Another Series of Unfortunate Events

As said by my classmates, Ashley and John, this past week in class we analyzed the first four or five minutes of A Series of Unfortunate Events and nearly all of that was the opening credits, and song. As a person who read the books as a child, and watched the movie made in 2004, I was eminently under impressed with Netflix’s tv series. I can agree with John that Lemony Snicket, played by Patrick Warburton, was my favorite character. I was disappointed considering, I have always loved Neil Patrick Harris, and in the role of Count Olaf he just didn’t do anything to capture my attention and was not at all how I envisioned Count Olaf as a child.

I found that my opinion at the beginning was that I preferred the 2004 version of A Series of Unfortunate Events to the Netflix series, but when I went back to watch the movie to compare the two I found that many scenes from the first episode and the movie are significantly similar. Here is a scene from both the movie and the Netflix series:

In the side-by-side comparison, you can clearly tell that the scenes are deeply similar. In this scene, Count Olaf seems to frantically be showing the crowd a sheet of paper, and in the movie, you can’t quite tell what that paper is in this still. Looking at the judge in the background, I would assume that the piece of paper he is showing everyone is a legal document. In both scenes, Violet seems to be wearing a wedding dress and veil, and Count Olaf seems to be in a medieval suit. So one can conclude that maybe they are in a play where they are acting out a wedding, but when you take into account the looks on the faces in both scenes you start to obtain the inclining that maybe something is wrong.

I did notice that while plenty of scenes are extremely similar, the major difference between the two is the colour difference. In the movie, all of the scenes have muted tones and the characters all wear dark colors, which almost in some scenes blend them in with the background. Violet is a prime example of this contrast; in the movie she only wears black, but in the Netflix series, Violet is always wearing a pink dress and a baby blue cardigan. In fact, all of the siblings in the movie where some shade of gray or black, whereas in the series they are always wearing a bright colour, or some colour that makes them stand out.

In the end, I enjoyed the TV series and might continue to watch it, but I think that the 2004 movie will always hold a special place in my childhood. While there are hordes of differences between the movie and the series, and I only covered one, there are more similarities than I covered as well. Overall, if you have never read or seen the original A Series of Unfortunate Events this might be up your alley, but some might not appreciate the TV series being that the movie has a place in their heart. My advice would be to give the show a shot, and if you don’t like it you don’t like it, but maybe you find your next series to watch.