Concessions 90210

Did you know that in the year 2002, French president Jacques Chirac exhumed Alexandre Dumas’s 132-year-old corpse, dressed the coffin up in velvet like a fancy prostitute, transported it (“solemnly”) to Paris, and then buried it again in a fancier corpse-hole because its original corpse-hole wasn’t fancy enough, as if any corpse is capable of caring about the fanciness of its hole? And did you know they put it all on TV, and Jacques Chirac made a speech about castles and dreams? And did you know that the pallbearers were (“SOLEMNLY”) all costumed up as Athos, Porthos, Aramis, d’Artagnan, and a big feather? All of that is mostly true. Fuck, I hope I get famous enough to have costumed weirdos bearing my pall at my state-sponsored televised second funeral (my pallbearers would be dressed, obviously, as Kim Cattrall’s vagina, a rampaging bear, a Dorito, a poop, and a big feather).

So anyway, did you guys also know that in the year 2011, they went and did it all again? Only this time, instead of the president of France it was the king of Hollywood, and instead of calling it Jacques Chirac’s Corpse-Yoinking Velveteen Jamboree, they just went with The Three Musketeers. And while Alexandre Dumas’s literal corpse was not involved, his words and characters were, to their great enduring shame (and ours).

Here’s what I’m getting at IN CASE THE METAPHOR IS CONFUSING: The Three Musketeers is a stinky, crusty, awkward, reanimated old dead body dressed up in velvet like a fancy prostitute and carried around by costumed weirdos covered in big feathers for no reason. It’s a 3-D “steampunk” retelling of Dumas’s classic novel (as we all know, “steampunk” is German for “the only thing worse than 3-D”), and it catches up with those plucky musketeers in exactly the same place where all 799 other Three Musketeers adaptations caught up with them: They’re drunk, depressed, and hella mad at Cardinal Richelieu. Musketeering ain’t what it used to be. Then, as usual, little d’Artagnan shows up (he rode a horse all the way from Fresno, apparently), and the team sets out to hijack Leonardo da Vinci’s unstoppable “war machine” (literally just a ship tied to a balloon), save France (from… something), and—the key ingredient in any Three Musketeers movie—NEVER USE A SINGLE FUCKING MUSKET AT ANY TIME EVER.

I mean, have you EVER seen a musketeer actually use a musket? It’s always goddamn swords with these people. Swords, swords, swords. In this version, there’s even a scene when d’Artagnan’s d’Ad presents him with a special sword, and d’Artagnan has the GALL to go, “Ahhhh, the weapon of a musketeer.” No! Noooooooo!!! It’s right in the name! A MUSKET IS THE WEAPON OF A MUSKETEER. OTHERWISE THEY WOULD BE CALLED SWORDY-BLOKES OR WHATEVER. Much to my relief, d’Artagnan’s d’Ad immediately corrects him. “No,” he says gravely. “No. The real weapon of a musketeer is here.” And he points. To his big fucking feather.