I read the novel in tenth grade English class and remember watching both of the movies in class the week after finishing the book, but it had been several years since I'd seen this version and when it came on TV last weekend I decided to watch it.
The first thing that I noticed was that so much of the symbolic imagery was either lost or heavily modified, I'm not sure if the writer really understood the story's themes or got the meaning of some of the imagery of the story with important scenes changed and a great deal of the character development was left out entirely which makes the script feels like the cole's notes version of the story.
Among the more glaring changes were:
In the book Simon was an allegory for Jesus while in the movie he's looked at as being "weird", they completely ignored the mystical almost Buddha like qualities of the character.
In the book Jack represented the darkness that exists within us all and our hidden desire to pretend to be what we aren't while in this movie he's just an arrogant jerk.
In the book the pigs head represented the pure evil of Satan (lord of the flies is a translation from a Hebrew word that literally means the devil)while in this version of the movie it's really just set dressing that does not convey the horror that it's supposed to.
In the book Roger starts out as a minor character but slowly builds into being a sadistic psychopath who represents the pure evil that we all possess but control, in this movie he is portrayed as being sick and twisted monster who revels in the pain of others almost right from the start and in the novel he's first described very subtly as being dark (meaning evil not African American)but in this version of the movie he's written as the stereotypical violent black kid.
The whole scene of Simon's death was presented in the book in a subtle way as a semi-satanic right (the whole setting was indicative of an ancient pagan right of animal/human sacrifice)while being described as "accidental" it's left up to the imagination of the reader as to what happened, in this movie it comes off as being a frenzied accident.
In the book Piggy's intellect is the glue that holds Ralph's civilization together, in this movie he 's written to be a whiny simpering sort of buffoon.
But the biggest changes that actually hurt the movie the most were a combination of two things first changing the time setting and second making the boys American,
The thing that made the novel so shocking was the idea that prim and proper English school boys in the late forties or early fifties could become uncivilized savages capable of horrific acts of brutality and violence committed against each other.
Updating the time setting and making the boys American really took away from the shock value of the novel because by the late eighties and early nineties it wasn't so uncommon to hear stories on the evening news about preteen gang bangers shooting people or middle school kids violently attacking each other on the school yard, these factors really desensitized the audience to the violence that the boys are doing to each other in the story and make it much less impactful to the viewer.
The acting is alright, it's nothing terribly special but watchable it's obvious that the director wasn't going to pull Oscar winning performances out of the kids but the leads manage to put in convincing performances and bring some life to their characters despite being saddled with a relatively flat script that omits much of the character development from the novel.
The direction and photography are good, although the bright lush colors sort of take away from the darkness of the story and make it seem like a tourism Hawaii commercial at times.
The negatives slightly outweigh the positives but it's a decent movie and is at least watchable which is more than I can say for some movies today.
The first thing that I noticed was that so much of the symbolic imagery was either lost or heavily modified, I'm not sure if the writer really understood the story's themes or got the meaning of some of the imagery of the story with important scenes changed and a great deal of the character development was left out entirely which makes the script feels like the cole's notes version of the story.
Among the more glaring changes were:
In the book Simon was an allegory for Jesus while in the movie he's looked at as being "weird", they completely ignored the mystical almost Buddha like qualities of the character.
In the book Jack represented the darkness that exists within us all and our hidden desire to pretend to be what we aren't while in this movie he's just an arrogant jerk.
In the book the pigs head represented the pure evil of Satan (lord of the flies is a translation from a Hebrew word that literally means the devil)while in this version of the movie it's really just set dressing that does not convey the horror that it's supposed to.
In the book Roger starts out as a minor character but slowly builds into being a sadistic psychopath who represents the pure evil that we all possess but control, in this movie he is portrayed as being sick and twisted monster who revels in the pain of others almost right from the start and in the novel he's first described very subtly as being dark (meaning evil not African American)but in this version of the movie he's written as the stereotypical violent black kid.
The whole scene of Simon's death was presented in the book in a subtle way as a semi-satanic right (the whole setting was indicative of an ancient pagan right of animal/human sacrifice)while being described as "accidental" it's left up to the imagination of the reader as to what happened, in this movie it comes off as being a frenzied accident.
In the book Piggy's intellect is the glue that holds Ralph's civilization together, in this movie he 's written to be a whiny simpering sort of buffoon.
But the biggest changes that actually hurt the movie the most were a combination of two things first changing the time setting and second making the boys American,
The thing that made the novel so shocking was the idea that prim and proper English school boys in the late forties or early fifties could become uncivilized savages capable of horrific acts of brutality and violence committed against each other.
Updating the time setting and making the boys American really took away from the shock value of the novel because by the late eighties and early nineties it wasn't so uncommon to hear stories on the evening news about preteen gang bangers shooting people or middle school kids violently attacking each other on the school yard, these factors really desensitized the audience to the violence that the boys are doing to each other in the story and make it much less impactful to the viewer.
The acting is alright, it's nothing terribly special but watchable it's obvious that the director wasn't going to pull Oscar winning performances out of the kids but the leads manage to put in convincing performances and bring some life to their characters despite being saddled with a relatively flat script that omits much of the character development from the novel.
The direction and photography are good, although the bright lush colors sort of take away from the darkness of the story and make it seem like a tourism Hawaii commercial at times.
The negatives slightly outweigh the positives but it's a decent movie and is at least watchable which is more than I can say for some movies today.