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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 8349585" data-attributes="member: 177">I already have well-executed and enjoyable versions.  Why do I need another?Because this one is... different?  Novel, perhaps?So... Branagh's Hamlet, as far as I am concerned, suffers exactly from the issue of making a slavish version of the classic.  Most versions (film or stage) have the good sense to edit it down quite a bit, but his Hamlet is unabridged.  As a result his has a runtime of four tedious hours.I know this, because, back before we married, I took my wife to see it on a date.  We were both big Shakespeare fans, and Branagh usually knew what he was doing.  He had done reasonable editing on other productions...When your significant other falls asleep... it is not a good date.  I don't recommend it.  I haven't seen Tennant's version of the thing yet - largely because that experience put my wife off Hamlet, and I don't take many opportunities to watch things on my own.  But I am willing to guess that is differs substantially from Branagh's (as, I see they lopped an entire hour off).Let me put it another way - I have a copy of Le Morte d'Arthur.  I do not, in fact, need two copies on my bookshelf.  If you are going to produce a book of Arthurian fiction, that simply follows Le Morte d'Arthur... why do I need yours?  I already have it!I have other books of Arthurian bent.  They are all different takes on the legends.  One's a scholarly work that breaks down the legends to fit into know historical events, with the idea to show that Arthur was not really a single individual, but an amalgam of various legends.  Another casts the Arthurian characters as immortals (Arthur was known as Gilgamesh and Baldur before he hooked up with Merlin and became Arthur), and mixes them with other immortal beings to see how it plays out.  Another has the characters reborn in the modern era on the road to simply repeat the same tragedy again, while desperately trying to avoid that fate.  And there are others...Same stories, with novelty.  Far more engaging than just rephrasing Le Morte d'Arthur four and more times over.</blockquote>

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