i watched red white and royal blue and i'm here to be a hater.
i was having such a great time on tumblr, looking over people's posts and then i went to letterboxd to leave a review and my fucking god. why are there so many people bashing this film for being a bad adaptation. worse yet, why are they queer?
i understand, trust me, i completely understand loving a piece of media and waiting impatiently with bated breath to watch the adaptation of it into another recognisable medium. i'm a mortal instruments girlie, i'm a last of us girlie, i'm a fault in our stars girlie, i'm a watchmen girlie. i get it. i do. sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit.
but bruv, i am also a person who works in the film industry and you have no fucking clue the amount of effort it takes to make a film let alone a film that's an adaptation of a pre-existing, utterly loved piece of fiction that is revered by so many. and this movie goes one step further. this is a cheesy, cutesy rom-com about a queer couple. how many of those do we even have? no. really. how many hopeful, easy-going, cheesy queer rom-coms have you watched? can you count them on one hand? do you need a google search to remind yourself of them?
this film is a rare commodity and fine, maybe that's not a good enough reason for you to be 'lenient' to it... but it kinda is. no adaptation will be perfect, not really, not for everyone. every piece of media has it's flaws but adaptations most of all. but this film does something that you cannot dismiss simply because your favourite scene wasn't in it. personally i so miss alex's speech before the election results are announced. i miss ellen's powerful and amazing speech when she does win. i miss june, i miss raphael and i miss leo, and the powerpoint presentations and i miss cornbread knowing alex's sins.
but none of that will ever take away from the beauty of being able to sit in front of my laptop and watch the most intimate queer love scene i have ever laid my eyes on. it just won't.
anyway.... i'm rambling. the point that i was trying to make before i got lost in all this, was that you are obviously allowed to hate on the movie but like... be kinder about it? don't hate it because it's not a straight up remake of the book. don't hate it because it's cheesy. idk man, just hate kindly, if possible.
this is a huge step for us.
i don't want the response to this film to seem negative in a way that gives the (already reluctant) studious more reason to not make queer media for queer people, you know?
there will come a time in this life where we can hate and critique queer media without worrying about all this context but we're not there yet?
so i guess, like henry, i'm also asking for y'all patience.
however, whoever fucking said that nick and taylor don't have chemistry can suck my huge ugly metaphorical dick. fuck you. they made me week in the knees.
