The Movie: A Wasted Opportunity

[Dandy Forsdyke]

Sorry but Diana is too a cold Emma. Look her in The Joker : she's stoical, emotionless, austere.... Honor Blackman, in Don't look behind you is more expressive, touching. The main default of Emma is she isn't very emotive. It's why I prefer Tara, more warmy...

Uma is a good Emma for me. Of course, she isn't Diana but she understood the character, I am not disappointed by her acting.

I accept that everyone has a different opinion on Uma Thurman, but I don't think she did understand her character. I don't think she had a clue.

Just to clear up the differences in styles between Diana and Honor in what (essentially) is the same episode ...

Honor said, in an interview, that Brian Clemens wanted her to play it "tough", but she couldn't play it anything else but vulnerable. In the end Honor appears to have tears in her eyes - not sure whether that was acting or real.

Because it was a good episode - and the US audience had never seen it - it was chosen as one of the stories to remake as a colour 'Emma Peel'. Diana plays it a lot cooler, as the writer intended. So Brian Clemens got his way in the end.

[darren]

It was Peter Hammond who asked Honor to play it tough but he didn't get his way.

Although I'll always believe Thurman to be miscast as Dr. Emma Peel, it would have been tough for any actress to make a logical attempt at the character as written in the film. It's trying to have both her and Steed newly introduced and yet act like how old friends would act (as they did in the series). There's a really skewed sense of reality to their scenes - in the series, no mater how absurd the situation, you believe in the characters but that's difficult in the film because they suddenly do things that come out of nowhere.

[Ketman]

An actor can't do better than the script allows them to do. If the script is a mess, the actor can't get a grip on the character, and their performance will be a mess too. It's also true that turning in a bad performance is sometimes the only way an actor has of making a protest, since publicly criticising a film they've been in is the surest way of not getting any more work. Many an actor has passed judgement on a film covertly by being no better in their role than they think the film deserves.

It's obvious that neither Fiennes nor Thurman had any emotional attachment to this film, and their performances were appropriately bad. I don't blame them. I wouldn't mind Thurman being "cold", if that was how she wanted to play Emma, provided that she played the role with conviction. But with no coherent script, it wasn't possible. She did as well as anyone was entitled to expect.

[Dandy Forsdyke]

An actor can't do better than the script allows them to do. If the script is a mess, the actor can't get a grip on the character, and their performance will be a mess too. It's also true that turning in a bad performance is sometimes the only way an actor has of making a protest, since publicly criticising a film they've been in is the surest way of not getting any more work. Many an actor has passed judgement on a film covertly by being no better in their role than they think the film deserves.

Or they can lift the script. I think, in spite of Sidney Hayers suggesting Pat and Di were sleepwalking through the latter part of the 5th series, they made the stories work with their strong performances.

I think a strong director can bring out something special from an actor, but of course that project was also saddled with a bad director.

[MRotten]

Sorry but Diana is too a cold Emma. Look her in The Joker : she's stoical, emotionless, austere.... Honor Blackman, in Don't look behind you is more expressive, touching. The main default of Emma is she isn't very emotive. It's why I prefer Tara, more warmy...

Uma is a good Emma for me. Of course, she isn't Diana but she understood the character, I am not disappointed by her acting.

thurman's ok..in many other films..but sadly, in my opinion, she couldn't
heat up the olde tea kettle, with her flimsy attempt as peel...

just terrible....

Ditto Fienes. They were equally ill-suited to be playing Mrs. Peel and Steed.

The film should have been on a smaller scale, and not one of those "blockbuster" type films. I think two unknowns would have been the right way to go regarding casting. If it had been an independent production, maybe even in monochrome, it would have been more effective. Still, how do you re-do perfection?

[Dandy Forsdyke]

Sorry but Diana is too a cold Emma. Look her in The Joker : she's stoical, emotionless, austere.... Honor Blackman, in Don't look behind you is more expressive, touching. The main default of Emma is she isn't very emotive. It's why I prefer Tara, more warmy...

Uma is a good Emma for me. Of course, she isn't Diana but she understood the character, I am not disappointed by her acting.

thurman's ok..in many other films..but sadly, in my opinion, she couldn't
heat up the olde tea kettle, with her flimsy attempt as peel...

just terrible....

Ditto Fienes. They were equally ill-suited to be playing Mrs. Peel and Steed.

The film should have been on a smaller scale, and not one of those "blockbuster" type films. I think two unknowns would have been the right way to go regarding casting. If it had been an independent production, maybe even in monochrome, it would have been more effective. Still, how do you re-do perfection?

... and on TV. In one hour episodes every week.

Perhaps one day ...

[darren]

Sorry but Diana is too a cold Emma. Look her in The Joker : she's stoical, emotionless, austere.... Honor Blackman, in Don't look behind you is more expressive, touching. The main default of Emma is she isn't very emotive. It's why I prefer Tara, more warmy...

Uma is a good Emma for me. Of course, she isn't Diana but she understood the character, I am not disappointed by her acting.

thurman's ok..in many other films..but sadly, in my opinion, she couldn't
heat up the olde tea kettle, with her flimsy attempt as peel...

just terrible....

Ditto Fienes. They were equally ill-suited to be playing Mrs. Peel and Steed.

The film should have been on a smaller scale, and not one of those "blockbuster" type films. I think two unknowns would have been the right way to go regarding casting. If it had been an independent production, maybe even in monochrome, it would have been more effective. Still, how do you re-do perfection?

It's the epic, blockbuster quality that killed the film for me amongst all the other stuff that was wrong. It's a massive world wide disaster and yet they've created Avengersland where no one lives - why should we care about this cold, soulless, empty world? What Emma and Steed worked on should have been behind the scenes stuff that the world at large has no idea about.

I like the idea of a very stylistic b/w production - not sure how well it would have gone down with a mainstream audience but I love the idea.

[Dandy Forsdyke]

So do I. And was The Avengers ever really mainstream?

[Frankymole]

So do I. And was The Avengers ever really mainstream?

Only with youngsters, in the 60s... who became middle-agesters in the 80s! It was "cult" by then...

[dissolute]

So do I. And was The Avengers ever really mainstream?

Highest rating show in the UK & Australia 1967-8, that's pretty mainstream.