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Has anyone else seen the first two movies in the Night Watch trilogy (Night Watch and Day Watch)? For those unfamiliar with it, they were Russian films from the late 2000's (and I believe hold the Russian box office record) about the ongoing battle between good and evil. The two sides make a truce back in the middle ages and since then the Night Watch patrols evenings to make sure the forces of evil do not break the truce, while the Day Watch patrols the forces of good for the same.
The first was fantastic, the second was less so but still good. I have never heard word of the third and final movie, and Wikipedia makes it sound as though it was never filmed. Does anyone know if it will ever come out?
I happen to think the movies (Night Watch and the sequel, Day Watch) were quite good but knowing that they were based on a series consisting of four books, I was perplexed as to how they were going to complete movie versions of the entire book series, considering the circular and rather final ending of Day Watch.
I now realize (having read all four of the books) that there will be no additional Night Watch movies, and why such sweeping changes had to be made to the plots of Night Watch and Day Watch in order to translate them into films.
All four of the books consist of trilogies of interlocking stories outlining different events or incidents but with central elements that run through all three stories in each book. Also there is a vast progression in the development of the characters, so that, should they attempt do make a film of the third book, Twilight Watch, the characters as left in the films would be vastly different from the same characters by the time they reached book three.
Bear in mind that the author of the original novels, Sergei Lukyananko (sic) also worked on the films so they should be considered "authorized translations", despite the radical alterations to the characters and plots.
In fact, the plot of the Night Watch movie is taken almost entirely from the first story of the first book. Bits and pieces get pulled in from Day Watch and Twilight Watch but in general the plot of the second movie, Day Watch, is so different from the book as to constitute an entirely new story.
Still, the movies are well worth watching, great fun, visually interesting and complete in and of themselves. The books also are quite enjoyable.
Think of this series like Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That started as a BBC radio series, was rewritten as a novel (with some plot changes), then re-re-written for a tv mini-series and once again for a feature film. in the case of Hitchhiker, that appears to be because each time he approached it, Adams came up with more jokes, better situations and more or less was doing variations on the main theme for ech new incarnation.
For the Night Watch series, the story was so complex (across the four books) that each movie would have ended with too much dangling in terms of story. So they just chopped out the first part and assembled it with a kind of circular timeline, making it more or less a variation of the essense of the books, but whole and complete within itself. Probably the best option, all things considered.
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The movies are not that great, but the books are an incredible read. I would suggest them to anyone that gets into that genre. The translation from Russian to English were very well done.
I thought the two movies were great. I heard that Fox Corporation had bought the rights and were going to make a series about this. I hope so and if anyone else has heard about a series I would love any information about that.
I heard that Fox Corporation bought the rights and were going to make a series about this supposedly sometime late 2017.
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Night Watch films
