 Persuasion by Jane Austen is a book and is also at least three movies, three that I know of. I read Persuasion recently. I was already planning to read it for a vlog project. That is a secret vlog project. So now you know one book that's in that project, but anyway, good timing. So this was already on the list of books I needed to read for that project. And I was like, well, let's read this sooner rather than later, because there is a film coming out. You knew one. So let's let's read it so that we're ready for the film. I did and I really, really, really liked it. I don't know that this supplants sense and sensibility is my favorite Austin, but I really, really did like it. And I was quite surprised by some things in it. I had seen the 1995 adaptation when I was like in middle school or high school. I saw the 2000, I believe, 2007 adaptation when it came out because I aired on like PBS. I've seen that one a couple times. And now I've read the book. And having seen those previous adaptations, as I say, there were some things in the book that surprised me a little bit because there was a common theme in both adaptations that I would have therefore expected to find in the book. And I didn't really. But anyway, what we're really here to talk about, right, is the new persuasion film on Netflix. A little bit about me as a content watcher, rather than creator. I love when there is some piece of media that everybody wants to rip to shreds. And then I will binge hours and hours, cumulatively days and weeks of content about it. So like when Game of Thrones season eight was terrible, I had days worth of content to watch. I was so excited. Even if I didn't agree with all the takes, I just I love it. I ate it up. I watch it all. I just chew through all of it. And then similarly, when Rise of Skywalker was terrible, I mean, I personally do think it was terrible. But regardless, I loved watching all of the content about the Rise of Skywalker hours, cumulatively days and weeks. When the second Fantastic Beasts movie came out, there was hours, days, weeks of content for me to marathon and binge and chew through. There have been, you know, a few other things. And every time something that I think is going to do that for me is going to deliver tons and tons of content, tons and tons of content creators giving their hot takes about it, the after movies, there's usually great content about that, the 50 shades of gray movies, tons of content about that. And so recently, there have been a few things that have come out that I was so sure I was going to get hours and hours of content for. Wheel of Time comes to mind, Morbius comes to mind, the third Fantastic Beasts movie. And while there were some videos about these things, there wasn't the like hours and hours, days, weeks of content that I was expecting slash hoping for. And then, surprise, surprise, sneak attack, my, my feet is flooded with content about persuasion, the Netflix persuasion movie being horrible, being the worst thing ever, being atrocious, being a sin against book-to-film adaptations as a genre. I didn't watch any of it. I will. I haven't watched any of it yet, because I knew I was going to read Persuasion and I had intended then to watch the film, just, you know, because why not? Because I watched Austin adaptations pretty much if there is one I watch it. So I'd already planned to watch it, and then I started to hear bad reviews and I said, well, I'm still curious. And then I saw all of this content and I was like, I can't watch any of it yet, because I want to see it for myself and form my own opinion, which is why I also have not watched it yet now, because this is my opinion. I have not seen anyone else's takes. All I have seen is all the thumbnails for the take. So perhaps it's all clickbait. Perhaps all of those videos are going to say the same thing that I'm saying. And they just chose to go with very aggressive thumbnails. Now, based on all the thumbnails that I saw, when I went to go see the film now, or when I sat down to see the film now, I was preparing for the worst movie of all time, frankly, based on all of the buzz about this being the worst movie of all time, about how this has failed, again, Jane Austen as an adaptation. It's a failure on Netflix. It's a flop. Never make a film like this. This is the worst thing ever. You know, eyes are bleeding. It's terrible. And I was like, well, at the very least, maybe I'll get a fun hate watch out of it, you know, have a drink and laugh. And so I did go into it with extremely, extremely low expectations. My own expectations before I saw those thumbnails, but when I had just seen the trailer for the film, just based on the trailer, my own reaction to that trailer was, I don't know about this, because it was very clear in the trailer what they in particular chose to highlight were all the clips were all the scenes where she's saying something that sounds anachronistically modern, where she's saying something that sounds like it belongs in like a rom-com with Sandra Bullock. I'm single and thriving. I spend my time drinking fine wines. Enjoying warm baths. Rather than a Jane Austen adaptation, using words like X's, like we were, we are X's. Now we're worse than X's. He's a 10. Because he's a 10. I never trust a 10. This is the playlist he made me. Playlist he made me. Stuff like that where you're just like, what? I'm sorry, what? But apart from that, I mean the costumes, the way they were shot, the cast, I was like, those things all still look good. They looked good when I hadn't seen the trailer yet when I just saw stills and I'd heard he was cast. And now seeing the trailer, it still looks good. But I don't know why there's a randomly modern dialogue in this film, but okay. So before my feed was flooded with all of the takes on it being the most atrocious thing of all time, I was beginning to form expectations for it. And the expectations I formed for it at that time were, okay, this is not going to be a loyal, like the A&E Pride and Prejudice. This is not going to be like Masterpiece Theater on PBS. This is not going to be even the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice. I was like, this is going to be something else. This is going to take a lot of creative license. And so I was like, okay, I'll meet this movie on its own terms if that's what you're doing. And I've often said if there is intentionality behind what you're doing, I may still end up not liking it. But that's a very different metric by which to judge something. You know, like if the project of it is to be stylistically different from the norm in some way, then okay, that's the metric by which I'll assess it. Did that choice work or not? So for example, so the basically the type of expectation that I began to set for myself was that this is going to be the a night's tale of Austin adaptations. So if you watch a night's tale, if you've never seen it, a night's tale is a medieval film about jousting, but it uses modern rock music the entire time and the costuming and some of the dialogue is like kind of halfway between. Sometimes it sounds very archaic with all the bees and boughs. And sometimes it sounds like something from a modern day rom-com. When you watch a night's tale again, you could hate a night's tale. That's absolutely fair. If it's not your cup of tea and you don't like it and you don't think that worked, but it is clearly a stylistic choice on the part of the filmmakers to kind of make this comparison between nights jousting and rock stars and how that's why they're using rock music to kind of be like jousting nights were kind of the rock stars of their day. So we're kind of doing this weird blending of things with this is a stylistic choice we're making. This is very intentional. It's not that you're like, don't these filmmakers know that queen music didn't exist in the middle ages? Like they obviously know that it's not a case of like, gotcha. This is anachronistic. Like they definitely know this is anachronistic, but it is a choice to do it this way. So I was like, okay, persuasion might be terrible, but it seems to me that it's going to it's purposely choosing to do this kind of extremely modern. It's not just like a sometimes you'll watch in the historical like a Jane Austen type adaptation, even if it's not Jane Austen, or read a book, I complained about it a lot in books, and it's all like clearly kind of trying to be within this time period. But then out of nowhere, someone will say something that isn't quite what one would one would expect or they're wearing something that technically hadn't been invented yet, something like that, where people are like, this isn't accurate versus here where they are clearly choosing, like they are under no illusions. They know that this dialogue is extremely modern. It's not like an accident. It's not a misstep. It's not them not realizing that this is modern. So it's like, okay, I will go into this expecting again the a night's tale of Austen adaptations. And maybe it's terrible. Maybe that stylistically does not work, but that's what they're trying to do, it seems. So I will judge it according to that. And then again, I saw all of my feet flooded with everything saying it's the most atrocious thing ever, and I didn't see a single divergent opinion from that. I didn't see any thumbnail saying, I actually liked it or why it's actually brilliant. Every single thumbnail was like, this is atrocious. This is a synagons film. So I was like, okay, I guess the a night's tale of Jane Austen adaptations is unanimously the unanimous consensus is that this is a terrible idea and it didn't work. So I sat down expecting to be hate watching something to just get through it and best case, I can laugh at its awfulness. And maybe I would have hated it if I had gone in with higher expectations. Maybe if I hadn't seen all those thumbnails saying this is the worst thing of all time, I would have hated it. I don't think that's I don't think I know myself well enough to say that I don't think that's the case, but it could be. But so I did it did benefit from bottom of the barrel expectations from me having seen the reaction everyone had to it. So I sat down to watch it. I watched it with my mom. She has not she has seen the adaptations of it, but I don't think she remembers them very well. Like she vaguely knew the story, but not really. She definitely hadn't read the book. So me being me, I do this all the time. If I'm watching a film with her that is based on a book, pause it to be like, well in the book, pause it to be like, well, this was better in the book or pause it to be like, hey, okay, they totally skipped over in the book. There was this thing that's not here, et cetera, et cetera. And it's funny because I feel like the comments on this video are going to be yelling at me because I'm okay with them changing things from the book. And my mom kept being angry that she's like, you just want it to be exactly like the book. You won't accept anything that's different from the book. And I'm like, Oh, honey, no, no, no, there are people like that. And I am not one of them. I'm simply telling you what the differences are. And I'm telling you when, if and when those differences bother me, or when those differences seem to me to be a curious choice, I don't exactly see why you would make that choice. Because when you're adapting, you may need to make changes. And sometimes I'm like, I see why they changed that. And other times I'm like, I don't get why you would change that because that would work very well on film the way that it was in the book. So I don't need it to be the same, but I need it to make sense for why you changed it. There were definitely things in it that I did not think worked. There were definitely things in it that I thought were a strange choice, a weird choice, and a bad choice, perhaps. There were a couple of scenes in particular, two that stand out to me distinctly as being the two that I really, really bothered me where I definitely paused the movie to be like, okay, so before I get into spoilers for book and film more specific like scenes and choices that were made and changes that are made. Just overall, I would say this was not my favorite film of all time. And it's definitely not my favorite Austin. And in overall, like, it's, you know, it was, it was okay. The things that it did well, I think it did pretty well. Like, I honestly, I haven't watched the videos yet, but I'm getting the sense from the little bit that I have seen like posts and things, not videos, that people hate Dakota Johnson and blame her. I don't know if that is the consensus. If it is, I vehemently disagree. The issues with the the way the character is in the film, in my opinion, have literally nothing to do with Dakota Johnson herself, unless she was the screenwriter. And I don't believe she was the screenwriter. The problem with the character, if and when there is a problem with the character is down to the script to the screenplay. And Dakota Johnson did a very good job with what she was given. The parts of it that where they wrote it more, I mean, there's there's parts of it where her lines are pulled basically verbatim from the book. And she delivers those lines very well. And I think that she can play the character of Anne and could very well play the character of Anne in a more serious traditional adaptation. Here, the parts where it's strange, the parts where it's weirdly modern, that is how the script was written. And that being the case, I think she handled it pretty well. I don't have any problem with Dakota Johnson herself at all. I think she did the best with what she was given. And I feel similarly about the other characters in the story. She's always the main character, so there's more screen time and more chances to f up with her. But the other characters also have instances of saying things that are strange, saying things that are anachronistic, saying things that are not in the book, alterations to the natures of their characters. She just gets the brunt of it because she's in it the most. But if people, again, I haven't watched all the takes yet, but if the consensus is that everyone is great except her, and they're blaming her for the state of things, one, it was the screenplay and not her. And two, she's not the only character that has this kind of thing happen to her character in this when it's being translated from book to weirdly modern adaptation. Overall, I felt like they didn't know exactly which way they wanted to go with this. And so it's kind of like, this is a weird analogy, but it's the one that comes to mind, you know, if you have like a cup and another cup and you're trying to pour like coffee or something, for example, into the other cup without spilling any. And if you do it slowly and carefully, and like are not like confident in the poor, it's going to drip everywhere and spill everywhere. But if you're confident in the poor and you just do it, you might maybe you'll spill a little bit, but you're much more likely to get it all in without spilling anything. So I kind of feel like they weren't sure they wanted to go this way with it. They weren't totally confident about this choice to make it kind of the a night's tale of Austin adaptations. So they like kind of did it and and it kind of dribbled everywhere and it kind of didn't work. And I feel like they should have not done that at all, or they should have like actually really done it and like leaned into that and then the a night's tale of Austin adaptations completely commit to that stylistic choice. What made it so strange was that most of the time for the majority of the film it it feels like it's relatively period accurate or as period accurate as any Hollywood version of period piece is. There's dialogue again that's literally pulled verbatim from the book. The plot progression is, with some changes that I'll get to, more or less the plot progression of the book. The costumes do not look like again in a night's tale. The costumes are like a very much a stylistic choice. Like they don't look period accurate. They look like what people wear to Renfair or something. And the costumes here, again, I'm not an expert on period accuracy, but as a lay person looking at it, it didn't stand out as looking strange or stylistic or modern. I mean, when you watch Bridgerton, it looks weird and stylistic. It doesn't look like it's period accurate. Whereas here, everything's pretty muted. No one's wearing like garishly bright colors or strange head pieces. Everything like and especially she's wearing very simple clothes that look like something that I'd see in most Austin adaptations. Like, Keira Knightley would have worn these things in The Pride and Prejudice that she was in. So it didn't feel like a film that was doing something out there. So then every so often when it would do something out there, like, and would say this is the playlist that he made me and hold up some sheet music, it would just be so jarring because the film is not really like this the rest of the time. And so when that happens, you're not like, well, this is the style of this film. You're like, it's not the style of this film. It's the style of this line of this scene. Why is this here? And as bad as those lines were, I think Dakota Johnson, who gets the majority of them, did deliver them decently well. I mean, if I was her and I read the script, I'd be like, you want me to say what? That's, that's really stupid. But she delivered it pretty well, as well as as well as she possibly could. There were other scenes like that. And again, it felt like something out of a modern rom-com, you know, where she's got like something on her face. Well, she's because she's like messing around and playing. So she's got something on her face. And then there's like turns around and the love interest is there. And it's kind of an awkward moment. Captain Wentworth and I am handsome. Captain, meet nine. Where she shouts something and spills food on herself. Perfect. Things like that. We were like, again, this feels like something Sandra Bullock would be doing in her present day of rom-com. Like, why is Aunt Elliot from Persuasion doing this? But she's only doing it in this scene. She's only doing it in this particular moment. But like most of the rest of the time, she's just being Aunt Elliot from Persuasion. So like, why is this here? But so there were, like those, those things didn't work for me. Like I didn't like them, but they weren't that many. And they just, every, every time one of them happened, I'd be like taken out of the film for a second. I'd be like, no, didn't like that. Why, why, why would you do that? And then we'd go back to having a normal film. And then something like that would happen again. And I'd be like, yeah, that was weird. I don't know why that was there. And then we'd go back to having a normal film. So I just, they were relatively few and far between. It felt like every single one of the instances where it did that are in the trailer for, there's, there's a couple more in the film. But mainly, that stuff is in the trailer. And pretty much the rest of the film is not like that. She just break the fourth wall a few times. But the 2007 master of like British television adaptation of it with Rupert Penry Jones and Sally Hawkins, she also breaks the fourth wall a couple times. And it's a very serious and melancholy adaptation. Her breaking the fourth wall could totally work as well. That's not what makes it modern. It's just some of the things that she says. And I, some of that would absolutely actually work for me as well. Because I was telling my mom this that the problem with a lot of Jane Austen adaptations is that a lot of the wit and social commentary and snark that is present in Jane Austen books is delivered by the voice of the narrator, not by any of the characters in the scenes. Sometimes she has witty characters as well. But when you're adapting Jane Austen unless you have a voiceover or unless you give the narrator's words to a character for some reason, there's, you're going to lose it. Because if you're just depicting what happens in the scene, the scene itself might be pretty dry. The social commentary, the sarcasm, the wit was in the narrator describing the scene to you, which you're, that's necessarily going to be stripped away unless you have a voiceover or something. So having Anne Elliot break the fourth wall and deliver some of the lines of the narrator is a solution to that, to include those pieces of wit that are in the book in a way that they can be present in the film without a voiceover narrator. So the choice to do that is an okay choice. It's all in the execution of course, but that itself doesn't bother me. They did make some of those parts where she's saying stuff. It's sort of a, that's, those aren't the words Jane Austen used, but it is the gist of the attitude of the narrator towards what's happening. So Anne, Anne doesn't say it in the book, it's the narrator. And then when the narrator is saying it, she's saying it in a more old-fashioned way. So in the film, Anne is saying it instead of a, you know, omnipresent narrator and Anne is saying it in a slightly more snarky and zippy modern way. But the message that she's communicating about what's happening and the nature of the characters around her is essentially the message that Jane Austen is conveying about the situation and about those characters in the books. My father, he's never met a reflective surface he didn't like. To me, that's kind of, I mean, I don't know that I would say that's, I would say that's decently loyal to the book because it's finding a way to include material from the book that otherwise would be difficult to find a way to include. I also felt that between the three adaptations now that I've seen, I don't really feel like any of them do justice to the character of Anne Elliot. And if any of them do, I kind of think it's Dakota Johnson's Anne Elliot. And I mean, like, she's far from perfect and not an ideal version of it either. She's not, you know, the book's Anne Elliot. But the thing that really bothers me about the older adaptations is that they focus so much on making Anne this shy wallflower that just gives way to the smallest bit of coercion or persuasion. I don't know, it just, it's too much. They belabor that too much to the point where I'm like, how did Captain Wentworth even notice her when she's melting into the wallpaper as we speak? You know, like, it's too much. And so that's one of the things that surprised me when I read the book, having seen the older adaptations only, that Anne, she is quiet. She's not like Lizzie mouthing off to people. She's not like Marianne Dashwood loving and not caring where the chips fall. She's not like Emma being a busy body and getting in everybody's business. She's not like that. She's not like any of those people. But there is a quiet confidence to Anne's character, at least in my reading of persuasion. Feel free to disagree. When I read persuasion, that's what surprised me. I was like, Anne is quieter. She's not talking all the time. She's not being snarky all the time. And she did years ago yield to persuasion, floated the name of the book. But who she is today is a person who does have her regrets. But day to day, she's got a pretty good idea of what the people around her are like. She's got a pretty good idea of what she likes and doesn't like, what she does want to do and what she doesn't want to do, what matters to her and what doesn't. And she's kind of okay with people being with people judging her for that a bit. So when it comes to like going places with her family and wearing fancy clothes and going to fashionable places, she doesn't like doing that. And she's like, nah, I'm good. I'd rather stay home. And people are like, you're so strange. How can you possibly want to stay home? Or how could you possibly want to see a poor friend instead of someone rich and important? And she's like, yeah, I mean, I don't know what to tell you, what you're doing sounds awful. I would much rather stay home. Please and thank you. So when there's moments where there's like a fancy dinner and someone needs to stay home and like, it's fine. I'll stay home. It's really, it's fine. I don't care. And so, yeah, her vibe is much less like, oh, whatever anyone else wants, oh, whatever anyone else says, don't look at me like she's not really like that in the book. And the book she's just kind of like, I don't need to be the center of attention. And I just to soon be in the countryside, then in some fashionable part of town, I know what I like. I'm good with it. You know, sorry if that's not cool. Sorry if that's not fashionable. But, you know, I am who I am and I know what I like. And so I was pleasantly surprised by that. I thought that that I liked her as a character much better than I thought that I would. That's one of the reasons I didn't really want to read it for a long time. Having seen the adaptations of it, I was like, the story's fine. But I don't know, I don't really like Ann that much. And so when people said it was their favorite Austin, the book, I was like, I mean, I'm sure it's great. But reading it now is like, yeah, I mean, the book is great. The story is, you know, it's pretty much how it is in those adaptations. They're decently loyal. But Ann herself is a much better character in the book. And so while Dakota Johnson's Ann says weirdly modern things and kind of makes an ass of herself because it's written like a Sandra Bullock Romcom, her general vibe and her general demeanor and the way that she comports herself and the way that she reacts to and relates to the people around her is a little more like in the book where it's just, you know, she's not interested in participating. She's not interested in being cool. She's not interested in doing the fashionable thing. She is pretty okay with who she is and what she is interested in and would just rather go her own way if that's all the same to you. And I like that. It's one of the things I like about Ann in the book. So while this version of Ann in the film, again, is more in your face and does more silly, dumb, anachronistic thing, her general demeanor and vibe, I liked better because it did remind me more of the book, Ann. Now, the scene that more than any, there was several scenes like the part where she's talking about having a dream about being with an octopus. I was like, why is this here? This is making me so uncomfortable. Why is this happening? But like mostly that was like dumb. But the scene that truly bothered me that I literally paused the film and talked to my mom about it for like five minutes because I was like, I know nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. This scene was a true misstep in my opinion. It wasn't just like, ew, that's weirdly modern. I was like so much about this scene. I don't like it. In the book, it is known that Ann's sister married a man who originally wanted to marry Ann. Yeah, if you don't know anything, okay, if you don't know anything about the story of persuasion, so you know, eight, I think it's eight years ago, maybe 10 years ago, but regardless, Ann, Elliot, the middle daughter of a well-to-do noble family, she had a romance with a young naval officer who hadn't really made a name for himself, wasn't rich yet. He was just enlisted in the Navy. And they had a romance and they were very, very much in love, but she was persuaded by a family friend who had become sort of a mother-like figure to her when her mother died that, you know, she'd be throwing herself away. She's young and she is, you know, rich and noble and whatever. And to marry this man who's a nobody, maybe he'll be somebody someday who distinguishes himself in the Navy, but he's not anyone today and it would be a waste to marry him. And so she deals to persuasion and doesn't marry him and he knows why. And now it's many years on, she's still unmarried and he has made a name for himself and so, you know, she's filled with regret over the fact that she still loves him, she wished she had married him and that all the practical concerns that were put forth as why she shouldn't marry him ended up not really mattering because he was successful and he has made a name for himself and he is now an eligible bachelor. So he's come back into their lives because his sister is renting the house that Anne's family owns and, you know, social relationship dramas ensue with Anne's family and the neighbors and Captain Wentworth, etc. But so it is known or becomes known in the book that the man that Anne's sister married originally wanted to marry Anne. And when Captain Wentworth learns about this, he learns about this from someone else and he hears about it because someone is telling him or talking, someone is talking about how, you know, we all wish that he had married Anne and he's like, what? And they're like, yeah, originally he wanted to marry Anne. And Captain Wentworth is like, she refused him. And they're like, yeah, which is a significant revelation because it means after she refused him, she continued to refuse someone else who did have more money and status. She turned him down as well, which is a quiet revelation, but a quiet moment for Captain Wentworth to be like, interesting. There might be hope yet. Whereas in the film, they're all at dinner at Captain Wentworth who's there, her sister is there, her sister's family is there, a bunch of people are there. And for, I cannot fathom the reason, Anne volunteers the information that her sister's husband, who was seated at the same table as them, that he originally wanted to marry Anne, but he originally wanted to marry her. She's saying this about herself and about the man a few seats down from her and her sister who is married to him is across the way, sitting next to Captain Wentworth. And she blurts this out. Captain Wentworth is unsurprisingly kind of disgusted with this. Like, are you really just bragging? Like, why would you want us to know that he wanted to marry, that he preferred you? And then I guess to ease the tension and make it a funny scene, the sister's husband is like, it's true, I did want to marry her. And everyone's like, this is awkward. I was like, why? This is such a quietly important revelation for Captain Wentworth to make in the book to realize that she had refused other people after she had refused him, that she might still have affection for him, and that she had refused other offers. And that to hear this information from someone else, like, Anne's not bragging about it. She's not telling him this. Like, you'd want to find that out from someone else. Anne's saying this in this brackadocious, awkward way in front of everybody. I just, I don't know, it's not funny. It's intensely awkward. I had the most intense secondhand embarrassment of my life watching that scene. But like, narratively, I was like, okay, so there's funny scenes in movies that I give me personally secondhand embarrassment that I don't like watching. But in Emma, there's a scene that gives me intense secondhand embarrassment. But narratively, it's an important scene. I just feel really uncomfortable watching it. But this scene, I was like, why would you choose to deliver this information in this way? This is something Captain Wentworth should learn. But not from Anne, not at dinner, in front of everybody. I was like, I, this scene, why, why is this here? Why would you choose to do this? Like, that scene was enough to enrage me. The rest of the film was fine. That scene, no, absolutely not. I mean, they made another substantial change. They took out an entire character, which at first confused me, because there's a significant revelation with the sort of, if this is a love triangle, though it's not really much of one, but I guess technically it is. So the other leg of the love triangle, the man that wants to marry Anne now, there is a revelation about his motives and his behavior that is made by a poor friend of Anne's, who has found this information out and is telling her this information before Anne makes the mistake of engaging herself to him. But this information, which the book and the other adaptations treat as like a big shocking reveal. The character in the, in this film, he volunteers this information after a brief acquaintance with Anne. He's like, oh, these are my motivations. This is what I'm doing. And I was like, that's the reveal from the end of the movie, like at the end of the book, like, you're just telling us? Like, what? What? And later, when I realized that they had entirely removed the character of the poor friend that tells her this, I was like, okay, I guess that works. And then I did kind of, it was still strange to me, but I kind of liked the idea of Anne knowing who he is from the get go, especially because they were going for a slightly more modern town. So knowing who he is and what his motivations are, they aren't a big shock to her. She's still flirting with him after knowing that. So it's not a big bombshell revelation that would like make her turn away from him. It's that like, nah, I'm not into you. I'm into Captain Wentworth. And like, you know, like, it's he's not treated as like the villain of the piece. And I kind of like that, actually. Like, I get why it's not that way in the book. And it is quite modern of Anne to be okay with his motivations. But I get that in this film, when you find out his motivations of what he's been doing, it's, I don't know, as a modern, as a modern viewer, it feels less awful than it probably would to a to the audience that this story was written for originally. So I get why they would make that change. It caught me off guard. When they did that, I was like, I why tell it? It's like, if in Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Wickham just volunteered the information that Lizzie finds out that's the big reveal, you'd be like, what? Why are you telling us this information? This is a big secret. So that was strange. But I ultimately, I thought that that worked. But overall, I thought the actor who played Cosmo Jarvis, I think the actor who played Captain Wentworth, was good. And he had good chemistry with Anne, played by Dakota Johnson, the actor who was playing Mr. Elliott, the one who just outed himself as the villain of the piece. I thought he had great chemistry as well. Richard E. Grant playing Anne's father was absolute perfect casting. He was fantastic. I mean, he's a great actor. And he really gave that role his all. Sir Walter Elliott, on March 1st, 1760, man of consequence, known for his exquisite jawline. A lot of the other minor characters and minor actors, a lot of them were new faces to me. The actress that played Anne's younger sister, the self-important hypochondriac, she kind of reminded me of Florence Pugh. And I really enjoyed that actress' performance. I hope to see her in more things. I really liked her. I'm just too kind, Anne. That's my problem. I give all of my attention to others and then I suffer for it. So I had a good time. My mom and I watched it. And after seeing all of the reviews come in and people saying, this is the most atrocious thing ever, she and I were like, oh God, my mom had a genitonic and I had a verb. And we were like, let's get through this. And about halfway through, we were like, are you enjoying this? I'm enjoying this. She was like, I am. I really was expecting to suffer tonight. But so far, I'm having a good time. And I was like, me too. And when the film ended, we hated so, so, so, so much the modern music that was played over the final scene. Because it was so modern. And it was so loud. And it was so aggressively singing over everything. I really, really disliked that. I could have done without that. But otherwise, when it ended, she and I were like, that really wasn't all that bad. That was fine. We had a good time watching it. That was pretty great. Dakota Johnson was fine. She looked adorable in all her costumes. She was a good anteliot. There were some weird choices made by the film, but overall, hardly the worst thing that I've seen. And hardly worthy of inheriting the mantle that was previously held by Rise of Skywalker and Fantastic Beasts and The Last Season of Game of Thrones, where the entire content feed on YouTube is just bursting with takedowns. I was like, I don't, this movie doesn't deserve this. I've seen much worse. This movie is like, you know, if Persuasion's your favorite book of all time, I could see why you'd be like, they did it dirty. But like, it's, it's not that bad. It's really not. It's fine. In fact, it's quite enjoyable at times. So that's my hot take. Persuasion was fine. I liked it. And if you want, if you're not an obsessed fan of Persuasion, if you've, if you've, I mean, I read the book pretty shortly before watching it, and I liked the book a lot. And I still enjoyed the film. But if you've never read the book, or if you like the book and don't, you're like, it's a good book, but I don't need it to be exactly like the book. If you're okay with it, kind of having some scenes, we were like, well, I could do without that. But anyway, back to the film. It's fine. I enjoyed it. And you might too. It's really not that bad. Let me know your thoughts in the comments down below. If you've read Persuasion, if you've not read Persuasion, if you've seen all the adaptations, if you've seen none of the adaptations, if you watch the new one, if you will never watch the new one, whatever you want to let me know. I post videos on Saturdays. Other random times will be on Saturdays, so like and subscribe, join my Patreon if you feel so inclined, and I'll see you when I see you.