WTF Wednesdays: Nineteen Eighty-Four starring Kristen Stewart?!

In an effort to start routinely updating this blog more regularly than I did before, one of the things I needed to do was find a way to write five blog posts routinely. So then as I was trying to think of something to write, I was browsing news stories and saw something that just made me go “WTF”. After some consideration, I realized that the goofball I am would totally write a column on Wednesdays called “WTF Wednesdays”. So, here we are!

WTF is up with…

Making Nineteen Eighty-Four a romance movie?

In the 1940s, George Orwell wrote a dystopian novel with such impact that it framed how we describe a unique variety of dystopia: Orwellian. And in that novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four (hereby referred to as “1984”), he laid out something that was inconceivable in the time he wrote it but has become all too easy to identify in our modern world. In the Orwellian dystopia, the world is in perpetual war, governments have gained the ability to watch everything you do and can even monitor and manipulate your thoughts.

So with the recent work of the NSA, a lot of people had started to throw around the term Orwellian to describe their activities. This, of course, created a new-found swell of interest in the novel and for a period of time it became a best-seller once again in several markets. So, of course, as is the way with all popular novels, someone had to make a movie out of it.

Mind you, this wouldn’t be the first time anyone’s made a film adaptation of 1984, it’s actually been adapted quite often and has been the inspiration for even some unusual ones such as Brazil and Equilibrium. But with the recent swell of interest, someone decided it was time to make another and recent casting news had informed us that adaptation would be called “Equals” and star…Kristen Stewart.

I’m going to admit it: this picture’s a little unfair… to Orwell.

Never mind the fact that Kristen Stewart has the acting talent of a female Hayden Christensen, the details released so far has indicated that this movie is going to reinterpret 1984 as a romance film. Yes, a dystopian romance film about a world where people can have their very thoughts monitored starring Kristen Stewart. Already my brain was starting to shut itself down in rejection of the concept.

But then something profound and terrifying struck me. The rationale for making a film adaptation of 1984 was pretty obvious: it’s become popular with the government surveillance programs making the term “Orwellian” so common again. But what about making it a romance? Why would you go out of your way to make 1984 into a romance move of all things? The last dystopian romance movie to be made was…

Oh god.

So, let me get this straight. The Host, the last romantic dystopian novel adaptation to be released, bombed utterly. In response to this, a studio takes a much better novel and decides to adapt it and turn it into a romance, trying to capitalize on what they see as an open market that hasn’t quite been tapped since The Host was regarded by many to be a shitty movie born from the work of a shitty writer. But in an effort to make sure they can have a success on their hands, they cast… Kristen Stewart. Now why would they think that would make their chances better…?

Oh god. Oh god no.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

So, let me get this straight: You’re taking one of the greatest science fiction classics of all time and you’re purposefully turning it into something meant to follow in the wake of TWILIGHT. Oh. My. God.

Surely this must be what it feels like to go insane. Because as someone who dreams of being able to stand side-by-side with Orwell in the annals of history – I just watched someone get invited up to the stage, drop their pants, and take a dump on the man’s shoes. Still, somehow, it gets worse from there.

When talking about her casting in the film, Kristen Stewart described the premise as “a very basic concept”. Yes, the woman of a thousand identical faces just called Orwell’s classic as a very basic concept.

What we have here is a novel of such regard that it spawned an adjective still in use 7 decades later, being made to look like the work of Stephanie Meyer. As that salt is seeping into the wounds; Kristen Stewart, one of the least talented actresses to have “graced” the screen in our lifetimes, spits on the work even further by diminishing its intellectual value. Remember, as that thought sinks in, that this is the woman known for turning in this complex and nuanced performance:

Seriously. What the fuck?

(This space here is normally used for shilling my books. However, today I’m going to do something a little different and shill Orwell’s book too. I’d have thought he wouldn’t need it, but did you just see what they did to him? Damn.)