Anne with an E (2017) Review – Why the Makers of This Series Should Be Set on Fire and Thrown Off a Bridge
How to take a beautiful coming-of-age story about imagination, hope, and individuality in the face of society who doesn't "get" you... and turn it into a grimdark woke-avenger trash-fire
Disclaimer: If you loved Anne with an E, that’s okay. I’m not here to shame anyone for enjoying it. Stories hit us all differently. This one’s just really personal for me, so I needed to vent this out.
Also, no, I do not actually condone setting people on fire and throwing them off bridges.
Throughout my journalistic career, it has always been deeply important to me that I try my best to be fair and objective. Don’t get me wrong, I love to be snarky and colorful, but I also strive for generous reads, overall objectivity, and I am actively against insulting artists for the sake of clickbait…
But today? Today is the day I brandish my bear claws and go passionately fucking nuclear. This is because never before have I seen a modern remake that so thoroughly obliterated its source material’s point and got away with it… and I’ve seen a lot of the new Disney remakes (looking at you, Mulan).
My hot take?
Anne with an E is the worst modern remake I’ve ever seen.
…I’m not even sure if I should give a spoiler warning because I rage-quit this show after approximately 10 minutes, but suffice to say I’ll be talking about the themes from the series it was based on.
About ‘Anne of Green Gables’
If you don’t know the series at all, the original Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maude Montgomery came out way back in 1908, and continued with Anne of Avolea, Anne of the Island, Anne of Windy Poplars, Anne’s House of Dreams, Anne of Ingleside, and Rainbow Valley, after which point the series begins to focus on the next generation.
Conceptually, it is the life story of Anne Shirley, an orphan who’s been bumped around from orphanage to abusive family and back again, until she’s accidentally taken to an aging brother and sister, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, who were looking to adopt a boy to help on the farm. The first book, which most series are based on, covers her school years, including her continuing education.
What ‘Anne of Green Gables’ Meant to Me
I grew up with Lucy Maude Montgomery’s work. When I was a little kid, thirsty for entertaining literary tales, I found my first true kindred spirit in Anne Shirley. A romantic, whimsical little girl who tells too-long stories, with more imagination than she knows what to do with? That was me! I felt so seen!
Anne Shirley built the foundation of who I am as a human being and to a degree, as an artist. She gave me my love of found families, reinforced the value of both discipline and imagination, and told me that even if people think I’m too much, a winning personality would counterbalance it. She might be the reason conforming with others to fit in always felt viscerally uncomfortable, so I stopped doing it back in my school days. She taught me the dangerous pitfalls of vanity and the value of responsibility.
Furthermore, the way the story followed her throughout her life without an overarching plot? That’s probably the reason I love slow burn stories. You might credit it for The Vitmar Chronicles being closer to a slice-of-life series than your usual fantasy novellas.
I should also thank her for my lifelong ability to be an individual. Anne is constantly told that she’s too much, she’s too imaginative, too much of a dreamer, too lost in her thoughts, too talkative… those are all things that I have been told too. So having read a story where a girl is relentlessly all of those things and still finds love, family, and a life that she’s proud of? FUCK YEAH!
To be taught that you’ll be loved no matter who you are, so long as you learn to respect others? That’s one hell of a lesson to be ingrained from a young age and I credit most of my strength to it.
Why the Original ‘Anne of Green Gables’ Is SO Important
Ever notice how a lot of modern media seems to deeply struggle with healthy portrayals of “woke” values without being performative, stereotyping, or outright losing necessary depth? L.M. Montgomery’s original novel shone for having none of those things. This series was written back when performative narratives weren’t even a twinkle in society’s eye.
A big chunk of the entire first book is Anne trying to prove herself to these people so that she could have a real home. She’s absolutely not what they were looking for, but her effervescent personality instantly won over quiet, old Matthew Cuthbert, who softly encourages his sister to give her a chance… because she talked his ear off on the ride home and he loved every second of it.
Isn’t that pretty much everything most little girls want? To be seen and taken seriously and feel valuable as they are?
The Modern Grimdark Uber-Woke Faux-Feminist Nightmare That Is This Remake
Okay, professional gloves off, motherfuckers. I am outraged that this series was received so positively by critics… unless all of those critics were the same bots that review Amazon’s programming.
The premiere episode of Anne with an E opens with little Anne Shirley in her orphanage, being emotionally abused by her guardian. The scenes are shot in dark mood lighting, emphasizing the grimdark trauma arc.
First of all, let’s look at the filmography. Anne Shirley was all about romantic literature, romantic love, beauty, nature, and so on. As such, one might think that the scenes would be filled with dappled sunlight, sweet spring blossoms, and wind rippling across ponds as the lilies dance on their surface.
Instead, we are given such dark, gritty, trauma-laced imagery that it makes Requiem for a Dream look like preschool… and I don’t lightly reference one of the most devastating movies about addiction ever made. Overdone and missing the point much? This isn’t dialed up to 11, it’s dialed up to over 9000. I also don’t recall this version of Anne reading poetry or daydreaming in the first 10 minutes of the episode, which was pretty central to the character’s entire personality.
Then we have the reframing of the story for Netflix. Without spoiling the first episode’s plot, the show takes what should have been a brief arc—wherein Marilla learns some necessary humility—and turns it into a rom-com climax, ending with a cliffhanger. By dramatizing the consequences of Marilla’s mistake, what should have been a very human bonding moment between her and Anne turns into a just another trauma for Anne and the viewer has no time to let the lesson sink in.
The first episode could have ended with a brilliant scene where the viewer would learn that Marilla, though tough, can admit when she’s wrong, and wants Anne to know that she intends to be fair with her. Instead, from what I read, Netflix viewers got a chase scene.
Then we have the treatment of Anne’s character, which I have enough to say on that it deserves a segment of its own…
The Strawman Feministification of Anne Shirley
The moment I rage-quit the show was about 10-20 minutes into the first episode, when Marilla tells Anne that they need a boy to work on the farm, and, in an obnoxious, defiant tone, Anne shouts, “Girls can do anything a boy can do, and more!”
First of all? Generic “woke feminist” vomit dialogue—learn some bloody tact.
Secondly? Anne had zero interest in working in the field or doing the things that boys could do. She was extremely traditionally feminine for the time period: she loved hosting, she learned to keep a tidy house, and she dreamed of being swept off her feet by a handsome man.
Anne of Green Gables was not a feminist story. It was a story in defiance of prejudice against orphans. Medicine in that time was limited, so losing parents to something like Scarlet fever was a lot more common, making this very much a period piece. The author wanted people to understand that orphaned children would flourish when loved like any other child.
Nowadays, orphanages are far rarer and infertile families struggle to find children, so this issue has more or less worked its way out of society. As a result, it seems that we’ve forgotten what message Anne of Green Gables was actually trying to teach.
So the story of the girl who steps up to prove that she can do anything a boy can do? That’s Mulan (1998). That’s her story, and the story of many, many other characters. It is not Anne Shirley’s story.
A Yearning for Love vs The Angry Feminist Manifesto
Anne was not out to dismantle patriarchy. She wasn’t out for gender equality. Her resistance was personal, not political.
The girl just wanted to be loved, much like all of us.
In the original story, Marilla gives Anne a chance because—despite her lack of manners—she’s honest, she relentlessly tries her best no matter how many times she fails, and she puts effort into things Marilla values (regardless of how patriarchally outdated those things might be). Anne doesn’t earn respect by doing a boy’s chores, she works herself to the bone to earn respect in the face of society and her own pride. This is what makes her a genuine feminist icon today and stripping her of that is, frankly, an insult.
What baffles me is how overwhelmingly positive the reviews were, with one review from The Daily Utah Chronicle go so far as to say it was a rare case where “the remake of a classic is done better than the original.”
If I could have thrown a brick through a window on reading that, I would have. This is professional journalism? To utterly miss the point of something on a fundamental level and declare it better than the original? I want to vomit until my bones come out of my eye sockets. This is the state of modern media critiques!?
How fucking dare you try to gaslight me into believing Galadriel of Amazon was Anne Shirley!
It Didn’t Need to Be Like This!
The worst part of all of this was how absurdly unnecessary these changes were. How do I know this? Because there is a 1985 made-for-TV series based on the book and it is the best TV remake of a book ever made (in my experience).
It’s a more or less flawless reproduction of the book:
It changes very little of the plot and takes care with what it does change
It took as much time it needed to tell the story (4 or so hours)
The casting and performances are perfect
The filmography is dreamy and romantic
The writers clearly understood what the story was about
The show starts with Anne walking through a beautiful meadow with twinkling afternoon sunlight, reading Tennyson, completely lost in the poetry of romance-era literature.
It then starkly cuts back to the reality of her life, where there’s an angry mother with too many children making too many demands of her, while also harshly pointing out her legitimate flaws, of which she was not devoid—she was supposed to bring this woman’s husband his lunch, but was late because she was too lost in her poetry book.
This results in the man having a heart attack, Anne getting blamed, and sent back to the orphanage.
There, she sits sadly in the window, talking to her reflection—her only friend—about her loneliness and longing.
That, right there, is a perfectly heart-wrenching portrayal of someone with a vivid imagination being utterly devoid of joy and light in her real life, unloved and unwanted, thinking she’ll never find a happy home. Thus, she finds escapism in beauty, nature, and literature.
Anne’s story wasn’t about trauma, it was about hope.
A Personal Note
Every so often, you might notice me making reference to my late adoptive son—a young man who grew up in an abusive home that destroyed his perception of love and affection to such a degree that, even once he was loved, he couldn’t accept it.
Once, during a movie weekend, I chose to share the aforementioned 1985 TV-movie with him, and my 24-year-old full-body-tattooed, heavily abused, drug addicted thug of a boy told me it was his favorite thing we watched that weekend.
Yeah, that’s right, a kid—who was traumatized and abused to the point that he didn’t make it past 25—saw the original story, felt connected to it, and loved it.
I can only imagine the rage he would have felt if he saw the Netflix series.
This is why edgy remakes are bullshit… they aren’t here to teach us anything, they’re shock value experiences that invoke emotional reactions from people who’ve never experienced such painful tragedies. As such, they don’t resonate with people who actually share these traumatic experiences.
My cub wouldn’t have wanted Anne to be some trauma-ridden pity party, he wanted the girl who boldly faced whatever life threw at her, no matter how much she got beaten down along the way.
Final Thoughts
It feels like the showrunners saw a gorgeous story and thought that it needed more trauma, more feminism, and more defiance… in a story that was inherently about friendship, found families, and being your whole self while still being a respectful member of society.
This remake invoked a webcomic from waaaaaaay back in the day that mocked the way American programming would butcher anime when translated and adapted for English audiences. You can still find it here for reference—it’s pretty spot on. Whether you’re gutting the heart of something for “the sake of kids” or for the sake of spectacle, it never leads to genuine stories that inspire us, it’s a one-time thrill with no replay value.
Ultimately, I know a lot of my friends liked this series, but the thing those friends all have in common is that they never read the book or saw the TV movie, and if you have no frame of reference, perhaps the show is worth watching.
But you will never convince me that this show was good, or a good remake.
If I were L.M. Montgomery, I would be rolling in my grave with disgust over how this show disrespected my story. Fortunately for her, she never lived long enough to see the social justice warrior culture mutilate her magnificent character.
Me? I recommend you dig up that 1985 made-for-TV movie. It’s brilliant.
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