a series of unfortunate events the bad beginning

It must walk the line between evils both large and small, while keeping both poignant and equally impactful: the ordinary awfulness of ignorance, greed, abuse, and the abnegation of responsibility and justice, and the more dramatic, stylized Gothic horror story that is the lives of the Baudelaire orphans. Allowing the increasingly complex story to unfold slowly and delicately, devoting two episodes to each novel, is a more optimal solution.Īs a visual work, A Series of Unfortunate Events - both in movie and in television show form - has a tricky balancing act. Unlike The Hunger Games or Harry Potter, A Series of Unfortunate Events has no action sequences to speak of, and little to none of the romantic subplots characteristic of typical blockbusters.

Admittedly, it would’ve taken many years to adapt all 13 of A Series of Unfortunate Events books into individual films audiences may have stopped caring after the fourth or fifth outing, so turning this series into television feels like the right choice. Perhaps the more relevant question is why would you change a beloved, popular series so much for the movie adaptation (see also: Percy Jackson and the Olympians)? The movie managed to gloss over the most important and pertinent themes of the tragic tale of the Baudelaire orphans, instead focusing on the steampunk aesthetic and cartoonish performance of Carrey as Count Olaf, who adopts the children after the death of their parents with the intent of stealing their family fortune. Why would you turn three books into one movie when you could milk the series endlessly for infinite movies (and prequels and spinoffs, et cetera)? Yet despite so much rich material, the feature film, starring Jim Carrey, failed to do the books justice, especially in our current age of turning one book into two ( Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Parts One and Two, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Parts One and Two, and Divergent) or even three ( The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug, and The Battle of the Five Armies) films, seems impossibly dated. These books were a central part of my childhood in a big way: while Harry Potter was universally beloved, the Lemony Snicket books were for the weirder kids who didn’t mind dark humor and tragic endings. The original A Series of Unfortunate Events movie, which combined the first three books - The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window - was utterly disappointing for fans of the books (myself included).

This review contains potential spoilers for those who have not read the books.

A series of unfortunate events the bad beginning