How would you properly adapt Moby Dick?

How would you properly adapt Moby Dick?

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Make the whale black

I think it'd have to be a TV series, you could never capture the epic scale of the book in a film format.
Starring Ian MacShane as Ahab, directed by David Milch

All memes aside I think he would be a perfect Capitan Ahab.

If they make that chapter where they desciribe the varies types of whales and explain why whales are fish into an entire episode I'd watch it

Underrated

Stars and Directs

Yeah, I could see that. He's good at playing obsessed crazy people.

>How would you properly adapt Moby Dick?
I wouldn't. Not every book needs a movie adaptation.

They'd have to, its integral to conveying the autistic obsessional immersion of industry. The grueling nauseating infliction of knowledge. Anything less isn't Moby Dick

Make a small series, people dont seem to realize that the encounter with the whale is actually a small part of the whole story and it all needs to build up. If all else fails cast Idis Elba as Ahab, create controversy, make my money back and leave, because you cant do the story much justice without that buildup, most adaptations are way to eager to just get to the end.

This is shaping up to be a comfy thread

Got a load of reddit over here

id call it morBy RIIIICKKK WHALEALEALUBDUBBB

Cut out all the boring parts and keep the exciting stuff in.

star treck already did it

skip all the filler chapters about tying knots and different species of whale and actually stick to the original story in the book
Thats it, theres your Moby Dick kino, its a masterpiece

>durr cut out the boring parts

Stick to marvel threads

It can't be done unless you only care about muh plot

its about a captain chasing a whale and 15 minutes into the film he gets swallowed by it and reflects upon his troubled past that led him to becoming a captain while being digested

You mean to tell me you absolutely loved and couldnt stop reading the chapter explaining how to tie different knots? Was that a thrill for you? Is that how you get your sick kicks?
You know what fuck you

The point is you're meant to find them painful, not everything in life has to be instant easy gratification kiddo

>and explain why whales are fish
That's where I lost interest in the book. It's so flat out wrong and it even says so, but then goes on to say myth and tales have more baring then facts and science.

Have Nick Nolte play every part. Warrior style.

mostly black cast, one white girl heroine, one gay jew who looks white enough to spew anti-white rhetoric

I couldn't. I couldn't make a boy like Ishamel seem like the all knowing erudite man he is in the book and is also a sailor whaler. I really think he is a cringy and stupidily unrealistic character

I love this meme

Idris Elba should be Queegqueeg

Leave Ishmael to me

Have Malick direct it
>Ahab V.O.: All these years....where have you led me....show yourself....I must do what is to be done....
>[Handel's Water Music starts playing]
>Whale V.O.: Mother....you nourished me....why are they after me....

This. And make Captain Ahab a Captain Arab

Well news flash, that wont translate well into film
People don't want a 30 minute scene about tying knots just because "you're supposed to hate it"

Cast Amy Schumer as the white whale.

Well tough shit for them

>Dick

lmao

Yeah he'd do well

Not a meme. I truly despise Ishmael. It is literally impossible that a XIX Century sailor of his age during the action of the story has that amount of knowledge. It just is. If he does have that amount of knowledge at such an young age, it mean he was born in a wealthy family. Which means he has no business to be on a whale hunt and he is just doing it for cringy and autistic reasons to "find himself"

I realize I am a pleb and I am in the wrong. I realize Melville intended Ishmael to be like that. But I still fucking hate that character and everytime I read the novel pray to Moby Dick to slaughter him instead of Ahab

Oh woah, you're not kidding
You realize fucking Melville was a sailor and an autodidact and Ishmael was just his self insert

Actually I have meet some fairly educated sailors cause life in the sea it's kind of boring and reading helps.

I'd write a book

Why do i always in vision Brendan Gleeson as a priest? Anyway all i know is that i know what to see him doing Father Mapple's speech. You just know it would be 5 star TV kino

Make sure you never actually see the whale

I read the novel and I found it really boring. I got 25% through it. Plus the book is super racist. Once, a captain makes his black slaves kneel on his hands and knees so he can use him as a chair

Yeah, but they are in the XXI Century. And they are probably older than Ishmael. I would have no problem with Ishmael if he was 40 years old

That's actually a good idea.
The worst thing imaginable would be a ridiculous CGI whale

Is Ishmael's age ever actually stated?

Morgan freeman as the whale.

Elba as the nigger on a boat.

>facts and science
Science has nothing to do with it, taxonomists lifted the common name, applied their own definition then forced that onto the common parlance. Humans naturally categorise things by their common features not by a handful of arbitrary autistic rules. Whales and dolphins act and look a lot more like fish than they do rats or elephants. This is why I hate this encroachment of science onto language, "mammal" is a completely useless term for the common man, it's a definition that carries no worthwhile information

Beginning:
The film opens up with Chapter 2, The Carpet Bag. The "I am Ishmael" voice over is cut out, because it's too gaudy to put on film, as we saw from John Houston. Replace the original VO with a simple and realistic version. The movie strictly follows Ishmael, but it keeps its distance from him, never getting to close.

Keep the humorous bromance scenes between Queequeg and Ish. Keep the sermon, and let it set the tone for the film. Elijah prophecy obviously stays, the film should be oriented toward mystery/prophecy. Join the boat where the first VO begins from Ishmael, where he touches on whales and his shipmates. Ahab isn't truly revealed until a third of the way through the film. We capture glimpses of him, he remains an engima, rumors stir. Ahab is the center piece, his mystery/megalomania is the audience's intrigue.

Middle:
The boat has set sail already, this middle sections leads up to the Three Candles scene. Being vague, keep the Shakespearean stage-like scenes in the middle section. General whaling, mix in the scientific voice overs every now and then from Ish, every now and then letting them go on for a while. Chapter 58-59. 58 is the happy little spectacle, the crew is fresh. 59 is another omen, the squid, keeping up the prophecy/mystery aspect. Chapter 61 Stubb Kills a Whale. Whaling scenes, voice overs. Really introduces the brutish nature of Stubb and the calm soldier-like mentality of Starbuck. The Funeral stays, more omens. Starbuck and Ahab have their GOAT dialogue about masks. At this point Ahab has been fully revealed and is showing his megalomania entirely. Pequod meets the ships, especially the Rose-Bud, setting up the poetic ending.

Except the very same passage in the book notes that whales have horizontal tails, while fish have upright tails. It also notes differences in internal anatomy that isn't present in fish. Whale are not fish, and it's not "arbitrary" nor "autistic" to classify them as otherwise.

>ridiculous CGI whale
I changed my mind, I now want to not only see the whale, I want it to be a Kaiju which Ahab and the gang have to battle in an epic Pirates of the Caribbean vs the kraken style

I think you'd need to see the whale, at least in part. It could be CGI but it just has to be grounded in terms of its movement so it looks realistic. And like pic related it should be very slightly otherworldly/surreal. Like only half stylized and less so than this

More reference

Another

>I think you'd need to see the whale
You wouldn't need to see the whale mate. You'd need to see some movement of the water, some flashes of white. Maybe I'd tolerate a tail. Really though, to leave an impression the way the book does it should mostly give an impression of a whale, then focus on the resultant devastation.

End:
All this leads up to Chapter 119 The Candles. This is the height of Ahab's intensity. Leading right into the final chase, not stopping for a second. Epilogue - The Coffin - Rose-Bud - The End - John Tavener's The Whale plays at the end credits.

Hasn't been a good adaptation of Moby Dick, and there probably never will be. John Huston's whaling scenes are pretty damn good, but Peck as Ahab blows. So does the Ishmael and the boyish voice over, has an ugly Hollywood feel to it. His Starbuck is actually really good, though. Very matter-of-fact and soldier-like, plays perfect counter point to Ahab. Peck in 1998 version is actually closer to the Ahab I would want.

All that being said, the money would be better spent on a PSA trying to convince people to read the book. Greatest book of all time. Any attempts and adapting would only be a pale reflection of that master piece. There's too much for a film, and why even bother with a series. If a series was done plebs would just complain about the same things they do about the book, and everyone else would just realize the book is superior. Sorry for the shit grammar.

Moby Dick wasn't really about the story, it was about Herman Melville's prose. An adaptation would always fall short. I would just reimagine it as a Michael Bay type action flick with a giant murderous whale fucking shit up in unbelievable ways, put it in a modern setting with some big name actors.

Show regular sperm whales like in the book but whenever Moby Dick appears never show it just depict it as a force of nature.

Pretty good description
youtube.com/watch?v=K-H35Mpj4uk

I don't think you got what I said at all, and taxonomy is absolutely is arbitrary, what constitutes a species, sub-species, clade etc. is extremely fuzzy beyond a few rules of thumb and most of the time ends up simply relying on consensus between taxonomists. My point is that though this sort of classification is valuable to scientifically minded people it doesn't convey the same sort of value for the rest of the population

>about the prose
>impression of a whale
So the issue is that prose doesn't translate well to dialog or narration. I think the only way to do this then would be to make it a kind of surreal visual representation of his prose. Something like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In fact you shouldn't be able to describe what it looked like in words just like you can't translate prose to film. So in this way you would "see" the whale, but not as it is in reality. Maybe we see it as distorted by different sailor's viewpoints

>properly adapt Moby Dick?

just delete the "o" and the "b".
adapted.

but distortion of a something using different viewpoints is very literature like - see Absalom, Absalom for prototypical usage.

How about go full highbudget time intensive and go for oil on glass animation with vivid, surreal imagery when facing the whale?

youtube.com/watch?v=W5ih1IRIRxI

Yeah you could go all over the place from that to stopmotion styled like James and the Giant Peach

heaven forbid you actually learn something from a movie

Gotta include the circle jerk. Its gonna be the ultimate fag movie

Not that user, but you're wrong. I mean,you're right in the sense that small differences between sub-species are too insignificant for regular people to care about, but this isn't one of those cases. Whales and dolphins may look like fish, but they don't act anything like them, the differences are huge and I think its important to be aware of the fact that they are entirely different animals.