‘Orphan’ movie strikes controversy
Isabelle Fuhrman plays Esther in "Orphan."
A controversy has popped up surrounding “Orphan” the movie, and Wikipedia seems to be the first place to highlight it. Wikipedia says:
The film’s content of an adopted child causing trouble has not been well received by the adoption community. The controversy has already caused filmmakers to change a line in one of their trailers from “It must be difficult to love an adopted child as much as your own,” to “I don’t think Mommy likes me very much.” Some of the main criticisms of the movie include:
“The movie Orphan comes directly from this unexamined place in popular culture. Esther’s shadowy past includes Eastern Europe; she appears normal and sweet, but quickly turns violent and cruel, especially toward her mother. These are clichés. This is the baggage with which we saddle abandoned, orphaned, or disabled children given a fresh start at family life.”
Conflict and the bottom line
Sometimes a controversy can hinder a movie at the box office, but more often than not it helps it. People who have a quick payday coming up might decide to go see it just to find out “What’s so bad?”
I don’t think the controversy will stop people who were planning to see it. Also, because it’s causing a bit of a stir, some people who hadn’t even heard of it probably will hear about it.
“Orphan” movie spoilers
Of course, there are “Orphan” movie spoilers out there that very well might cut into the film’s earnings. Especially with a horror movie that lists “twist at the end” as one of the movie’s keywords on IMDB, people who already know how it ends will likely not want to pay nearly $10 to go see it.
Why spoil the movie?
I wasn’t really planning on seeing “Orphan,” so I dug around and found the “Orphan” movie spoiler and a good explanation for why people are letting the ending slip on the internet. Jamie at Knox Road says:
I guess movie studios really like horror movie twists? Like maybe they saw The Sixth Sense and were all “That’s the ONLY way to do it now.” So now we have Orphan and the tagline is basically “This movie has a CRAZY twist.” But the twist happens to be SO crazy that people online are having lots of fun spoiling it. Because it’s ridiculous. Ridiculous. Like so much worse than “The ghost has been riding your shoulders the whole time!!”
Jamie also publishes the “Orphan” movie spoiler on her blog, so if you want to know the ridiculous, crazy, “Orphan” ending twist, you can read her article “Knowing the Orphan spoiler is more fun than seeing the actual movie. Also, there’s a pretty long discussion in the comments section there about whether the “Orphan” movie spoiler is really any crazier than the regular plots of “Law & Order: SVU.”
Personal side note: I don’t know why, but for some reason I find it amusing that the parents in the film are named John and Kate. Those two, simple, common names will never be the same. At least not when paired together.
I seen the movie the orphan today, and for some reason i cant stop thinking about if their is another movie that has the same plot as the orphan. i know i seen a movie like that where there is an old lady posing as a little girl and she gets adopted with a family so and she was an escaped patient from a insane hospital. people please help me in discorvering the answer. ???
Alright – I admit it, I got it wrong. My mistake. They aren’t the same film. There was an interview I found with the director of El Orfanato, during which he’d confirmed New Line had bought rights to remake, and made an erroneous assumption. Please forgive me for besmirching the reputation of The Orphanage, yet another in a long line of exceedingly average horror movies. I’d hate to sully the good name of the completely inane horror genre of the last few years, many of which are all remakes, and usually worse than the originals. It isn’t that Hollywood is unoriginal, it’s that they don’t have any original ideas.
Aside from the movie confusion, it’s still the case that hardly anything comes out which isn’t written and engineered to a formula that appeals to the lowest common denominator, so they can make money – but thankfully there are some good independent directors that can make something interesting. (Wes Anderson, Jim Jarmusch, Todd Solundz, Darren Aranofsky, to name a few.) However, their films usually get panned because they don’t all end happy, precious few things explode and typically don’t star some generic bimbo and doofus with the acting skills of an end table. (Jessicas Alba and Biel, Angelina; McConaghey, Jude Law, Tom Cruise, etc.) I’m still not seeing this flick.
You know, Pete, I think the general feeling is that you’ve apparently confused two movie plots. Sheesh. Usually when a bunch of sheeple all say the same thing it’s because they’re all replying at the same time. These bozos are DAYS apart and don’t realize they are all saying the same thing. Maybe they don’t realize they are repeating what others have said, or maybe they don’t realize they are repeating what others have said. To your credit, Peter, at least you had an ORIGINAL comment.
Th movie Peter Stone talks about is NOT the same at all. El Orphanato or The Orphanage has a different plot. It does share a limited amount of things in common. The twist at the end of El Orphanato is way different, and in my opinion, way better
Actually, Peter, that movie is called “The Orphanage” and is a completely different movie altogether. I would highly recommend “The Orphanage”, and they are currently working on an English language remake.
I think you may be mistaken. I believe that you are thinking of “The Orphanage,” which is, as far as I know, in no way related to this movie.In “The Orphanage” the main character is refurbishing her childhood orphanage to make it a home for disabled children, and her adopted son, Simón, believes he has a masked friend named Tomás whom only he can see. The plot snowballs from there. This is completely different.
ACTUALLY, that statement is entirely incorrect. The film that Del Toro made was called The Orphanage and has an entirely different story line. Do a little research first if you don’t know what youre talking about, buddy.
Oh, no! Lookout it’s the “leave a comment” police. Lighten up, dude, it’s called an error. Your parents made one and it all turned out ok.
It turns out that this movie is a remake. The original was a Spanish language film, produced by Guillermo Del Toro, that was released in 2007. Let me repeat that – 2007. That means, that when they started shooting this new one, they were remaking a film that wasn’t even one year old! Hollywood is out of ideas. In fact the director of the original went on record saying that Hollywood has no guts or ideas but too much money. Well, the reason why is that because Hollywood obviously doesn’t give a tinker’s about whether or not they make quality films, they only care about whether or not they can get people to buy tickets – it’s all the same recycled crap. This is why I don’t go to theaters that often.
You’re thinking of El Orfanato (The Orphanage), this is a completely different movie. The plot isn’t even similar. El Orfanato is about a woman, her husband, and her adopted son living in a haunted ex-orphanage when her son is kidnapped by child-ghosts.
I;m not sure it was a remake. It doesn’t resemble the Bayona one in the slightest.