And you see, I never got that from the book. I got an anti-conservative Catholicism vibe from it, but I could get on board there--perhaps because in the previous book the Pope had been established to be a good guy? But in the movie the distinction, while not completely lost, was far too subtle, and ended up IMHO painting the RCC as if everyone from Benedict XVI to Leonardo Boff were indicted in the same conspiracy.
Not to mention there were other aspects of the book-to-movie transition which bugged me, but I can't remember offhand what they were. The book simply seemed to be going "What if Holy Blood, Holy Grail were true?" and using that as a basis for a rather by-the-book murder/thriller (then again, we're talking about Dan Brown here, so formulae are pretty much the order of the day) at a fifth grade reading level. Only with the movie did I get the feeling that we were expected to treat the "history" as true--and I blame Howard, not Brown, for that one.
Which isn't to say I don't blame Brown for the book's many other sins--which mostly consist of not being as good as some truly great novels of a similar type out there.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 04:29 am (UTC)Not to mention there were other aspects of the book-to-movie transition which bugged me, but I can't remember offhand what they were. The book simply seemed to be going "What if Holy Blood, Holy Grail were true?" and using that as a basis for a rather by-the-book murder/thriller (then again, we're talking about Dan Brown here, so formulae are pretty much the order of the day) at a fifth grade reading level. Only with the movie did I get the feeling that we were expected to treat the "history" as true--and I blame Howard, not Brown, for that one.
Which isn't to say I don't blame Brown for the book's many other sins--which mostly consist of not being as good as some truly great novels of a similar type out there.