the Dalaverse

So, 'The Other Boleyn Girl'? Makes 'The Tudors' look like fucking Shakespeare. Seriously, I can't wait for the new season to wash this out of my brain. A painfully bad and boring bastardization of a reasonably bad (but still entertaining) bastardization. JRM's Henry might be whiny and arrogant and wee, but at least he HAS A PERSONALITY. You cannot do anything with any tale of Henry VIII's life without a Henry, and Eric Bana's Henry was like a empty dark void. He had nothing to give, the actresses had nothing to play off of. It's a shame, because he was physically imposing and I know he can act, dammit.

That being said, Natalie Portman was quite good and Scarlett Johanssen surprisingly serviceable. And once again, Catherine of Aragon gets the most awesome part of the screenplay, although the actress was not as impressive as Maria Doyle Kennedy. I really need to make an icon of the portrait of young Catherine.

I just do not understand the things they did with the plot. It's really not all that complicated, people. I figured they were going to leave out any of the theology issues at play beyond the divorce (and they didn't even go into that - I recall Henry saying it was a question of his marriage being valid, but was the question of Catherine's marriage to Arthur actually raised?), which immediately makes the whole thing 25% less interesting to me. However, they even hacked apart Gregory's familial drama-rama. And it all seemed to take place in like two weeks.

Sigh. How disappointing. I expected better of you, Hollywood. And now I never want to hear the word 'sister' ever again.

With the cheesy and unnecessary 'where are they now?' scripts at the end, I totally wanted them to close with a shot of Henry and the words, 'Two down, four to go.'