The Count of Monte Cristo - Just cannot be adapted into a 2 hour movie. Many characters are completely cut out, relationships between characters are switched around, and the ending is different. It really needs to be a series to do the book any kind of justice.

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo kept me up way past my bedtime for many nights. It felt like each chapter left you wanting to see what was going to happen in the next one.

Because that Edmond Dantes that was in love with Mercedes was a different Edmond Dantes. Being imprisoned in a dungeon for 14 years has changed him. He is a much more hardened man than he was before being imprisoned. He realizes that the Edmond Dantes that was in love with Mercedes no longer exists. That was a different man from a different life and it needs to be left in the past.

I like the ending because it doesn’t try to do the “and they reunited, and picked up right where they left off and lived happily ever after” thing. People often have a strong desire to recreate the past and go back to a happier time in their lives, but things change and people change. It can never be like it was before. People grow up, go through different life experiences, develop new interests, get married, and have families. At 45, they aren’t going to be the same person they were when they were 20. Dantes realizes that he cannot recreate the past.

I love the Count of Monte Cristo for its realistic portrayal of human experiences. Edmond Dantes isn’t a Clark Kent or Steve Rogers who can be beaten and tortured to seemingly no end and remain completely unphased by it. His experience of being wrongfully imprisoned in a dungeon has made him a much darker person. He is still a good man at heart, but he has a dark side. He’ll kill a man in a duel and not lose a wink of sleep over it. The Edmond Dantes before being imprisoned would have been appalled at watching the execution, whereas the one after being imprisoned watches it with great anticipation. He’s a much more human character than your typical fictional hero.