Status Updates From Great Expectations (Noveliz...

The original is a first-person narrative, giving you unlimited insight into its narrator's thoughts but treating, naturally, the motivation of others as largely unknowable. This goes the more standard adaptation route of a limited third-person perspective except, weirdly, for two pages where the viewpoint floats into another character's head... revealing to us nothing worthwhile in the process.

Jimmy's aunt is (probably) a prostitute. She definitely has an addiction to pot which, in the 1950's-style hysteria of this version of GREAT EXPECTATIONS, is portrayed akin to meth or heroin addiction. "She had her stash or pot in front of her and was busily sorting through it... she was too busy to do more than briefly glance up at Jimmy while rolling her joint."

"He thought maybe he was hallucinating, because he could have sworn he saw a man's face hovering just beneath the water!"

And once more turns Dickens green with envy of such a masterful literary style.

" 'Sometimes,' Jimmy said, as the booze began working its way into his bloodstream, 'don't you wonder how different your life could have been if just one thing, one little thing, hadn't happened?'

"Rafael glared at him. 'All the damn time.' ...

CUE THE FLASHBACK!

Dickens opened his novel with Pip being threatened at knife point by an escaped convict to bring him food and supplies. This version decides on a flash forward to Pip/Jimmy in his 20s, drunkenly mocking the man robbing him at gunpoint, who he disarms via sticking his finger in the gun's barrel (as one does). Jimmy is emotionally shattered, you see, and wants to share his life story with his new "friend." Improvement?

"Jimmy felt as if he were in a movie, starring in the role of the tough guy who didn't give a shit, usually played by Bruce Willis or Clint Eastwood."

Dickens only wishes he had thought to write: "For more than half of his twenty-eight years, Jimmy had carried in his heart a shining image, a vision of perfection. Her name was Estella. He yearned for her with every breath and heartbeat."

Page one of a novelization of the movie GREAT EXPECTATIONS which was itself based on the Dickens novel GREAT EXPECTATIONS. Dickens calls his hero "Pip," but this version goes with the all-American "Jimmy," so as not to offend our modern mindsets. My expectations for what is to follow are, indeed, great.