I'm a fan of book to movie releases. Regardless of whether I've read the book or not, I enjoy spotting the differences and considering how well the movie conveys the gist of the plot and how the actors portray the characters. This time round however, I was sorely disappointed.
My first contact with the Parasite Eve series was during the Playstation game's release in the 90s. Enthralled by the bioscience driven story, with the chill of the idea that your own body might rebel against you, I began looking up the original novel that started it all. At the time, the book remained untranslated, but I managed to find a graphic novel version translated to Chinese at the local comic shop. The plot, essentially a prequel to the game, completely blew me away. It explained so much of the game's background in a style of brutal science fiction horror.
This movie, an adaptation of the novel, abandons most of that. While I can forgive the fact that the special effects aren't exactly 'up to standard' given that it is a film from the 90s, I cannot forgive the utter mangling of the plot and the bad acting. I honestly don't understand how they managed or decided to drag the film out to two hours long while failing to convey even half of the original story.
Instead of the evenly paced bioscience thriller where the rush to stop Mitochondria Eve actually *fails* and her scheme is only foiled by a miscalculation on her own part, a frightening salvation of mankind only by a single chromosome; the plot is inexplicably dissolved into a two hour long, woodenly acted angst-fest of a man who forgot his wedding anniversary and greatly regrets not spending time with his wife. The story of the mitochondria rebelling seems to take second place to this, especially in the anti-climatic 'grand finale' where he somehow stops the independently acting Mitochondria from carrying out their plot because for some reason, in the process of making their host fall in love with him, they have come to develop feelings for him too (or imply that 'Kiyomi', his wife, is still 'in there', which is even cheesier and more unbelievable). To top it off, the movie even fails to provide the aftermath of what happens to the other characters, leaving behind plot holes aplenty.
All in all, if you really want to something that stays true and keeps to the spirit of Parasite Eve, just order the book off Amazon, they actually have it translated now.
My first contact with the Parasite Eve series was during the Playstation game's release in the 90s. Enthralled by the bioscience driven story, with the chill of the idea that your own body might rebel against you, I began looking up the original novel that started it all. At the time, the book remained untranslated, but I managed to find a graphic novel version translated to Chinese at the local comic shop. The plot, essentially a prequel to the game, completely blew me away. It explained so much of the game's background in a style of brutal science fiction horror.
This movie, an adaptation of the novel, abandons most of that. While I can forgive the fact that the special effects aren't exactly 'up to standard' given that it is a film from the 90s, I cannot forgive the utter mangling of the plot and the bad acting. I honestly don't understand how they managed or decided to drag the film out to two hours long while failing to convey even half of the original story.
Instead of the evenly paced bioscience thriller where the rush to stop Mitochondria Eve actually *fails* and her scheme is only foiled by a miscalculation on her own part, a frightening salvation of mankind only by a single chromosome; the plot is inexplicably dissolved into a two hour long, woodenly acted angst-fest of a man who forgot his wedding anniversary and greatly regrets not spending time with his wife. The story of the mitochondria rebelling seems to take second place to this, especially in the anti-climatic 'grand finale' where he somehow stops the independently acting Mitochondria from carrying out their plot because for some reason, in the process of making their host fall in love with him, they have come to develop feelings for him too (or imply that 'Kiyomi', his wife, is still 'in there', which is even cheesier and more unbelievable). To top it off, the movie even fails to provide the aftermath of what happens to the other characters, leaving behind plot holes aplenty.
All in all, if you really want to something that stays true and keeps to the spirit of Parasite Eve, just order the book off Amazon, they actually have it translated now.