were some parts here and there I did enjoy.

@vance39 3 года назад

I enjoyed your presentation. Well done. I am a fan of the 1990 film version too. For me, it was just much better.

@BookshelftoBigScreen 3 года назад

Thanks for watching!

@Fixundfertig1 2 месяца назад

Excellent presentation, I enjoyed it from start to finish 😊

@fonzie.0075 3 года назад

Really like the thorough explanation throughout the whole video- hope to see more in the future

@BookshelftoBigScreen 3 года назад

Thanks for watching!

@user-cn7ys9bc2u 2 года назад

I love your presentation. You just like an English teacher to me.

@BookshelftoBigScreen 2 года назад

Thank you! 😊

@huntercoleman460 Год назад

The Witches is one of my favorites of Dahl’s. I’ve only seen the 1990 film. While not a bad adaptation, I thought the book was so much better. I could tell by the trailer for the 2020 one that it sucks. They took so much liberties with the source material. I could definitely say that Dahl would’ve despised the new one. They didn’t make the witches scary in this one and the CGI was so bad. They had the chance to make a very good adaptation and they blew it.

@mythologyfan3696 3 года назад

Congratulations! This is your most viewed video! Keep up the good work! ❤❤❤❤ However, you did miss something. In the 2020 movie, the Grand High Witch says that three doses from the potion will make it work instantly.

@trevormillerentertainment 8 месяцев назад

Yeah I like the book more than both. but the 2020 movie made more changes I didn't like than the 1990 movie did. Great video.

@antbee520 2 года назад

you could read the book in 30 mins

@alexandersaunders8776 22 часа назад

You have your opinion but I thought Anna Hathaway was great as the grand high witch because it was like seeing a female version of lord Voldemort

@gabrielmorales5185 2 года назад

naruto ultimate ninja 3 opening and road to bourto opening

@genuinescorruption 9 месяцев назад

Hi, I just wanted to say I loved your comparison (and the Witches in General). I was wondering what your thoughts were on something. You see, I was a little older than this story's target audience when I was first exposed to it. Well... a little more than a little older. I was 16 to be exact, and here I am at 33 and this thing is still an obsession of mine. Even back then, I always wondered if it was somehow possible that maybe not all of the witches actually wanted to be doing what the GHW was commanding them to do. At the start of the book and movie (s), we have Grandma making the statement that "Real witches hate children" as if it were an absolute fact. But this is a statement from a character, as opposed to being narration; and I think it's fair to say that Grandma, like any other human being, is prone to bias. Then, fast-forward to the meeting, and we witness the GHW behaving like a typical cult leader. First we see a witch pay the ultimate price for questioning her. And about that witch: I always wondered if she wasn't secretly compassionate towards children to some extent, and only framed her doubts as a matter of feasibility because this was less dangerous than it would have been to say that she was opposed to killing children for something they obviously couldn't control. Then, we have the GHW giving her followers their annual dose of propaganda. I always thought that if it was just an objective fact that children smell like dog poo to witches in this universe, that the GHW would not need to allocate precious meeting time to repeatedly articulating this fact in numerous different ways. Yet this is exactly what she does. To me, this suggests that the GHW has reason to be concerned that her followers may not hold the required beliefs with sufficient conviction to stay the course on their own without ongoing re-enforcement. Then, in the book we have every single witch exterminated. In the movie, we have one who survives thanks only to the GHW's cruelty, and comes around to helping the children. I always had my own fan theory that the GHW herself was the cause of the "stink waves". Perhaps she inflicted a viral curse on either witches (to make them perceive human children as stinky) or on humans (to cause the stink waves) so that she could give the witches false hope of relief as long as they stay under her control. Perhaps, if the GHW had been mousified but some of the others had lived, they might have split off in different directions and some of them might have investigated the true reason why children smell badly to them and tried to mitigate it in different ways (like breaking a curse). Last but definitely not least, I think my most important piece of evidence here is that Roald Dahl himself was actually quite a bigoted individual. He wasn't called Roald the rotten for nothing. When the 1990 movie came out, he actively tried to discourage people from watching it simply because it changed the ending to have one witch survive and change her ways. As much as I absolutely love this story and haven't been able to break my obsession with it for 17 years, I can't help but think some of Dahl's personality rubs off on it. He creates this race (or species) of witches, puts them in an impossible situation (under a tyrannical leader who will burn them alive for any act of disobedience), and then has the heroes of the story perpetuate a belief that each and every member of this group is inherently evil, when in fact none of them except GHW have ever had the freedom to make their own decisions, which they would be clearly capable of if it weren't for GHW's influence. Your thoughts?

@BookshelftoBigScreen 9 месяцев назад

That’s an interesting theory. I get what you’re saying, but I think only the movie gives the hint that there could be potential for good witches. I never got the impression in the book that any witch had sympathy for children, but they definitely had a fear of the GHW. Your theory would make for some interesting fan fiction, though!

@blues2980 Год назад

Hhaha les sorcières c'est trop marrant

@huntercoleman460 Год назад

The book is definitely the superior version. I also prefer it’s ending over the 1990’s movie’s ending.

@artheaux666 Год назад

Can you please review Little Fires Everywhere?

@BookshelftoBigScreen Год назад

I’ll add it to the list 👍🏼

@strongrex2615 Год назад

Regarding the three fingers, I don’t support that change because anyone who looks at a witch’s hands can easily tell that there’s nothing in the two middle fingers but air, and it looks very awkward. I wasn’t even thinking about people who have three fingers on their hands, I just thought it was a very stupid change. But I thought it was the least of this movie’s problems.

@huntercoleman460 Год назад

Yeah. I think Dahl would’ve hated the 2020 Witches more than the 1990 one. Aside from keeping the ending the same, they changed so much from the original story. Why set it in America instead of England and Norway? Why make the boy and his grandma black? Why tone down the scariness of the witches? Why have one mouse instead of William and Mary? I expected better from Robert Zemeckis considering he directed Back to the Future and Forrest Gump. This had potential to be a Witches adaptation Dahl would’ve liked and they blew it.

@strongrex2615 Год назад

@@huntercoleman460 directors tend to decline in their quality of movies over the years, and Robert Zemeckis seems to be no different. His version of A Christmas Carol was hit-and-miss for a lot of people, though I really loved it and thought it was a very solid adaptation, albeit with a few flaws here and there. I thought casting Anne Hathaway was a good choice on paper, but the way the Grand High Witch was executed stunk of heavily missed opportunity. The witches missed a lot of traits that made them frightening and they lost a lot of their subtlety. This movie’s changes made them too obvious and too easy for anyone to spot them.

@huntercoleman460 Год назад

@@strongrex2615 Steven Spielberg is guilty of this too with his version of The BFG. He made the giants goofballs instead of cold blooded killers and made Sophie an unlikable wet blanket. I mean, this is the same guy that scared kids with Jaws and Jurassic Park. That’s what I like about people like Don Bluth and R.L. Stine. They know kids are braver than they’re given credit for.

@strongrex2615 Год назад

@@huntercoleman460 oh, don’t even get me started on Steven Spielberg. This is the director that remade the one movie I said Hollywood should never remake ever and made it into Woke Side Story. I will never forgive him for doing that to my favorite movie nor will I forgive Disney for being the studio behind it (I also will never forgive Disney for what they did to Maleficent). I don’t know about RL Stine, but even Don Bluth had a serious decline in his movie quality.